#surveillance

Government public record databases apparently help law enforcement officials save lives, prevent further crimes from being committed by perpetrators, and also provide a detailed information platform that can stitch together obscure tidbits of data that can help them hunt down and capture fugitives and individuals fleeing from an arrest warrant.

The government of the United Kingdom is reportedly selling spyware, wiretaps, and other surveillance equipment to countries with repressive regimes, so they could spy on dissidents. This reportedly goes contrary to the rules under which the UK should not supply security devices to governments that might deploy it for internal repression.

The global deployment of spy and stalking applications has surged by as much as 51% since the world’s governments introduced the lockdown in March, 2020. Stalkerware is software or apps designed to monitor and track the target person’s location, intercept emails, messages, and eavesdrop on phone calls without the victim’s consent, among other things.

Recently, the news broke that TikTok, a popular Chinese online platform and mobile app for sharing short-form mobile videos, collects user personal data in an amount unusual for a social media app.

Last week, Republican U.S. Senators introduced the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act “ending the use of ‘warrant-proof’ encrypted technology by terrorists and other bad actors to conceal illicit behavior.” Experts and privacy advocates think it can effectively outlaw strong encryption.

Amnesty Tech, a global collective of researchers, hackers, and advocates campaigning for human rights, has claimed that Israeli tech company NSO Group committed a government-backed surveillance operation over journalists.

As of May 2020, Google’s Chrome Web Store has reportedly been hit with the most massive surveillance campaign so far, which managed to steal data from users around the world through over 32 million downloads of malicious extensions.

As the civil protests in the U.S. continue, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reported that a military-class drone was surveilling the protesters in Minneapolis in late May.

The U.S. police are using social media to find people involved in looting and violence, as well as those who were going to get involved and posted about it. According to Politico, there are several currently unfolding cases, in which the police acted on hints taken from Facebook.

Tech giant IBM will no longer develop and sell facial recognition software for mass surveillance. The move came in response to the death of George Floyd, which raised concerns about the accuracy of face-scanning software in terms of race and gender, as well as about how the police use facial recognition technology (FRT) to track […]

According to Gallup, in 2018, about two-thirds of people worldwide had confidence in their local police. Given the law enforcement response to the protests in the U.S., this number will probably be quite different in subsequent reports. But batons, rubber bullets, and tear gas aren’t the only tools for the job.

Tests performed by Comparitech showed that Amazon’s face recognition technology incorrectly matched over a hundred of the United States and United Kingdom politicians with photos of arrested people.