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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Forecast of social network's impending doom comes from comparing its growth curve to that of an infectious disease
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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:
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
- Linux Journal Might Have Become the Latest Slopfarm Targeting "Linux", the Trends Are Concerning for Dying News Sites
- They tarnish the Web with junk and then die
- On "Learning to Code"
- quality may suffer, plus things get bloated
- Quick Points Regarding This Week's Court Hearing
- it paves the way for us to squash all the SLAPPs from Microsofters
-
- 1989: Free Software as "Open" Software (OSI Didn't Coin "Open Source", It Also Predates Linux)
- "One man's fight for Free software"
- The Microsoft OOXML Modus Operandi: Throw 1,000 Pages of Other People's Work for a Judge to Read Ahead of a One-Hour Meeting
- No time to discuss this - that's the point
- Formalities Officers (FOs) at the EPO Are in Trouble, Reveals Internal Report
- We already know, based on an HR pattern we saw at IBM and elsewhere, that reallocating roles can be prerequisite for dismissal and those who do so expect many to resign anyway
- The Web is Slop and FUD, Let's Go to Gemini Protocol
- Lupa sees self-signed capsules at 92.4%
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, June 20, 2025
- Links 21/06/2025: Phone Bans for Concerts, Tensions in Taiwan Strait
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/06/2025: Spoilers, Public Yggdrasil Node, Changes to AuraGem Search
- Links for the day
- "Six years of Gemini!"
- From gemini://geminiprotocol.net
- Gemini Links 20/06/2025: Summer Updates and Hardware Failures
- Links for the day
- Links 20/06/2025: Google Shareholder Sues Google and Google Sued for Defamatory Slop ('Hey Hi') Word Salads ('Summaries')
- Links for the day
- Common Mistake: Believing Social Control Media Will Document Your Writings/Thoughts and Search Engines Like Google Will Help You Find These
- Many news sites wrongly assumed that posting directly to Twitter would be acceptable
- The Manchester Bees and This Hot Summer
- We have had a fantastic week so far this week
- Gemini Protocol Enters Its Seventh Year, Growth Has Accelerated!
- Maybe in June 20 2026 there will be over 3,500 active capsules?
- Mastodon and the Fediverse Have an Issue: Liability for Content (Even in Other Instances) and Costs
- self-hosting is the only logical path forward
- Why Microsoft and Its 'Hey Hi' (Slop) Frenzy Fail While Sinking in Deep, Growing Debt
- Right now, like Twitter around the time it was sold to MElon, "open" "hey hi" is a big pile of debt with a lot to pay for that debt (interest payments)
- Europe is Leaving Microsoft, the Press Coverage Isn't Sufficiently Helpful
- The news is generally positive, but the press coverage leaves so much to be desired
- Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, BetaNews, and Linux Journal
- slippery slope
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, June 19, 2025
- Gemini Links 20/06/2025: Gemini Protocol Turns 6!
- Links for the day
- Links 19/06/2025: Ghostwriting Scam and Fentanylware (TikTok) Buying Time
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's Windows is a Niche Operating System in Africa
- African nations aren't a large contributor to Microsoft's income, but if many African nations move away from Windows, then the monopoly is at risk
- Gemini Links 19/06/2025: Unix Primitivism, Zine Club, and Gemini Protocol Turns 6 at Midnight
- Links for the day
- Links 19/06/2025: WhatsApp Identified as Assassination 'Crosshairs', Patreon Now Rips Off People Even More
- Links for the day
- "Told You So": Another Very Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Now Confirmed in Mainstream Media
- So we were right to believe the rumours, based on the credibility of prior such rumours
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 18, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, June 18, 2025