Category Archives: Surveillance state

Blockbuster WSJ Investigation: How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results

WSJ publishes results documenting how Google tweaks its search algorithms and adjusts your search results, to privilege large over small, and muddled middle perspectives.

Google Collecting Medical Data on Millions Without Informing Patients or Doctors

Google now wants to play doctor.

Electronic Voting Machine Debacle Continues in 2019, Setting Dangerous Precedent for 2020

Bloomberg’s recent story on electronic voting machines is good, but ignores their private equity owners, soft-pedals the role of corruption, and ignores the incursion of the intelligence community into the voting process.

What’s Inside That Black Box: What Regulating Data Privacy and Policing Drunk Driving Have in Common

Two recent NYT stories – on data privacy and drunk driving – highlight the dangers of unquestioned reliance on omnipotent back boxes.

Trump’s Border Wall is a Multi-Billion Dollar Corporate Handout

How Trump made the long-standing border boondoggle even bigger.

To Stop Threat of ‘For-Profit Surveillance,’ Rights Groups Demand End to Partnerships That Give Cops Access to Amazon Ring Data

Civil rights groups demand that Amazon Ring’s spy program be put behind bars.

How Facial Recognition Technology Is Bringing Surveillance Capitalism to Our Streets

Facial recognition cameras are bringing the datafication of the internet to the real world, threatening our right to privacy and public space.

Cory Doctorow: Permanent Record: Edward Snowden and the Making of a Whistleblower

A review of Edward Snowden’s new book.

California Privacy Law Looms

Businesses race to comply with California’s new data privacy law by 1st January; meanwhile, efforts continue to weaken its protections.

Robocalls: Your Number, Please

The players change, but the game remains the same: telephone companies agree to empty agreement intended to combat robocalls.

Jeffrey Epstein’s Death, Critical Thinking, and the Decline of Reporting

Why neither the government nor the press have covered themselves in glory in ‘splaining the death of Jeffrey Epstein.

Australia Debates: Communist Party China the New Nazi Germany?

A row Down Under as a prominent and well placed MP says some not-nice things about China.