Search results for "surveillance"

Congress approves import ban targeting forced labor in China

Senators gave final congressional approval Thursday to a bill barring imports from China’s Xinjiang region unless businesses can prove they were produced without forced labor, overcoming initial hesitation from the White House and what supporters said was opposition from corporations. The measure is the latest in a series intensifying U.S. penalties over China’s alleged systemic […]

Spyware find highlights depth of hacker-for-hire industry

Security researchers said Thursday they found two kinds of commercial spyware on the phone of a leading exiled Egyptian dissident, providing new evidence of the depth and diversity of the abusive hacker-for-hire industry. One piece of malware recently found on an iPhone belonging to Ayman Nour, a dissident and 2005 Egyptian presidential candidate who subsequently […]

Instagram Hits 2 Billion Active Users Without Admitting

Instagram is reported to have reached 2 billion monthly active users without officially announcing it, according to anonymous employees who broke the news to CNBC. The reason behind not announcing it is that the platform was under surveillance in the past few months for potentially causing harm to children and teens. The last time the […]

Norway fines dating app Grindr $7.16M over privacy breach

Norway’s data privacy watchdog on Wednesday fined gay dating app Grindr 65 million kroner ($7.16 million) for sending sensitive personal data to hundreds of potential advertising partners without users’ consent — a breach of strict European Union privacy rules. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority said it imposed its highest fine to date because the California-based […]

Group: Pandemic tech tools raise risk of everyday tracking

Tech tools like digital contact tracing apps and artificial intelligence that European governments rolled out to combat COVID-19 failed to play a key role in solving the pandemic and now threaten to make such monitoring widely accepted, a new report shows. The health surveillance technologies that many European countries deployed after the coronavirus pandemic erupted […]

Apple suing Israeli hacker-for-hire company NSO Group

Tech giant Apple announced Tuesday it is suing Israel’s NSO Group, seeking to block the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire company from breaking into Apple’s products, like the iPhone. Apple said in a complaint filed in federal court in California that NSO Group employees are “amoral 21st century mercenaries who have created highly sophisticated cyber-surveillance machinery […]

Charities see more crypto donations. Who is benefiting?

As the biggest cryptocurrencies flirt with record high values, they’re increasingly becoming bigger sources of revenue for charities. However, the number of charities accepting the virtual currencies, known for their volatility, remains limited. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, hit nearly $69,000 for the first time in its history last week, roaring back after sinking below […]

Google bids on Pentagon program for Cloud computing technology

Three years ago, Google was pressured by its employees to drop a Pentagon project using artificial intelligence (AI), now, the Big Tech giant is chasing after another massive contract that will work on cloud computing to the military, according to The New York Times.  In 2018, Google backed away from Project Maven with the Department of […]

Facebook to shut down face-recognition system, delete data

Facebook said it will shut down its face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than 1 billion people amid growing concerns about the technology and its misuse by governments, police and others. “This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history,” Jerome Pesenti, vice president of […]