The makers of an Internet-connected sex toy have settled to pay a small amount to some 300,000 owners of a vibrator which was used to spy on their sex habits, which the manufacturer collected as individually identifiable data. Additionally, the bluetooth-controlled sex toy device was utterly insecure, allowing remote anonymous administration. In the mess of IoT devices spying on us, we now need to add the bedroom.
Falkvinge:
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 past year, there have been very mixed signals about Bitcoin and virtual currencies from the EU. They range from the opinion that it is too early to regulate, as we cannot tell how they will develop – to demands for mandatory registration of all players and all transactions.
This piece might give you a picture of the current state of the debate: EU Parliament states Virtual Currencies cannot be anonymous »
TSA officer Robert Howard signals an airline passenger forward at a security check-point at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Monday, Jan. 4, 2010 (AP/Elaine Thompson)
U.S. authorities at airports have been asking U.S. citizens for cell phone passwords in order to search them, according to a recent investigation by NBC News which included one incident in which a couple was asked two separate times for their passwords and the second time the Muslim partner was held in a chokehold when he questioned the officer’s demand.
(ANTIMEDIA) Chicago, IL — Congratulations, friend. You are now slightly more free thanks to a recent ruling by a federal judge in Chicago. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), the nation’s top law enforcement agency, previously filed a warrant to search the home of a man believed to be trafficking child pornography. U.S. Magistrate Judge David Weisman denied the request based on a lack of evidence to justify to the privacy intrusion.
“It’s like this perfect test case,” says Andrew Ferguson, a professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia. “Alexa is only one of the smart devices in that guy’s house. I don’t know if all of them were on or recording, but if you were going to set up a hypothetical situation to decide if the internet of things could be used as an investigative tool, you’ve got this mysterious hot tub murder.”
A first look at the Wikileaks #Vault7 leak on CIA hacking and mass surveillance.
Youtube »
“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones. (…)
The debate on »fake news« might be new to some. But for us who are activist when it comes to a free and open internet, privacy and civil rights – this is what we have been fighting for a very long time.
Governments strive towards »total information awareness« has always been excused with e.g. the war on terror, the war on drugs, child protection, fighting organized crime and national security.
The same arguments – and some other, like hate speech – have been used to restrict free speech and freedom of information.
