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.
Read more...Category Archives: Surveillance state
Trump’s Border Wall is a Multi-Billion Dollar Corporate Handout
How Trump made the long-standing border boondoggle even bigger.
Read more...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.
Read more...America’s Final Patriots: An Interview + Book Review of Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud by Tom Mueller (Riverhead Books, 2019)
A new, “brutally researched” book on whistleblowers describes their importance and the price they often pay.
Read more...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.
Read more...Cory Doctorow: Permanent Record: Edward Snowden and the Making of a Whistleblower
A review of Edward Snowden’s new book.
Read more...Big Tech ‘Nudges’ Our Behavior for Its Own Greed: Here’s a 4-Step Social Media Self-Defense Class
Some simple suggestions for how to keep tech from running your life.
Read more...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.
Read more...Robocalls: Your Number, Please
The players change, but the game remains the same: telephone companies agree to empty agreement intended to combat robocalls.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...Why Busy-Ness Is So Damaging
How our economic and political order fuels busy-ness, harming both individual and community well-being.
Read more...Congress Sniffing Around Botched McKinsey Studies Depicted as Impairing Intelligence Agencies
McKinsey is in hot water again.
Read more...Privacy Watch: US Visa Applicants Must Provide Social Media Details
The US will now require applicants for visas to share social media details, thus formalizing an existing policy of government monitoring of such traffic.
Read more...Daniel Ellsberg on Julian Assange’s Espionage Charges
The US has added new charges againat Julian Assange that represent a threat to journalists.
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