Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The lawyer, who asked not to be named, is involved in a civil case brought against the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group whose sophisticated Pegasus malware has reportedly been used against Mexican journalists, and a prominent Saudi dissident living in Canada.
Top watchdog promises to force change following Cambridge Analytica scandal as New York announces new investigation
Facebook broke Canadian privacy laws when it collected the information of some 600,000 citizens, a top watchdog in the country said on Thursday, pledging to seek a court order to force the social media company to change its practices.
Canada’s privacy commissioner, Daniel Therrien, made his comments while releasing the results of an investigation, opened a year ago, into a data sharing scandal involving Facebook and the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Staff review audio in effort to help AI-powered voice assistant respond to commands
When Amazon customers speak to Alexa, the company’s AI-powered voice assistant, they may be heard by more people than they expect, according to a report.
Amazon employees around the world regularly listen to recordings from the company’s smart speakers as part of the development process for new services, Bloomberg News reports.
Social network targeted legislators around the world, promising or threatening to withhold investment
Facebook has targeted politicians around the world – including the former UK chancellor, George Osborne – promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook’s behalf against data privacy legislation, an explosive new leak of internal Facebook documents has revealed.
The documents, which have been seen by the Observer and Computer Weekly, reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU. The documents include details of how Facebook:
Communications between senior figures, including Mark Zuckerberg, shed new light on data use
Documents posted online Friday appear to be confidential internal Facebook communications that reveal new details of the company’s treatment of user data.
About 60 pages of un-redacted exhibits from a lawsuit between Facebook and Six4Three, an app developer, were posted anonymously on GitHub on Friday. They include emails between various Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a “highly confidential” 2012 memo detailing various policy matters.
The recent court decision against the neighbours of Tate Modern in London belies a much wider problem – everyone is constantly being watched
Alexander McFadyen says that he and his family were “more or less constantly watched” while they were at home. They had to be “properly dressed” at all times, and even then they were often photographed or filmed, and sometimes spied on with binoculars. McFadyen set out to measure the problem. While working at the dining table, he counted 84 people taking photographs in 90 minutes. This is the reality of living in a glass-walled flat in Block C of Neo Bankside, just 34 metres from the viewing gallery at Tate Modern, which receives up to 600,000 visitors a year.
A neighbour, Claire Fearn, said being watched like that made her “sick to her stomach”. People waved and made obscene gestures at her and her family. Her husband, Giles Fearn, found pictures of their home posted online by strangers. Many of the images are still on Twitter, often with amused remarks about the misfortune of their wealthy owners. (The flats are worth an average of £4.35m each.) Another neighbour, Lindsay Urquhart, visited the viewing gallery and heard someone remark that she and the other residents of Block C deserved to lose their privacy because they were “rich bastards”.
CNIL found that company failed to offer users transparent information on data use
The French data protection watchdog CNIL has fined Google a record €50m (£44m) for failing to provide users with transparent and understandable information on its data use policies.
For the first time, the company was fined using new terms laid out in the pan-European general data protection regulation. The maximum fine for large companies under the new law is 4% of annual turnover, meaning the theoretical maximum fine for Google is almost €4bn.
Man, 20, driven by ‘annoyance’ at statements made by politicians and celebrities
A 20-year-old man has admitted to police that he was behind one of the country’s biggest data breaches, in which the private details of almost 1,000 public figures were leaked.
The man, who lives with his parents in the central German state of Hesse and is still in the education system, told police he had acted alone and was not politically motivated.
For Facebook, this is a huge blow - and the latest of several high-profile breaches that have cast renewed doubts on data privacy. This highlights the need for a robust public-private partnership when it comes to cybersecurity.
The Trump administration is hoping Congress can come up with a new set of national rules governing how companies can use consumers' data that finds a balance between "privacy and prosperity." But it will be tricky to reconcile the concerns of privacy advocates who want people to have more control over the usage of their personal data - where they've been, what they view, who their friends are -and the powerful companies that mine it for profit.
In this Sept. 5, 2018, file photo, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., speaks with reporters after the Republican's policy luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Google says YouTube isn't for children under 13, which is why it created a separate app for them, YouTube Kids. Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican, sent a letter this week to Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai asking for more details about how the service collects data.
Big Tech returns to the hot seat with executives from Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and others facing Senate questioning on Sept. 26 covering compliance with privacy laws and how they each handle user data.
Paul previously had been a lonely Republican voice expressing any concern about President Donald Trump's pick to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Paul had raised questions about surveillance and privacy rights, among other issues.
Farm handout signals damage of Trump tariffs Republicans outraged at Trump's trade policies should do something instead of just lobbing words: Our view Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://usat.ly/2v3Y1jF When the Trump administration announced Tuesday that it would spend $12 billion to aid farmers harmed by its trade polices, the outrage was palpable. Lawmakers of both parties called it welfare, a bailout and other derogatory terms.
Democratic lawmakers joined scores of scientists, health providers, environmental officials and activists Tuesday in denouncing an industry-backed proposal that could limit dramatically the scientific studies the Environmental Protection Agency considers in shaping protections for human health. If adopted by the Trump administration, the rule would allow an EPA administrator to reject study results in making decisions about chemicals, pollutants and other health risks if underlying research data is not made public because of patient privacy concerns or other issues.
Cellphone carriers usually ask for their customers' blessing before listing their phone numbers, sharing their addresses or exposing them to promotional emails. But seeking permission to share one particularly sensitive piece of information-a cellphone's current location-often falls to one of several dozen third-party companies like Securus Inc. and 3Cinteractive Corp. rely on those firms to vouch that they obtained users' consent before handing over the data.
Robert Mueller's latest indictment in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election is chock full of extraordinary details. Its most breathtaking revelation, however, is just how scary-good America's cyberspies are.
While some critics worry the legislation doesn't nearly go far enough, other observers are saying "California could be the bellwether for the privacy movement" after the state legislature on Thursday unanimously passed and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the nation's toughest digital privacy rules. Businesses must disclose what information it collects, what business purpose it does so for and any third parties it shares that data with.
Police generally need a warrant to look at records that reveal where cellphone users have been, the Supreme Court ruled Friday in a big victory for privacy interests in the digital age. The justices' 5-4 decision marks a big change in how police may obtain information that phone companies collect from the ubiquitous cellphone towers that allow people to make and receive calls, and transmit data.