From surveillance to arrests, governments are using the novel coronavirus as cover for a crackdown on digital liberty. Almost 40 million people around …
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Tech's 2020: How Software Is Being Used to Spy on You
While we embrace technology to help make life easier and more productive, some of these tools are being used by employers and government agencies to spy on us. Here are some of the biggest privacy and surveillance headlines of 2020.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will investigate its own use of location data after it was revealed that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was purchasing cellphone location data from commercial vendors for use in its work. The DHS’s Office of the Inspector General recently informed Sens. …
Before April, Radiant RFID, a 16-year-old tech company based in Austin, was mainly in the business of tracking equipment around the workplace. …
“Today is a win for human rights globally, and we set an important precedent for other democracies to follow suit,” said Markéta Gregorová, a member …
Tool allows managers to use Microsoft 365 to track their employees’ activity Microsoft has been criticised for enabling “workplace surveillance” after privacy campaigners warned that the company’s “productivity score” feature allows managers to use Microsoft 365 to track their employees’ activity at …
Dozens of leaked documents from Amazon’s Global Security Operations Center reveal the company’s reliance on Pinkerton operatives to spy on warehouse workers and the extensive monitoring of labor unions, environmental activists, and other social movements. A trove of more than two dozen internal …
The Los Angeles Police Department has used facial recognition software nearly 30,000 times since 2009, with hundreds of officers running images of suspects from surveillance cameras and other sources against a massive database of mug shots taken by law enforcement. The new figures, released to The …
Portland, Maine has passed a ballot initiative banning the use of facial recognition by police and city agencies. The Bangor Daily News is reporting that voters have passed a ballot initiative bolstering a ban on facial recognition by city agencies. The initiative follows a city council vote in …
Employees at Verkada accessed the company's facial recognition system to take photos of women colleagues and make sexually explicit jokes. On Tuesday after the publication of this piece, Verkada’s co-founder and CEO Filip Kaliszan issued a new statement saying the company had changed its decision on …
Two apps developed by Chinese tech giant Baidu were leaking “sensitive” user data that potentially left millions of users open to surveillance or cybercrime, researchers claimed on Tuesday. The two apps—Baidu Maps and the Baidu App—were thrown out of the Google Play store late last month, as Google …
Read More About Tech's Year in Review 2020
Check out this Storyboard for more on the news and events that shaped the tech industry's year.
