Free Republic

TEL AVIV - Israel’s defense ministry plans to use software that analyses data gathered from mobile phones - produced, according to Israeli media, by the spyware firm NSO - to help locate likely carriers of the coronavirus in order to test them. Defense Minister Naftali Bennett told reporters that the “coronameter” would need approval from the cabinet - likely to be given - as well as an assessment of privacy issues from the attorney general, who has the power to block it. But it could be operational within 48 hours of getting the go-ahead. Israel already tests around 5,000 people...

The ONC interoperability rule is a step in the right direction towards a nationwide health data exchange and enhanced interoperability. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has put the importance of health data exchange and interoperability under a microscope. Niam Yaraghi, a fellow in governance studies at the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings Institution, penned an op-ed to explain why he thinks the US lacks health information technologies to stop or contain the COVID-19 epidemic. “The pandemic has shattered our common beliefs about the type and scope of health information exchange (HIE),” wrote Yaraghi. “It has shown us that...

The overall best VPN services encrypt all your internet traffic and pass it through a private tunnel to their own secure servers so that no one can see what you're reading or downloading - not the government, not your ISP, not even the VPN service itself.Very simply, a VPN (short for virtual private network) is an app you can download for your mobile or laptop that allows you to hide your location, identity and IP address from the rest of the internet.All internet content is completely encrypted - securely jumbled so no one could read it even if they intercepted...

BEIJING - China’s coronavirus outbreak has tested the limits of free speech on the country’s heavily censored online and social media, with a brief window of liberalization that opened during January subsequently slammed shut by authorities. The period from Jan 19 to Feb 1, when public concern about the coronavirus exploded just as China was gearing up for the Lunar New Year holiday, saw an uncharacteristic loosening. Online buzz about the outbreak flourished, with netizens largely unfettered in criticizing local authorities - but not central government leaders - over their handling of the crisis. That liberalisation has come to end,...

When the man from Hangzhou returned home from a business trip, the local police got in touch. They had tracked his car by his license plate in nearby Wenzhou, which has had a spate of coronavirus cases despite being far from the epicenter of the outbreak. Stay indoors for two weeks, they requested. After around 12 days, he was bored and went out early. This time, not only did the police contact him, so did his boss. He had been spotted near Hangzhou’s West Lake by a camera with facial recognition technology, and the authorities had alerted his company as...

In years gone by there existed an understanding that one’s personal information surrendered to private companies was a voluntary choice – the “cost,” if you will, to obtaining the benefit of a company’s goods or services. Importantly – and constitutionally – such a “trade off” was far different from the government obtaining personal and private information by way of surveillance or other information-gathering actions undertaken without a warrant. There was a relatively clear line between private company collection of personal information voluntarily provided, and the government gathering such information without one’s knowledge or consent. Today, that “line” has been blurred...

Ring doorbells are providing customer data to companies such as Facebook and Google, an investigation suggests. The Electronic Frontier Foundation found the Ring app was "packed" with third-party tracking, sending out customers' personally identifiable information. Five companies were receiving a range of information, including names, IP addresses and mobile networks, it said. Ring said it limited the amount of data it shared. The company told Gizmodo: "Like many companies, Ring uses third-party service providers to evaluate the use of our mobile app, which helps us improve features, optimise the customer experience and evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing." But the...

The more we talk about freedom (of speech, of assembly, to carry guns, religion) in the world today occupied and controlled by everything progressive, the more we hear the chains rattling I wrote before about the 2006 Oscar winner for the best Foreign Language Film, “Das Leben des Anderen” (The Lives of Others), a German drama that describes in painful detail life in the communist East Berlin of 1984, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, how ordinary and not so ordinary citizens were spied upon by their government, using agents of the infamous Stasi, the German Democratic Republic’s secret...

New students at the University of Missouri will be required to participate in a tracking program designed to measure and enforce class attendance, according to a new report from The Kansas City Star. Despite privacy concerns, officials defended the decision as one to the benefit of students, as the school's athletics department has already been using the same app, SpotterEdu, to track certain student-athletes.

Sales for some at-home DNA testing kits are on the decline amid consumer privacy concerns. 23andMe, the home DNA-testing company, is laying off about 100 people, nearly 14 percent of its staff, the company confirmed to FOX Business Friday. The company cut staffers in its operations department in charge of growing and scaling the company as fewer people pay for genetic test results which can reveal things about their heritage or how prone they are to health conditions like type 2 diabetes or celiac disease, according to a CNBC report. The declining sales came as a surprise for CEO Anne...

Until recently, Hoan Ton-That’s greatest hits included an obscure iPhone game and an app that let people put Donald Trump’s distinctive yellow hair on their own photos. Then Mr. Ton-That — an Australian techie and onetime model — did something momentous: He invented a tool that could end your ability to walk down the street anonymously, and provided it to hundreds of law enforcement agencies, ranging from local cops in Florida to the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security. His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it...

Conference goers now have to be wary that robots will identify them everywhere they go. Corporations can now rent Chinese-made CloudMinds robots that can identify everyone on the conference floor. (To learn more about CloudMinds and China click here & here.) CloudMinds mission is to “make helpful robot services possible and to make them safe, secure and affordable.” While their hidden mission is to help governments identify everyone. According to CloudMinds “About Us” page, their so-called values are to convince employees, moms, dads and their children to trust rentable emotion and facial recognition robots. We make helpful robot Their rent-a-robot...

Google on Tuesday announced it would begin phasing third-party cookies out of its Chrome web browser, following in the steps of competitors Safari and Firefox. However, unlike those two companies that banned cookies outright, Google will phase out their support for cookies "within two years," Justin Schuh, director at engineering for Chrome, wrote in a blog post. "Some browsers have reacted to these concerns by blocking third-party cookies, but we believe this has unintended consequences that can negatively impact both users and the web ecosystem," he continued. Google cited user concerns about cookies including privacy and data collection, pledging to...

Attorney General William P. Barr declared on Monday that a deadly shooting last month at a naval air station in Pensacola, Fla., was an act of terrorism, and he asked Apple in an unusually high-profile request to provide access to two phones used by the gunman.Mr. Barr’s appeal was an escalation of a continuing fight between the Justice Department and Apple pitting personal privacy against public safety. “This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that the public be able to get access to digital evidence,” Mr. Barr said, calling on technology companies to find a solution and complaining that...

HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is continuing the industry's push to incorporate social factors that influence health—like food insecurity and homelessness—into patient care. The 2020 edition of the ONC's interoperability standards advisory, a collection of agency-recognized interoperability standards and implementation specifications, includes resources to support sharing information on four new categories of data related to social determinants: drug use, food insecurity, housing insecurity and transportation insecurity. "As factors like these can greatly impact one's overall health, ensuring this information is known, and captured in clinical systems and available to providers is important," wrote the ONC's...

Apple made some waves at CES 2019 by placing a billboard outside the Las Vegas Convention Center that needled its competitors over user privacy. This year, the company will have an official presence, with Jane Horvath, its senior director of global privacy, set to appear January 9 on a panel called the Chief Privacy Officer Roundtable. The company will be showing off its HomeKit smart home platform during CES. There, Horvath will likely argue for increased privacy protections. The roundtable is also expected to be attended by executives from Facebook and Procter & Gamble, as well as a Federal Trade...

Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, says it's giving all users more control of their own data. The change is spurred by the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, which went into effect Wednesday. The new data privacy law gives California residents the right to know what personal data tech companies collect. It also enables people to ask companies to delete their data and not sell it. Mozilla said changes it's making under the CCPA will apply to every Firefox user, not just those in California. In a blog post Tuesday, Mozilla said it'll give Firefox users the option...

ToTok, an Emirati messaging app that has been downloaded to millions of phones, is the latest escalation of a digital arms race. IMAGE: The Aldar Building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where the Emirates’ signals intelligence agency and Pax AI, a data mining firm linked to ToTok, have their offices.  Photo Credit...Ben Job/ReutersWASHINGTON — It is billed as an easy and secure way to chat by video or text message with friends and family, even in a country that has restricted popular messaging services like WhatsApp and Skype.But the service, ToTok, is actually a spying tool, according to American officials...

A mother has released a chilling video of a hacker talking to her eight-year-old daughter through a Ring security camera in her bedroom. The footage was recorded at the family home in Desoto County, Mississippi. Ashley LeMay had installed the Ring security camera in order to watch over her three daughters and to feel connected to them during her night shifts as a nurse.

On Dec. 10, Lisa Page filed a complaint against the Department of Justice and the FBI for alleged violations of the Privacy Act related to the disclosure of information about her to the media. The document is available here and below.