Tag: internet

Arizona High Court Misses Opportunity to Uphold Internet Users’ Online Privacy

It’s an uncontroversial position that EFF has long fought for: Internet users expect their private online activities to stay that way. That’s why law enforcement should have to get a search warrant before getting records of people’s Internet activities. 

But in a disappointing decision earlier this month, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a warrant requirement for services to disclose Internet users’ activities and other information to law enforcement, a setback for people’s privacy online.

In a 4-3 opinion, the Arizona high court ruled in State v. Mixton that people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information held by online services that record their online activities, such as IP address logs. According to the Court, that information is not protected by either the federal Constitution’s Fourth Amendment or the state’s constitution, because people disclose that information to third-party online services whenever they use them, a legal principle known as the third-party doctrine.

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Your Credit Score Should Be Based on Your Web History, IMF Says

With more services than ever collecting your data, it’s easy to start asking why anyone should care about most of it. This is why. Because people start having ideas like this.

In a new blog post for the International Monetary Fund, four researchers presented their findings from a working paper that examines the current relationship between finance and tech as well as its potential future. Gazing into their crystal ball, the researchers see the possibility of using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history to create a more accurate mechanism for determining the credit rating of an individual or business. They believe that this approach could result in greater lending to borrowers who would potentially be denied by traditional financial institutions.

At its heart, the paper is trying to wrestle with the dawning notion that the institutional banking system is facing a serious threat from tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. The researchers identify two key areas in which this is true: Tech companies have greater access to soft-information, and messaging platforms can take the place of the physical locations that banks rely on for meeting with customers.

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Obama: The internet is “the single biggest threat to our democracy”

Back in 2008, Barack Obama famously harnessed the internet and social media to help win the White House. He kept up the embrace once he got there.

Now he worries that the internet and social media have helped create “the single biggest threat to our democracy.”

Obama has been saying a version of this for four years — since he left the White House — but his words are getting steadily more pointed. He’s clearly sounding an alarm, but it’s not exactly clear what he thinks we should do about it.

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Introducing The Biden-Harris Paid-For Online Troll Farm

After a bit of research into the Biden-Harris digital operation, I found a likely answer to my question. It’s no secret to anyone in the digital subcontracting business that India’s troll farm industry is the largest in the world. It boasts a global clientele, and it is also the cheapest, and most decentralized and robust in the world. This service is available for anyone who is willing to pay – western PR agencies, fashion brands, entertainment companies, and political campaigns. The more money you have, the more online muscle you can flex. As it turns out, in 2020 one of this shady industry’s biggest and best paying clients has been the Biden-Harris campaign.

As one troll farm operator in India told Newsweek recently, “We don’t pick and choose. Joe Biden the person is irrelevant to us. We got a target in August to follow him and engage with his tweets, and we did. The agencies in Delhi who we work with don’t tell us any details, and we don’t ask.”

With very little popularity online and with the election drawing near, in August the Biden campaign reached out to troll farms in India in order to artificially boost Joe’s lack luster Twitter presence, and received an immediate injection of tens of thousands of fake followers which were literally purchased from troll farms located throughout rural India. On this point, Newsweek added:

“Within two weeks of Biden selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate on August 12, his Twitter following jumped by 738,595 new followers—a 9.1 percent leap. The number hit 11 million by the third week of October.”

If memory serves me correctly, aren’t these the very same practices that federal law enforcement agencies spent the last four years condemning as systemic during the 2016 presidential election?

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