Category Archives: Cybersecurity

Tracking of Planned Parenthood Visits ‘Should Terrify Every Single American’

Sen. Ron Wyden warns that “if a data broker could track Americans’ cellphones to help extremists” send ads to clinic visitors, “a right-wing prosecutor could use that same information to put women in jail.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 2-14-2024 by Common Dreams

Planned Parenthood- Manitowoc, WI. Photo: Michael Steeber/flickr/CC

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and privacy rights advocates this week are sounding the alarm about an anti-abortion group using cellphone location data to send misinformation to people who visited hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.

“If a data broker could track Americans’ cellphones to help extremists target misinformation to people at hundreds of Planned Parenthood locations across the United States, a right-wing prosecutor could use that same information to put women in jail,” Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement Tuesday.

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Feds ‘All F—king Tied Up in Knots’ Over How to Handle Election Threats

Top CIA, DHS, DOJ, and FBI officials recently gathered to discuss simulations on deepfakes and violence at the polls—and, as one journalist put it, “the results weren’t encouraging.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 2-9-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: Public Policy Institute of California/Facebook

Just nine months away from the U.S. general election, reporting published Friday by CNN suggests the federal government is poorly prepared to respond to “nightmare scenarios,” from violence at the polls to disinformation created with artificial intelligence.

One U.S. official familiar with a previously unreported meeting at the White House Situation Room in December told CNN‘s Sean Lyngaas that in terms of a coordinated federal response to an election-related threat, “we’re all f—king tied up in knots.”

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`Study Finds Over 33 Million Instagram, TikTok Posts Promoting Harmful Content to Kids

The Ekō report came as a U.S. Senate panel held a hearing about online child sexual exploitation featuring testimony from five Big Tech CEOs.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 1-31-2024 by Common Dreams

As five Big Tech executives appeared before the U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee on January 31, 2024, Ekō held a protest at the U.S. Capitol and released a report about platforms promoting harmful content to children. (Photo: Ekō)

As five Big Tech executives appeared before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, the group Ekō released a report highlighting how “social media companies are not only failing to safeguard young users from harm, but actively profiting from it.”

“This briefing serves as an urgent call for legislative action,” says the 17-page publication from Ekō—previously called SumOfUs—which is addressed to the Senate panel on the first page and urges constituents to contact their members of Congress.

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Amazon Fined in France for Illegally Spying on Workers

The retail giant was also ordered to pay more than $30 million last year after allegedly surveilling customers with its tech products.

By Julia Conley. Published 1-23-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: LSA/CC

Months after Amazon was fined more than $30 million for allegedly spying on customers in their homes, a French data watchdog on Monday announced it had ordered the retail giant to pay another $35 million for what it called “excessive” tracking of warehouse employees’ activity.

France’s National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) informed Amazon France Logistique, which runs the U.S. company’s warehouses in the country, of the fine late last month after investigating scanning devices used by employees.

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‘Much-Needed’: FTC Bolsters Privacy Rules to Protect Kids Online

“Anyone who believes that children deserve to explore and play online without being tracked and manipulated should support this update.”

By Julia Conley. Published 12-20-2023 by Common Dreams

Image by Freepik.

To ensure that tech giants will not have “carte blanche with kids’ data,” as one advocacy group said, the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday unveiled major proposed changes to the United States’ online privacy law for children for the first time in a decade, saying that companies’ evolving practices and capabilities require stronger protection for young people.

“Kids must be able to play and learn online without being endlessly tracked by companies looking to hoard and monetize their personal data,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan as she announced proposed changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998.

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Nebraska Teen Sentenced to 90 Days in Jail After Self-Managed Abortion

The case of Celeste Burgess illustrates “the real, human cost of mass surveillance of everyone’s private digital communications,” said one digital rights advocate.

By Julia Conley. Published 7-21-2023 by Common Dreams

Protestors in front of the Supreme Court on June 24, the day of Roe v. Wade’s overturn.. Photo: Ted Eytan/CC

Advocates for digital privacy rights and reproductive rights alike were outraged Thursday over the jail sentence of a 19-year-old in Nebraska who self-managed her abortion last year—a case which one campaigner said highlights how prosecutors will “stretch laws far beyond their intended scope” to penalize people who end or attempt to end their pregnancies in the post-Roe v. Wade legal landscape.

Self-managed abortion is only banned in two states—Nevada and South Carolina—but prosecutors charged Celeste Burgess with one felony and two misdemeanors last year, several months after she had a stillbirth at 29 weeks of pregnancy. Burgess, who was 17 at the time, had procured pills for a medication abortion shortly before the stillbirth, and had discussed the outcome of the pregnancy on Facebook Messenger with her mother, Jessica Burgess.

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‘Shocking Breach’: Probe Shows Tax Prep Companies Shared Personal Data With Tech Giants

One expert called the new revelations “a five-alarm fire” for taxpayer privacy.

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-12-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: QuoteInspector

After a seven-month investigation, a group of congressional Democrats and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders released a bombshell report Wednesday showing that private tax prep firms have been secretly sharing U.S. taxpayers’ sensitive personal information with tech giants for years, a practice that the lawmakers condemned as outrageous and possibly illegal.

The report, spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the Senate and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) in the House, notes that TaxAct, H&R Block, and TaxSlayer “used computer code—known as pixels—to send data to Meta and Google.” The lawmakers’ investigation was sparked by recent reporting in The Markup.

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How big tech and AI are putting trafficking survivors at risk

The tech industry’s privileging of ‘safety over privacy’ could get the most vulnerable killed

By Sabra Boyd. Published 6-14-2023 by openDemocracy

Ring spotlight camera’ Photo: Trusted Reviews/CC

High above the homeless camps of Seattle, in September 2022, Amazon hosted the first Tech Against Trafficking Summit. It was an elite affair. Project managers and executives from Amazon, Google, Facebook (Meta), Instagram, and Microsoft were present, as were ministers of labour from around the globe. Panellists included government leaders, law enforcement, tech executives, and NGO directors. Only two trafficking survivors made the speakers’ list.

The summit was above all a show of force. Most of the tools presented were built for law enforcement, and safety over privacy appeared to be the mantra. Only the two survivors highlighted the dangers of haphazardly collecting any and all data, a view that was generally scoffed at. Stopping traffickers by any means necessary, the non-survivors said, was more important.

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Letting ‘Secrecy Prevail,’ SCOTUS Declines to Hear Challenge to NSA Mass Surveillance

“If the courts are unwilling to hear Wikimedia’s challenge, then Congress must step in to protect Americans’ privacy,” said the Knight First Amendment Institute’s litigation director.

By Jessica Corbett.  Published 2-21-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Kristina Alexanderson (Internetstiftelsen)/CC

Privacy advocates on Tuesday blasted the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Wikimedia Foundation’s case against a federal program for spying on Americans’ online communications with people abroad.

The nonprofit foundation, which operates Wikipedia, took aim at the National Security Agency (NSA) program “Upstream” that—under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—searches emails, internet messages, and other web communications leaving and entering the United States. Continue reading

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90+ Groups Warn ‘Kids Online Safety Act’ Could Have ‘Damaging’ Effects

“Congress needs to pass real laws that rein in the abuses of Big Tech and protect everyone’s privacy and human rights rather than using kids as pawns to advance poorly drafted legislation in order to score political points,” said one critic.

By Jessica Corbett.  Published 11-28-2022 by Common Dreams

Photo: Julia M Cameron/Pexels

Nearly 100 LGBTQ+ and human rights groups warned in a Monday letter to Congress that while “privacy, online safety, and digital well-being of children should be protected,” proposed legislation intended to do so would instead negatively impact all internet users.

Specifically, the letter says that the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) “would undermine those goals for all people, but especially children, by effectively forcing providers to use invasive filtering and monitoring tools; jeopardizing private, secure communications; incentivizing increased data collection on children and adults; and undermining the delivery of critical services to minors by public agencies like schools.” Continue reading

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