Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes the Guardian: The coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented global surge in digital surveillance, researchers and privacy advocates around the world have said, with billions of people facing enhanced monitoring that may prove difficult to roll back. Governments in at least 25 countries are employing vast programmes for mobile data tracking, apps to record personal…
Tag: digital surveillance
What Happens When Tech Companies Offer to Fight Coronavirus With Digital Surveillance?
“White House officials are asking tech companies for more insight into our social networks and travel patterns,” reports Wired, noting that Facebook even “created a disease mapping tool that tracks the spread of disease by aggregating user travel patterns.”
And Clearview AI “says it is in talks with public officials to use its software to identify anyone in contact with people who…
Newspaper Decries Fearmongering of the ‘Student Surveillance Industry’
Iowa City’s school board heard presentations from “two companies pitching digital surveillance services,” complains a columnist for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, expressing concerns about their offers to “track students’ digital lives and flag potential threats for in-house analysts and school officials to review.” The student surveillance industry is overrun with buzz words, misinformation and fearmongering. Digital citizenship. Crowd-sourcing. Machine-learning algorithm. Those…
Mozilla’s Annual Buyer’s Guide Rates Amazon and Google Security Cameras ‘Very Creepy’
“Be Smart. Shop Safe,” warns Mozilla’s annual buyer’s guide for secure connected products. Based on their conversations with developers and dozens of privacy experts, they’ve awarded smiley faces with different expressions to rate products from “Not Creepy” up to “Super Creepy”. “While the variety of smart devices on offer is rapidly increasing, so are the number of products that pay no…