Is it safe? Is it spying? Disquiet over NHS ‘magic eye’ surveillance camera in mental health units

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/30/mental-health-surveillance-camera-oxevision-nhs

Campaign calls for investigation into the use of Oxevison amid concerns over care and its effect on patients

KEWL🌀NEWS

##SURVEILLANCE #MENTALHEALTH #NHS #PRESS

Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, seeks to introduce a law that would make it a criminal offence to wear face coverings at a protest. With this law it is stepping out of line with democratic states, and closer in line with Russia.

"Without changes, this bill risks transforming protests into surveillance opportunities."

#UK #Surveillance #KeirStarmer #Protest

https://theconversation.com/banning-face-coverings-expanding-facial-recognition-how-the-uk-government-and-police-are-eroding-protest-rights-252976?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=bylinecopy_url_button

Madison Square Garden Bans Fan After Surveillance System IDs Him as a Critic of Its CEO

https://gizmodo.com/madison-square-garden-bans-fan-after-surveillance-system-ids-him-as-a-critic-of-its-ceo-2000582132

> The man created—but didn't wear—a shirt critical of James Dolan, the venue's CEO.

#ethics #surveillance #MSG #press

"While CBP said it only searched about 47,000 devices of the 420 million people who crossed the US border in 2024, experts the Guardian spoke to say border enforcement has been unpredictable under the Trump administration, so figuring out whether you’re at risk of a device search is not as straightforward as it once was. French officials said a French scientist was recently turned away at an airport in Texas because immigration officers found texts that were critical of Trump on his phone.

“The super-conservative perspective is to assume they are completely unhinged and that even the most benign reasons for travel are going to subject non-citizens to these device searches,” said Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit digital rights group.

If you’re a US citizen, you must be admitted into the country. That said, some jurisdictions allow CBP to work with the FBI or local police to advance domestic investigations, so there are still some risks of your devices being searched for domestic reasons.

There are steps you can take to make it harder for CBP officers to access your device and the data on it. So what should you do to protect the data on your phone from being searched? The main thing is to prepare ahead of heading to the airport. Here is what you should be thinking about:"

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/26/phone-search-privacy-us-border-immigration

#USA #Borders #Privacy #Surveillance #DataProtection #CBP

“TRUMP KILLED PUBLIC WAR RESEARCH. STARGATE WILL MAKE IT SECRET—AND FAR MORE DANGEROUS”

by Kit Klarenberg in Mint Press News

“Days after a #Pentagon spokesperson celebrated the work of Elon Musk’s DOGE, the Minerva Initiative—an influential research program—was killed without fanfare. No mainstream outlet covered it. But the reasons behind its demise reveal the next frontier of American war planning: #AI, #surveillance, and full-spectrum #social #control”

https://www.mintpressnews.com/trump-killed-minerva-stargate-make-secret-more-dangerous/289313/

#Press #US

"[A] team of researchers recently set out to determine just how much companies like Amazon, Apple and Google are using the data gathered through their voice assistants to profile us –– track and monitor our behavior –– across the internet.
(...)
The study focused on the behaviors of the three biggest voice assistant platforms: Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant. What researchers found was that how concerned you should be about your smart assistant profiling you varies greatly depending on which device you use.

But in order to figure this out, they had to essentially trick voice assistants into profiling them.

They downloaded publicly available information that Google compiles on every user based on their searches, like gender, age range, relationship status and income bracket. Using those labels, they were able to design questions that could easily convince the platforms that they were, for example, married, had children or were a homeowner not a renter.

The researchers then recorded themselves asking these questions and replayed the audio to voice assistants over and over again. Over the course of 20 months, they conducted 1,171 experiments involving nearly 25,000 queries.
(...)
What they ended up finding was that Alexa exhibits the most straightforward kind of profiling behavior: It’s all based on your interest in products.
(...)
However, with Siri and Google Assistant, things are more complicated.

After reaching out to Apple to get their data, the company insisted “they had no data on us,” Choffnes says, “which means we couldn’t even test anything or prove any hypothesis about whether there was any profiling happening.”
(...)
Meanwhile, Google Assistant was the strangest of the bunch. The researchers found that it was clearly profiling its users but often incorrectly."
https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/03/17/voice-assistant-profiling-research/

#VoiceAssistants #IoT #SmartObjects #Amazon #Alexa #Google #Apple #Surveillance #Privacy #DataProtection

Good Night, Tech-Right: Pull The Plug On AI Fascism

„The Tech-Right is united, but less by their scattered reactionary ideologies, and more by their shared class interests. They want us divided, thinking we’ll fight each other over the scraps they offer us, or by generating the latest outrage on social media platforms they control.

We need to organize and build around our shared class interests, reaching across divisions, around common goals and struggles. We want homes for everyone. We want a livable planet for our children. We want control over our labor. We want to abolish the systems that are destroying us.

In the 1990s, anarchists, labor unions, anti-sweatshop activists, and environmental groups helped mobilize thousands in militant protests against corporate globalization, all under a Democratic president. Using decentralized networks, independent media, and affinity groups, they helped to create a growing movement, rooted in anti-capitalist analysis and direct action. We did it before, we can do it again.“

The oligarchs want a king. Let’s give them a peasants’ revolt instead.“

Via @igd_news
https://itsgoingdown.org/good-night-tech-right-pull-the-plug-on-ai-fascism/

#Technology #Data #SurveillanceCapitalism #Surveillance #Musk #Zuckerberg #Trump #Fascism #Protest #AI #KI

Don't let Google & co. take over our lives and spaces!
Fuck off #Google!

"Google steals and exploits our #data for profit and turned this behaviour into a norm. It also colonizes our physical spaces. Google canceled its plan for a ‘Google Campus’ in Kreuzberg, Berlin under pressure by the neighborhood; yet it continues its expansion worldwide.
As a decentralized network of people, we want to keep our lives and spaces free from this law- and tax-evading company and its peers, and oppose the dystopian future they offer.
More on our wiki....."
https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Main_Page

https://search.fuckoffgoogle.net

#Surveillance #capitalism #Antirepor #Data #Privacy

Why Big Tech, Cops, and Spies Were Made for One Another
"The American surveillance state is a public-private partnership."
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/16/surveillance-state-big-tech/

#BigTech #Cops #Spyware #Surveillance #Capitalism #Antireport #Police #USA

#Google sells your Information to Cops

#Data #Surveillance #Privacy

Wenn bis jetzt kein Bedarf bestand WhatsApp zu verlassen sollte es jetzt so weit sein. Das Ziel ist ein Aufweichen der Akzeptanz für komplette KI Überwachung und Verkauf der Daten. Gerade in privaten Chats sollte man sich auf Privatsphäre verlassen können. Überzeugt eure Freund*innen heute #WhatsApp, #Insta & Co zu verlassen. Es ist Zeit die Gemütlichkeit abzulegen.

https://netzpolitik.org/2025/angriff-auf-privatsphaere-meta-messenger-fuehren-ki-assistenten-in-europa-ein/

#unplugtrump #whatsappki #bigbrother #ueberwachung #MetaAI #broligarchy #surveillance #leavemeta

#uk #israel #palestine : #war / #gaza / #palestineaction / #surveillance

»Keir Starmer’s government held a private meeting with #ElbitSystems, Israel’s largest weapons company (…). The meeting occurred in Dec. 2024 (…). Elbit’s efforts to counter Palestine Action in Britain seem to have gone even further. Declassified can reveal the company has its own “intelligence cell” and shares “information with the [U.K.] police across the country on a two weekly basis.”«

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/03/25/uks-secret-meeting-with-top-israeli-arms-firm/

Creeping fascism - using Israeli spy technology perhaps?

“Breaking: Met Police installing permanent live facial recognition cameras”

by Skwawkbox @skwawkbox
@UKLabour

“Force slammed for racism, misogyny and homophobia, which serves police state and is stitching up anti-genocide protesters will soon be able to spy on you across the capital. What could go wrong?”

https://skwawkbox.org/2025/03/24/breaking-met-police-installing-permanent-live-facial-recognition-cameras/

#Press #UK #Police #London #MetPolice #Facial #Recognition #Surveillance #AI #Racism #PoliceState #Fascism

"Vancouver school staff and anyone else with links to the files could read everything. Firewalls or passwords didn’t protect the documents, and student names were not redacted, which cybersecurity experts warned was a massive security risk.

The monitoring tools often helped counselors reach out to students who might have otherwise struggled in silence. But the Vancouver case is a stark reminder of surveillance technology’s unintended consequences in American schools.

In some cases, the technology has outed LGBTQ+ children and eroded trust between students and school staff, while failing to keep schools completely safe.

Gaggle Safety Management, the company that developed the software that tracks Vancouver schools students’ online activity, believes not monitoring children is like letting them loose on “a digital playground without fences or recess monitors,” CEO and founder Jeff Patterson said.

Roughly 1,500 school districts nationwide use Gaggle’s software to track the online activity of approximately 6 million students. It’s one of many companies, like GoGuardian and Securly, that promise to keep kids safe through AI-assisted web surveillance."

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/schools-ai-monitor-kids-hoping-prevent-violence-investigation-119705134

#USA #AI #Surveillance #Schools #PoliceState #Gaggle

The governments of #Australia, #Canada, #Cyprus, #Denmark, #Israel, and #Singapore are likely customers of Israeli #spyware maker #Paragon Solutions

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/19/researchers-name-several-countries-as-potential-paragon-spyware-customers/

#Toronto #AU #CA #CY #DK #IL #SG #government #academic #security #research #surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism #WhatsApp #Italy #IT #VentureCapital #authoritarian #authoritarianism

"A consumer-grade spyware operation called SpyX was hit by a data breach last year, TechCrunch has learned. The breach reveals that SpyX and two other related mobile apps had records on almost two million people at the time of the breach, including thousands of Apple users.

The data breach dates back to June 2024 but has not been previously reported, and there is no indication that SpyX’s operators ever notified its customers or those targeted by the spyware.

The SpyX family of mobile spyware is now, by our count, the 25th mobile surveillance operation since 2017 known to have experienced a data breach, or otherwise spilled or exposed their victims’ or users’ data, showing that the consumer-grade spyware industry continues to proliferate and put people’s private data at risk.

The breach also provides a rare look at how stalkerware like SpyX can also target Apple customers.

Troy Hunt, who runs data breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, received a copy of the breached data in the form of two text files, which contained 1.97 million unique account records with associated email addresses."

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/19/data-breach-at-stalkerware-spyx-affects-close-to-2-million-including-thousands-of-apple-users/

#CyberSecurity #Spyware #SpyX #Apple #Stalkerware #Surveillance

"- Introducing Paragon Solutions. Paragon Solutions was founded in Israel in 2019 and sells spyware called Graphite. The company differentiates itself by claiming it has safeguards to prevent the kinds of spyware abuses that NSO Group and other vendors are notorious for.
- Infrastructure Analysis of Paragon Spyware. Based on a tip from a collaborator, we mapped out server infrastructure that we attribute to Paragon’s Graphite spyware tool. We identified a subset of suspected Paragon deployments, including in Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore.
- Identifying a Possible Canadian Paragon Customer. Our investigation surfaced potential links between Paragon Solutions and the Canadian Ontario Provincial Police, and found evidence of a growing ecosystem of spyware capability among Ontario-based police services.
- Helping WhatsApp Catch a Zero-Click. We shared our analysis of Paragon’s infrastructure with Meta, who told us that the details were pivotal to their ongoing investigation into Paragon.
- WhatsApp discovered and mitigated an active Paragon zero-click exploit, and later notified over 90 individuals who it believed were targeted, including civil society members in Italy.
- Android Forensic Analysis: Italian Cluster. We forensically analyzed multiple Android phones belonging to Paragon targets in Italy (an acknowledged Paragon user) who were notified by WhatsApp. We found clear indications that spyware had been loaded into WhatsApp, as well as other apps on their devices."

#CyberSecurity #Israel #Paragon #Spyware #WhatsApp #Meta #Italy #Surveillance

https://citizenlab.ca/2025/03/a-first-look-at-paragons-proliferating-spyware-operations/

"New documents obtained by 404 Media reveal that Clearview AI spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase “690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photos” from all 50 states from an intelligence firm. The contract further describes the records as including current and former home addresses, dates of birth, arrest photos, social security and cell phone numbers, and email addresses. Clearview attempted to purchase this data from Investigative Consultant, Inc. (ICI) which billed itself as an intelligence company with access to tens of thousands of databases and the ability to create unique data streams for its clients. The contract was signed in mid-2019, at a time when Clearview AI was quietly collecting billions of photos off the internet and was relatively unknown at the time.

Ultimately, the entire deal fell apart after Clearview and ICI clashed about the utility of the data with each company filing breach of contract claims. The dispute ultimately went into arbitration where it is common for disputes to be settled privately. The arbiter ultimately sided with Clearview AI in 2024 and ordered ICI to return the contract money. To date, ICI has not paid Clearview, with the company now seeking a court order to enforce the arbiter’s ruling."

https://www.404media.co/facial-recognition-company-clearview-attempted-to-buy-social-security-numbers-and-mugshots-for-its-database/

#Clearview #Surveillance #Privacy #DataProtection #SocialSecurity #FacialRecognition #Biometrics

"In 2006, a retired AT&T engineer knocked on the door of the EFF's office in a rundown part of San Francisco's Mission district and asked, "Do you folks care about privacy?" With him he carried schematics exposing the largest US government domestic spying operation since Watergate.

That person was Mark Klein, who died on March 8 this year from cancer. He was 79.

After a life working in telecoms, Klein realized he had helped the NSA wire up a listening station in AT&T's San Francisco switching facility - the infamous Room 641A - that was being used to illegally spy on Americans.

The evidence he gathered and shared led to two lawsuits that exposed the extent to which US citizens were being spied on by their own government in the post-9/11 world. Klein faced legal pressure, death threats, and the constant fear of ruin, to get his story out and tell the public what was going on. But Klein regretted nothing."

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/15/rip_mark_klein/

#USA #NSA #Surveillance #ATT #MassSurveillance #PoliceState #Privacy

Ontario’s provincial police force could be using Israeli spyware, report finds https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/19/ontario-police-force-israeli-spyware #Surveillance #Worldnews #Americas #Canada #Israel

Muchos padres instalan aplicaciones espía en los teléfonos de sus hijos por preocupación. Pero la supuesta función de seguridad para niños es en sí misma bastante peligrosa, como demuestra un nuevo estudio - https://netzpolitik.org/2025/spionage-apps-neue-studie-enthuellt-risiken-von-spionage-apps-fuer-kinder/ #surveillance #spyware #vigilancia

US Police records obtained by The Intercept show Dataminr (a social media surveillance firm and “official partner” of X) tracked Gaza-related protests and other constitutionally protected speech.

#US #Police #Surveillance #Spying #protests #fascism #israel #policeState #politics #USpol

@palestine @israel https://theintercept.com/2025/03/17/lapd-surveillance-gaza-palestine-protests-dataminr/

US Police records obtained by The Intercept show Dataminr (a social media surveillance firm and “official partner” of X) tracked Gaza-related protests and other constitutionally protected speech.

#US #Police #Surveillance #Spying #protests #fascism #israel #policeState #politics #USpol
https://theintercept.com/2025/03/17/lapd-surveillance-gaza-palestine-protests-dataminr/

'LAPD knew protests were coming: 2 days earlier, the dept received👉advanced warning 👈on #Dataminr, a socialmedia #surveillance firm ...and👉“official partner” of X👈.

....LosAngeles #ACAB Department emails obtained via public records show city police used Dataminr to track Gaza-related demonstrations and other constitutionally protected #freespeech.'

"#LAPD Surveilled #Gaza #Protests Using #SocialMedia Tool"

https://theintercept.com/2025/03/17/lapd-surveillance-gaza-palestine-protests-dataminr/ #CyberSecurity #DomesticSpying #CyberStalking @palestine

„Klinische Tests ohne Genehmigung, autonome Autos ohne Auflagen, Kernreaktoren und Nuklearenergie ohne staatliche Überwachung und eine Sonderwirtschaftszone, in der es kaum Steuern zu zahlen gibt und auch die Rechte von Arbeitskräften außer Kraft gesetzt werden. So stellen sich zahlreiche Chefs der Big-Tech-Unternehmen und US-Investoren die Zukunft vor – von Peter Thiel bis Sam Altman und Marc Andreessen. Donald Trump soll es möglich machen. Schon 2023 hatte er im Wahlkampf davon gesprochen, solche Freedom Cities in den USA zu ermöglichen.…“

Unregulierte Tech-Tests: Thiel, Altman und Co wollen Freedom Cities

https://www.heise.de/news/Unregulierte-Tech-Tests-Thiel-Altman-und-Co-wollen-Freedom-Cities-10309769.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Überwachungskapitalismus #Technology #Thiel #Trump #Musk #Usa #FreedomCities #AI #Surveillance

Es gibt viele Beispiele die aufzeigen, wie die vielbeschworene Digitalisierung und "Smartifizierung der Welt" vor allem eine Transformation in eine noch autoritärere und repressivere Zukunft bedeuten kann.

Die biometrische Überwachung/Verfolgung von Frauen in Iran und von Kriegsdienstverweigernden in Russland sowie die Zero-Covid-Politik des chinesischen Staates sind offensichtliche Beispiele dafür. Und auch im Überwachungskapitalismus des "demokratischen Westens" werden solche Entwicklungen schon seit einer ganzen Weile auf hohen Ebenen herbeigesehnt, wie z.B. das Dokument "Smart City Charta" von Bundesinstituten und dem Bundesumweltministerium aus dem Jahr 2017 zeigt.

Eine schön deutliche Einordnung dieses Dokuments (im Rahmen einer vergangenen Veranstaltung) findet sich hier:

https://frevel.noblogs.org/post/2022/01/25/februar-2022/

#Überwachung , #Surveillance , #ZeroCovid , #biometrie , #Iran , #Russland

“The eyes and ears that decapitated Hezbollah”

by Anis Raiss in The Cradle

@palestine
@israel

“As Hezbollah reels from a wave of assassinations deep within its strongholds, an unseen war rages – one fought not with bullets, but with hacked signals, infiltrated networks, and a digital battlefield where every movement is mapped before it happens”

https://thecradle.co/articles/the-eyes-and-ears-that-decapitated-hezbollah

#Press #Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #Assassination #Digital #Battlefield #Surveillance #Cameras #Dahua #Iran #Russia

'A contractor for #ICE ... other US govt agencies, has developed a tool that lets analysts more easily pull a target individual’s public data from... sites, #socialnetworks, apps, and services across the web at once, including #Bluesky, OnlyFans... #Meta platforms... In all the list (leaked to 404) names more than 200 sites that the contractor, called #ShadowDragon...'
The 200+ Sites an ICE #Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring
https://www.404media.co/the-200-sites-an-ice-surveillance-contractor-is-monitoring/ #cybersec #persec #cyberstalking

Google is on the Wrong Side of History - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/google-wrong-side-history #ai #defense #surveillance

ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil for his role in pro-Palestine protests, signaling the beginning of a surveillance nightmare.
https://www.theverge.com/policy/627185/columbia-ice-arrest-mahmoud-khalil-palestine-protest-surveillance

#USA #ICE #Palestine #zionist #surveillance #activist

Homeland Security can now spy on LGBTQ+ people & groups as threats to U.S. safety
#LGBTQ #Trans #Surveillance #SurveillanceState
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/02/homeland-security-can-now-spy-on-lgbtq-people-groups-as-a-threat-to-u-s-safety/

"The U.K. government appears to have quietly scrubbed encryption advice from government web pages, just weeks after demanding backdoor access to encrypted data stored on Apple’s cloud storage service, iCloud.

The change was spotted by security expert Alec Muffett, who wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is no longer recommending that high-risk individuals use encryption to protect their sensitive information.

The NCSC in October published a document titled “Cybersecurity tips for barristers, solicitors & legal professionals,” that advised the use of encryption tools such as Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP).

ADP allows users to turn on end-to-end encryption for their iCloud backups, effectively making it impossible for anyone, including Apple and government authorities, to view data stored on iCloud."

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/06/uk-quietly-scrubs-encryption-advice-from-government-websites/

#UK #CyberSecurity #Encryption #Surveillance #Apple #iCloud

“According to one source, Unit 8200’s chatbot has been trained on 100 billion words of Arabic obtained in part through Israel’s large-scale surveillance of Palestinians under the rule of its military.”

This got me thinking about NSA mass surveillance and Salt Typhoon. What kind of language models are being trained on our private cleartext comms?

https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-chatgpt-8200-surveillance-ai/
#Surveillance #Palestine #AI

US to revoke student visas over ‘pro-Hamas’ social media posts flagged by AI - report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/foreign-student-visas-pro-palestinian-ai #USconstitutionandcivilliberties #Artificialintelligence(AI) #MiddleEastandnorthAfrica #Palestinianterritories #UScampusprotests #Israel-Gazawar #USuniversities #Surveillance #DonaldTrump #Worldnews #Judaism #USnews #Hamas #Gaza

"At EFF we spend a lot of time thinking about Street Level Surveillance technologies—the technologies used by police and other authorities to spy on you while you are going about your everyday life—such as automated license plate readers, facial recognition, surveillance camera networks, and cell-site simulators (CSS). Rayhunter is a new open source tool we’ve created that runs off an affordable mobile hotspot that we hope empowers everyone, regardless of technical skill, to help search out CSS around the world.

CSS (also known as Stingrays or IMSI catchers) are devices that masquerade as legitimate cell-phone towers, tricking phones within a certain radius into connecting to the device rather than a tower."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/meet-rayhunter-new-open-source-tool-eff-detect-cellular-spying

#USA #Surveillance #Cellphones #DigitalRights #Stingrays #IMSICatchers #Privacy #Rayhunter

Wer dauerhaft in den #USA leben möchte, muss künftig #SocialMedia-Aktivitäten offenlegen

https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000260173/wer-dauerhaft-in-den-usa-leben-moechte-muss-kuenftig-social-media-aktivitaeten-offenlegen

🤣

#LandOfTheFree #Trump #Überwachung #surveillance #fascism

Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like tool using vast collection of Palestinian surveillance data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/06/israel-military-ai-surveillance #israel #palestine #surveillance #ai #infosec