Category Archives: Surveillance

Drones, informers and apps: Iran intensifies surveillance on women to enforce hijab law

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Iranian police are using digital tools to identify and punish women who defy the Islamic state’s harsh dress code

Like many women in Iran, Darya is used to feeling under surveillance. Yet in recent months, the 25-year-old finance analyst from northern Tehran says that she never knows who could be watching her every move.

She says she has received messages from the police before warning her of suspected violations of the country’s strict hijab laws, but last November she was sent an SMS message containing her car registration plate that stated the exact time and place that she had been recorded driving without her head properly covered. Next time it happened, the SMS warned, her car would be impounded.

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Ontario’s police force using ‘growing ecosystem’ of Israeli spyware – report

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Findings raise questions about extent and scope of Canadian authorities’ use of cyberweapons

Researchers have uncovered “possible links” between Ontario’s provincial police force and an Israel-based military-grade spyware maker called Paragon Solutions, raising questions about the extent and scope of Canadian authorities’ use of cyberweapons.

The new findings were published by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which tracks and identifies digital threats against civil society, and come three years after a parliamentary committee in Canada called for Ottawa to update the country’s privacy laws in the wake of press reports that the national police force had been using spyware to hack mobile phone devices. No laws were ever passed to address the controversy.

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US to revoke student visas over ‘pro-Hamas’ social media posts flagged by AI – report

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State department launches AI-assisted reviews of accounts to look for what it perceives as Hamas supporters

The US state department will use artificial intelligence to revoke visas of foreign students who it perceives as supporters of Hamas, Axios reported on Thursday, citing senior state department officials.

Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to combat antisemitism and has pledged to deport non-citizen college students and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests that have been ongoing for months amid Israel’s military assault on Gaza after Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

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UK-based lawyers for Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai targeted by Chinese state

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Exclusive: Barristers at Doughty Street Chambers say they have been subject to surveillance, hacking and rape threats

UK-based lawyers have spoken out about being targeted by the Chinese state and its supporters in a campaign of intimidation including surveillance, hacking of bank accounts and rape threats.

The barristers, from Doughty Street Chambers in London, say there has been a coordinated and concerted campaign against them since they began acting for the jailed Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and media mogul, Jimmy Lai, three years ago.

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Is your air fryer spying on you? Concerns over ‘excessive’ surveillance in smart devices

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UK consumer group Which? finds some everyday items including watches and speakers are ‘stuffed with trackers’

Air fryers that gather your personal data and audio speakers “stuffed with trackers” are among examples of smart devices engaged in “excessive” surveillance, according to the consumer group Which?

The organisation tested three air fryers, increasingly a staple of British kitchens, each of which requested permission to record audio on the user’s phone through a connected app.

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Top Chinese economist disappears after criticising Xi Jinping in private chat – report

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Zhu Hengpeng, who worked for an influential government thinktank, has reportedly not been seen in public since making disparaging remarks on WeChat

A leading Chinese economist at a government thinktank has reportedly disappeared after being disciplined for criticising Xi Jinping in a private chat group.

Zhu Hengpeng, 55, is believed to have made disparaging remarks about China’s economy, and potentially about the Chinese leader specifically, in a private WeChat group. Zhu was subsequently detained in April and put under investigation, according to the Wall Street Journal which cited anonymous sources.

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Privacy experts shocked as Hobart council agrees to beam live CCTV footage into police station

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Sharing livestream from 330 council-operated cameras with force via ‘portal’ in Hobart police station labelled ‘a massive intrusion on rights’

Police in Hobart have been granted real-time access to footage from hundreds of city council CCTV cameras in a move labelled “so intrusive and oppressive” by the Australian Privacy Foundation.

The CCTV partnership between Tasmania police and the City of Hobart was announced on Thursday but has been operating secretly for weeks.

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Starmer’s live facial recognition plan would usher in national ID, campaigners say

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PM accused of ignoring civil rights and aping autocracies as he proposes new powers after far-right unrest

Civil liberties campaigners have said that a proposal made by Keir Starmer on Thursday to expand the use of live facial recognition technology would amount to the effective introduction of a national ID card system based on people’s faces.

Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, said it was ironic the new prime minister was suggesting a greater use of facial matching on the same day that an EU-wide law largely banning real-time surveillance technology came into force.

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Detroit changes rules for police use of facial recognition after wrongful arrest of Black man

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City to pay $300,000 to Robert Williams, whose driver’s license was incorrectly flagged in shoplifting investigation

The city of Detroit has agreed to pay $300,000 to a Black man who was wrongly arrested for shoplifting, and to change how police use facial-recognition technology to solve crimes after the software identified him as a suspect.

The conditions are part of a lawsuit settlement with Robert Williams. His driver’s license photo was incorrectly flagged by facial-recognition software as a likely match to a man seen on security video at a Shinola watch store in 2018.

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California deploys hundreds of freeway surveillance cameras in Oakland to fight crime

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Critics say system will infringe on privacy and fuel police abuse of marginalized communities

Hundreds of high-tech surveillance cameras are being installed in the city of Oakland and surrounding freeways to help battle crime, the California governor announced on Friday.

Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in a news release that the California highway patrol (CHP) has contracted with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company, to install 480 cameras that can identify and track vehicles by license plate, type, color and even decals and bumper stickers. The cameras will provide authorities with real-time alerts of suspect vehicles.

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Secret tribunal to hear claims police spied on Northern Ireland journalists

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Judges urged to keep proceedings as open as possible in case relating to Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey

Allegations that UK police and intelligence spied on investigative journalists to identify their sources will be heard by a secret tribunal on Wednesday, with judges urged to ensure as much as possible takes place in open court.

Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey asked the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) to look into whether police in Northern Ireland and Durham, as well as MI5 and GCHQ, used intrusive surveillance powers against them.

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Dozens in Jordan targeted by authorities using NSO spyware, report finds

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Findings suggest Jordan is relying on cyberweapon to quash dissent and its use is ‘staggeringly widespread’

About three dozen journalists, lawyers and human rights workers in Jordan have been targeted by authorities using powerful spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group amid a broad crackdown on press freedoms and political participation, according to a report by the lobbying group Access Now.

The information suggests the Jordanian government has used the Israeli cyberweapon against members of civil society, including at least one American citizen living in Jordan, between 2019 and September 2023.

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Police to be able to run face recognition searches on 50m driving licence holders

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Exclusive: Privacy campaigners say clause in new criminal justice bill will put all UK drivers on ‘permanent police lineup’

The police will be able to run facial recognition searches on a database containing images of Britain’s 50 million driving licence holders under a law change being quietly introduced by the government.

Should the police wish to put a name to an image collected on CCTV, or shared on social media, the legislation would provide them with the powers to search driving licence records for a match.

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Surveillance technology is advancing at pace – with what consequences?

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Plans for facial recognition searches across UK driving licence records could threaten idea of policing by consent

In the summer of 2019, Nikolay Glukhin travelled on the Moscow underground with a lifesize cardboard cutout of a young political protester, Konstantin Kotov. On a banner he had scrawled of Kotov’s fate: “I’m facing up to five years … for peaceful protests.” A few days later, Glukhin himself was arrested.

Glukhin’s peaceful initiative is believed to have been picked up on social media and CCTV cameras. His image is thought to have been matched through facial recognition technology to a database of photos, the source of which has yet to be confirmed.

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EU agrees tough limits on police use of AI biometric surveillance

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Measure bans use of real-time data without judicial authorisation in nearly all circumstances and covers both public and private spaces

Police and national security bodies in the EU will be banned from using real-time biometric data driven by artificial intelligence in most circumstances without having judicial authorisation, it has emerged.

The measure was part of a historic agreement reached between the European parliament and EU member states on Friday after three days of negotiations. However, officials only revealed the operational details on Monday, as the final text will not be published until “a cleaning-up process” is complete.

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Revealed: Home Affairs paying to access controversial tool tracking mobile phone movements

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Agency has had access to Locate X since at least 2021, documents show, amid questions about use of data that may contain people’s sensitive information

Home Affairs has paid an American intelligence company to access Locate X, a controversial tool that can track the movement of smartphones.

The agency has had access to the product since at least 2021, according to correspondence between Home Affairs and Babel Street obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information (FOI) laws.

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Hundreds of millions of Australian identity checks may have been illegally conducted, Senate hears

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Albanese government is rushing through laws to underpin the ID verification service, say experts who have privacy concerns

Hundreds of millions of identity checks under the federal government’s ID verification service may have been illegally conducted, with the Albanese government rushing through legislation to underpin the service.

Identity verification services are used by government departments and businesses – such as credit card providers and power companies – to combat fraud and identity theft.

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Britain is ‘omni-surveillance’ society, watchdog warns

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Exclusive: Fraser Sampson says law is not keeping up with AI advances as police retain 3m images of innocent people

Britain is an “omni-surveillance” society with police forces in the “extraordinary” position of holding more than 3m custody photographs of innocent people more than a decade after being told to destroy them, the independent surveillance watchdog has said.

Fraser Sampson, who will end his term as the Home Office’s biometrics and surveillance commissioner this month, said there “isn’t much not being watched by somebody” in the UK and that the regulatory framework was “inconsistent, incomplete and in some areas incoherent”.

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UK police urged to double use of facial recognition software

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Policing minister Chris Philp suggests target of more than 200,000 searches over next six months

Police are being encouraged to double their use of retrospective facial recognition software to track down offenders over the next six months.

Policing minister Chris Philp has written to force leaders suggesting the target of exceeding 200,000 searches of still images against the police national database by May using facial recognition technology.

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Hamas’s stealth attack will be remembered as Israeli intelligence failure for the ages

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Israel’s advanced surveillance of Palestinians makes scenes of Hamas gunmen moving through its streets all the more astounding

Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, will be remembered as an intelligence failure for the ages.

In the space of several hours, dozens of Gaza militants broke through the border fence into southern Israel, surprising local military positions.

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