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.

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One Way to Prevent Police From Surveilling Your Phone

Here is an interesting article: https://theintercept.com/2020/09/25/surveillance-sim-cloning-protests-protect-phone/ I have 2 other suggestions: Leave your phone at home. Use an Apple iPod touch instead of a cell phone as it doesn’t have a SIM card and is nearly impossible to wire-tap or even detect by normal methods (see the previous article, The Most Secure Way to Communicate? An iPod Touch, at https://privacyblog.com/2015/08/20/the-most-secure-way-to-communicate-an-ipod-touch/. The primary drawback is that the iPod touch can only […]

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EFF Launches Searchable Database of Police Agencies and the Tech Tools They Use to Spy on Communities

The following announcement was written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation: San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in partnership with the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, today launched the largest-ever collection of searchable data on police use of surveillance technologies, created as a tool for the public to learn about facial recognition, drones, license plate readers, and other devices law enforcement agencies are acquiring to spy on […]

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Coronavirus Tracing App a Test for Privacy-Minded Germany

Germany launched a coronavirus tracing app Tuesday that officials say is so secure even government ministers can use it, though developers acknowledge it isn’t perfect yet. Smartphone apps have been touted as a high-tech tool in the effort to track down potential COVID-19 infections. Experts say finding new cases quickly is key to clamping down on fresh clusters, especially as countries slowly emerge from lockdowns and try to avoid a […]

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India Proposes New Rules to Access its Citizens’ Personal Data

From a report by Manish Singh in the TechCrunch web site: “India has proposed groundbreaking rules, akin to Europe’s GDPR, that would require technology companies to garner consent from citizens before collecting and processing their personal data. ‘But at the same time, the new rules also state that companies would have to hand over ‘non-personal’ data of their users to the government, and New Delhi would also hold the power […]

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Introducing Private.sh: A search engine that Cryptographically Protects Your Privacy

The following announcement was written by the Private Internet Access Research Team, a service of the company that sells Private Internet Access, a very popular VPN: Private.sh is a new private search engine that uses cryptography to ensure that your search history cannot be tracked by anyone – even us. Private.sh comes from the same privacy committed makers of Private Internet Access in partnership with GigaBlast – one of the few companies to have […]

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US Court Rules Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Cannot Be Searched Arbitrarily

A federal court in Boston has ruled that US government agents cannot search phones and laptops of international travelers at airports and other US ports of entry without reasonable suspicion. With the ruling on Tuesday, any warrantless searches will now be deemed as violations of the Fourth Amendment. Details may be found in an article by Campbell Kwan in the ZDNet web site at: https://tinyurl.com/privacy191113.

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National Geographic November 2017 article about “Joyful Countries” – Costa Rica, Denmark, and Singapore

This article is somewhat “off topic” as it doesn’t deal with privacy issues as much as it deals with happiness in life. Still, I found it interesting. I have been to both Denmark and to Singapore recently and am planning a trip to Costa Rica, hopefully within the next year. (I am thinking about obtaining a new retirement home.) I agree with this article about Denmark and Singapore and I […]

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The Government Of Kazakhstan is Coercing its Citizens to Install a Root Certificate in their Devices that will Allow the Authorities to Monitor Everything the Citizens Do Online

UPDATE: The Kazakhstan government announced on 8 August 2019 that the project is being abandoned. Kazakhstan’s State Security Committee said in a statement that the certificate rollout was simply a test which has now been completed. Users can remove the certificate and use internet as usual, it said. While this is scary for the citizens of Kazakhstan, every computer user in the world also should be concerned. If one government […]

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Worried about the Capital One Hack? ? Here’s What To Do.

Millions of Capital One customers have been affected by a data breach that the bank says happened in March. Approximately 100 million people in the United States and 6 million more in Canada are affected, the company said, with about 140,000 Social Security numbers, 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers compromised. That may include you. Michelle Toh tells what affected Capital One customers should do […]

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