RESOURCES
As Coronavirus Surveillance Escalates, Personal Privacy Plummets
Tracking entire populations to combat the pandemic now could open the doors to more invasive forms of government snooping later. In South Korea, government agencies…
In Fast-Moving Pandemic, Sources of Falsehoods Spread by Text, Email, WhatsApp and TikTok
Misleading text messages claiming that President Trump was going to announce a national quarantine buzzed into cellphones across the country over the weekend, underscoring how…
Surveillance Company Banjo Used a Secret Company and Fake Apps To Scrape Social Media
Banjo, an artificial intelligence firm that works with police used a shadow company to create an array of Android and iOS apps that looked innocuous…
In Coronavirus Fight, China Gives Citizens a Color Code, With Red Flags
A new system uses software to dictate quarantines -- and appears to send personal data to police, in a troubling precedent for automated social control.…
Airbnb ‘Surveillance Bugs To Make Sure Guests Behave’
"So this is creepy," writes a Forbes cybersecurity reporter, saying Airbnb "has put aside the stories of hosts secretly spying on guests" to promote a…
First Use of Deepfakes In an Indian Election Campaign
The Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has partnered with political communications firm The Ideaz Factory to create "positive campaigns" using deepfakes to reach different linguistic…
‘These People Are Evil’: Drivers Speak Out Against Uber’s New Coronavirus Sick Leave Fund
Countless Uber drivers are now being pushed to the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, transporting humans, food, supplies, and maybe soon Covid-19 testing kits…
Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?
Google and Facebook, including their subsidiaries like Instagram and YouTube, make about 83 percent and 99 percent of their respective revenue from one thing: selling…
Gig Workers for Target’s Delivery App Hate Their Algorithmically-Determined Pay
In 2017 Target bought a same-day home-delivery company called Shipt for $550 million. Shipt now services half of Target's stores, reports Motherboard, and employs more…
Installing Air Filters in Classrooms Has Surprisingly Large Educational Benefits
An emergency situation that turned out to be mostly a false alarm led a lot of schools in Los Angeles to install air filters, and…
Welcome To Walmart: The Robot Will Grab Your Groceries
Walmart is testing back-of-store automated systems that can collect 800 products an hour, 10 times as many as a store worker. In the backroom of…
‘I Oversaw America’s Nuclear Power Industry. Now I Think It Should Be Banned.’
Friday the Washington Post published an essay by Gregory Jaczko, who served on America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2005 to 2009 and was its chairman…
Skype Audio Graded by Workers in China With ‘No Security Measures’
A Microsoft program to transcribe and vet audio from Skype and Cortana, its voice assistant, ran for years with "no security measures," according to a…
Earth Is Hotter Than at Any Time Since Steam Engine Was Invented
The last five years on Earth have been hotter than at any time since the industrial revolution kicked off almost two centuries ago. That’s the…
Ring Fired Employees for Watching Customer Videos
Amazon-owned home security camera company Ring has fired employees for improperly accessing Ring users' video data, Motherboard reported Wednesday, citing a letter the company wrote…
Companies Are Using AI-Generated People To Appear More “Diverse”
AI startups are selling images of computer-generated faces that look like the real thing, offering companies a chance to create imaginary models and "increase diversity"…
Xiaomi Camera Feed is Showing Random Homes on a Google Nest Hub, Including Still Images of Sleeping People
So-called "smart" security cameras have had some pretty dumb security problems recently, but a recent report regarding a Xiaomi Mijia camera linked to a Google…
AI is Sending People To Jail–and Getting it Wrong
The US imprisons more people than any other country in the world. At the end of 2016, nearly 2.2 million adults were being held in…
Samsung Chip Output at South Korea Plant Partly Halted Due To 1-Minute Electricity Glitch
A 1-minute power glitch on Tuesday, December 31, partially shut down Samsung chip production at its Hwaseong chip complex in South Korea for "two or…
Internet shutdowns used to be rare. They’re increasingly becoming the norm in much of the world
An ongoing internet blackout in Indian-controlled Kashmir is now the longest ever in a democracy -- at more than 135 days -- according to Access…