Privacy Blog

"Friends don’t let friends get spied on.' – Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation and longtime advocate of privacy in technology.

Current Affairs

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New Homeland Security Plan to Gather Social Media Information has Privacy Advocates up in Arms

Yes, Big Brother is watching you, me, and everyone else more than ever before. It has special interests in immigrants, even those who later became U.S. citizens. Back in September, the Department of Homeland Security announced in the Federal Register that it had been collecting information from social media accounts of immigrants and foreign visitors. According to that notice, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of DHS, keeps […]

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US Studying Ways to End Use of Social Security Numbers For ID

U.S. officials are studying ways to end the use of social security numbers for identification following a series of data breaches compromising the data for millions of Americans, Rob Joyce, the White House cybersecurity coordinator, said Tuesday. Joyce told a forum at the Washington Post that officials were studying ways to use “modern cryptographic identifiers” to replace social security numbers.  

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Trump Administration Demands Data on over a Million Visitors to anti-Trump Site

I assume this is for the purpose of generating reprisals? In any case, this would set a huge precedent for invasion of privacy simply for visiting a web site. The Trump administration is demanding web host provider Dreamhost turn over the logs of over 1.3 million visitors to an anti-Trump website it hosts, the company has revealed. News of the Justice Department order landed Monday when the company took an […]

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Trump Voter-Fraud Panel’s Data Request is a Gold Mine for Hackers, Experts Warn

Cybersecurity specialists are warning that President Donald Trump’s voter-fraud commission may unintentionally expose voter data to even more hacking and digital manipulation. Their concerns stem from a letter the commission sent to every state this week, asking for full voter rolls and vowing to make the information “available to the public.” The requested information includes full names, addresses, birth dates, political party and, most notably, the last four digits of […]

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Australians Provide Fake Names Amid Census Privacy Fears

In the 2016 census, many Australians provided fake names and withheld their date of birth. A sharp drop in the number of respondents allowing authorities to keep their data archived for 99 years was also noted. The first batch of data from last year’s bungled census was released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday with authorities insisting the information collected is useful. Privacy concerns plagued the half-billion-dollar exercise […]

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What is the Future of Privacy, Surveillance and Policing Technologies under Trump?

“But Mr. Trump, with the power of the presidency and executive branch as a whole at his fingertips, has said little of how he intends to approach the authority he now wields over the country’s surveillance policies. As developing policing technologies continue to outpace laws restricting their use, and as Mr. Trump and top members of his administration like Attorney General Jeff Sessions take a hard line against illegal immigration, […]

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Hackers May Have Retrieved the Names and Social Security Numbers of Florida Concealed Carry Weapon Owners

Hackers might have obtained the names of more than 16,000 people who have Florida concealed weapon permits, officials said. The Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services announced Monday that it had discovered a data breach of an online payment system that processes payments for applications and permits. The department warned that the breach might have revealed the Social Security numbers of 469 customers. The agency plans to offer free credit […]

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Cyberattack Hits England’s National Health Service With Ransom Demands

Hospitals across England have been hit by a large-scale cyber-attack, the NHS has confirmed, which has locked staff out of their computers and forced many trusts to divert emergency patients.Hospitals across the country appear to have been simultaneously hit, with a pop-up message demanding a ransom in exchange for access to the PCs. NHS Digital said it was aware of the problem and would release more details soon. Details of […]

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