Advanced Search
Content Type: Long Read
Governments around the world are increasingly making registration in national digital ID systems mandatory for populations, justifying its need on a range of issues from facilitating access to services, to national security and fighting against corruption. This is an attempt to create a "foundational identity" for an individual, or "a single source of truth" about who someone is, according to a government agency. These identity systems are run by governments, sometimes by private companies, or…
Content Type: Long Read
On 15th April Margaret Atwood, author of the Handmaid's Tale, gave an interview to BBC Radio 5 Live where she commented that ‘people may be making arrangements that aren’t too pleasant, but it’s not a deliberate totalitarianism’. You can read more about the interview in the Guardian.
While we agree with Margaret Atwood that we are not necessarily entering an era of "deliberate totalitarianism" we have written the following open letter (download link at the bottom of the page) to her as a ‘…
Content Type: Examples
Bluetooth utilizes a device pairing mechanism based on elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key exchange to allow encrypted communication between devices. The ECDH key pair consists of a private and a public key, and the public keys are exchanged to produce a shared pairing key. The devices must also agree on the elliptic curve parameters being used. Previous work on the "Invalid Curve Attack" showed that the ECDH parameters are not always validated before being used in computing the resulted…
Content Type: Examples
“The BlueBorne attack vector requires no user interaction, is compatible to all software versions, and does not require any preconditions or configurations aside of the Bluetooth being active,” warned the researchers.
“Unlike the common misconception, Bluetooth enabled devices are constantly searching for incoming connections from any devices, and not only those they have been paired with,” they added.
“This means a Bluetooth connection can be established without pairing the devices at all.…
Content Type: Examples
An engineering and computer science professor and his team from The Ohio State University discovered a design flaw in low-powered Bluetooth devices that leaves them susceptible to hacking.
Zhiqiang Lin, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the university, found the commonly used Bluetooth Low Energy devices, such as fitness trackers and smart speakers, are vulnerable when they communicate with their associated apps on the owner’s mobile phone.
"There is a fundamental…
Content Type: Examples
On November 3rd, 2019, [...] a critical vulnerability affecting the Android Bluetooth subsystem [was reported]. This vulnerability has been assigned CVE-2020-0022 and was now patched in the latest security patch from February 2020. The security impact is as follows:
On Android 8.0 to 9.0, a remote attacker within proximity can silently execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the Bluetooth daemon as long as Bluetooth is enabled. No user interaction is required and only the Bluetooth MAC…
Content Type: Examples
Researchers at the Center for IT-Security, Privacy and Accountability (CISPA) have identified a security vulnerability related to encryption on Bluetooth BR/EDR connections. The researchers identified that it is possible for an attacking device to interfere with the procedure used to set up encryption on a BR/EDR connection between two devices in such a way as to reduce the length of the encryption key used. In addition, since not all Bluetooth specifications mandate a minimum…
Content Type: Examples
In August 2017, it was reported that a researcher scraped videos of transgender Youtubers documenting their transition process without informing them or asking their permission, as part of an attempt to train artificial intelligence facial recognition software to be able to identify transgender people after they have transitioned.
These videos were primarily of transgender people sharing the progress and results of hormone replacement therapy, including video diaries and time-lapse videos. The…
Content Type: Examples
In October 2018, researcher Johannes Eichstaedt led a project to study how the words people use on social media reflect their underlying psychological state. Working with 1,200 patients at a Philadelphia emergency department, 114 of whom had a depression diagnosis, Eichstaedt's group studied their EMRs and up to seven years of their Facebook posts. Matching every person with a depressive diagnosis with five who did not, to mimic the distribution of depression in the population at large, from…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, economists Marianne Bertrand and Emir Kamenica at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business showed that national divisions are so entrenched that details of what Americans buy, do, and watch can be used to predict, sometimes with more than 90% accuracy, their politics, race, income, education, and gender. In a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the economists taught machine algorithms to detect patterns in decades of responses to three long-running…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, based on an analysis of 270,000 purchases between October 2015 and December 2016 on a German ecommerce site that sells furniture on credit, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research found that variables such as the type of device could be used to estimate the likelihood that a purchaser would default. The difference in rates of default between users of iOS and Android was about the same as the difference between a median FICO credit score and the 80th percentile of FICO…
Content Type: Examples
In April 2018, the Austrian cabinet agreed on legislation that required asylum seekers would be forced to hand over their mobile devices to allow authorities to check their identities and origins. If they have been found to have entered another EU country first, under the Dublin regulation, they can be sent back there. The number of asylum seekers has dropped substantially since 2016, when measures were taken to close the Balkan route. The bill, which must pass Parliament, also allows the…
Content Type: Examples
In a 2018 interview, the Stanford professor of organisational behaviour Michal Kosinski discussed his research, which included a controversial and widely debunked 2017 study claiming that his algorithms could distinguish gay and straight faces; a 2013 study of 58,000 people that explored the relationship between Facebook Likes and psychological and demographic characteristics; and the myPersonality project, which collected data on 6 million people via a personality quiz that went viral on…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, a Duke University medical doctor who worked with Microsoft researchers to analyse millions of Bing user searches found links between some computer users' physical behaviours - tremors while using a mouse, repeated queries, and average scrolling speed - and Parkinson's disease. The hope was to be able to diagnose conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's earlier and more accurately. Other such studies tracked participants via a weekly online health survey, mouse usage, and, via…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, the EU announced iBorderCtrl, a six-month pilot led by the Hungarian National Police to install an automated lie detection test at four border crossing points in Hungary, Latvia, and Greece. The system uses an animated AI border agent that records travellers' faces while asking questions such as "What's in your suitcase?". The AI then analyses the video, scoring each response for 38 microexpressions. Travellers who pass will be issued QR codes to let them through; those who don't will…
Content Type: Examples
In July 2014, a study conducted by Adam D. I. Kramer (Facebook), Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock (both Cornell University) and published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences alerted Facebook users to the fact that for one week in 2012 689,003 of them had been the subjects of research into "emotional contagion". In the study, the researchers changed randomly selected users' newsfeeds to be more positive or negative to study whether those users then displayed a more…
Content Type: Examples
In early 2011, Facebook launched "Sponsored Stories", an advertising product that used content from members' posts inside ads displayed on the service. Drawing on Likes, check-ins, and comments, a Sponsored Story might use a member's photograph and their comments from a coffee shop to create an ad that would then be displayed alongside other ads. Users were provided no ability to opt out. Among the inaugural advertisers was Coca-Cola, and Starbucks featured in a marketing video Facebook made to…
Content Type: Examples
In October 2010, the Wall Street Journal discovered that apps on Facebook were sending identifying information such as the names of users and their Friends to myriad third-party app advertising and internet tracking companies. All of the ten most popular Facebook apps, including Zynga's FarmVille, Texas HoldEm Poker, and FrontierVille, were found to be transmitting personal information about their users' Friends to outside companies. While Facebook and defenders of online tracking argued that…
Content Type: Examples
Designed for use by border guards, Unisys' LineSight software uses advanced data analytics and machine learning to help border guards decide whether to inspect travellers more closely before admitting them into their country. Unisys says the software assesses each traveller's risk beginning with the initial intent to travel and refines its assessment as more information becomes available at each stage of the journey - visa application, reservation, ticket purchase, seat selection, check-in, and…
Content Type: Examples
In 2016, Facebook and its photo-sharing subsidiary Instagram rolled out a new reporting tool that lets users anonymously flag posts that suggest friends are threatening self-harm or suicide. The act of flagging the post triggers a message from Instagram to the user in question offering support including access to a help line and suggestions such as calling a friend. These messages are also triggered if someone searches the service for certain terms such as "thinspo", which is associated with…
Content Type: Examples
Recruiters are beginning to incorporate emotional recognition technology into the processes they use for assessing video-based job applications. Human, a London-based start-up, claims its algorithms can match the subliminal facial expressions of prospective candidates to personality traits. It then scores the results against characteristics the recruiter specifies. HireVue, which sells its service to Unilever, uses the emotion database of Affectiva, a specialist in emotion recognition that…
Content Type: Examples
In a report on mobile security updates, the US Federal Trade Commission finds that because of the complexity of the mobile ecosystem applying security updates to operating system software on some mobile devices is time-consuming and complicated. Based on information gathered from eight device manufacturers - Apple, Blackberry, Google, HTC, LG, Microsoft, Motorola, and Samsung, the FTC recommends that manufacturers should deploy these updates more quickly and suggests that manufacturers should…
Content Type: Examples
In February 2018 the Canadian government announced a three-month pilot partnership with the artificial intelligence company Advanced Symbolics to monitor social media posts with a view to predicting rises in regional suicide risk. Advanced Symbolics will look for trends by analysing posts from 160,000 social media accounts; the results are intended to aid the Canadian government in allocating mental health resources. The company claims to be able to predict suicidal ideation, behaviours, and…
Content Type: Examples
In 2014, the UK suicide prevention group The Samaritans launched Radar, a Twitter-based service intended to leverage the social graph to identify people showing signs of suicidal intent on social media and alert their friends to reach out to offer them help. The app was quickly taken offline after widespread criticism and an online petition asking them to delete the app. Among the complaints: the high error rate, intrusiveness, and the Samaritans' response, which was to suggest that people…
Content Type: Examples
"To the 53 people who’ve watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?" Netflix tweeted in December 2017. While the tweet did not contain any information that could have identified any of the 53 people, it still made many of those who saw it uncomfortable. A Christmas Prince was a new movie released by Netflix, and the statistic is apparently derived from the service's detailed collection of data on what its subscribers watch.
Subscribers are generally aware that the…
Content Type: Examples
A pregnancy-tracking app collected basic information such as name, address, age, and date of last period from its users. A woman who miscarried found that although she had entered the miscarriage into the app to terminate its tracking, the information was not passed along to the marketers to which the app's developer had sold it. A few weeks before her original due date, a package was delivered to her home including a note of congratulations and a box of baby formula. Although the baby had died…
Content Type: Examples
In 2016 reports surfaced that bricks-and-mortar retailers were beginning to adopt physical-world analogues to the tracking techniques long used by their online counterparts. In a report, Computer Sciences Corporation claimed that about 30% of retailers were tracking customers in-store via facial recognition and cameras such as Intel's RealSense cameras, which can analyse facial expressions and identify the clothing brands a customer is wearing. Intel noted that the purpose was to build general…
Content Type: Examples
Caucuses, which are used in some US states as a method of voting in presidential primaries, rely on voters indicating their support for a particulate candidate by travelling to the caucus location. In a 2016 Marketplace radio interview, Tom Phillips, the CEO of Dstillery, a big data intelligence company, said that his company had collected mobile device IDs at the location for each of the political party causes during the Iowa primaries. Dstillery paired caucus-goers with their online…
Content Type: Examples
In 2015, the Royal Parks conducted a covert study of visitors to London's Hyde Park using anonymised mobile phone signals provided by the network operator EE to analyse footfall. During the study, which was conducted via government-funded Future Cities Catapult, the Royal Parks also had access to aggregated age and gender data, creating a detailed picture of how different people used the park over the period of about a year. The study also showed the percentage of EE subscribers who visited…