The UK government, in collaboration with universities, water companies, and public research bodies, is preparing to launch a national research programme to develop an early warning system for future waves of COVID-19 by detecting the coronavirus in sewage. About half of those infected with SARS-CoV
A new generation of technology has given local law enforcement officers in some parts of the US unprecedented power to peer into the lives of citizens. The police department of Frenso California uses a cutting-edge Real Time Crime Center that relies on software like Beware. As officers respond to
In the early 2000s, "Agbogbloshie", a section of Old Fadama, a large slum on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana, became a dumping ground for unwanted electronic waste, recast as "donations", from the developed world, which found it cheaper to ship in bulk than to recycle: old computers, cameras, TV sets
The Danish company Blip Systems deploys sensors in cities, airports, and railway stations to help understand and analyse traffic flows and improve planning. In the UK's city of Portsmouth, a network of BlipTrack sensors was installed in 2013 by VAR Smart CCTV, and the data it has collected is used
The first signs of the combination of AI and surveillance are beginning to emerge. In December 2017, the digital surveillance manufacturer IC Realtime, launched a web and app platform named Ella that uses AI to analyse video feeds and make them instantly searchable - like a Google for CCTV. Company
Internal documents show that local police coordinated with Enbridge, the oil company building the Line 3 pipeline through northern Minnesota, to track and crack down on indigenous opposition to the development in an initiative known as Opposition Driven Operational Threats (ODOT). Enbridge designed
The story began with the free Bylock messaging app, which was used between 2014 and 2016 and which the Turkish government associated with treason and followers of Fethullah Gülen, the group they believe was behind the attempted 2016 coup. The app was downloaded roughly half a million times and had
In 2017, a website run by the Jharkhand Directorate of Social Security leaked the personal details of over.1 million Aadhaar subscribers, most of them old age pensioners who had enabled automatic benefits payment into their bank accounts. Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identification number issued to
The Dutch data protection authority has found that Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system breaches Dutch law by processing personal data of the system's users without informing them clearly about what type of data the company uses and for what purpose. In addition, users cannot give valid consent
A 2017 research report found that the most vulnerable smartphone users are the ones whose devices are most open to fraud and harassment. Cheaper, low-end devices are less secure to begin with, and they are also less often replaced than their more expensive counterparts made by. Apple and Google. At
When Google and Apple announced their joint platform for contact tracing, the companies said the system would not track users’ locations. By mid-July, the resulting apps had been downloaded more than 20 million times in companies such as Germany and Switzerland. However, in order for Bluetooth
On August 1, 2017, Wisconsin company Three Square Market began offering its employees the option of implanting a tiny chip between their thumb and index finger. The chip enables employees to wave at hand at any of the company's RFID readers in order to enter the building, pay for food in the
In January 2019, the security researcher Justin Paine discovered that the California-based voice over IP provider Voipo had left exposed an unprotected database containing tens of gigabytes of call logs, other internal documents, and customer text messages, including password resets and two-factor
Websites have long used third-party analytics scripts to collect information about how visitors use their sites. In November 2017, researchers at Princeton found that an increasing number of sites use "session replay" scripts that collect every action the user performs while on the site, including
The accuracy of Facebook's ad targeting sometimes leads users to believe that Facebook is spying on them by tapping the microphones in their phones. Facebook has denied the practice - and is likely telling the truth because uploading and scanning the amount of audio data such a system would involve
Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial governments across have put in place numerous emergency measures to curtail behaviour in order to curb the spread of COVID-19. The orders include placing people under quarantine, limiting gatherings, closing schools and businesses, barring most visits to
Security researcher Scott Helme found more than 4,000 websites, including many belonging to the UK government, were infected with Coinhive, code that mines the cryptocurrency Monero. Among the sites affected were those belonging to the Information Commissioner's Office, the Student Loans Company
A report from the University of Washington studies parents' and children's interactions with general-purpose connected devices and connected toys. There are numerous privacy issues: toy companies may collect masses of children's intimate data; the toys may enable parents to spy on their children
