An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Berkeley has become the third city in California and the fourth city in the United States to ban the use of face recognition technology by the government. After an outpouring of support from the community, the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to adopt the ordinance introduced by Councilmember Kate Harrison…
Tag: eff
EFF Wins Access To License Plate Reader Data To Study Law Enforcement Use
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) have reached an agreement with Los Angeles law enforcement agencies under which the police and sheriff’s departments will turn over license plate data they indiscriminately collected on millions of law-abiding drivers in Southern California….
Facebook Accused of ‘Deliberately Vague’ Announcement About Face Recognition
Facebook is “bringing” facial recognition to all users, the company announced Tuesday. But the EFF’s surveillance litigation director and a senior staff attorney warn that despite media reports, Facebook’s announcement “definitely does not say that face recognition is now opt-in for all users.” Throughout Facebook’s deliberately vague announcement, it takes great pains to note that the change applies only to new…
EFF Warns: ‘Don’t Play in Google’s Privacy Sandbox’
An EFF analysis looks at the problems with some of Google’s new “Privacy Sandbox” proposals, a few of which it calls “downright dangerous”: Perhaps the most fleshed-out proposal in the Sandbox is the conversion measurement API. This is trying to tackle a problem as old as online ads: how can you know whether the people clicking on an ad ultimately buy…
‘Storm Area 51’ has now become ‘Alienstock’
A plan to send thousands of people through the gates of Area 51 seems to have turned into a music festival. Originally billed as a tongue-in-cheek eff… Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/329742/storm-area-51-has-now-become-alienstock…
Google’s Plans for Chrome Extensions ‘Won’t Really Help Security’, Argues EFF
Is Google making the wrong response to the DataSpii report on a “catastrophic data leak”? The EFF writes:
In response to questions about DataSpii from Ars Technica, Google officials pointed out that they have “announced technical changes to how extensions work that will mitigate or prevent this behavior.” Here, Google is referring to its controversial set of proposed changes to curtail extension…
Did WhatsApp Backdoor Rumor Come From ‘Unanswered Questions ‘ and ‘Leap of Faith’ For Closed-Source Encryption Products?
On Friday technologist Bruce Schneier wrote that after reviewing responses from WhatsApp, he’s concluded that reports of a pre-encryption backdoor are a false alarm. He also says he got an equally strong confirmation from WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy Manager Nate Cardozo, who Facebook hired last December from the EFF. “He basically leveraged his historical reputation to assure me that WhatsApp, and Facebook…
EFF Warns Proposed Law Could Create ‘Life-Altering’ Copyright Lawsuits
Forbes reports:
In July, members of the federal Senate Judiciary Committee chose to move forward with a bill targeting copyright abuse with a more streamlined way to collect damages, but critics say that it could still allow big online players to push smaller ones around — and even into bankruptcy. Known as the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (or CASE) Act, the…
EFF Argues For ‘Empowerment, Not Censorship’ Online
An activism director and a legislative analyst at the EFF have co-authored an essay arguing that the key to children’s safetly online “is user empowerment, not censorship,” reporting on a recent hearing by the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Commitee: While children do face problems online, some committee members seemed bent on using those problems as an excuse to censor the Internet and…
Privacy-Focused Android Q Still Lets Advertisers Track You
“The upcoming version of the Android operating system is taking a strong focus on privacy,” reports SD Times, “but the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) believes it could still do better.” Android Q’s new privacy features include: user control over app access to device location, new limits on access to files in shared external storage, restrictions on launching activities, and restrictions on…