As gadgets and services get smarter, they need more data, and face the hard problem of keeping it safe. Data privacy has become a huge problem for Google, Facebook, Amazon, and any company using artificial intelligence to power its services — and a major sticking point for lawmakers looking to regulate. Here’s all the news on data privacy and how it’s changing tech.
I appeared on On the Media to discuss our story about the Anime Nazi who allegedly hacks universities. I explain why the identity of the alleged hacker is important, why the Times’ obfuscation of its sources is troubling, and what’s at stake in the Republican war on higher education: upward mobility.
Purportedly searching for illegal cannabis grow houses, the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD) has been tipping off police about “high” electricity usage based on smart meter readings.
The EFF is suing, saying it’s flagged Asian customers specifically, as “SMUD analysts deemed one home suspicious because it was ‘4k [kWh], Asian,’ and another suspicious because ‘multiple Asians have reported there,’” while the cops sent accusatory “nastygrams” to suspected homes in only English and Chinese. SMUD also admitted that “high” readings could come from air conditioning, electric vehicles, and even Christmas lights.
21-year-old Mads Mikkelsen (not the famous one) tells Norwegian newspaper Nordlys that he was pulled aside by customs officials at Newark Airport. An agent searched his phone and found (1) a photo of a wooden pipe he had made, and (2) that one meme of JD Vance where he has the giant bald baby head.
Mikkelsen says he was detained, strip searched, and ultimately refused entry into the US. The English language Daily Mail write-up can be found here.
While Meta said ads will be globally introduced to WhatsApp’s updates tab “slowly over the next several months,” the company has now clarified to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DCP) that they won’t arrive in the European Union market until 2026. That gives EU privacy regulators time to discuss data-sharing concerns about the ad model.
[politico.eu]
“Court documents unsealed Monday alleged Vance Boelter, 57, used online people search services to find the home addresses of his intended targets. Police found the names of 11 registered data brokers — or companies that gather and sell people’s information, including addresses, emails and phone numbers — in Boelter’s abandoned car after the shootings.”
Ron Wyden is on it; if only the rest of Congress was.
On the list of apparel-related data breaches, Adidas was early to the trend. Then, the Victoria’s Secret website was offline for a few days last week as it dealt with a “security incident.”
Now, Bleeping Computer has two more to add to the list, reporting that Cartier has sent emails to customers informing them that info like name, email address, and country of residence was stolen, and that The North Face has apparently suffered its fourth reported credential stuffing incident since 2020.
[bleepingcomputer.com]
Palantir has received more than $113 million in federal funds since Trump took office and is reportedly discussing potential contracts with the Social Security Administration and the IRS. The ubiquity of Palantir’s tech within federal agencies may help Trump achieve his goal of creating a master database allowing administration officials to access data on nearly anyone in the US.
Employees are “raising questions internally” about Palantir’s contracts, one former engineer said. Some are worried about the implications of collecting so much data on Americans.
[nytimes.com]
TechCrunch found that the RAW dating app actually exposed its user’s personal information and location data. That’s... not great! As for why that even matters, earlier this week I wrote about how the folks behind the app are also creating a smart ring for couples that some have described as a “dystopian loyalty tracker.” The company has since fixed the bug, and the RAW Ring doesn’t exist yet. But this definitely isn’t a great look.
David Pierce and I dug into this and other privacy questions on this week’s episode of The Vergecast.
The answer is: it depends. Your immigration status dictates some of your rights to refuse device searches at airports and other ports of entry. Citizens — and in many cases, permanent residents — can’t be denied entry for saying no to a search, but people with visas can. Regardless of your status, we have some advice on how to safeguard your data before traveling.
The data-mining company recently did a three-week sprint to build a tool that will help Trump execute his mass deportations. It includes a “self-deportation tracking” project and a database of “actionable leads” of people who can be deported.
Palantir also put together FAQs to help staff explain their work to friends and family, and its “Ethics Education Program Lead” is circulating links to internal company pages like:
[404media.co]
Makled, whose clients include demonstrators arrested at University of Michigan protests, was asked to hand over his phone to Customs and Border Protection after flying into Detroit with his family.
“I tell them, ‘I know you can take my phone. I’m not going to give you my phone, however ... 90% of my work is on my phone. You’re not getting unfettered access,” he said. “We have an obligation as lawyers to stand up to this stuff.”
Agents looked through Makled’s contacts list but ultimately returned his phone.
Hoan Ton-That, the founder and former CEO of Clearview AI, is fixated on “race, IQ, and hierarchy” and “solicited input from eugenicists and right-wing extremists” to build his facial recognition system, Mother Jones reports.
Ton-That, who has had a long history with the far right, reportedly wanted to “totally hire” Danish race scientist Emil Kirkegaard. This part stuck out to me:
Ton-That was fascinated by eugenics and admired the field’s founder, Francis Galton, who inspired Nazi “racial hygiene” programs. After digesting a letter by Galton that argued for Chinese immigrants to move to Africa and supplant the “inferior” Black race, Ton-That declared in an email that Galton was a “true prophet.”
