Facebook’s First CES Reveal In Years Is a Privacy Tool That Falls Short

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: At CES 2020, Facebook plans to show off an innovative new concept for the company: privacy. It will have a booth at the tech show for giving demos on its updated Privacy Checkup tool, which it announced Monday morning. This is the first significant update to Facebook’s Privacy Checkup tool since it was…

How Much Are Cars Spying On Their Owners?

“We’re at a turning point for driving surveillance,” reports the Washington Post (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader davidwr ). “In the 2020 model year, most new cars sold in the United States will come with built-in Internet connections, including 100 percent of Fords, GMs and BMWs and all but one model Toyota and Volkswagen.” Often included for free…

Ask Slashdot: Will We Ever Be Able To Make Our Own Computer Hardware At Home?

dryriver writes: The sheer extent of the data privacy catastrophe happening — everything software/hardware potentially spies on us, and we don’t get to see what is in the source code or circuit diagrams — got me thinking about an intriguing possibility. Will it ever be possible to design and manufacture your own CPU, GPU, ASIC or RAM chip right in your…

Democrats Propose Sweeping Online Privacy Laws

mspohr quotes a report from The Guardian: Top Democrats on Tuesday proposed tough new privacy laws to rein in the U.S.’s tech companies after a series of scandals that have shaken confidence in the companies and exposed the personal data of millions of consumers. The effort, led by Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate commerce, science and transportation…

Google Almost Made 100,000 Chest X-rays Public — Until it Realized Personal Data Could Be Exposed

Two days before Google was set to publicly post more than 100,000 images of human chest X-rays, the tech giant got a call from the National Institutes of Health, which had provided the images: Some of them still contained details that could be used to identify the patients, a potential privacy and legal violation. From a report: Google abruptly canceled its…

‘Ignorance is Not an Excuse’: California Draft Rules on Data Privacy Released

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released a series of draft regulations this week aimed at getting businesses to comply with the state’s landmark data privacy law, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. From a report: Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, signed into law in June 2018, businesses must disclose to consumers the various kinds of data they collect about them….

Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower: US Heading In ‘Same Direction As China’ With Online Privacy

“The United States is walking in the same direction as China, we’re just allowing private companies to monetize left, right and center,” Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie told CNBC on Wednesday. “Just because it’s not the state doesn’t mean that there isn’t harmful impacts that could come if you have one or two large companies monitoring or tracking everything you do,”…

India Is Planning a Huge China-Style Facial Recognition Program

India is planning to set up one of the world’s largest facial recognition systems, potentially a lucrative opportunity for surveillance companies and a nightmare for privacy advocates who fear it will lead to a Chinese-style Orwellian state. Bloomberg reports: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will open bids next month to build a system to centralize facial recognition data captured through surveillance…

India Tells Tech Firms To Protect User Privacy, Prevent Abuse

Technology firms must protect user privacy and prevent abuse of their platforms, India’s IT minister said on Thursday, speaking as the government draws up a data privacy law and seeks to push companies to store more data locally. From a report: Federal Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said he wanted Indians to have access to more technology platforms but…

Spouse of Ring Exec Among Lawmakers Trying To Weaken California Privacy Law

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The California legislature worked through the summer to finalize the text of the state’s landmark data privacy law before time to make amendments ran out on Friday. In the Assembly (California’s lower house), Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin has been a key voice and vote backing motions that would weaken the law, and a…