Tag: privacy

Police will be allowed to spy on suspects by remotely activating their phones’ camera, microphone and GPS under new French laws dubbed a ‘snoopers’ charter’

French police should be able to spy on suspects by remotely activating the camera, microphone and GPS of their phones and other devices, lawmakers agreed late Wednesday.

Part of a wider justice reform bill, the spying provision has been attacked by the left and rights defenders as an authoritarian snoopers’ charter, though Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti insists it would affect only ‘dozens of cases a year’.

Covering laptops, cars and other connected objects as well as phones, the measure would allow geolocation of suspects in crimes punishable by at least five years’ jail.

Devices could also be remotely activated to record sound and images of people suspected of terror offenses, as well as delinquency and organised crime.

The provisions ‘raise serious concerns over infringements of fundamental liberties,’ digital rights group La Quadrature du Net wrote in a May statement.

It cited the ‘right to security, right to a private life and to private correspondence’ and ‘the right to come and go freely’, calling the proposal part of a ‘slide into heavy-handed security’.

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UK Home Secretary Uses Idea of Keeping Children Safe as a Justification To Demand Ban on Private Messaging

It would be extremely refreshing to hear a government official in the UK, or in a number of other countries, make a, “think of the encryption” plea – which would show they understand the very fundamentals of a safe and privacy-preserving internet.

But instead, we are getting more and more “think of the children” platitudes – as always, designed not to actually do that, but mask other, controversial and unpopular policies.

This time, it is UK’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman who claims that her opposition to Facebook’s slow-moving, alleged attempt to make a number of its products safe via implementing end-to-end encryption has to do with fears that children might get abused online.

Any tech-literate person would present the big picture, and argue quite the opposite, but Braverman is either not one of those, or elects to pretend not to be, in order to serve a policy that is staunchly anti-encryption, for a whole different reason – summed up, that technology stands severely annoyingly, no doubt, in the way of governments’ wholesale mass surveillance of everybody on the internet.

And what better place to twist the narrative about fears of awful things like child grooming and sexual abuse – perversely juxtaposed with actually improving internet security, i.e., encryption – than a get-together of the (in)famous “Five Eyes,” held in one eager member – New Zealand.

Braverman made an effort to write to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and, ignoring the reality of what an internet without encryption would turn into, tried, no doubt, above all to pull at her constituents’ heartstrings:

“As a mother to young children,” the politician stomped her feet, “I won’t stand by idly and watch this happen,” The Daily Mail reported.

“This” would be – platforms like Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct introducing secure communications, so that third parties – be they criminals, malign (foreign) actors, or (sometimes (effectively malign) domestic law enforcement – cannot just swoop in and use personal information in any way they please, including to directly harm those participating, children included, by gaining unfettered access to all their data.

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Feds May Need Warrants To Search Cell Phones at the Border After All

The role of smart phones as snitches is well-established, with people paying for their handy communications capabilities while the treacherous devices track us and reveal details of our lives. Even as the government spoofs cellphone towers to locate phone users, or purchases commercial data about our movements, border agents also insist they can, at will, search the phones of Americans returning home. But last month a federal judge ruled that a free pass to probe electronic devices is too broad, and that Americans enjoy some protections at the border of the sort they have elsewhere.

In this latest case, United States v. Smith, Jatiek Smith, the subject of a federal investigation, was stopped at the airport in Newark on his return from Jamaica. As detailed by U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, federal agents “forced him to turn over his cellphone and its password. They reviewed the phone manually and created and saved an electronic copy of it as it existed as of that date and time – all without a search warrant.”

Wait. No warrant? Unfortunately, yes.

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The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens

THE UNITED STATES government has been secretly amassing a “large amount” of “sensitive and intimate information” on its own citizens, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, more than a year ago. 

The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans’ lives are described soberly and at length by the director’s own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members. 

What that report ended up saying constitutes a nightmare scenario for privacy defenders. 

“This report reveals what we feared most,” says Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.” 

In the shadow of years of inaction by the US Congress on comprehensive privacy reform, a surveillance state has been quietly growing in the legal system’s cracks. Little deference is paid by prosecutors to the purpose or intent behind limits traditionally imposed on domestic surveillance activities. More craven interpretations of aging laws are widely used to ignore them. As the framework guarding what privacy Americans do have grows increasingly frail, opportunities abound to split hairs in court over whether such rights are even enjoyed by our digital counterparts.

“I’ve been warning for years that if using a credit card to buy an American’s personal information voids their Fourth Amendment rights, then traditional checks and balances for government surveillance will crumble,” Ron Wyden, a US senator from Oregon, says. 

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) did not immediately respond to a request for comment. WIRED was unable to reach any members of the senior advisory panel, whose names have been redacted in the report. Former members have included ex-CIA officials of note and top defense industry leaders.

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Leaked Document Shows The EU Countries That Want To Ban Private Messaging

A leaked European Council survey of the views on encryption of member countries showed that Spain strongly supports banning end-to-end encryption, a measure that has been proposed to combat the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), but would end privacy for all citizens.

The proposed law would require tech platforms to scan encrypted communications, something tech experts have warned is not possible without breaking the encryption.

According to the document, which was obtained by Wired, Spain’s position in encryption is the most radical.

“Ideally, in our view, it would be desirable to legislatively prevent EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption,” representatives from Spain said.

End-to-end encryption ensures that only the sender and receiver can see the content of a message. Even the owner of the platform does not have access to the content.

Of the 20 member countries represented in the survey, 15 support the banning of end-to-end encrypted communications, the report stated.

Poland suggested the introduction of measures that would allow a court to lift encryption and for parents to be allowed to decrypt the communications of their children.

“It is of utmost importance to provide clear wording in the CSA Regulation that end-to-end encryption is not a reason not to report CSA material,” Croatia’s representatives said.

Romania said: “We don’t want E2EE encryption to become a ‘safe haven’ for malicious actors…”

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The EARN IT Act, an attack on encrypted communications, to be reintroduced next week

Those behind the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act must be hoping that third time’s a charm for this previously widely-opposed piece of legislation, that is set to be reintroduced next week.

The previous two attempts to make EARN IT into law failed amid outcry from opponents who said that while designed to protect children, the bill would fail to do that – but would still damage online privacy.

Now here’s the third, bipartisan attempt sponsored by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Richard Blumenthal to bring changes to the Communication Decency Act (CDA) Section 230.

Critics say that the amendment as envisaged by EARN IT would harm internet users by removing legal protections Section 230 gives tech companies for third party content.

The consequence would be those companies protecting themselves by engaging in (even more) censorship, and “working” with the government to this end – even more than we are aware they already do.

At the core of EARN IT is to target platforms for violations related to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) rules that exist at the federal and state level.

But allegedly, these platforms are reluctant to “moderate” i.e., censor content in a heavy-handed manner, and for that reason oppose the legislation.

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Clearview Facial Recognition: A Perpetual Police Lineup

Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That admitted that the company scraped 30 billion photos from Facebook and other social media platforms and used them in its massive facial recognition database accessible by law enforcement agencies across the U.S. Critics call the company’s database a “perpetual police lineup.” 

This is an example of the growing cooperation between private companies and government agencies in the ever-growing U.S. surveillance state.

The photos were collected from social media platforms without users’ permission or knowledge.

Clearview AI markets its facial recognition database as a tool allowing law enforcement to rapidly generate leads “to help identify suspects, witnesses and victims to close cases faster and keep communities safe.” According to Ton-That, law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have accessed the company’s database over 1 million times since 2017.

According to a CNN report last year, more than 3,100 U.S. agencies use Clearview AI, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

In a statement, Ton-That said, “Clearview AI’s database of publicly available images is lawfully collected, just like any other search engine like Google.”

While photo scraping might be legal, Facebook sent Clearview AI a cease and desist order in 2020 for violation of the platform’s terms of service. In an email to Insider, a Meta spokesperson said, “Clearview AI’s actions invade people’s privacy, which is why we banned their founder from our services and sent them a legal demand to stop accessing any data, photos, or videos from our services.”

Fight for the Future director of campaigns Caitlin Seeley George called Clearview “a total affront to peoples’ rights, full stop,” and said, “Police should not be able to use this tool.”

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Italy’s ChatGPT ban fails to deter users due to VPNs

VPN applications have gained a vast amount of new users after Italy’s ChatGPT ban. People are using the apps to access the chatbot.

Recently, the Italian government banned ChatGPT due to privacy reasons. However, this didn’t stop people from reaching OpenAI’s services. PureVPN has noticed an odd increase in traffic coming from Italy on their website after the ban went into effect on April 1. According to a recent blog post from the company, “Italians have been turning to VPN services following the decision of the country’s data protection authority to ban ChatGPT over privacy concerns.”

ChatGPT is one of the most popular topics on the internet. People from all around the globe use it to get their work done easier. However, the Italian government prevented the chatbot from being used in the country. Authorities further alleged that OpenAI failed to verify its users’ ages and enforce prohibitions barring anyone under the age of 13 from using ChatGPT.

“ChatGPT has garnered more than 100 million users since its launch two months ago. The advanced chatbot is just as popular in Italy as in other countries because of its ability to have human-like conversations. However, with Italians unable to access ChatGPT, many of them are turning to VPNs to circumvent the block,” says PureVPN.

VPNs can help users mask their real IP addresses and use a different one from their selected country. Italian people use VPNs and an IP address of another country to access ChatGPT.

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In Push To Dismiss Lawsuit, CIA Says Americans Who Visited Assange Had No Privacy Rights

The Central Intelligence Agency and former CIA director Mike Pompeo contend that attorneys and journalists, who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, had no “legitimate expectation of privacy” when it came to conversations with a “notorious wanted fugitive in a foreign embassy.”

“There is no plausible argument that it would be unreasonable or indiscriminate for the government to surveil Assange, who oversaw WikiLeaks’ publication of large amounts of U.S. national security information,” the CIA and Pompeo additionally contend. “Thus, any alleged surveillance of Assange that incidentally captured his conversations with U.S. citizens such as plaintiffs would not violate the Fourth Amendment [right to privacy] as a matter of law.”

The statements are part of a motion to dismiss [PDF] a lawsuit that was brought by a group of Americans, who allege that they were spied on by the CIA when they met with Assange while he was living under political asylum in the Ecuador embassy.

When one considers that Assange has been held in detention at Belmarsh prison and faces Espionage Act charges for publishing classified documents, the government is essentially arguing that it may spy on any journalist who publishes such documents and “incidentally capture” the communications of anyone communicating with that particular journalist.

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Could the RESTRICT Act Criminalize the Use of VPNs?

Would the RESTRICT Act—a.k.a. the TikTok ban bill—criminalize the use of VPNs? That’s the rumor floating around about the legislation, which was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Mark Warner (D–Va.) earlier this month. Warner’s office has said his bill wouldn‘t do this… but its broad language leaves room for doubt. And the act is still insanely far-reaching and could have a huge range of deleterious effects, even if it doesn’t criminalize people using a VPN to access TikTok.

VPN stands for virtual private network, and there are several different kinds, but their general aim is the same: keeping your digital activities and location private. Using a VPN with your computer, phone, or another internet-enabled device can do things like mask your I.P. address and encrypt your internet connection. It’s a great way to get around location-based firewalls (a.k.a. geoblocking) and other forms of internet censorship.

For this reason, VPNs are popular in countries that exercise authoritarian control over what their citizens can access online. It’s sad that this contingent could soon include U.S. citizens, but include us it does, as both Republicans and Democrats get more and more gung-ho about banning the popular video platform TikTok.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) introduced one TikTok ban bill back in January. Hawley’s bill would direct the president to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to specifically “block and prohibit all transactions” and to “prevent commercial operation of” TikTok parent company ByteDance in the U.S.

The latest legislation is more extensive—and even more invasive.

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