Tag: mass surveillance

The Rise Of China’s ‘Surveillance Colonialism’ In Africa

African governments are using Chinese artificial intelligence to find, jail, torture, and even kill political opponents and pro-democracy activists, according to several investigations.

Researchers say Beijing is exporting its “surveillance state” model to African countries and rapidly positioning itself to control the critical infrastructure, data, and energy that will power the continent’s AI systems in the future.

This could mean that China will have immense influence over politics and public life in Africa, potentially influencing election outcomes and swaying public opinion in favor of Beijing and its allies, according to the studies.

Some academics say it’s happening already.

One investigation by a nonprofit studying the use of social media and other technology to target dissident groups worldwide concluded that a “largely invisible pattern” is transforming conflicts across Africa.

The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) stated that using technology such as spyware to hunt political activists and employing facial recognition to track protesters represents “a new kind of mercenary force” in Africa, one that’s largely shaped by companies controlled from Beijing.

Adio-Adet Dinika, researcher and affiliate fellow at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Science in Germany, headed DAIR’s Data Workers Inquiry project. It investigated incidents in countries including Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.

Dinika’s research revealed the existence of “digital sweatshops” in African cities and towns, including in Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; and Gulu, Uganda, where workers are paid as little as $1.50 per hour to teach AI systems to recognize faces, moderate content, and analyze behavior patterns.

The Chinese regime is perpetrating what Dinika called “digital colonialism at its most insidious.”

“I call this surveillance colonialism, the process by which foreign powers extract data and labor from African populations to build AI systems that ultimately police, repress, and destabilise those very populations,” he wrote.

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Federal surveillance of Jews, Trudeau critics was part of larger plot to censor the internet

Federal surveillance of pro-Israel social media accounts was part of a larger Canadian Heritage project to find “promising regulatory avenues to curb online content,” according to Access To Information records. The specific accounts monitored were not disclosed, as reported by Blacklock’s.

In 2023, the Liberal government, led by Justin Trudeau, explored international internet censorship practices, backed by groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and the NCCM.

“We’ve seen great progress,” said former Justice Minister Arif Virani in December 2023, who provided no examples of legal content they would censor when asked by reporters.

Since 2021, Cabinet has introduced two bills, C-36 and C-63, to censor legal internet content. Both failed due to opposition from Conservative MPs, academia, and free speech advocates.

Despite professing support for free speech, Trudeau repeatedly stated that legal internet content requires regulation, as he testified at the Emergencies Act inquiry in September 2022.

The now-former prime minister believes social media, a “petri dish” for “anger” and “hate,” is “destabilizing our democracy” in an unprecedented and challenging way.

On April 10, Prime Minister Mark Carney publicly stated his intent to address “online pollution” through censorship. As of now, no new legislation has been introduced.

However, a federal consultant’s memo detailed a project to engage policymakers and law enforcement on digital regulation, drawing from European models, to curb online content threatening Canadian communities.

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Amazon Ring Cashes In On Techno-Authoritarianism And Mass Surveillance

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at the helm of the surveillance doorbell company, and with him is the surveillance-first-privacy-last approach that made Ring one of the most maligned tech devices. Not only is the company reintroducing new versions of old features which would allow police to request footage directly from Ring users, it is also introducing a new feature that would allow police to request live-stream access to people’s home security devices.

This is a bad, bad step for Ring and the broader public.

Ring is rolling back many of the reforms it’s made in the last few years by easing police access to footage from millions of homes in the United States. This is a grave threat to civil liberties in the United States. After all, police have used Ring footage to spy on protestors, and obtained footage without a warrant or consent of the user. It is easy to imagine that law enforcement officials will use their renewed access to Ring information to find people who have had abortions or track down people for immigration enforcement.

Siminoff has announced in a memo seen by Business Insider that the company will now be reimagined from the ground up to be “AI first”—whatever that means for a home security camera that lets you see who is ringing your doorbell. We fear that this may signal the introduction of video analytics or face recognition to an already problematic surveillance device.

It was also reported that employees at Ring will have to show proof that they use AI in order to get promoted.

Not to be undone with new bad features, they are also planning on rolling back some of the necessary reforms Ring has made: namely partnering with Axon to build a new tool that would allow police to request Ring footage directly from users, and also allow users to consent to letting police livestream directly from their device.

After years of serving as the eyes and ears of police, the company was compelled by public pressure to make a number of necessary changes. They introduced end-to-end encryption, they ended their formal partnerships with police which were an ethical minefield, and they ended their tool that facilitated police requests for footage directly to customers. Now they are pivoting back to being a tool of mass surveillance.

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When Smart Meters Turn Into Spy Tools

California’s robust privacy protections are facing a critical test as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and community advocates press forward with a lawsuit to dismantle what they describe as an illegal and biased surveillance operation run by Sacramento’s public electric utility.

In a legal filing submitted last week, the EFF laid out evidence that the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), which serves more than 650,000 customers, has spent over a decade monitoring detailed home electricity data and funneling it to police without a warrant. The organization calls this an unconstitutional “dragnet surveillance” program that unlawfully invades household privacy on a massive scale.

We obtained a copy of the filing for you here.

“This case is about Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s…dragnet surveillance of SMUD customers’ homes using sensitive and confidential energy usage information,” the brief begins. “The decade-long surveillance violates the California Constitution and a state privacy statute.”

SMUD’s so-called “smart meters,” installed in nearly every home it serves, transmit power usage in 15-minute intervals to the utility multiple times per day. This data, the lawsuit argues, offers a detailed portrait of home life, including sleep patterns, occupancy, and even personal routines. “SMUD analysts can, in effect, use the data to digitally peer into a person’s home,” the brief explains.

EFF alleges that SMUD has routinely handed over customer information to local police departments, including names, addresses, and usage history, without any individualized suspicion or judicial oversight. In many cases, these disclosures were based solely on arbitrary consumption thresholds. “SMUD has turned over…the names, addresses, and electrical consumption information of more than 33,000 customers through a zip code list,” the brief states.

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The Wearables Trap: How the Government Plans to Monitor, Score, and Control You

Bodily autonomy—the right to privacy and integrity over our own bodies—is rapidly vanishing. The debate now extends beyond forced vaccinations or invasive searches to include biometric surveillance, wearable tracking, and predictive health profiling.

We are entering a new age of algorithmic, authoritarian control, where our thoughts, moods, and biology are monitored and judged by the state.

This is the dark promise behind the newest campaign by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, to push for a future in which all Americans wear biometric health-tracking devices.

Under the guise of public health and personal empowerment, this initiative is nothing less than the normalization of 24/7 bodily surveillance—ushering in a world where every step, heartbeat, and biological fluctuation is monitored not only by private companies but also by the government.

In this emerging surveillance-industrial complex, health data becomes currency. Tech firms profit from hardware and app subscriptions, insurers profit from risk scoring, and government agencies profit from increased compliance and behavioral insight.

This convergence of health, technology, and surveillance is not a new strategy—it’s just the next step in a long, familiar pattern of control.

Surveillance has always arrived dressed as progress.

Every new wave of surveillance technology—GPS trackers, red light cameras, facial recognition, Ring doorbells, Alexa smart speakers—has been sold to us as a tool of convenience, safety, or connection. But in time, each became a mechanism for tracking, monitoring, or controlling the public.

What began as voluntary has become inescapable and mandatory.

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Mexico Mandates Biometric Digital ID by 2026

Mexico has formally mandated the use of a new biometric-based digital ID system, making compulsory a previously voluntary identification mechanism known as the Unique Population Registry Code, or CURP.

Under the new law, CURP IDs will now incorporate detailed personal biometric records, including fingerprints, iris scans, and photographs embedded within a QR code.

The government plans a phased rollout, expecting full nationwide adoption by February 2026.

Historically, CURP codes facilitated everyday interactions such as filing taxes, registering companies, school enrollments, and applying for passports.

Accompanying this shift is a broader initiative to consolidate multiple government databases into a single Unified Identity Platform. Within 90 days, the Ministry of the Interior and the Digital Transformation Agency must launch the unified platform, which will be integrated into various public and private institutions’ databases.

Additionally, a separate program aimed at systematically collecting biometric data from minors is slated to commence within 120 days.

Despite the obvious privacy concerns, Mexican authorities argue that existing privacy legislation already sufficiently guards against unauthorized surveillance or misuse of sensitive data.

President Claudia Sheinbaum responded to privacy concerns earlier this month, clarifying, “A wiretap can only be approved by a judge, according to the Constitution and the law,” though that doesn’t placate concerns about data breaches and the wider introduction of a checkpoint society.

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Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” Greatly Expands Biometric Surveillance, Funds DHS’ ‘End-To-End Biometric Travel’ And Autonomous Surveillance Towers

Of the many things contained in President Donald Trump’s highly touted spending package, the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” (BBB) which he signed earlier this month, the bill allocates hefty spending to drastically expand nationwide biometric surveillance in the United States, drastically bolstering the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) tracking capabilities.

Though not revealed by mainstream or alternative media, Biometric Update highlights how the 940-page BBB allocates hundreds of billions of dollars “in immigration-related funding for fiscal year 2025 alone, which is by far the largest such allocation in U.S. history and represents a dramatic technology buildout.”

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would receive nearly $30 billion in funding through 2029, earmarked not only for personnel and deportation operations, but also for digital modernization efforts that lean heavily on AI and biometric surveillance,” the outlet added. “More than $5.2 billion within ICE’s share is dedicated to infrastructure modernization, including $2.5 billion specifically for artificial intelligence systems, biometric data collection platforms, and digital case tracking.”

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Backroom Politics and Big Tech Fuel Europe’s New Spy Push

A hastily arranged gathering within the European Union is reigniting fears over a renewed push for sweeping surveillance measures disguised as child protection.

Behind closed doors, a controversial “Chat Control” meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, has raised alarms among digital rights advocates who see it as a thinly veiled attempt to subvert the European Parliament’s current stance, which expressly prohibits the monitoring of encrypted communications.

Despite no formal negotiations underway between the Parliament, Commission, and Council, Javier Zarzalejos, the rapporteur for the regulation and chair of the Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE), has chosen to hold what is being described as a “shadow meeting.”

Notably, this comes over a year after the Parliament reached a compromise aimed at defending fundamental rights by shielding private, encrypted exchanges from warrantless surveillance.

The meeting’s guest list, obtained by netzpolitik.org, painted a lopsided picture.

Government and law enforcement figures from Denmark, including its Justice Ministry, which has put forward an even stricter proposal, are slated to attend, alongside Europol, representatives from Meta and Microsoft, and several pro-surveillance NGOs like ECPAT.

Also expected is Hany Farid, a US academic affiliated with the Counter Extremism Project, an organization known for its close relationships with intelligence agencies.

What was missing from the invitation list until late Monday was any representation from civil liberties groups or organizations that have consistently pushed back against warrantless monitoring.

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ICE Is Snooping on Your Medical Bills

The feds are vacuuming up a lot of data on Americans in the name of stopping illegal immigration. Their latest target? Your insurance data.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now using data from the Insurance Services Office’s ClaimSearch, a private industry service for detecting car and health insurance fraud, according to ICE documents obtained by the tech news site 404 Media on Wednesday. ClaimSearch includes 1.8 billion insurance claims and 58 million medical bills—along with the personal data attached to them, including addresses, tax identification numbers, and license plates.

ClaimSearch’s public policy states that it grants full access to law enforcement agencies “investigating or prosecuting insurance-related crime, or developing background information about a specific individual or list of individuals who have been identified as persons of interest with regard to homeland security activity.”

Verisk, the company that runs ClaimSearch, denied to 404 Media that ICE or the Department of Homeland Security is one of its clients. But the National Insurance Crime Bureau, which controls access to ClaimSearch, did not directly answer whether ICE has access. 404 Media speculated that ICE could have gained access through another government agency.

In March 2025, the Trump administration signed an executive order to tear down “information silos” between federal agencies, and in May, the IRS signed a data-sharing agreement with ICE. The administration has leaned heavily on surveillance contractor Palantir, which has a contract with ICE to facilitate “complete target analysis of known populations.”

ICE has also been tapping into the nationwide network of license plate reading cameras by asking local law enforcement agencies to run searches for specific cars, 404 Media reported earlier this year. Some police departments insisted to 404 Media that the searches were conducted for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations branch, which handles organized crime and smuggling rather than immigration enforcement.

However, the ICE documents on ClaimSearch specifically said that the data was going to Enforcement and Removal Operations, the branch that handles the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants.

The immigration cops didn’t just start building their mass surveillance dragnets this year. In 2021, at the start of the Biden administration, The Washington Post reported that ICE was buying utility company records. While Customs and Border Protection (CBP) insisted in a 2018 report that it buys “only anonymized data” from third-party brokers, it has used commercial cell phone data to track and arrest specific people.

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