Posts Tagged privacy

DHS Colludes With Gaming Companies To Monitor “Extremist” Gamers

From The Intercept:

The exact nature of the cooperation between federal agencies and video game companies, which has not been previously reported, is detailed in a new Government Accountability Office report. The report draws on interviews conducted with five gaming and social media companies including Roblox, an online gaming platform; Discord, a social media app commonly used by gamers; Reddit; as well as a game publisher and social media company that asked the GAO to remain anonymous.

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Court Rules California Can Continue Revealing Gun Owner Information To “Researchers”

From Ammoland:

“California’s Department of Justice had been permitted to share ‘identifying information of more than 4 million gun owners’ collected by the state during the background check process for firearms purchases with ‘qualified research institutions,’ ostensibly to aid in the study of gun-related accidents, suicides and violence.”

The “personal information” includes “names, addresses, phone numbers, and any criminal records, among other things.” What “other things”?

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The Case For Banning Surveillance Ads

From The Electronic Freedom Foundation:

The behavioral advertising industry claims that it can deliver more value to everyone through this surveillance: advertisers get to target exactly who they want to reach; publishers get paid top dollar for setting up exactly the right user with exactly the right ad, and the user wins because they are only ever shown highly relevant ads that are tailored to their interests.

And as to the claim that users “like ads, so long as they are relevant,” the evidence is very strong that this isn’t true and never was. Ad-blocking is the most successful consumer boycott in human history. When Apple gave iPhone users a one-click opt-out to block all surveillance ads, 96 percent of users clicked the button (presumably, the other four percent were confused, or they work for ad-tech companies).

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Bank of America Snitches On Gun Owners

From Ammoland:

FBI whistleblowers have come forward with damning allegations against Bank of America (BoA). According to Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the banking giant has been revealing information to the FBI about its customer’s gun purchases without a warrant. 

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Walmart Video Recording Gun Sales

From Breitbart:

The “Responsible Firearm Sales” page says: “Additionally, we require that customers pass a background check, despite federal law allowing firearms to be sold after a three-day waiting period even if approval isn’t received. We also videotape the point of sale for firearms and only allow certain trained associate to sell firearms.”

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UPS Requires Access To Gun Sellers’ Books

From Ammoland:

Firearms sellers started to receive a new agreement that they must sign to ship firearms through UPS. The letter contains new provisions in addition to the requirements announced last month. The most concerning of these new regulations is that UPS requires gun companies to turn over customer data and must allow UPS access to review and examine the shipper’s books and records relevant to the products being shipped upon request. The shipper must also provide UPS with invoices for any firearms-related products.

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Gun Control Groups Complain That Gun Owners’ Privacy Is Hampering Violence Studies

From Ammoland:

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that lawsuits filed by the National Rifle Association, Second Amendment Foundation and “other gun rights groups” challenging California’s sharing of admittedly “detailed information on gun owners” with researchers is hampering so-called “gun violence studies.”

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Oppose the Surveillance of the EARN IT Act

From EFF:

While Apple’s plan would have put the privacy and security of its users at risk, the EARN IT Act compromises security and free speech for everyone. The bill would create serious legal risk for business that hosts content—messages, photos stored in the cloud, online backups—and, potentially, even cloud-hosting sites like those using Amazon Web Services, unless they use government-approved scanning tools. 

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Governments Continue Encryption Propaganda

From Electronic Frontier Foundation:

This week, the U.K. government launched an unprecedented and deceptive effort to kill off end-to-end encryption. They’ve hired a fancy ad agency to convince people that encrypted messages are dangerous to children.

The explicit goal of the “No Place to Hide” campaign, launched on Tuesday, is to prevent Facebook from expanding its use of end-to-end encryption. Currently, Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging system uses end-to-end encryption, but other communications systems, including Facebook Messenger, are scanned and checked against a US government database, run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which identifies child abuse images.

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The Message Apps The FBI Can’t Read

From Reason:

The bottom line: of the most popular apps, iMessage and WhatsApp are particularly susceptible to FBI snooping. Telegram and Signal score far better according to the FBI documents. (Line and Viber are also relatively bad picks, and my formerly favored Threema likewise fares more poorly than I’d have expected, but since they aren’t as popular this probably isn’t relevant for you.)

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Apple Backs Down On Phone Scanning Plans

From Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Since August, EFF and others have been telling Apple to cancel its new child safety plans. Apple is now changing its tune about one component of its plans: the Messages app will no longer send notifications to parent accounts.

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NBC Tried To Dox Rittenhouse Jurors

From The Federalist:

Judge Bruce Schroeder announced Thursday morning that MSNBC would no longer be permitted in the courtroom of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial after someone who identified himself as a producer working for MSNBC was pulled over and arrested when he blew a red light while following a bus transporting the jurors.

The man identified himself as James J. Morrison, employed by MSNBC, and said he had been instructed by MSNBC’s Irene Byon in New York to follow the jury bus, according to the judge.

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Fight For The Future Discusses Apple Petition Against Phone Scanning

From Fight For The Future:

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Georgia Senator Introduced Gun Owner Privacy Act

From Bearing Arms:

Loeffler’s bill, the Gun Owner Privacy Act, would ban the use of federal funds to store personal information collected during background checks attached to gun purchases. Federal agencies are already barred from creating a database of gun owners, but the legislation will give citizens recourse for any infringements on their privacy. While the law would not apply to Americans who fail background checks, those whose records are illegally stored will be able to sue agencies in federal court and collect damages.

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Researcher Tracked Gun Buyers For 12 Years

From The Truth About Guns:

These researchers — including noted anti-gun rights UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program director Garen Wintemute — used Dealer Records of Sales to identify 160,619 lawful gun owners. They then tracked these individuals, including where they lived, for the period of 2001-2013.

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