Tag: surveillance culture
A piece of code used by the NSA to label online “extremists” has been uncovered for the first time. The German public television network ARD reported that the popular encryption service Tor, which is based in Germany, was one of the entities that had become a target for the NSA’s labeling as part of their […]
Facebook has has a pretty shitty week in the media. Last week, we found out that they’d conducted an “emotional contagion” study in 2012 on almost 700,000 users without their knowledge. Advocates of privacy and informed consent raged, but defenders pointed out that Facebook’s User Agreement contains a sentence that warns users they can use your information […]
Last week, the New Scientist published an “emotional contagion study” conducted by researchers employed by Facebook, which proved that people can be influenced by the emotions of others online, just like “in real life.” The study’s unsettling methodology caught our attention: The experiment’s subjects were nearly 700,000 regular Facebook users whose feeds were manipulated to contain more […]
After several high profile cases in which defendants were arrested based on information found on their cell phones, the Supreme Court has ruled that police officers must obtain a warrant in order to search the mobile devices. Justice John Roberts said in his ruling: Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all […]
“Open Informant” is an app created by Superflux that searches your phone using real NSA trigger keywords and then displays those communications on a wearable badge. The NSA, GCHQ and other government security services secretly collect and scan our personal information and correspondence for trigger words; from the overtly malevolent: ‘anthrax’, ‘assassination’ and ‘bomb’ to the seemingly benign: ‘pork’, […]
Camera, a new film by James Leong, looks like a stylized yet plausible view of the near future. It’s 2030 in Hong Kong, and Ming has an eye implant that allows him to record everything he sees. Twitch premiered the trailer today. Ming is a surveillance expert with an obsession: he wants to film everything that […]
