Privacy Watch: Today's Stories of Interest
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-23 21:56:58 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-23 21:56:58 UTC
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Apple has been hit with a hefty class action lawsuit, courtesy of three men from Massachusetts who say the computer company illegally collected and sold its customers’ personal information.
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The NHS has been going through some fairly radical changes. This will affect who can see your medical records and what they can do with them.
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This is the kind of charge that gives people like Richard Stallman fits. Basically, if you have a microphone connected to your computer Chrome accesses it through a Web Speech API and is capable of performing speech-to-text tasks. The claim is that these features can be hijacked through pop-under windows for eavesdropping purposes.
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Forecast of social network's impending doom comes from comparing its growth curve to that of an infectious disease
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The US government’s privacy board has sharply rebuked President Barack Obama over the National Security Agency’s mass collection of American phone data, saying the program defended by Obama last week was illegal and ought to be shut down.
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The bulk collection of phone call data by US intelligence agencies is illegal and has had only "minimal" benefits in preventing terrorism, an independent US privacy watchdog has ruled.
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The U.S. National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records provides only minimal benefits to countering terrorism, is illegal and should end, a federal privacy watchdog said in a report to be released on Thursday and reviewed by Reuters.
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The federal agency that declared the NSA's telephone dragnet illegal has now released its 238-page report. One of its best features is a succinct presentation of 4 specific reasons that the program cannot be justified even under the PATRIOT Act. "There are four grounds upon which we find that the telephone records program fails to comply with Section 215," the text states. Here are those reasons:
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Pitched to us as an entry in a C-Span competition about what issues Congress should deal with in 2014, Data Obsession breaks down the controversy over domestic surveillance with help from AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein.
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You see, spying is kind of a sensitive topic in the reunified Germany. Before the reunification in 1990, citizens of Communist East Germany grappled with spying on one’s own friends, family and colleagues, under orders by the Stasi secret police.
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An new commission to be headed by Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt is set to investigate the implications of the US snooping affair for the future of the internet.
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Tor, an acronym for “the onion router,” is software that provides the closest thing to anonymity on the Internet. Engineered by the Tor Project, a nonprofit group, and offered free of charge, Tor has been adopted by both agitators for liberty and criminals. It sends chat messages, Google (GOOG) searches, purchase orders, or e-mails on a winding path through multiple computers, concealing activities as the layers of an onion cover its core, encrypting the source at each step to hide where one is and where one wants to go. Some 5,000 computers around the world, volunteered by their owners, serve as potential hop points in the path, obscuring requests for a new page or chat. Tor Project calls these points relays.
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So far, six states (Missouri, California, Oklahoma, Kansas, Washington, and Indiana) have introduced bills that target the NSA. Though they all differ somewhat, each state's bill would impede NSA operations within their boundaries.
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Edward Snowden risked everything to expose the secret NSA spying program of our calls and emails. Now he's been formally charged with violating the Espionage Act—the same law used to charge Bradley Manning, who provided information to WikiLeaks.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constrains Freedom of Thought
- Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
- Debian Left Twitter (MElon "X"), We Think the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Should Do the Same
- What would the FSF really lose if it stopped posting there?
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- Links 07/02/2025: Amazon’s Stock Collapses and US Government Being Dismantled (Still)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/02/2025: Mid-level Details and Simple Code
- Links for the day
- Links 07/02/2025: US 'Demolition Crew', e-ID Loopholes, and Sanctions
- Links for the day
- Social Control Media is Narcissism
- Nowadays there's a lot more literature and even press coverage explaining the harms of Social Control Media
- statCounter Sees GNU/Linux Share Doubling in China Over the Past Year
- It'll be interesting to see what data in the coming months shows
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 06, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, February 06, 2025
- Richard Stallman (RMS) Confirms Next Week's Talk in Europe
- He gave at least 2 talks in Europe last month
- Nationalism As A Service (NaaS) by Microsoft Azure, Gutting the US Government for Profit
- Will Microsoft be receiving bailouts as a reward for all this?
- Rumours of IBM Layoffs Apparently Confirmed Yesterday, IBM Canada Consulting Impacted (as Rumoured)
- when IBM has layoffs we must also read it as Red Hat layoffs
- Tons of Anti-Linux 'Articles' Published by Bots (LLMs), Maybe Microsoft's
- Upon closer inspection, all this FUD turned out to be LLM garbage
- Gemini Links 06/02/2025: Voicemail Sucks and Night of Lights
- Links for the day
- Ubuntu Desktop Director of Engineering Has Only One Blog Post. It Promotes Microsoft Windows.
- Remember that even 15 years ago (more or less, maybe 16 years ago) Canonical appointed a a 'former' Microsoft manager (Spencer) to lead Ubuntu on the desktop
- Links 06/02/2025: YouTube Takedowns Out of Control, 'DOGE' Breaking Laws
- Links for the day
- IBM Red Hat on "era of cloud computing", pushing "hey hi" (AI) hype in Microsoft Azure
- LLM slop might actually be more benign than Microsoft promotion
- Corruption and Rule-Breaking Prevail at the European Patent Office (EPO), Europe's Second-Largest Institution
- The law does not really exist at the EPO; it can be perceived as merely a "recommendation"
- statCounter: More Countries Where Windows is Around 1% "Market Share" (People Have Moved to Android/Linux)
- in some nations Windows is already 1% or less
- 404 Media Says "Workers at NASA Told to Drop Everything to Scrub Mentions of Indigenous People, Women from Its Websites" But There's Also Accessibility in the Firing Line
- In the case of abandoning accessibility, everyone stands to be hurt and proprietary software can be brought in to replace standards
- When BetaNews Writes Real Articles About "Linux" They Promote Windows
- The Web is in a bad state. We need to at least try to correct this.
- Gemini Links 06/02/2025: Cynicism and "Real Magic on the C64"
- Links for the day
- Links 06/02/2025: New Sanctions, Layoffs, and Executive Orders
- Links for the day
- Distros and Desktop Environments, Devices
- GNU/Linux focused
- New Rumours of IBM Layoffs in 2025, IBM Consulting Still Struggles, Based on Management
- "Hey hi" (AI) has been a common excuse for business failure
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 05, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, February 05, 2025
- Links 05/02/2025: Kessler Syndrome and News Online
- Links for the day
- statCounter: Monaco Now 7% GNU/Linux ("Proper")
- GNU/Linux, not counting Chromebooks, is on the rise
- Many Parts of Google Lose Money
- It's quite apparent that many parts of Google - even some that rely on ad revenue or push ads - aren't profiting
- European Internet Forum (EIF) is Dominated by American Corporations and Microsoft Lobbyists, Staff Take the Lead
- Should the officials over here or the European Parliament pay attention to these people?
- Links 05/02/2025: Connection without Connectivity and Unionised Grocery Workers
- Links for the day
- Just Because People on Top of the Microsoft Pyramid Made a Lot of Money Doesn't Mean Microsoft is Wealthy
- The bigger they are the harder they fall
- Gemini Links 05/02/2025: Learning, Madman Ruling a Mad Country, Back in Geminispace
- Links for the day
- statCounter Shows "WIntel" Chasing a Dying Market
- Microsoft acts as if it's running out of money
- Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Still Raising Money, Richard Stallman Contributes
- total exceeding $430k
- A Lot of Stuff About "Linux" in Google News is LLM Slop, Fake 'Articles'
- It seems to be getting worse
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 04, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, February 04, 2025