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.

Politics

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How to Avoid another Russian-Troll Misinformation Nightmare in 2020

“We typically think of social media platforms—Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc.—as distinct from one another…. This is true for most users. But it’s also true for the trolls and bots that drive disinformation campaigns. This phenomenon helps explain what happened when the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) targeted US social media during and after the 2016 US presidential election.” You can read more in n article by Josephine Lukito in the […]

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EU may Fine Political Groups Misusing Personal Data to Skew Elections

The European Union is determined to prevent a Cambridge Analytica-style scandal where politicians misuse personal data for strategic gains. The Financial Times has learned of a European Commission draft amendment that would fine political organizations if they benefit from surreptitious personal data gathering. The details are reportedly still in flux, but the penalty would represent about 5 percent of a political party’s yearly budget — not necessarily fatal to a […]

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Microsoft Calls For Federal Regulation of Facial Recognition

In just the past few weeks, critics assailed Amazon for selling facial recognition technology to local police departments, and Facebook for how it gained consent from Europeans to identify people in their photos. In an effort to help society keep pace with the rampaging development of the technology, Microsoft President Brad Smith published a blog post calling for government regulation of facial recognition. Details may be found at: https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-calls-for-federal-regulation-of-facial-recognition/. Image […]

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Russians Found One Use for Bitcoin: Hacking the 2016 US Election

Your analysis of the candidates and the issues may have been partially influenced by fake news spread online by Russian hackers. To facilitate all this, the hackers used many modern tools, including Bitcoins, to fund their operation. The hackers allegedly used the funds to purchase the domains, servers, and accounts involved in obtaining and disseminating the stolen materials. You can read more about this news in an article by Gregory […]

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“Net Neutrality will die, so let’s take the profit out of killing it.” – Robert X. Cringely

Lobbyists for Big Business and Big Brother apparently have bought enough Congressmen and other officials that the FCC is about to rescind the Net Neutrality rules. Of course, the big losers in this action will be the consumers. That’s you and me. Robert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld. Cringely, whoever he is or […]

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When Visiting Political, Religious, Sexual, Drug-Related, or other Controversial Web Sites, Always Use a VPN

This is a bit of a follow-up to the previous article, Trump Administration Demands Data on over a Million Visitors to anti-Trump 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. The demand asks for the IP addresses and other information that could be used to identify anyone who visited […]

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