Monique O. Madan and Wesley Callow from The Markup walk us through each step to safely purchase, set-up, and connect an off-the-grid phone, using multiple email accounts, and thereafter how and when to use it, keeping it otherwise turned off and not connected to WiFi.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring; US cities warn of wave of unpaid parking phishing texts; OPM watchdog to investigate IT risks tied to DOGE’s agency access; and A Brand-New Botnet Is Delivering Record-Size DDoS Attacks.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: 89% of enterprise AI usage is invisible to the organization; The Digital Packrat Manifesto; Cellebrite Is Using AI to Summarize Chat Logs and Audio from Seized Mobile Phones; and Flock Threatens Open Source Developer Mapping Its Surveillance Cameras.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Trump has purged government websites; The Wayback Machine is trying to preserve the record; Turn off your read receipts. They’re a security risk; You can now easily remove personal info from Google Search results; Google plans to end SMS verification in favor of QR codes; and Verizon isn’t doing enough to protect customers from robocall scams.
The integration of artificial intelligence into U.S. national security operations has automated and amplified discriminatory practices established in the post-9/11 era, creating unprecedented barriers for Arab Americans. This paper by Natalie Abdou examines how AI systems deploy overlapping forms of bias through facial recognition technology, language processing, and automated screening, producing a uniquely destructive form of compound discrimination that is more pervasive and harder to challenge than traditional bias.
Since January 20, 2025 America has been catapulted into an unimaginable inflection point. Sabrina I. Pacifici chronicles seismic events in recent weeks which have upended America’s democracy, jeopardized our economy, financial system, national security, science and medical communities, and fractured our national identity, at home and around the world. This is a commentary, and a guide written by a law librarian and former federal employee who was the target of a similar purge by Trump in 2018, to what and who has been targeted and purged, an overview of the process used to do so, and a perspective on the impact of these sweeping, deeply damaging and likely illegal actions.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Federal workers: Here’s how to lock down your communications; Why rebooting your phone daily is your best defense against zero-click hackers; EFF – Basics | Surveillance Self-Defense; Even the US government can fall victim to cryptojacking; and Federal immigration officials have extensive technology at their disposal.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: UnitedHealth now says 190 million impacted by 2024 data breach; A Tumultuous Week for Federal Cybersecurity Efforts; TikTok took a huge scoop of American users’ data and stored it in China – DeepSeek makes TikTok’s security issues look like child’s play; CVS Is Turning Locked Shelves Into an Excuse to Make You Download Its App; and Backdoor found in two healthcare patient monitors, linked to IP in China.
Effort to force federal civil service employees to resign uses format and statement Elon Musk sent to Twitter employees in 2022 asking them to pledge to being “extremely hardcore” or resign.” Agencies throughout the federal government, including the military and intelligence communities, as our global aid agency, USAID, are now in receipt of similar emails which are resignation offer letters.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: The double-edged sword of AI and cybersecurity; Trump Seeks to Paralyze Independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Watchdog; Cybersecurity Alert: Users Deceived By Fake Google CAPTCHA Pages; Candy Crush, Tinder, MyFitnessPal: See the Thousands of Apps Hijacked to Spy on Your Location; and Your phone is listening. Do you care?.