US president Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Wednesday aimed at preventing a handful of countries, including China, North Korea, and Russia, from purchasing sensitive information about Americans through commercial data brokers in the United States. Administration officials say categories of sensitive data, including personal identifiers, precise location …
Read More »How a Right-Wing Controversy Could Sabotage US Election Security
The meeting between top US election officials and their cybersecurity partners from the federal government almost went off without a hitch. Then Mac Warner spoke up. Warner, West Virginia’s Republican secretary of state, didn’t have a mundane logistical question for the government representatives, who were speaking at the winter meeting …
Read More »A Top White House Cyber Official Sees the ‘Promise and Peril’ in AI
When Anne Neuberger stepped into the newly created role of deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology on the White House’s National Security Council at the start of the Biden administration, she was already one of the government’s most experienced cyber veterans. Neuberger spent a decade at the …
Read More »Leak of Russian ‘Threat’ Part of a Bid to Kill US Surveillance Reform, Sources Say
The latest botched effort at salvaging a controversial US surveillance program collapsed this week thanks to a sabotage campaign by the United States House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI), crushing any hope of unraveling the program’s fate before Congress pivots to prevent a government shutdown in March. An agreement struck between rival …
Read More »Surveillance Fight Pits the White House Opposite Reproductive Rights
One of the foremost women’s advocacy groups in the United States is urging members of Congress to support a ban on government agencies using private data brokers to acquire access to Americans’ private data without a warrant, a response that came late Tuesday following explosive revelations about the surveillance of …
Read More »The Hidden Injustice of Cyberattacks
Talk about the promise and the peril of artificial intelligence is everywhere these days. But for many low-income families, communities of color, military veterans, people with disabilities, and immigrant communities, AI is a back-burner issue. Their day-to-day worries revolve around taking care of their health, navigating the economy, seeking educational …
Read More »A Backroom Deal Looms Over a High-Stakes US Surveillance Fight
Twice in the past decade, legislation limiting the United States government’s domestic surveillance powers sailed through the US House of Representatives. Attached to bills that would ultimately become law, both of these pro-privacy amendments were killed off in the final hours of consideration—erased each time in secret meetings held among …
Read More »US Lawmakers Tell DOJ to Quit Blindly Funding ‘Predictive’ Police Tools
The United States Department of Justice has failed to convince a group of US lawmakers that state and local police agencies aren't awarded federal grants to buy AI-based “policing” tools known to be inaccurate, if not prone to exacerbating biases long observed in US police forces. Seven members of Congress …
Read More »Notorious Spyware Maker NSO Group Is Quietly Plotting a Comeback
On New Year’s Eve, NSO Group—the Israel-based company behind the Pegasus spyware, one of the world’s most sophisticated cyberweapons—quietly released a new transparency report. The 27-page document is carefully worded—even apologetic—and is intended to demonstrate resilience, progress, and responsibility to further strengthen the company’s human rights compliance program. It claims …
Read More »The Sad Truth of the FTC’s ‘Historic’ Privacy Win
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reached a settlement last week with an American data broker known to sell location data gathered from hundreds of phone apps to the US government, among others. According to the agency, the company ignored in some cases the requests of consumers not to do …
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