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Category Archives: Privacy

Open-Source ‘Consent-O-Matic’ Tool Lets Anyone Automatically Stop Websites From Tracking Them

Vice: “Nobody really likes being tracked around the web, but rejecting cookies in a pop-up window every time you’re presented with the option can be exhausting. Now, there’s a tool that will do it for you automatically, and it’s called Consent-O-Matic.  Despite it being four years since Europe’s GDPR data protection and privacy law was… Continue Reading

The Best VPNs to Protect Yourself Online

Wired: It won’t solve all of your privacy problems, but a virtual private network can make you a less tempting target for hackers. “A virtual private network (VPN) is like a protective tunnel you can use to pass through a public network, protecting your data from outside eyes. Whether you’re worried about hiding your browsing… Continue Reading

FCC Targeting and Eliminating Unlawful Text Messages

“The Federal Communications Commission today proposed new rules to fight back against malicious robotext campaigns. The agency will take public comment on ideas to apply caller ID authentication standards to text messaging and require providers to find and actively block illegal texts before they get to consumers…The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking released today proposes and… Continue Reading

GAO – Federal Agencies Lack Senior Leadership to Effectively Implement Privacy Programs

EPIC: “A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, prepared in consultation with privacy experts including EPIC Senior Counsel John Davisson, canvassed 24 federal government agencies and found that most have failed to fully implement statutory privacy requirements. The GAO found that despite the massive amount of personally identifiable information (PII) collected by these agencies and the… Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 24, 2022

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 24, 2022 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly… Continue Reading

Lawless Surveillance

Friedman, Barry, Lawless Surveillance (February 1, 2022). 97 N.Y.U. L. Rev. (2022), NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 22-28, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4111547 “Here in the United States, policing agencies are engaging in mass collection of personal data, building a vast architecture of surveillance. License plate readers collect our location information. Mobile… Continue Reading

This site tells you if photos of you were used to train the AI

Tech Crunch: “Deepfakes, AI-generated porn and a thousand more innocent uses — there’s been a lot of news about neural network-generated images. It makes sense that people started getting curious; were my photos used to train the robots? Are photos of me in the image-generating training sets? A brand new site tries to give you… Continue Reading

U.S. Agencies Are Buying Access to Bulk Internet Records

Gizmodo – “Sen. Ron Wyden urged inspectors general at three departments to investigate the military’s purchases of large swaths of data: “Multiple military intelligence offices have paid a data broker for access to internet traffic logs, which could reveal the online browsing histories of U.S. citizens, Sen. Ron Wyden said in a letter Wednesday, citing… Continue Reading

Tracked: How colleges use AI to monitor student protests

The Dallas Morning News, Arijit (Ari) D. Sen [subscription or online database access. Note – they are also making public nearly 3,000 documents, covering more than 56,000 pages from these schools]: “The pitch was attractive and simple. For a few thousand dollars a year, Social Sentinel offered schools across the country sophisticated technology to scan… Continue Reading

How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing Your Friends (Or Family, Customers or Communities)

EFF: “Today, we launch “How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing Your Friends” – a narrated slideshow and essay explaining how Facebook locks in its users, how interoperability can free them, and what it would feel like to use an “interoperable Facebook” of the future, such as the one contemplated by the US ACCESS Act…You can… Continue Reading

Privacy Rights Under the Constitution: Procreation, Child Rearing, Contraception, Marriage, and Sexual Activity

CRS Legal Sidebar – Privacy Rights Under the Constitution: Procreation, Child Rearing, Contraception, Marriage, and Sexual Activity, September 14, 2022: “A line of Supreme Court cases establishes that the U.S. Constitution guaranteesa person’s ability to make certain decisions in matters related to procreation, child rearing, contraception, marriage (including interracial marriage and same-sex marriage), and consensual… Continue Reading