Kashmir Hill reporting for The New York Times: A mysterious company that has licensed its powerful facial recognition technology to hundreds of law enforcement agencies is facing attacks from Capitol Hill and from at least one Silicon Valley giant.
Twitter sent a letter this week to the small start-up company, Clearview AI, demanding that it stop taking photos and any other data…
Tag: Homeland Security
Facebook Tells US Attorney General It’s Not Prepared To Get Rid Of Encryption On WhatsApp And Messenger
Facebook said it would not weaken end-to-end encryption across its messaging apps, despite pressure from world governments, in a letter to US Attorney General Bill Barr and UK and Australian leaders. From a report: The letter, sent Monday, came in response to an October open letter from Barr, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel, Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, and…
Cyberattack Hits City of Pensacola After Shooting At Naval Air Station
The city of Pensacola, Florida, has been dealing with a cyberattack since late Friday when a Saudi Air Force trainee killed three sailors at Pensacola Naval Air Station. Officials for the city are unsure whether the incidents are related. CNN reports: The city of Pensacola, Florida, said it has experienced a cyber “incident” and has disconnected several city services until the…
Trump Administration Drops Plans For Mandatory Face Scans of Citizens
schwit1 shares a report from U.S. News & World Report: The Department of Homeland Security is dropping plans to propose a regulation requiring all travelers — including U.S. citizens — to have their photos taken and faces scanned by facial recognition technology when entering and exiting the country, according to multiple reports. The proposed rule was slated to be issued in…
DHS Wants Airport Face Recognition Scans To Include US Citizens
The Department of Homeland Security wants to expand facial recognition scans in the airport to also include citizens, which had previously been exempt from the mandatory checks. TechCrunch reports: In a filing, the department has proposed that all travelers, and not just foreign nationals or visitors, will have to complete a facial recognition check before they are allowed to enter the…
US Police Already Using ‘Spot’ Robot From Boston Dynamics In the Real World
Massachusetts State Police (MSP) has been quietly testing ways to use the four-legged Boston Dynamics robot known as Spot, according to new documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. And while Spot isn’t equipped with a weapon just yet, the documents provide a terrifying peek at our RoboCop future. Gizmodo reports: The Spot robot, which was officially made…
Google Shakes Up Its ‘TGIF’ — and Ends Its Culture of Openness
“It’s not working in its current form,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said of what was once the hallmark of Google culture. In 2020, he declared, the meetings would be limited to once a month, and they would be more constrained affairs, sticking to “product and business strategy.” Don’t Be Evil has changed to Don’t Ask Me Anything. From a report: With…
Boeing’s Poor Information Security Threatens Passenger Safety, National Security, Says Researcher
itwbennett writes: Security researcher Chris Kubecka has identified (and reported to Boeing and the Department of Homeland Security back in August) a number of security vulnerabilities in Boeing’s networks, email system, and website. “[T]he company’s failure to remedy the security failures she reported demonstrate either an unwillingness or inability to take responsibility for their information security,” writes JM Porup for CSO…
DHS Will Soon Have Biometric Data On Nearly 260 Million People
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expects to have face, fingerprint, and iris scans of at least 259 million people in its biometrics database by 2022, according to a recent presentation from the agency’s Office of Procurement Operations reviewed by Quartz. From the report: That’s about 40 million more than the agency’s 2017 projections, which estimated 220 million unique identities…
Edward Snowden: ‘Without Encryption, We Will Lose All Privacy. This is Our New Battleground’
Edward Snowden: In the midst of the greatest computer security crisis in history, the US government, along with the governments of the UK and Australia, is attempting to undermine the only method that currently exists for reliably protecting the world’s information: encryption. Should they succeed in their quest to undermine encryption, our public infrastructure and private lives will be rendered permanently…