As a scholar of cybersecurity policy, I have been reviewing the efforts of nations around the world to protect their citizens from foreign interference, while protecting free speech, an example of which is being published by the Washington and Lee Law Review.

There is no perfect approach, given the different cultural and legal traditions in play. But there’s plenty to learn and use to diminish outsiders’ ability to hack U.S. democracy.

Topics

• Australia
• Facebook
• New Zealand
• European Union (EU)
• Spain
• Indonesia
• Europe
• Twitter
• France
• Russia
• India
• United Kingdom
• Malaysia
• Information warfare
• Misinformation
• Disinformation
• Social media and democracy
• Deepfakes
• Russian information warfare
• Christchurch Call

Sample RSS feed: https://theconversation.com/us/topics/disinformation-42353/articles.atom

Red faces in Red Square, again. Last July, I reported on the hacking of SyTech, an FSB contractor working on internet surveillance tech. Now, reports have emerged from Russia of another shocking security breach within the FSB ecosystem. This one has exposed “a new weapon ordered by the security service,” one that can be used to execute cyber attacks on IoT devices.The goal of the so-called “Fronton Program” is to exploit IoT security vulnerabilities en masse—remember, these technologies are fundamentally less secure than other connected devices in homes and offices. In fact, one of the breached technical documents reported by BBC Russia even explains that “the Internet of Things is less secure than mobile devices and servers.” The security contractors highlight retained default “factory” passwords as the obvious weakness, one that is easy to exploit.

The intent of the program is not to access the owners of those devices, but rather to herd them together into a botnet that can be used to attack much larger targets—think major U.S. and European internet platforms, or the infrastructure within entire countries, such as those bordering Russia.

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Other articles by Zak Doffman: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/#15b7c488702c

Cybersecurity articles: https://www.forbes.com/cybersecurity/

bonus RSS for that category: https://www.forbes.com/cybersecurity/feed/

On 3/24/2020 15:10, Peter M. Weiss wrote:

Subject: Smartphone data reveal which Americans are social distancing (and not)
Source: WaPo via beSpacific
https://www.bespacific.com/smartphone-data-reveal-which-americans-are-social-distancing-and-not/

Washington Post – “If you have a smartphone, you’re probably contributing to a massive coronavirus surveillance system. And it’s revealing where Americans have — and haven’t — been practicing social distancing. On Tuesday, a company called Unacast that collects and analyzes phone GPS location data launched a “Social Distancing Scoreboard” that grades, county by county, which residents are changing behavior at the urging of health officials. It uses the reduction in the total distance we travel as a rough index for whether we’re staying put at home.Comparing the nation’s mass movements from March 20 to an average Friday, Washington, D.C., gets an A, while Wyoming as a whole earns an F. How do they know that? Efforts to track public health during the coronavirus pandemic are a reminder of the many ways phones reveal our personal lives, both as individuals and in the aggregate. Unacast’s location data comes from games, shopping and utility apps that tens of millions of Americans have installed on their phones — information the company normally analyzes for retailers, real estate firms and marketers…”

beSpacific Subjects: E-Records, Health Care, Privacy

BUT

https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

For example, GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate to within a 4.9 m (16 ft.) radius under open sky (view source at ION.org). However, their accuracy worsens near buildings, bridges, and trees.

High-end users boost GPS accuracy with dual-frequency receivers and/or augmentation systems. These can enable real-time positioning within a few centimeters, and long-term measurements at the millimeter level.