An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Steve Bannon has been outed for his involvement in running a network of misinformation pages on Facebook. Who could have possibly seen this coming. Facebook has talked a big game about monitoring election misinformation, and yet the independent activist network Avaaz said it had to alert the company to the pages before it…
Tag: Trafficking
Cult Expert Predicts QAnon Adherents Will ‘Get Angry and Exit’
“From my time studying cults and helping followers escape them, I can reassure you that QAnon will disintegrate in the United States over time if effective measures are taken if and when Trump is defeated,” writes prominent mental health counselor Steven Haasan: When cult adherents get confused, then ashamed, then realize they’ve been scammed, they get angry and exit. While some…
Massive Criminal Trial Begins For ‘Cyberbunker’ Dark Web Server
The Times of London reports:
A gang of cyberexperts turned a former German military bunker into one of Europe’s biggest hubs for the “dark web” and a superhighway for at least a quarter of a million offences, including drug trafficking and the falsification of identity papers, a court has been told. Four people from the Netherlands, three Germans and a Bulgarian are…
Amazon Will Pay $135,000 To Settle Alleged US Sanction Violations
In a statement (PDF) issued this week, the U.S. Treasury Department notes that Amazon has agreed to pay $134,523 to settle potential liability over alleged sanctions violations. TechCrunch reports: The charges specifically pertain to goods and services sent to people located in Crimea, Iran and Syria, which are covered by Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions, between November 2011 and…
Amazon Pauses Police Use of Facial Recognition Tech For a Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon on Wednesday said it was implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software, reversing its long-time support of selling the technology to law enforcement. Civil liberties activists have voiced concern that facial recognition could lead to unjust arrests during demonstrations against police brutality, racial injustice and the death…
Google Removes QAnon Apps From Play Store for Violating Terms
Google last week removed three apps related to the QAnon conspiracy theory from its Play Store digital marketplace. From a report: The apps — called QMAP, Q Alerts! and Q Alerts LITE — were taken down for violating Google’s policies against “harmful information,” the company said. The removal was earlier reported by Media Matters for America, a progressive not-for-profit. The QAnon…
Nintendo Files Lawsuits In Crackdown Against Switch Hackers
Nintendo of America filed two lawsuits on Friday against Nintendo Switch hack resellers that sell software to play pirated video games, according to court documents obtained by Polygon. From the report: The first lawsuit was filed Friday in an Ohio court against Tom Dilts Jr., the alleged operator of the website UberChips. The second lawsuit was filed in a Seattle court…
ICANN Delays .Org Sale After Scathing Letter from California’s Attorney General
Ars Technica reports:
ICANN, the nonprofit that oversees the Internet’s domain name system, has given itself another two weeks to decide whether to allow control of the .org domain to be sold to private equity firm Ethos Capital. The decision comes after ICANN received a blizzard of letters from people opposed to the transaction, including California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Becerra’s letter…
Motherboard Built a Database of Over 500 iPhones Cops Have Tried To Unlock
“Motherboard built and analyzed a database of over 500 iPhones seized by law enforcement,” writes Slashdot reader em1ly. “It’s a deep dive into the ongoing “Going Dark” conversation.” Here’s an excerpt from the report: Most of all, the records compiled by Motherboard show that the capability to unlock iPhones is a fluid issue, with an ebb and flow of law enforcement…
Lessons From the Cyberattack On India’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant
Dan Drollette shares an article by two staffers at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. “Indian officials acknowledged on October 30th that a cyberattack occurred at the country’s Kudankulam nuclear power plant,” they write, adding that “According to last Monday’s Washington Post, Kudankulam is India’s biggest nuclear power plant, ‘equipped…