Tag: surveillance

  • How to destroy surveillance capitalism

    Cory Doctorow’s new book, published in a whole on OneZero. What if the trauma of living through real conspiracies all around us — conspiracies among wealthy people, their lobbyists, and lawmakers to bury inconvenient facts and evidence of wrongdoing (these conspiracies are commonly known as “corruption”) — is making people vulnerable to conspiracy theories? From…

  • Automatisierte Gesichtserkennung: Warum die Technik gefährlich ist.

    Automatisierte Gesichtserkennung: diese Woche is eine Recherche zu dem US Unternehmen Clearview durch die Medien gereicht worden. Die Artikel haben jeweils viel Aufmerksamkeit auf sich gezogen. Gesichtserkennung ist das Feature, das man bereits von Fotoverarbeitungsprogrammen, Handys und sogar Sozialen Medien kennt. Für die meisten Nutzer dieser Programme oder Dienste ist das meist ein lustiges, manchmal…

  • Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism

    Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The age of surveillance capitalism“(Affiliate link) talks about surveillance capitalism and it’s impact on democracy at the Alexander von Humboldt Institut for internet and society. In her book, she investigates a novel market form and coined the term ‘surveillance capitalism’.

  • Alexa and Google spy on you

    Only after the Google SVP let the public know ‘He’d let guests know about smart speakers‘, there is more bad news on these smart home devices. Researchers found approved apps that deliberately turn these devices to spy on their owner. Amazon- and Google-approved apps turned both voice-controlled devices into “smart spies.” Source: Alexa and Google…

  • Google chief: I’d disclose smart speakers

    “Does the owner of a home need to disclose to a guest? I would and do when someone enters into my home, and it’s probably something that the products themselves should try to indicate.” Well, d’uh. If Rick Osterloh, SVP of Devices and Services, says so. At least the BBC writes.

  • Behavioral advertising efficiency

    Researchers from U Minnesota, UC Irvine and CMU took a look into “behavioural based advertisement”, a segment that requires heavy tracking of users across websites through cookies. A report of their findings is here: Online Tracking and Publishers’ Revenues: An Empirical Analysis. Money quote: They found that despite the 40% “ad-tech” premium charged by behavioral…

  • Phones Open to Attack through WhatsApp Flaw

    Meanwhile, another flaw from the Facebook universe. While it appears it’s not immediately related to data leakage, it gives great potential to 3rd parties, though. On the upside, nobody will attribute it to Facebook this time. It’s a good opportunity to point out and recommend the alternatives to Whatsapp, in particular Signal and Threema. A…