In October, Edward Snowden was granted permanent residency in Russia. A new web page by the EFF applauds his past activities as a U.S. whistleblower. “His revelations about secret surveillance programs opened the world’s eyes to a new level of government misconduct, and reinvigorated EFF’s continuing work in the courts and with lawmakers to end unlawful mass spying.” And then they…
Tag: government surveillance
Senators Introduce Bipartisan ‘Unplug Internet Kill Switch Act of 2020,’ Preventing a President From Denying Access To the Internet
Yesterday, U.S. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Gary Peters (D-MI) introduced the bipartisan ”Unplug the Internet Kill Switch Act of 2020” (S. 4646), which would help protect Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment rights by preventing a president from using emergency powers to unilaterally take control over or deny access to the internet and other telecommunications capabilities. Slashdot reader…
Ireland To Order Facebook To Stop Sending User Data To US
A European Union privacy regulator has sent Facebook a preliminary order to suspend data transfers to the U.S. about its EU users, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter, an operational and legal challenge for the company that could set a precedent for other tech giants. From the report: The preliminary order, the people said, was sent by Ireland’s…
While Some Top Creators Abandon TikTok, the ACLU Opposes a Ban
Late Friday night, the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted its objections to banning TikTok in the United States. “Banning an app like TikTok, which millions of Americans use to communicate with each other, is a danger to free expression and technologically impractical.” More details from TechCrunch: “With any Internet platform, we should be concerned about the risk that sensitive private data…
Mozilla Suspends Firefox Send Service While It Addresses Malware Abuse
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has temporarily suspended the Firefox Send file-sharing service as the organization investigates reports of abuse from malware operators and while it adds a “Report abuse” button. The browser maker took down the service today after ZDNet reached out to inquire about Firefox Send’s increasing prevalence in current malware operations. Since last year, several malware operations have…
Zoom Misses Its Own Deadline To Publish Its First Transparency Report
How many government demands for user data has Zoom received? We won’t know until “later this year,” an updated Zoom blog post now says. From a report: The video conferencing giant previously said it would release the number of government demands it has received by June 30. But the company said it’s missed that target and has given no firm new…
Group Builds Massive New Library of Censored Articles Inside Minecraft
In countries where websites, blogs and a free press are strictly limited, Minecraft “is still accessible by everyone,” notes the official official web site for Reporters Without Borders (an international nonprofit defending freedom of information):
Reporters Without Borders used this backdoor to build “The Uncensored Library”: A library that is now accessible on an open server for Minecraft players around the globe….