EFF Unveils Its New Street Level Surveillance Hub

3 months 2 weeks ago
The Updated and Expanded Hub Sheds New Light on the Digital Surveillance Dragnet that Law Enforcement Deploys Against Everyone

SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today unveiled its new Street Level Surveillance hub, a standalone website featuring expanded and updated content on various technologies that law enforcement agencies commonly use to invade Americans’ privacy. 

The hub has new or updated pages on automated license plate readers, biometric surveillance, body-worn cameras, camera networks, cell-site simulators, drones and robots, face recognition, electronic monitoring, gunshot detection, forensic extraction tools, police access to the Internet of Things, predictive policing, community surveillance apps, real-time location tracking, social media monitoring, and police databases.  

It also features links to the latest articles by EFF’s Street Level Surveillance working group, consisting of attorneys, policy analysts, technologists, and activists with extensive experience in this field. 

“People are surveilled by police at more times and in more ways than ever before, and understanding this panopticon is the first step in protecting our rights,” said EFF Senior Policy Analyst Dr. Matthew Guariglia. “Our new hub is a ‘Field Guide to Police Surveillance;’ providing a reference source on recognizing the most-used police spy technology. But more than that it is a vital, constantly updated news feed offering cutting-edge, detailed analysis of law enforcement’s uses and abuses of these devices.” 

The new hub also interfaces with several of EFF’s ongoing projects, including: 

  • The Atlas of Surveillance, EFF’s collaboration with the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno to map more than 12,000 police surveillance technologies in use across America; and 
  • Spot the Surveillance, an open-source educational virtual reality tool to help people identify street-level surveillance in their community. 

"We hope community groups, advocacy organizations, defense attorneys, and concerned individuals will use the hub to stay abreast of the latest legal cases and technological developments, and share their own stories with us,” Guariglia said. 

Visit EFF’s new Street Level Surveillance hub at https://sls.eff.org/ 

Contact:  MatthewGuariglia Senior Policy Analystmatthew@eff.org
Josh Richman

Privacy Badger Puts You in Control of Widgets

3 months 2 weeks ago

The latest version of Privacy Badger 1 replaces embedded tweets with click-to-activate placeholders. This is part of Privacy Badger's widget replacement feature, where certain potentially useful widgets are blocked and then replaced with placeholders. This protects privacy by default while letting you restore the original widget whenever you want it or need it for the page to function.

Websites often include external elements such as social media buttons, comments sections, and video players. Although potentially useful, these “widgets” often track your behavior. The tracking happens regardless of whether you click on the widget. If you see a widget, the widget sees you back.

This is where Privacy Badger's widget replacement comes in. When blocking certain social buttons and other potentially useful widgets, Privacy Badger replaces them with click-to-activate placeholders. You will not be tracked by these replacements unless you explicitly choose to activate them.

Privacy Badger’s placeholders tell you exactly what happened while putting you in control.

Changing the UI of a website is a bold move for a browser extension to do. That’s what Privacy Badger is all about though: making strong choices on behalf of user privacy and revealing how that privacy is betrayed by businesses online.

Privacy Badger isn’t the first software to replace embedded widgets with placeholders for privacy or security purposes. As early as 2004, users could install Flashblock, an extension that replaced embedded Adobe Flash plugin content, a notoriously insecure technology.

Flashblock’s Flash plugin placeholders lacked user-friendly buttons but got the (Flash blocking) job done.

Other extensions and eventually, even browsers, followed Flashblock in offering similar plugin-blocking placeholders. The need to do this declined as plugin use dropped over time, but a new concern rose to prominence. Privacy was under attack as social media buttons started spreading everywhere.

This brings us to ShareMeNot. Developed in 2012 as a research tool to investigate how browser extensions might enforce privacy on behest of the user, ShareMeNot replaced social media “share” buttons with click-to-activate placeholders. In 2014, ShareMeNot became a part of Privacy Badger. While the emphasis has shifted away from social media buttons to interactive widgets like video players and comments sections, Privacy Badger continues to carry on ShareMeNot's legacy.

Unfortunately, widget replacement is not perfect. The placeholder’s buttons may not work sometimes, or the placeholder may appear in the wrong place or may fail to appear at all. We will keep fixing and improving widget replacement. You can help by letting us know when something isn’t working right.

To report problems, first click on Privacy Badger’s icon in your browser toolbar. Privacy Badger’s “popup” window will open. Then, click the “Report broken site” button in the popup.

Pro tip #1: Because our YouTube replacement is not quite ready to be enabled by default, embedded YouTube players are not yet blocked or replaced. If you like though, you can try our YouTube replacement now.

To opt in, visit Privacy Badger's options page, select the “Tracking Domains” tab, search for “youtube.com”, and move the toggle for youtube.com to the “Block entirely” position.

Pro tip #2: The most private way to activate a replaced widget is to use the “this [YouTube] widget” link (inside the “Privacy Badger has replaced this [YouTube] widget” text), when the link is available. Going through the link, as opposed to one of the Allow buttons, means the widget provider doesn't necessarily get to know what site you activated the widget on. You can also right-click the link to save the widget URL; no need to visit the link or to use browser developer tools.

Click the link to open the widget in a new tab.

Privacy tools should be measured not only by efficacy, but also ease of use. As we write in the FAQ, we want Privacy Badger to function well without any special knowledge or configuration by the user. Privacy should be made easy, rather than gatekept for “power users.” Everyone should be able to decide for themselves when and with whom they want to share information. Privacy Badger fights to restore this control, biting back at sneaky non-consensual surveillance.

To install Privacy Badger, visit privacybadger.org. Thank you for using Privacy Badger!

 

  • 1. Privacy Badger version 2023.12.1
Alexei Miagkov

UAE Confirms Trial Against 84 Detainees; Ahmed Mansoor Suspected Among Them

3 months 2 weeks ago

The UAE confirmed this week that it has placed 84 detainees on trial, on charges of “establishing another secret organization for the purpose of committing acts of violence and terrorism on state territory.” Suspected to be among those facing trial is award-winning human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, also known as the “the million dollar dissident,” as he was once the target of exploits that exposed major security flaws in Apple’s iOS operating system—the kind of “zero-day” vulnerabilities that fetch seven figures on the exploit market. Mansoor drew the ire of UAE authorities for criticizing the country’s internet censorship and surveillance apparatus and for calling for a free press and democratic freedoms in the country.

Having previously been arrested in 2011 and sentenced to three years' imprisonment for “insulting officials,'' Ahmed Mansoor was released after eight months due to a presidential pardon influenced by international pressure. Later, Mansoor faced new speech-related charges for using social media to “publish false information that harms national unity.” During this period, authorities held him in an unknown location for over a year, deprived of legal representation, before convicting him again in May 2018 to ten years in prison under the UAE’s draconian cybercrime law. We have long advocated for his release, and are joined in doing so by hundreds of digital and human rights organizations around the world.

At the recent COP28 climate talks, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and other activists conducted a protest inside the UN-protected “blue zone” to raise awareness of Mansoor’s plight, as well the cases of both UAE detainee Mohamed El-Siddiq and Egyptian-British activist  Alaa Abd El Fattah. At the same time, it was reported by a dissident group that the UAE was proceeding with the trial against 84 of its detainees.

We reiterate our call for Ahmed Mansoor’s freedom, and take this opportunity to raise further awareness of the oppressive nature of the legislation that was used to imprison him. The UAE’s use of its criminal law to silence those who speak truth to power is another example of how counter-terrorism laws restrict free expression and justify disproportionate state surveillance. This concern is not hypothetical; a 2023 study by the Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism found widespread and systematic abuse of civil society and civic space through the use of similar laws supposedly designed to counter terrorism. Moreover, and problematically, references 'related to terrorism’ in the treaty preamble are still included in the latest version of a proposed United Nations Cybercrime Treaty, currently being negotiated with more than 190 member states, even though there is no  agreed-upon definition of terrorism in international law. If approved as currently written, the UN Cybercrime Treaty has the potential to substantively reshape international criminal law and bolster cross-border police surveillance powers to access and share users’ data, implicating the human rights of billions of people worldwide, and could enable States to justify repressive measures that overly restrict free expression and peaceful dissent.

Jillian C. York

阿部寛のホームページでだけでネコがいなくなる拡張機能

3 months 2 weeks ago
ITmediaの記事によると、Chrome拡張「ネッコサーフィン」で、あの有名軽量サイト「阿部寛のホームページでだけネコが消える」現象が話題になっているという。ネッコサーフィンは、発明家・デザイナーの「もにゃ」さんが開発したシルエット姿のネコがマウスの移動量に応じてWebブラウザ上に集まり、遊ぶだけの拡張機能(ITmedia)。 ネッコサーフィンを導入すると、あらゆるWebサイト上にネコが現れるが、なぜか阿部寛さんの公式Webサイト「阿部寛のホームページ」だけはネコが表示されないという。もにゃさんは、この件について10件以上の問い合わせが寄せられているとのことだが、「すみません、どうしてもあそこだけはホームページの実装が特殊すぎて技術的にネコが寄りつかないんです。修正予定もないです」とコメントしているとのこと。 同氏によると、過去に作成した「全てが全てを無差別に煽り散らかす翻訳」機能のChrome拡張も、「阿部寛のホームページ」では機能しなかったとしている。

すべて読む | ITセクション | 変なモノ | インターネット | idle |

関連ストーリー:
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nagazou

Googleマップ上の特定の場所で、日本語による荒らし行為が相次ぐ

3 months 2 weeks ago
ねとらぼの記事によると、Googleマップ上で、日本語による荒らし行為が多数確認されているという。標的になっているのはアフリカ大陸のビクトリア湖にある「ミギンゴ島」で、そこには日本国内で物議を醸した「ビッグモーター」「ダイハツ」「宝塚歌劇団」といった企業名や団体名が記載されたスポットが多数あるとされている。同地域はトタン屋根の民家が建ち並びバーや小さな港などがあるだけの場所だという。この場所が狙われた理由は不明。これに対してSNS上では「想像以上にひどい」などといった批判が広がっている(ねとらぼ)。

すべて読む | ITセクション | Google | spam | ニュース | インターネット |

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nagazou

土地規制法学習会のお知らせ

3 months 2 weeks ago
土地規制法学習会 一声がつぶされてしまう前にー 軍事基地の存在と訓練によって危険にさらされる暮らしや人権を守ろうと監視や抗議をする市民の弾圧につながるといわれる土地利用規制法。 2023年12月、政府は安全保障上重要な施設周辺や国境離島を対象とする同法の「特別注視区域」と「注視区域」に県内の31箇所を新たに選定しました。 注視区域には、東村の領海も含まれています。 この法律の問題と今後どうしていったらいいかいっしょにまなび、考えましょう。 日時:2024年1月20日(土)16時より 会場:ブロッコリーハウス 沖縄県国頭郡東村字高江85-95 講師:儀保 唯 弁護士(岡野法律事務所名護支店) お問合わせ先:「ヘリパッドいらない」住民の会 TEL. 090-9789-6396
高江イイトコ

Apple、ゴーグル型ヘッドセット「Vision Pro」を2月2日に発売。米国で

3 months 2 weeks ago
アップルは8日、ゴーグル型のヘッドマウントディスプレイ「Apple Vision Pro」を米国で2月2日から販売を開始すると発表した。「Vision Pro」は、デジタルコンテンツと物理世界をシームレスに融合させ、ユーザーがその場に存在し、他のユーザーと接続できるという「空間コンピュータ」のコンセプトを持った製品。現実空間上に存在するかのように表示されたアプリを視線で選び、音声や手で操作する仕組み。「visionOS」というOSを搭載している(Apple、ケータイ Watch、価格.com)。 高い処理能力を持ちつつも本体を快適な温度に保ち、ほとんど無音のままで動作する「M2」チップやリアルタイムのセンサー処理を行う新しい「R1」チップを搭載した。256GBのストレージを備え、価格は3499ドル(約50万円)。日本国内での展開は未定となっている。

すべて読む | アップルセクション | ハードウェア | グラフィック | ニュース | アップル |

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nagazou

NVIDIA、GeForce RTX 40 SUPERシリーズを発表

3 months 2 weeks ago
NVIDIAは9日、新型コンシューマー向けGPU「GeForce RTX 40 SUPER」シリーズを発表した。同シリーズは2022年9月に発表された「GeForce RTX 40」シリーズのリフレッシュモデル。上位モデルに当たる「GeForce RTX 4080 Super」は、「RTX 4080」からコアを20%増加させたタイプで、16GBのGDDR6Xメモリを搭載。RTX 4080は1199ドルから値下げされ価格は999ドル。1月17日より発売予定(GeForce RTX 40 シリーズ、AKIBA PC Hotline!、GAME Watch)。 同時発表の「RTX 4070 Ti SUPER」は、現行の「RTX 4070 Ti」からコアを増加させ、メモリ周りを強化したGPUで、16GBのGDDR6Xメモリを搭載している。発売は1月24日からで価格はRTX 4070 Tiから据え置きの799ドル。同じく「RTX 4070 SUPER」は、現行の「RTX 4070」からコアを20%増加させ、12GBのGDDR6Xメモリを搭載したモデル。1月17日から発売で価格は599ドルとなっている。

すべて読む | ハードウェアセクション | ハードウェア | グラフィック | ニュース |

関連ストーリー:
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nagazou