New rules allowing the US National Security Agency (NSA) to share private data with other US agencies without court oversight, recent revelations about surveillance activities by a US electronic communications service provider and vacancies on US oversight bodies are among the concerns raised by MEPs in a resolution passed on Thursday.
The Pornhub announcement comes at an auspicious time. Congress this week affirmed the power of cable providers to sell user data, while as of a few weeks ago more than half the web had officially embraced HTTPS. Encryption doesn’t solve your ISP woes altogether—they’ll still know that you were on Pornhub—but it does make it much harder to know what exactly you’re looking at while you’re there.
Wired: The World’s Biggest Porn Site Goes All-In on Encryption »
Last week, the UK’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that WhatsApp risked becoming a “place for terrorists to hide.” Then, like many others that have used this tired old trope, she went on to call for the development of some magic unicorn key to unlock all encrypted communications, one that was somehow available only to those on the side of truth, beauty, law and order, and not to the other lot. In doing so, her cluelessness was particularly evident, as her invocation of the “necessary hashtags” emphasized, but she’s not alone in that.
[audio mp3="http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/2016-03-30%20James%20Evan%20Pilato.mp3"][/audio]This week on the New World Next Week: Congress just passed a bill allowing ISPs to sell your search history; the Russian hacking story is falling apart at the seams; and liberty takes to the seas with seasteading.
A GOP bill in Congress could give employers access to employees’ personal medical and genetic information and increase financial penalties for people who reject workplace wellness programs. [1]
House Republicans have proposed this legislation that would make it easier for companies to gather DNA and health information from employees and their families – children included – when it’s collected as part of a ‘voluntary’ workplace wellness program. Debate still remains, however, on the effectiveness of such wellness programs in general. [2]
Yesterday, Republicans in the House voted-- pretty narrowly-- to approve Jeff Flake's Joint Resolution, overturning the protection of privacy rights on the Internet. Flake, an unpopular Arizona Republican, is up for reelection in 2018, as is unpopular Nevada Republican, Dean Heller, who co-sponsored the bill in the Senate.
Putting the interests of Internet providers over Internet users, Congress today voted to erase landmark broadband privacy protections. If the bill is signed into law, companies like Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon will have free rein to hijack your searches, sell your data, and hammer you with unwanted advertisements. Worst yet, consumers will now have to pay a privacy tax by relying on VPNs to safeguard their information. That is a poor substitute for legal protections.
Privacy: An appeals court has denied the appeal of a person who is jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt files. The man has not been charged with anything, but was ordered to hand over the unencrypted contents on police assertion of what the contents were. When this can result in lifetime imprisonment under “contempt of court”, the United States has effectively outlawed file-level encryption – without even going through Congress.
The FBI’s facial recognition system stores criminal mugshots and citizen ID photos in the same database.
If Congress doesn’t take legislative action, the FBI’s vast and growing facial recognition database could someday soon allow the government to track Americans’ “every move” in a breathtaking, nationwide violation of the Fourth Amendment.
That was the takeaway of a scathing hearing in the Congressional Oversight Committee on the FBI’s use of facial recognition technology last week.
