Eavesdropping on Phone Taps from Voice Assistants
December 22 2020
The microphones on voice assistants are very sensitive, and can snoop on all sorts of data:
In Hey Alexa what did I just type? we show that when...
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US Schools Are Buying Cell Phone Unlocking Systems
December 18 2020
Gizmodo is reporting that schools in the US are buying equipment to unlock cell phones from companies like Cellebrite:
Gizmodo has reviewed similar accounting documents from eight school districts,...
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Mexican Drug Cartels with High-Tech Spyware
December 17 2020
Sophisticated spyware, sold by surveillance tech companies to Mexican government agencies, are ending up in the hands of drug cartels:
As many as 25 private companies — including the...
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Senator Ron Wyden asked, and the NSA didn’t answer:
The NSA has long sought agreements with technology companies under which they would build special access for the spy agency...
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IMSI-Catchers from Canada
October 26 2020
Gizmodo is reporting that Harris Corp. is no longer selling Stingray IMSI-catchers (and, presumably, its follow-on models Hailstorm and Crossbow) to local governments:
L3Harris Technologies, formerly known as the...
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Google Responds to Warrants for “About” Searches
October 13 2020One of the things we learned from the Snowden documents is that the NSA conducts “about” searches. That is, searches based on activities and not identifiers. A normal search...
Read moreOn Executive Order 12333
September 28 2020
Mark Jaycox has written a long article on the US Executive Order 12333: “No Oversight, No Limits, No Worries: A Primer on Presidential Spying and Executive Order 12,333“:
Abstract:...
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Former NSA Director Keith Alexander Joins Amazon’s Board of Directors
September 21 2020This sounds like a bad idea.
Read moreCory Doctorow on The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
August 27 2020Cory Doctorow has writtten an extended rebuttal of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. He summarized the argument on Twitter. Shorter summary: it's not the surveillance part,...
Read moreTor and anonymous browsing – just how safe is it?
August 13 2020How to stay safe when you're using Tor, even if the network is littered with rogues.
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