Eight weeks ago Arizona’s attorney general sued Google for allegedly deceiving users about when location data would be collected from their phones, tracking them without their clear consent. . Now an Arizona congressman and more than two dozen researchers from institutions including Yale, MIT, and Cornell are urging a judge to publicly release the documents collected during that investigation: The documents…
Tag: spying
Do Drones Help Democratize Surveillance?
A University of San Diego (USD) professor has just published The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance. He tells a local newspaper that drones (as well as other aerial technologies like balloons, satellites, and even kites) actually help effect social change. “That was my litmus test,” Choi-Fitzpatrick continues. “Can I, or other people like me, use this technology for good?…
Google Bans Stalkerware Ads
Google announced plans this week to ban ads that promote stalkerware, spyware, and other forms of surveillance technology that can be used to track other persons without their specific consent. From a report: The change was announced this week as part of an upcoming update to Google Ads policies, set to enter into effect next month, on August 11, 2020. Examples…
Apple ‘Suddenly Catches TikTok Secretly Spying On Millions Of iPhone Users’, Claims Forbes
In February, Reddit’s CEO called TikTok “fundamentally parasitic,” according to a report on TechCrunch, adding “it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone… I actively tell people, ‘Don’t install that spyware on your phone.'” TikTok called his remarks “baseless accusations made without a…
Spying a rare ‘ring of fire’ around Venus at inferior conjunction
Amazing things happen in the day-to-day sky that often go unnoticed during our normal routine. Just such a curious ‘non-event’ happened this week, when Venus reached inferior conjunction between the Earth and the sun on its race from the dusk to the dawn sky. And what’s even more amazing is the fact that some skilled observers followed this passage and caught…
Learn to recognize the wildlife out your window
With careful observation, you can start to recognize a particular squirrel, or that certain cardinal pair that hangs out on your feeder. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/learn-to-recognize-individual-birds-wildlife…