New Anonymous Phone Service
A new anonymous phone service allows you to sign up with just a zip code. [...]
Showing only posts tagged surveillance. Show all posts.
Huawei and Chinese Surveillance
This quote is from House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company. “Long before anyone had heard of Ren Zhengfei or Huawei, Wan Runnan had been China’s star entrepreneur in the 1980s, with his company, the Stone Group, touted as “China’s IBM.” Wan …
First Wap: A Surveillance Computer You’ve Never Heard Of
Mother Jones has a long article on surveillance arms manufacturers, their wares, and how they avoid export control laws: Operating from their base in Jakarta, where permissive export laws have allowed their surveillance business to flourish, First Wap’s European founders and executives have quietly built a phone-tracking empire …
The Trump Administration’s Increased Use of Social Media Surveillance
This chilling paragraph is in a comprehensive Brookings report about the use of tech to deport people from the US: The administration has also adapted its methods of social media surveillance. Though agencies like the State Department have gathered millions of handles and monitored political discussions online, the Trump …
Flok License Plate Surveillance
The company Flok is surveilling us as we drive: A retired veteran named Lee Schmidt wanted to know how often Norfolk, Virginia’s 176 Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader cameras were tracking him. The answer, according to a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed in September, was more than four …
Details About Chinese Surveillance and Propaganda Companies
Details from leaked documents : While people often look at China’s Great Firewall as a single, all-powerful government system unique to China, the actual process of developing and maintaining it works the same way as surveillance technology in the West. Geedge collaborates with academic institutions on research and development …
Automatic License Plate Readers Are Coming to Schools
Fears around children is opening up a new market for automatic license place readers. [...]
Surveilling Your Children with AirTags
Skechers is making a line of kid’s shoes with a hidden compartment for an AirTag. [...]
Tradecraft in the Information Age
Long article on the difficulty (impossibility?) of human spying in the age of ubiquitous digital surveillance. [...]
‘Hacking is assumed now’: experts raise the alarm about added risk of surveillance cameras in childcare centres
As governments consider mandatory CCTV in early education, one big provider with cameras already installed is yet to formalise guidelines for how the footage will be stored and used Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast In the wake of horrifying reports last week alleging …
Provider of covert surveillance app spills passwords for 62,000 users
The maker of a phone app that is advertised as providing a stealthy means for monitoring all activities on an Android device spilled email addresses, plain-text passwords, and other sensitive data belonging to 62,000 users, a researcher discovered recently. A security flaw in the app, branded Catwatchful, allowed …
Surveillance Used by a Drug Cartel
Once you build a surveillance system, you can’t control who will use it: A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official’s phone records and use Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency’s informants in …
What LLMs Know About Their Users
Simon Willison talks about ChatGPT’s new memory dossier feature. In his explanation, he illustrates how much the LLM—and the company—knows about its users. It’s a big quote, but I want you to read it all. Here’s a prompt you can use to give you …
Surveillance in the US
Good article from 404 Media on the cozy surveillance relationship between local Oregon police and ICE: In the email thread, crime analysts from several local police departments and the FBI introduced themselves to each other and made lists of surveillance tools and tactics they have access to and felt …
Self-Driving Car Video Footage
Two articles crossed my path recently. First, a discussion of all the video Waymo has from outside its cars: in this case related to the LA protests. Second, a discussion of all the video Tesla has from inside its cars. Lots of things are collecting lots of video of …
Paragon Spyware Used to Spy on European Journalists
Paragon is an Israeli spyware company, increasingly in the news (now that NSO Group seems to be waning). “Graphite” is the name of its product. Citizen Lab caught it spying on multiple European journalists with a zero-click iOS exploit: On April 29, 2025, a select group of iOS users …
Surveillance Via Smart Toothbrush
The only links are from The Daily Mail and The Mirror, but a marital affair was discovered because the cheater was recorded using his smart toothbrush at home when he was supposed to be at work. [...]
US as a Surveillance State
Two essays were just published on DOGE’s data collection and aggregation, and how it ends with a modern surveillance state. It’s good to see this finally being talked about. [...]
DIRNSA Fired
In “ Secrets and Lies ” (2000), I wrote: It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state. It’s something a bunch of us were saying at the time, in reference to the vast NSA’s surveillance capabilities. I have been thinking of that …
RIP Mark Klein
2006 AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein has died. [...]
Rayhunter: Device to Detect Cellular Surveillance
The EFF has created an open-source hardware tool to detect IMSI catchers: fake cell phone towers that are used for mass surveillance of an area. It runs on a $20 mobile hotspot. [...]
Atlas of Surveillance
The EFF has released its Atlas of Surveillance, which documents police surveillance technology across the US. [...]