Surveillance
Tens of thousands of protestors have taken to the street in many French cities on Saturday, protesting a security bill that would restrict the filming and publication of police, especially regarding cases of police brutality. The bill will be considered in March by the French Senate after its proposal was approved by the National Assembly last year.
German privacy advocates warn against the creeping use of surveillance systems to identify people. Not only in retail but also in football stadiums, developers are already experimenting with automatic systems for recognizing the implementation of the mask-wearing requirement and for temperature measurement.
These systems could potentially encourage a faster return to "everyday life", but at the same time, there are doubts about the actual implementation due to the General Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO). The data collected here can fall under the so-called health data, which are subject to special protection. In the case of sensitive data of this kind, the person concerned would also need to have given their explicit consent; implicit consent to purchase the tickets would not be sufficient.
According to a complaint to be filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Tuesday, Google violated US labor laws by spying on workers who were organizing employee protests, then firing two of them.
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 labour unions, environmental activists, and other social movements.
"The documents say Pinkerton operatives were inserted into an Amazon warehouse in Wroclaw, Poland, to investigate an allegation that warehouse workers were circumventing sort of the application process for applying to warehouse jobs, so I would say that it goes directly against what Amazon is saying. They indeed, at least in this one instance we know, if these documents are correct, that Amazon has used Pinkertons explicitly to spy on warehouse workers.", said Lauren Gurley of Motherboard magazine.
The Karlsruhe energy supplier EnBW wants to carry out video surveillance on Europaplatz due to a lack of police authority. According to their own statements, no personal data is collected and stored with artificial intelligence that is supposed to recognize behaviour patterns, the number of people and movements.
The aim is to implement a monitoring infrastructure in which the EnBW employee is in close contact with the police.
The European Union wants to introduce restrictions on the sale abroad of technologies used for espionage and surveillance. This is reported by "Politico" with reference to informed persons. In the future, facial recognition systems and hacking programs will require a license to be sold outside of the Union. Governments would also have to publish details of the exact nature of the licenses granted to individual companies.
In a post, Facebook has taken a stance towards the accusations from the Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma".
Facebook stated that "the film’s creators do not include insights from those currently working at the companies or any experts that take a different view to the narrative put forward by the film" and added that "it gives a distorted view of how social media platforms work".
The National Security Agency program that swept up details on billions of Americans' phone calls was illegal and possibly unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
According to the magazine Bitter Winter the Chinese government offers monetary rewards for reports of underground churches. The program awards people with up to around $14,000 if they report religious activities of groups banned by the Chinese Communist Party in private homes to the authorities.
In addition to these measures the Chinese government has started putting banners with anti-religious slogans up such as: "Don’t believe in any religion other than the Communist Party. It’s enough to believe in the Party and the People’s Government of China"
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The Independent reports that public records show exports of security technology from the United Kingdom to repressive regimes despite rules to prevent it. Security technology such as wiretaps, spyware and other telecommunications interception equipment shouldn't be exported to regimes that might use them for internal repression purposes.
Public records show that despite the rules exports worth £75 million have been approved to 17 countries including China, Saudia Arabia, the United Arba Emirates and Bahrain. All 17 states have been rated "not free" by the Non-Governmental Organisation Freedom House.
According to Hong Kong Free Press the messenger app Telegram has decided to temporarily not fulfill data requests of its users made by Hong Kong courts. The head of marketing for telegram, Mike Ravdonikas, has stated that "Telegram does not intend to process any data requests related to its Hong Kong users until an international consensus is reached in relation to the ongoing political changes in the city". The decision follows the enactment of the new national security law in Hong Kong.
The president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte has signed a new anti-terrorism law. The new law the Republic Act No. 11479 provides the government with more rights for surveillance and repeals the Human Security Act of 2007. Suspected terrorists can be detained and arrested without a warrant and without charges for up to 24 days.
The "Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act", introduced by senators Graham, Blackburn, and Cotton would force manufacturers of devices and systems with encryption to be able to decrypt data upon request of public authorities or court orders.
The law is tied to other regulations regarding surveillance and national security including Section 215 of the Patriot Act. For technology companies, the only reason to not unencrypt data would require proof that it is "technically impossible" and then they could be forced by the government to redesign their systems.
The City Council in Boston has, in a unanimous vote, banned the usage of facial-recognition technology by the police. Councilor Ricardo Arroyo has stated that "It puts Bostonians at risk for misidentification", which is the reason why the technology has not been in use previous to the ban. The second Councilor, Michelle Wu, who co-authored the order with Arroyo said that "Boston should not be using racially discriminatory technology" as a study by the MIT found that facial recognition technology has a racial bias against people with darker skin.
Last week, a conversation between the Uruguayan vice president and the public relationships person Fernando Cristino was publicized.
In that record, the vice president said that "everything is known, everything is recorded".
He further mentions they have "a team" of lawyers dedicated to "process every kind of extorsions or requests they receive the whole time", so he (Fernando) should not mention "the Luis' dealer" because phones are wiretapped.
President Luis Lacalle Pou has now publically denied the accusations.
The IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has announced in a letter to the US Congress that IBM will no longer offer software for general-purpose facial recognition and analysis. In addition to not selling the software, IBM will stop developing or researching such technology. In the letter, Krishna stated that "IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency"
Cristina Caamaño, the new head of the federal intelligence agency of Argentina (Agencia Federal de Inteligencia - AFI) filed a complaint showing evidence of illegal political espionage by the agency under the previous government of Mauricio Macri.
Intercepted emails from about 80 opposition politicians, journalists , businessmen and law enforcement were recovered from a deleted hard drive.
The German Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that the current regulations regarding the surveillance of foreigners outside of Germany are unconstitutional. The judges remarked that the "strategic international telecommunications surveillance" conflicts with the constitutional rights protecting the secrecy of telecommunications and the freedom of press.
Since the 11th of May, end of the COVID-19 full-lockdown in France, the French government is using drones in Paris to ensure citizens are applying the post-lockdown rules properly.
Today, after a complain from different NGOs, the French State Council, highest administrative court in France, considered drone surveillance was a dangerous threat to privacy, and ordered the Government to stop their usage immediately.
In order to keep tracking carriers of the coronavirus, the subcommittee for the intelligence service of the Knesset has approved an extension of the smartphone surveillance program for another three weeks. The government originally advocated for an extension until June 16, but the committee only permitted one until May 26. The chair of the subcommittee, Gabi Ashkenazi, said that he sees it "as the right balance between not using this tool for the entire period and ensuring there is a legislative process".