26 Jul 2018
In 2018, the chair of the London Assembly's police and crime committee called on London's mayor to cut the budget of the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, which provides oversight, in order to pay for AI systems. The intention was that the efficiencies of adopting AI would free up officers'
26 Jul 2018
By July 2018, ten-year-old Twitter had become such a frequent data resource for social scientists that estimates were that anyone who tweeted publicly on the service was part of a dataset somewhere. The ease and low cost of using Twitter have enabled studies such as analysing bot behaviour during
28 Jul 2018
In 2018, documents filed in a court case showed that a few days before the 2017 inauguration of US president Donald Trump - timing that may have been a coincidence - two Romanian hackers took over 123 of the police department's 187 surveillance cameras in Washington, DC with the intention of using
31 Jul 2018
In 2018 genetic testing companies such as Ancestry and 23andMe agreed on guidelines for sharing users' DNA data and handling police requests. The guidelines, which include easy-to-read privacy policies, were inspired by two incidents: one in which local investigators used the GEDmatch DNA comparison
01 Aug 2018
By August 2018, the UK government's "hostile environment" policy, as set out in the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts and other measures, was extending the national border into the heart of services such as banking, education, health, and housing where landlords and staff have been forced to implement
01 Aug 2018
The common reporting standard brought in by the UK's HMRC in 2018 require tax authorities to automatically exchange information on millions of citizens living abroad. In response, an EU citizen domiciled in Italy who formerly lived in the UK and maintains a UK bank account, filed a complaint with
03 Aug 2018
Cookies and other tracking mechanisms are enabling advertisers to manipulate consumers in new ways. For $29, The Spinner will provide a seemingly innocent link containing an embedded cookie that will allow the buyer to deliver targeted content to their chosen recipient. The service advertises
05 Aug 2018
Under a clause in the country's computer crime act that criminalises uploading content that is false or causes "panic", in 2018, Thailand's ruling military junta pursued a criminal investigation into a live feed on the Facebook page belonging to the rising Future Forward Party. The postings claimed
09 Aug 2018
In 2018, the UK Information Commissioner's Office fined Emma's Diary, a site offering pregnancy and childcare advice owned by Lifecycle Marketing (Mother and Baby) Ltd, £140,000 for collecting and selling personal information belonging to more than 1 million people without disclosing in the site's
10 Aug 2018
In what appears to be an extension of China's tracking of its Muslim citizens, 3,300 of the 11,500 Chinese pilgrims joining the 2018 hajj to Mecca were outfitted with GPS trackers. When photos were shown of the first group preparing to depart wearing trackers around their necks, the state-run
11 Aug 2018
At the 2018 DefCon security conference, a researcher from the security firm Nuix presented the discovery that body cameras from five different manufacturers shoe cameras are in use by US law enforcement are vulnerable to remote digital attacks, some of which could manipulate footage so it could not
13 Aug 2018
In August 2018, banks and merchants had begun tracking the physical movements users make with input devices - keyboard, mouse, finger swipes - to aid in blocking automated attacks and suspicious transactions. In some cases, however, sites are amassing tens of millions of identifying "behavioural
14 Aug 2018
In August 2018 Amazon rolled out a software update to Fire OS 5, the operating system used by older versions of its Fire TV and Fire TV Stick devices to counteract malware. At risk were versions of the devices before the company released Fire OS 6 whose owners had turned on Android Debug Bridge in
14 Aug 2018
Semi-autonomous cars with built-in internet connections are increasingly being delivered with location tracking in place. Marketed as a convenience, the app FordPass links to Ford's Sync Infotainment system and can log frequent and recently visited locations. Similarly, GM Onstar's Family Link
15 Aug 2018
In 2018, Wells Fargo disclosed that due to a computer bug that remained undiscovered for nearly five years 600 customers were granted more expensive mortgage loans than they could have qualified for. About 400 of them went on to lose their homes. The announcement reignited the public anger and
16 Aug 2018
As the use of non-cash payment mechanisms continued to increase over the course of 2018, Europe's central banks began warning that phasing out cash poses a serious threat to the financial system, as too-heavy reliance on digital payments exposes countries to the potential for catastrophic failure
16 Aug 2018
In August 2018, three months after the General Data Protection Regulation came into force in the EU, Quantcast reported that over 90% of visitors to websites using the company's Quantcast Choice consent management platform were giving consent to at least some use of cookies. About 81% were
17 Aug 2018
US Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) used social media monitoring to track groups and people in New York City associated with public events opposing the Trump administration’s policies, including ones related to immigration and gun control. The investigative branch of ICE created and
20 Aug 2018
In August 2018 the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first over-the-counter digital contraceptive, an app called Natural Cycles. The app, which analyses basal body temperature readings and monthly menstruation data to determine whether unprotected sex is likely to lead to pregnancy
21 Aug 2018
In August 2018, Facebook announced it would remove more than 5,000 ad targeting options in order to prevent discrimination. Options specifying the exclusion of people interested in "Passover", "Native American culture", or "Islam" could be used as proxies to allow advertisers to exclude ethnic and
