Free Republic

Australians made $746 million in digital payments in 2018—that number soared to $93 billion in 2022.. A new all-in-one mobile app will offer what its developers claim is Australia’s first end-to-end digital banking platform for the country’s 2.4 million businesses with fewer than 10 employees. The announcement comes a day after Bankwest announced that it is closing 45 of its branches and transitioning the remaining 15 to Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) branches, going digital-only by October 2024. Bankwest is a subsidiary of the Commonwealth Bank, which trades on the Australian Stock Exchange. ... The new app, called Business+, was...

Hidden cameras are being found in hotel rooms, house rentals, cruise ships, and even airplane bathrooms, leaving many travelers to wonder: “Could a hidden camera be watching me?” Spycams, as they’re called, are getting smaller, harder to find and easier to buy. From alarm clocks to air fresheners, water bottles and toothbrush holders, cameras come embedded in common household items that seamlessly blend with home decor. They can be purchased in shops or online, and through retailers like Amazon and Walmart. And rather than having to retrieve the camera to obtain the recording, owners can stream live images straight to...

American whistle-blower Edward Snowden said Beijing’s use of technology to control its citizens and electronically track US targets prompted him to investigate and then expose Washington’s mass surveillance programme. In his book "Permanent Record," published on Wednesday, the former US spy agency contractor who now lives in exile in Russia, detailed how he fled to Hong Kong and then Moscow after creating one of the most serious security breaches in American history. Snowden, who was a technician subcontracted to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency for seven years, said he began to have suspicions about secret post-September...

In a world where many of us are glued to our smartphones, Dulcie Cowling is something of an anomaly - she has ditched hers. The 36-year-old decided at the end of last year that getting rid of her handset would improve her mental health. So, over Christmas she told her family and friends that she was switching to an old Nokia phone that could only make and receive calls and text messages. She recalls that one of the pivotal moments that led to her decision was a day at the park with her two boys, aged six and three: "I...

Great Leap Forward sees broadband speeds surge, 99 per cent of villages hooked up, all for $6/month China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had a busy Monday as it declared the country's intention to be both a manufacturing and a network superpower, and claimed progress towards the latter goal is illustrated with some seemingly odd statistics. Liu Liehong, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told reporters that China's 13th Five-Year Plan, enacted in 2015, delivered a great leap forward in networking capabilities. The minister claimed the Middle Kingdom has already "built the world's largest information...

Starlink, the latest internet venture by Elon Musk and his SpaceX, has launched enough of its satellites to begin early customer trialsStarlink is SpaceX’s ambitious project to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, to eventually deliver high-speed internet globallyElon Musk has successfully scaled new industries and disrupted the incumbents of others, becoming the world’s richest person early this year by upending the global auto industry and disrupting aerospace heavyweights with reusable rockets. Now Musk is looking to seriously disrupt the global telecommunications space with his Starlink internet satellites.Over the course of 18 launches, Elon Musk and his...

Exclusive: Whistleblower’s data suggests millions of tracking requests sent over four-month periodSaudi Arabia appears to be exploiting weaknesses in the global mobile telecoms network to track its citizens as they travel around the US, according to a whistleblower who has shown the Guardian millions of alleged secret tracking requests. Data revealed by the whistleblower, who is seeking to expose vulnerabilities in a global messaging system called SS7, appears to suggest a systematic spying campaign by the kingdom, according to experts. The data suggests that millions of secret tracking requests emanated from Saudi Arabia over a four-month period beginning in November...

Ericsson Subsidiary Pleads Guilty to FCPA Violations Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (Ericsson or the Company), a multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, has agreed to pay total penalties of more than $1 billion to resolve the government’s investigation into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) arising out of the Company’s scheme to make and improperly record tens of millions of dollars in improper payments around the world.  This includes a criminal penalty of over $520 million and approximately $540 million to be paid to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a related matter.  An Ericsson...

The secrets are hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program. Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities,...

Donald Trump, in only the 4th time in 70 years, disallowed the merger of Broadcom and QUALCOMM. Broadcom is the 5G leader out of Singapore with ties to Huawei, the giant Chinese electronics conglomerate that's also heavily tied to the PLA. The merger would have resulted in the dismantling of Qualcomm, with Broadcom and Huawei taking any advanced 5G technology and leaving the rest for scraps.

Finding a pay phone along the Pennsylvania Turnpike is no easy task, with fewer than three dozen spread over the 360-mile span, plus its extensions. Soon, it will be impossible. “Slowly, we have been eliminating the pay phones as construction work takes place at the interchanges,” said Renee Colborn, a turnpike spokeswoman. “Approximately 15 pay phones have been eliminated this year, which leaves a total of 28 pay phones at various locations.”The culprit behind the pay phone's demise along the turnpike is the same as elsewhere: the cellphone. For that same reason, turnpike officials in September began removing more than...

Apple and AT&T have been working together to improve cellular connectivity for iPhone users in Puerto Rico who have been largely without cellular service since Hurricane Maria hit a month ago. The two companies are enabling LTE Band 8, a provisional LTE band that's been approved but not activated or licensed in the United States or Puerto Rico, reports TechCrunch. ... LTE Band 8 will work with the iPhone 5c and up on iOS 10 or higher in Puerto Rico following a carrier update. Band 8 is a 900Mhz band with improved range to better reach cell towers that are...

Terahertz technology enabled via graphene could boost the capacity of future data networks, according to researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Andrei Vorobiev, pictured, senior researcher, said: “One of graphene’s special features is that electrons move much faster than in most semiconductors used today. Thanks to this, we can access the high frequencies that constitute the terahertz range. Data communication then has the potential of becoming up to ten times faster and can transmit much larger amounts of data than is currently possible.” Researchers at Chalmers have shown that graphene based transistor devices could receive and convert terahertz...

A top advisor to Donald Trump on tech policy matters proposed all but abolishing the nation's telecom regulator last month, foreshadowing possible moves by the president-elect to sharply reduce the Federal Communications Commission's role as a consumer protection watchdog. In an Oct. 21 blog post, Mark Jamison, who on Monday was named one of two members of Trump's tech policy transition team, laid out his ideal vision for the government's role in telecommunications, concluding there is little need for the agency to exist. "Most of the original motivations for having an FCC have gone away," Jamison wrote. "Telecommunications network providers...

In a new piece out in The Intercept, whistleblower Edward Snowden has summed up what smart phones really are: By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they’re in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it’s so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology...

The move, mandated by a law passed six months ago, represents the greatest reduction of U.S. spying capabilities since they expanded dramatically after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Under the Freedom Act, the NSA and law enforcement agencies can no longer collect telephone-calling records in bulk in an effort to sniff out suspicious activity. Such records, known as 'metadata,' reveal which numbers Americans are calling and what time they place those calls, but not the content of the conversations. Instead analysts must now get a court order to ask telecommunications companies like Verizon Communications to enable monitoring of call records...

The "hashtag" is the pound, or number, sign on a keyboard. Many on social medial place the symbol before words, allowing those words to be tracked as keywords on social media. Listeners to my radio show, for example, often tweet with #EERS at the end for "Erick Erickson Radio Show," making it easy for listeners to see each other's tweets. In 2014, State Department spokes child Jen Psaki held up a sign for twitter showing the #UnitedForUkraine hashtag. She then followed it up a month later tweeting, "The world stands #UnitedforUkraine. Let's hope that the #Kremlin & @mfa_Russia will live...

How a Jailbird Con Artist Uncovered a Secret FBI Surveillance Tool 43,960 7 Kate KnibbsFiled to: Stingrays 6/19/15 2:30pm A convict lawyer, sitting in jail, obsessed with a wacky theory that the government tracked him by sending secret rays into his house... ends up discovering a secret government cell phone tracking program. Sounds like bizarre noir, right? But it’s true.It happened to Daniel Rigmaiden, who found out that the government had used Stingrays—covert surveillance devices that act like a fake cell phone towers—to catch him running a fake tax return scheme. He’s the guy who brought Stingrays to light. Rigmaiden...

(Thomas Dishaw) As a blogger and concerned citizen I try to put my money where my mouth is. I believe voting with my dollars is a way of life, therefore I do my best to only support companies, products, and people who I truly stand behind morally and politically. I came to an understanding long ago that the only way to get a point across criminal corporations is to affect their bottom line. Over the last few months I have been having discussions with friends and family about getting rid of my smartphone and downgrading to a cheaper, less traceable...

The Swedish firm Ericsson is working with Iran's largest mobile telecom operator to expand its network and has promised to support another Iranian mobile carrier until 2021, according to interviews and an internal company document. The involvement of Ericsson, the world's largest mobile network equipment maker, comes at a time when many Western companies have stopped doing business in Iran because of international sanctions or concerns about damage to their reputations. While Ericsson argues in the internal document that telecommunications are a "basic humanitarian service," Iranian human rights groups say Iran's regime has used the country's mobile-phone networks to track...