Free Republic

Washington, DC – The New Civil Liberties Alliance is challenging the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) in federal court for coordinating with Google to automatically install spyware on the smartphones of more than one million Commonwealth residents, without their knowledge or consent, in a misguided effort to combat Covid-19. A newly-released video details how DPH’s actions have violated fundamental constitutional rights. ... Thousands of people do not know DPH’s Covid-19 tracking app is on their phone, as it does not appear on their home screens like other apps. NCLA client Robert Wright, who commutes to Massachusetts for work, was...

A group led by a Rutgers University professor just created an Android smartphone app that notifies users when their location data is being tracked and transmitted by another app. Assistant professor Janne Lindqvist’s new app displays a banner across Android screens saying, “Your location is accessed by [app name],” when said app is transmitting location data, taking advantage of technology already present on the Android operating system that few users were aware even existed. “People were really surprised that some apps were accessing their location, or how often some apps were accessing their location,” Lindqvist told MIT Technology Review of...