Meanwhile....
FBI and CISA officials said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers.
Hm. Wonder what might happen after the FBI is turned into the Museum of the Deep State ("on day one" - Patel)
Software engineer Vishnu Mohandas decided he would quit Google in more ways than one when he learned that the tech giant had briefly helped the US military develop AI to study drone footage. In 2020, he left his job working on Google Assistant and also stopped backing up all of his images to Google Photos. He feared that his content could be used to train AI systems, even if they weren’t specifically ones tied to the Pentagon project. “I don’t control any of the future outcomes that this will enable,” Mohandas thought. “So now, shouldn’t I be more responsible?”
Apart from the incredible detail that is recognised from the smallest details on a single photo, the AI also draws all sorts of inferences from appearances, expressions, etc. But you really need to think about the collective analysis across hundreds or thousands of personal photos a single Google user backs up into Google Photos. The power of AI across all of those photos is where the true value lies.
Google though, says the company doesn’t sell the content stored in Google Photos to third parties or use it for advertising purposes. Users can turn off some of the analysis features in Photos, but they can’t prevent Google from accessing their images entirely, because the data are not end-to-end encrypted.
As a user, you just have to hope that analysis really does not get into the wrong hands, no matter whose hands those may be.
See wired.com/story/website-google…
#Blog, #AI, #GooglePhotos, #privacy, #technology
Was macht ihr mit der elektronischen Patientenakte? Nach der folgenden Lektüre habe ich sie jetzt endgültig abgelehnt.
#privacy #Datenschutz #ElektronischePatientenakte #ePA #Krankenkasse
De Volkskrant (€)
Met Bluesky lijkt er een volwaardig alternatief voor X te zijn ontstaan. Het netwerk groeit onstuimig en het enthousiasme onder gebruikers is groot. Maar met de groei komen ook de vragen, bijvoorbeeld over de privacy van de gebruikers. (...)
(Tekst loopt door onder de foto.)
Links het logo van het voormalige Twitter, nu X. Rechts dat van Bluesky. Beeld Karlis Dzjamko / Cover Images.
Het open karakter, waar Bluesky prat op gaat, lijkt op dit moment ook de achilleshiel van het platform te zijn. (...)
Over het open karakter van de app is het bedrijf niet geheimzinnig: ‘De Bluesky-app is een microblogdienst voor openbare gesprekken. Dat betekent dat alle informatie die u aan uw openbare profiel toevoegt en de informatie die u op de Bluesky-app plaatst, openbaar is.’ (...)
Wat de implicaties hiervan van zijn, is niet helder genoeg voor gebruikers, zeggen hoogleraar gegevensbescherming en privacyrecht Anna Berlee (Open Universiteit) en privacy- en datajuristen Menno Weij (BDO) en Hester de Vries (Kennedy Van der Laan). Allen stellen onomwonden dat het Amerikaanse bedrijf zijn huiswerk op dit vlak niet goed heeft gedaan. (...)
‘De privacyvoorwaarden zijn volstrekt onder de maat.’ Weij: ‘Dit kan de toets van de AVG (de Europese privacywetgeving, red.) niet doorstaan.’ Berlee: ‘De voorwaarden zijn extreem oppervlakkig.’
De gesproken experts vallen over het feit dat het bedrijf veel te onduidelijk is over waar de gegevens terecht kunnen komen en hoe lang deze dan worden bewaard. (...)
Snoek is kritischer: ‘Dit bewijst dat het netwerk niet is ontworpen met privacy als uitgangspunt.’ (...)
Tags: #nederlands #social_media #sociale_media #fediverse #bluesky #privacy #avg #data #data_mining
The controversial bill could see Australians forced to adopt a mandatory Digital ID to use online platforms.
#TrojanHorse #SocialMedia #bill #Australia #DigitalID #Privacy
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-copilot-oversharing-problem-fix-customers-2024-11
Now the software giant is trying to fix the #problem. On Tuesday, #Microsoft released new tools and a guide to help customers mitigate a #Copilot #security issue that inadvertently let employees access sensitive information such as CEO emails and HR documents.
#fail #Software #ai #technology #Windows #news #omg #wtf #privacy #bug
Simplex Chat (private, secure, encrypted #messaging) welcomes Flux #decentralised services.
Servers operated by #Flux — true #privacy and #decentralization for all users
simplex.chat/blog/20241125-ser…
#security #data #simplex #sxc #simplexchat #metadata #IM #e2ee #encryption #fediverse #anonymous #foss #communication #mobile #matrix #session #tor #Signal #Threema #deltachat #rocketchat #tox #wire #wickr #xmpp #cheogram #snikket #android #ios #Linux #Mac #windows #GrapheneOS #mastodon #bluesky
Something Schneier linked to.
https://www.404media.co/email/f459caa7-1a58-4f31-a9ba-3cb53a5046a4/
#privacy #security #surveillance #location-data #police #law-enforcement #fourth-amendment #search #carpenter-decision #liberty #freedom #right-to-privacy
Cape runs its own mobile core, all of the software necessary to route messages, authenticate users, and basically be a telecom. Ultimately, this gives Cape the control to do more privacy-enhancing things, such as periodically give its phones a new IMEI—a unique identifier for the phone—and new IMSI—a similar identifier, but one attached to the SIM card (or eSIM in Cape’s case). The phone can also give itself a new mobile advertising identifier (MAID), which is an identifier advertising ecosystems and apps use to track peoples’ web browsing activity and is sometimes linked to their physical movement data. Cape said the IMEI and MAID rotation is handled by the custom Cape handset, which runs standard up-to-date Android.
Cape lets users create bundles of these identifiers, called “personas”, then cycle through them at different points. This means that during some attacks, a Cape phone may look like a different phone each time.
Well, this is a very interesting phone. Whether governments really want their citizens (or their terrorists or child molesters) to have these devices is another story…
The author also raises an intriguing point about why has AT&T and other phone networks not offered something like this before. The easy answer is wire-tapping requirements (remember the NSA vs PGP encryption in the 1990’s). Google could have offered encrypted email too if it wished, but reading our mail helps fuel its advertising business.
But way more shocking in the linked article, was the statement by the author that they have not owned a smartphone since 2017! I get that you can do a lot on your desktop (like I do), but even I realised that I needed that banking app to do 2FA when approving payments, or SMS for some sites still to authenticate access, and needed Waze to navigate through ever denser traffic, etc. Even the poorest of the poor in our country now at least have a feature phone.
I find it difficult enough telling many people, no, really, I don’t have WhatsApp when they want to send receipts to me via WhatsApp.
See 404media.co/i-dont-own-a-cellp…
#Blog, #privacy, #technology
Via Bridgy Fed I tried to link my diasp.nl account to BlueSky thinking that Diaspora* is part of the Fediverse, but it did not work.
Is that because Diaspora* does not support the ActivityPub protocol?
Tags: #english #social_media #fediverse #activitypub #diaspora* #bluesky #bridgy_fed #privacy
(Opnieuw gepost, nu met tags)
Tijdens verblijf in het buitenland blijkt diasp.nl onbereikbaar op de lokale wifi. Mastodon.nl is normaal bereikbaar. VPN op een Nederlandse server zetten hielp niet. Alleen via de Tor Browser kan ik nu diasp.nl openen.
Wat zou hier achter zitten?
Tags: #nederlands #social_media #sociale_media #fediverse #diaspora* #privacy
(Opnieuw gepost, nu met tags)
Ik wilde via Bridgy Fed mijn diasp.nl te koppelen aan (bijv.) BlueSky in de mening dat Diaspora* deel uitmaakt van de Fediverse, maar dat lukte me niet.
Omdat Diaspora* het ActivityPub protocol niet ondersteunt?
Tags: #nederlands #social_media #sociale_media #fediverse #activitypub #diaspora* #bluesky #bridgy_fed #privacy
Source: https://guardianproject.info/apps/org.torproject.android/
Orbot is a very useful app for using the #TOR #network on #Android. With all due respect to floss and the achievements of the altruistic developers, I still think it's downright cheeky to lie so blatantly to the user.
The bridge functionality, which can be optionally activated, allows users from the censored Internet, where all TOR servers are blocked, to connect anyway.
Orbot is writing:
It will not drain your battery
This is wrong. There will be more background activity for this connections and this will cost battery power. This is a damn lie!
It will not slow down your internet
This is wrong. There will be connections from others and they will slow down your internet. With a big bandwidth you won't note it but not everyone have high speed internet. This is a damm lie!
#news #fail #Software #gui #Problem #onion #privacy #snowflake #bridge #documentation #user #lie #internet
As with Threema and SimpleX, Session is one of the most secure and private chat apps that you get today (more so than Signal, and way more so than WhatsApp).
A lot of this is to do with the metadata level (that data which WhatsApp actively resells upstream to Facebook and other providers).
There is no doubt that Session is up there with the best, but this is also why none of your friends will be found there. There is no phone number or e-mail lookup to find users, nor any search to find them. Each friend must choose to share their contact ID with you. You can connect quite easily with a QR code or a contact link, but that is just not how people are yet connecting.
Most users want to log into a central service where their e-mail address or phone number is searchable (at least to those who know it), and that is how people connect and find each other.
Of course that means the central provider knows who you are and can connect that information with your login times, IP addresses, location, etc. Yes Signal tries to minimise that, as does Proton Mail, but others like Google, Facebook, and WhatsApp max out that information to build profiles on you “to serve you better”. Personally, I think WhatsApp and Facebook have taken that too far, by sharing that information, which is why I deleted my accounts with them.
So, yes Session is excellent, but regretfully the world is just not ready to adopt it en-mass (and the same goes for truly encrypted e-mail). The technology is ready, but humans are not ready.
What you can otherwise do, if this does concern you at all, is to rather adopt something like Signal messenger, and for Facebook use a 3rd party anonymising app like SlimSocial. If you are not ready to delete your Facebook and WhatsApp apps (the mobile apps are real data gatherers), then at least create your presence on Signal, so that others friends can delete their apps and can still contact you.
See howtogeek.com/i-went-hands-on-…
#Blog, #privacy, #Session, #technology
This means you can use #bacteria to determine whether someone has just been to the beach, got off the train in the city centre or taken a walk in the woods. This opens up new possibilities within #medicine, #epidemiology and #forensics.
#police #surveillance #location #technology #privacy #news #future
[gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/0/feeds/voaheadlines/2024/Nov/15/https---www.voanews.com-a-australia-s-plan-to-ban-children-from-social-media-proves-popular-problematic-7864823.html](gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/0/feeds/voaheadlines/2024/Nov/15/https---www.voanews.com-a-australia-s-plan-to-ban-children-from-social-media-proves-popular-problematic-7864823.html)
Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.
by Associated Press
MELBOURNE, Australia --
How do you remove children from the harms of social media? Politically
the answer appears simple in Australia, but practically the solution
could be far more difficult.
The Australian government's plan to ban children from social media
platforms including X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram until their 16th
birthdays is politically popular. The opposition party says it would
have done the same after winning elections due within months if the
government hadn't moved first.
The leaders of all eight Australian states and mainland territories
have unanimously backed the plan, although Tasmania, the smallest
state, would have preferred the threshold was set at 14.
But a vocal assortment of experts in the fields of technology and child
welfare have responded with alarm. More than 140 such experts signed an
open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemning the 16-year
age limit as "too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively."
Details of what is proposed and how it will be implemented are scant.
More will be known when legislation is introduced into the Parliament
next week.
## The concerned teen
Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Melbourne student who founded online
streaming service 6 News Australia at the age of 11, laments that
lawmakers imposing the ban lack the perspective on social media that
young people have gained by growing up in the digital age.
"With respect to the government and prime minister, they didn't grow up
in the social media age, they're not growing up in the social media
age, and what a lot of people are failing to understand here is that,
like it or not, social media is a part of people's daily lives," Leo
said.
"It's part of their communities, it's part of work, it's part of
entertainment, it's where they watch content -- young people aren't
listening to the radio or reading newspapers or watching free-to-air TV
-- and so it can't be ignored. The reality is this ban, if implemented,
is just kicking the can down the road for when a young person goes on
social media," Leo added.
Leo has been applauded for his work online. He was a finalist in his
home state Victoria's nomination for the Young Australian of the Year
award, which will be announced in January. His nomination bid credits
his platform with "fostering a new generation of informed, critical
thinkers."
## The grieving mom-turned-activist
One of the proposal's supporters, cyber safety campaigner Sonya Ryan,
knows from personal tragedy how dangerous social media can be for
children.
Her 15-year-old daughter Carly Ryan was murdered in 2007 in South
Australia state by a 50-year-old pedophile who pretended to be a
teenager online. In a grim milestone of the digital age, Carly was the
first person in Australia to be killed by an online predator.
"Kids are being exposed to harmful pornography, they're being fed
misinformation, there are body image issues, there's sextortion, online
predators, bullying. There are so many different harms for them to try
and manage and kids just don't have the skills or the life experience
to be able to manage those well," Sonya Ryan said.
"The result of that is we're losing our kids. Not only what happened to
Carly, predatory behavior, but also we're seeing an alarming rise in
suicide of young people," she added.
Sonya Ryan is part of a group advising the government on a national
strategy to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse in Australia.
She wholeheartedly supports Australia setting the social media age
limit at 16.
"We're not going to get this perfect," she said. "We have to make sure
that there are mechanisms in place to deal with what we already have
which is an anxious generation and an addicted generation of children
to social media."
A major concern for social media users of all ages is the legislation's
potential privacy implications.
Age estimation technology has proved inaccurate, so digital
identification appears to be the most likely option for assuring a user
is at least 16.
Australia's eSafety Commissioner, an office that describes itself as
the world's first government agency dedicated to keeping people safer
online, has suggested in planning documents adopting the role of
authenticator. The government would hold the identity data and the
platforms would discover through the commissioner whether a potential
account holder was 16.
## The skeptical internet expert
Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University, fears
that the government will make the platforms hold the users'
identification data instead.
The government has already said the onus will be on the platforms,
rather than on children or their parents, to ensure everyone meets the
age limit.
"The worst possible outcome seems to be the one that the government may
be inadvertently pushing towards, which would be that the social media
platforms themselves would end up being the identity arbiter," Leaver
said.
"They would be the holder of identity documents which would be
absolutely terrible because they have a fairly poor track record so far
of holding on to personal data well," he added.
The platforms will have a year once the legislation has become law to
work out how the ban can be implemented.
Ryan, who divides her time between Adelaide in South Australia and Fort
Worth, Texas, said privacy concerns should not stand in the way of
removing children from social media.
"What is the cost if we don't? If we don't put the safety of our
children ahead of profit and privacy?" she asked.
#social-media #australia #internet #privacy #mental-health #kids #children #age-limit #age-verification #minimum-age
