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Daily Archives: October 23, 2024

The Global Surveillance Free-for-All in Mobile Ad Data

Krebs on Security: “…Delaware-based Atlas Data Privacy Corp. helps its users remove their personal information from the clutches of consumer data brokers, and from people-search services online. Backed by millions of dollars in litigation financing, Atlas so far this year has sued 151 consumer data brokers on behalf of a class that includes more than 20,000 New Jersey law enforcement officers who are signed up for Atlas services. Atlas alleges all of these data brokers have ignored repeated warnings that they are violating Daniel’s Law, a New Jersey statute allowing law enforcement, government personnel, judges and their families to have their information completely removed from commercial data brokers. Daniel’s Law was passed in 2020 after the death of 20-year-old Daniel Anderl, who was killed in a violent attack targeting a federal judge — his mother. Last week, Atlas invoked Daniel’s Law in a lawsuit (PDF) against Babel Street, a little-known technology company incorporated in Reston, Va. Babel Street’s core product allows customers to draw a digital polygon around nearly any location on a map of the world, and view a slightly dated (by a few days) time-lapse history of the mobile devices seen coming in and out of the specified area. Babel Street’s LocateX platform also allows customers to track individual mobile users by their Mobile Advertising ID or MAID, a unique, alphanumeric identifier built into all Google Android and Apple mobile devices. Babel Street can offer this tracking capability by consuming location data and other identifying information that is collected by many websites and broadcast to dozens and sometimes hundreds of ad networks that may wish to bid on showing their ad to a particular user…”

Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind

The New York Times unlocked article Robert Paxton thought the label was overused. But now he’s alarmed by what he sees in global politics — including Trumpism…Paxton, who is 92, is one of the foremost American experts on fascism and perhaps the greatest living American scholar of mid-20th-century European history. His 1972 book, “Vichy France:… Continue Reading

Spreadsheet of the longer-term implications of #COVID19 infections

Augie Ray @[email protected] – My spreadsheet of the longer-term implications of COVID19 infections has now reached 1,100 studies. Recent additions show COVID and Long COVID causes fatigue, heart arrhythmias, reduced white blood cell count, T-cell exhaustion, lower quality of life, cognitive impairment, insomnia, erectile dysfunction, and persistent liver damage. Continue Reading

VISA Biannual Threat Report Fall 2024

This report provides an overview of the top payments ecosystem threats within the past six-month period (January – June 2024) as identified by Visa Payment Fraud Disruption (PFD). In the December 2023 Biannual Report, Visa PFD noted an interesting shift in threat actors’ organization, access to tools, and target choice, with threat actors increasing in… Continue Reading

Fact check: Debunking weather modification claims

As the southeastern United States reels from the impact of two historic hurricanes, a large amount of disinformation about nonexistent weather manipulation technology is spreading across the internet, particularly on social media platforms. Below, NOAA identifies some of the inaccurate claims circulating online and provides science-based facts and information in response. Continue Reading

Online Talk About ‘Civil War’ Could Inspire Real-World Violence, DHS Warns Cops

Wired [unpaywalled]: “The agency also cautioned that it’s unable to get a grasp on the full scale of the threat, due to extremists increasingly using encrypted chat tools…Last month, the agency’s intelligence office emphasized in a report that “perceptions of voter fraud” had risen to become a primary “trigger” for the “mobilization to violence.” This… Continue Reading

The National Security Case for Public AI

Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator:  In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posed a simple but striking question: “Who will control the future of AI?” Altman frames the choice as between two futures: “Will it be one in which the United States and allied nations advance a global AI that spreads the… Continue Reading

Billionaire Blowback on Housing and The American Housing Crisis: A Theft, Not a Shortage

How concentrated wealth disrupts housing markets and worsens the housing affordability crisis. By Chuck Collins, Omar Ocampo, Amee Chew – Across the United States, communities are facing an acute housing affordability crisis. Rents and homelessness are rising while home ownership feels increasingly out of reach for millions. What’s driving that crisis? In a word, inequality.… Continue Reading