Tag: surveillance

Britain ‘investing in 30,000 more electronic tags for criminals’ amid massive overhaul

Britain is investing in 30,000 more electronic tags for criminals as part of a massive overhaul in sentencing law.

The huge expansion of tagging technology will see nearly 40,000 criminals electronically monitored at once.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is understood to have secured £700 million in funding from the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to buy the devices.

This will increase the Probation Service’s budget by roughly a third and enable it to quadruple the number of criminals fitted with electronic tags, The Times reports.

It comes as David Gauke, the former Conservative justice secretary, will publish a long-awaited sentencing review this month.

The report is expected to lead to the most drastic shake-up of sentencing legislation in decades and, the government is predicted to accept most of his recommendations.

A MoJ spokesman said last week: ‘This Government inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons days from collapse.

‘David Gauke is conducting a sentencing review to ensure that we never run out of prison places again, and we are committed to reforming sentencing to ensure our prisons cut crime and keep the public safe.’

The Ministry of Justice is also thought to be preparing to announce a new type of tag that will measure the level of drugs in an offender’s system by monitoring their blood pressure and heart rate.

Mahmood said the new devices are the ‘holy grail’ of tagging technology because of the large proportion of criminals whose offending is driven by drugs.

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KOSA Reintroduced: Child “Safety” Bill Raises Alarms Over Internet Surveillance, Digital ID, and Free Speech Risks

Senators have once again put forward the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), reviving a bill that, if enacted, would radically reshape how Americans experience the internet.

Promoted as a measure to protect children, this latest version now carries the backing of Apple, a tech giant that has publicly endorsed the legislation as a meaningful step toward improving online safety.

But behind the bipartisan sales pitch and industry support lies a framework that risks expanding government control over online content and eroding user privacy through mandated age verification and surveillance infrastructure.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

KOSA is often described as a child protection bill, requiring platforms to limit exposure to content that could contribute to mental health issues such as depression or disordered eating.

What is less emphasized by its sponsors is how the bill empowers the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and sue platforms over speech that’s deemed “harmful” to minors.

Though lawmakers insist the bill does not authorize the censorship of content, it effectively places government pressure on websites to sanitize what users see, or face liability. Such chilling effects rarely need explicit censorship orders to shape outcomes.

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California Expands Digital ID Programs for Public Services, Despite Privacy Concerns

California is accelerating its push into digital identity, with officials launching new pilot programs designed to streamline how residents access public services. But while the state promotes the convenience and efficiency of these efforts, the broader implications for privacy and data control remain a growing concern among advocates for digital rights.

Jonathan Porat, California’s chief technology officer, said the state’s Department of Technology is moving ahead with new collaborations following initial efforts that included the mobile driver’s license launched last fall and a single sign-on pilot through Login.gov tied to transportation benefits.

That project, run through the Cal-ITP platform, lets eligible residents access transit discounts using a contactless payment system linked to their identity. Seniors, veterans, and others were able to verify eligibility for reduced fares without presenting physical documentation. According to Porat, the project’s success in Monterey County and Santa Barbara led the state to explore expanding the system to more than a dozen other local transit agencies.

But while the state touts these pilots as progress toward modernizing access to benefits, the increasing reliance on digital credentials has sparked important questions about surveillance, data sharing, and long-term risks.

California’s approach differs from other states that have focused on digital IDs primarily for age or identity verification. Porat explained that the state wants to use these tools to confirm eligibility across a range of public services. “We’re proud as a state to have [a mobile driver’s license] as well, but we’re really thinking about, how can we digitize the way that we validate residents’ identities and eligibility for different programs,” he said.

That vision includes broader partnerships, including with federal agencies like the VA and CMS. “What we’re doing now is trying to expand the breadth of those different benefits programs,” Porat said. “So we started by looking at a couple of simple things, like age-related discounts, and now we’re going so far as to have agreements with the federal VA and CMS, the group that manages Medicare and Medicaid, so that if you receive disability, if you are above a certain age, if you have a certain status, you can get those discounts automatically, just by paying with your wireless payment.”

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Rogue communication devices found in Chinese solar power inverters

U.S. energy officials are reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made devices that play a critical role in renewable energy infrastructure after unexplained communication equipment was found inside some of them, two people familiar with the matter said.

Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers.

While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.

However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said.

Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said.

Reuters was unable to determine how many solar power inverters and batteries they have looked at.

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Google Hit with Historic $1.375 Billion Settlement for Secretly Tracking People’s Movements, Private Searches, Voiceprints, and Facial Data

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has delivered a knockout punch to Google, securing a record-shattering $1.375 billion settlement for the Big Tech’s covert surveillance of everyday Americans.

This staggering sum is nearly a billion dollars more than what 40 states combined were able to wring from Google for similar offenses — a testament to Paxton’s unrelenting crusade against Big Tech tyranny.

In 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a 44-page lawsuit against Google, accusing the multibillion-dollar corporation of “systematically misleading” and “deceiving” Texans for years in order to secretly track their every move — and rake in obscene profits from it.

The lawsuit lays out a damning case against Google, alleging that the tech behemoth “covertly harvested” users’ precise geolocation data, voiceprints, and even facial geometry — all while leading users to believe they had turned off such invasive tracking.

According to the lawsuit, Google duped its users by creating a maze of confusing and misleading settings, falsely telling Texans they could protect their privacy by turning off features like “Location History.” But in reality, Google was still logging user data using obscure and hard-to-find settings like “Web & App Activity,” storing data in shadowy internal databases with Orwellian names like “Footprints.”

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Federal REAL ID requirement takes effect Wednesday as airport delay worries grow

On Wednesday, Americans will need a REAL ID to board a domestic flight, enter secure federal facilities or access certain military bases, after the deadline has been pushed back multiple times over a 20-year period.

The requirement for REAL IDs comes from legislation passed by Congress in 2005. The legislation was a recommendation from a commission on terrorist attacks created after Sept. 11, 2001, and was intended to make IDs more difficult to fake. The REAL ID Act established minimum security standards for driver’s licenses and other forms of state-issued identification.

REAL IDs have enhanced security features like barcodes, holograms, and other anti-counterfeiting measures, but they also typically require more documentation to obtain than earlier forms of ID.

Most states require an applicant’s date of birth, proof of identity, proof of a Social Security number and two documents showing residency to issue a REAL ID. A valid U.S. passport or birth certificate, a Social Security card or other federally issued documents or tax documents often satisfy the identity and Social Security requirements.

Americans who don’t yet have a REAL ID can use a passport card or passport book, an enhanced driver’s license, a military ID or select other forms of ID to fly domestically. Minors accompanied by adults carrying acceptable forms of ID also aren’t required to have a REAL ID in order to board domestic flights.

REAL IDs aren’t required to enter federally owned or operated museums, obtain federal benefits or for access to health care, law enforcement or constitutionally protected activities.

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Five Eyes now getting sensitive space intel – The Times

The US has begun sharing its “most sensitive” military intelligence on China’s and Russia’s space operations with the UK and other members of The Five Eyes (FVEY) global intelligence group, The Times has reported, citing a senior commander within the US Space Force.

Until this month, the work of Space Delta 9, a unit focused on America’s orbital warfare, was largely meant only for US officials with top-secret security clearance.

However, in a move that a Space Delta 9 spokesman described to The Times as “momentous,” British military chiefs have been allowed to observe operations at the unit’s base in Colorado.

The other Five Eyes members, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, have also been allowed access to the highest levels of US space intelligence, the British daily reported on Wednesday.

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Google’s Updated Local Services Ads Terms Spark Privacy Fears, Threaten Confidentiality in Medical and Legal Sectors

Google has once again raised considerable privacy and surveillance concerns – including affecting sensitive sectors like the medical industry – this time with its updated Terms of Service for Local Services Ads (LSA).

The LSA scheme is designed to give local business leads, like calls and emails, directly from local customers who search for their services on Google.

But an email sent to participating advertisers last week informed them that failure to accept the terms by June 5 will mean their ads will no longer appear either in the giant’s Search or Maps.

The new rights over advertiser assets benefit not only Google but also the company’s affiliates, and what they now can do is access all content in an LSA profile (including calls from potential customers) in order to use, modify, and display it across Google products and services.

This by no means exhaustive list of content includes business photos, entity name, location, phone number, category, site, and hours.

Google is also claiming the right to select, modify, display, and use content such as photos, provider bios, service descriptions, pricing information, and discounts.

That content is derived from phone calls and messages with end users routed through Google, and URLS identified and shared in the LSA account.

Ad agencies can be the ones to consent to the terms on behalf of advertisers, and in that case, the new rules apply to both. However, it is at this time not clear whether agency manager accounts can make this decision without letting the clients know how their data will be handled starting June 5.

When applied to advertisers representing legal and medical firms, Google having the right to record phone calls and messages means they would be unable to continue to use LSA without breaking confidentiality.

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U.S. Companies Honed Their Surveillance Tech in Israel. Now It’s Coming Home.

Rita Murad, a 21-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel and student at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, was arrested by Israeli authorities in November 2023 after sharing three Instagram stories on the morning of October 7. The images included a picture of a bulldozer breaking through the border fence in Gaza and a quote: “Do you support decolonization as an abstract academic theory? Or as a tangible event?” She was suspended from university and faced up to five years in prison.

In recent years, Israeli security officials have boasted of a “ChatGPT-like” arsenal used to monitor social media users for supporting or inciting terrorism. It was released in full force after Hamas’s bloody attack on October 7. Right-wing activists and politicians instructed police forces to arrest hundreds of Palestinians within Israel and east Jerusalem for social media-related offenses. Many had engaged in relatively low-level political speech, like posting verses from the Quran on WhatsApp or sharing images from Gaza on their Instagram stories.

When the New York Times covered Murad’s saga last year, the journalist Jesse Baron wrote that, in the U.S., “There is certainly no way to charge people with a crime for their reaction to a terrorist attack. In Israel, the situation is completely different.”

Soon, that may no longer be the case.

Hundreds of students with various legal statuses have been threatened with deportation on similar grounds in the U.S. this year. Recent high-profile cases have targeted those associated with student-led dissent against the Israeli military’s policies in Gaza. There is Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, taken from his Columbia University residence and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. There is Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts disappeared from the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, by plainclothes officers allegedly for co-authoring an op-ed calling on university administrators to heed student protesters’ demands. And there is Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia philosophy student arrested by ICE agents outside the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office where he was scheduled for his naturalization interview.

In some instances, the State Department has relied on informants, blacklists, and technology as simple as a screenshot. But the U.S. is in the process of activating a suite of algorithmic surveillance tools Israeli authorities have also used to monitor and criminalize online speech.

In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the State Department was launching an AI-powered “Catch and Revoke” initiative to accelerate the cancellation of student visas. Algorithms would collect data from social media profiles, news outlets, and doxing sites to enforce the January 20 executive order targeting foreign nationals who threaten to “overthrow or replace the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands.” The arsenal was built in concert with American tech companies over the past two decades and already deployed, in part, within the U.S. immigration system.

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DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants

Operatives from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are building a master database at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that could track and surveil undocumented immigrants, two sources with direct knowledge tell WIRED.

DOGE is knitting together immigration databases from across DHS and uploading data from outside agencies including the Social Security Administration (SSA), as well as voting records, sources say. This, experts tell WIRED, could create a system that could later be searched to identify and surveil immigrants.

The scale at which DOGE is seeking to interconnect data, including sensitive biometric data, has never been done before, raising alarms with experts who fear it may lead to disastrous privacy violations for citizens, certified foreign workers, and undocumented immigrants.

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