The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have just soft-launched their US campaign to influence press privacy laws. However, they may find the American take on celebrity privacy is quite different from their expectations. In Los Angeles, paparazzi behaviour is relatively controlled (though press photographers are still far less restricted than in the UK), but in New York the state constitution doesn't uphold privacy at all. If the couple wants to change the rules around news gathering they may need to attack the methods rather than the news agencies themselves – they'll need Support from a lot of celebrities to be successful.
Have you forgotten a fortune? This B.C. team wants to return millions to rightful owners
CBC
23-05-18 18:37
The team behind B.C. Unclaimed, a group helping citizens find forgotten or abandoned funds owed to them in British Columbia, has announced a record CAD1.98m ($1.5m) will be paid out at the end of this month. In the past two decades the organisation has reunited locals with funds held in old bank accounts, government departments and court payments, with a total of CAD21.5m since its inception. The new record also relates to a court-related payment and there is at least one further seven-figure sum waiting to be claimed in the province.
Several US states have withdrawn from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a non-profit organisation that assists states to improve the accuracy of voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens. ERIC has faced claims of bias, lack of transparency and misplaced focus within its administration, as well as questions about how the organisation uses and shares data and whether some of its requirements violate federal law. This has led to calls for major changes in ERIC's governance and bylaws.
States withdrew from ERIC due to concerns about issues with getting accurate information, which can be found using best practices like regularly obtaining information from the National Change of Address system and checking updated driver’s license records. Federal law requires states to have programs that make reasonable efforts to remove names of ineligible voters from the official list, due to their death or change of residence. ERIC is the only program in the country in which member states can share their statewide voter registration lists in order to find individuals who are registered and potentially voting in multiple states.
ERIC was started as a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Funding was also provided by two grants to Pew in 2011 totalling $725,000 from George Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society. Recent reports indicate that ERIC member data are being shared with former ERIC lead David Becker’s Center for Election Innovation and Research, raising concerns about impartiality. Several hundred million additional dollars were also distributed to Democrat Party strongholds in 2020 by non-profit the Center for Technology and Civic Life.
Australia’s media watchdog, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), has said that footage of a violent dispute between neighbours, posted on social media platform TikTok, was a breach of privacy and should not have been shown by network A Current Affair. The segment showed footage from 19-year-old Jack Stokes, who captured a fight with a neighbour and posted it on the site, in which the neighbour’s face is seen. Nine Network aired the footage in March 2019. ACMA said Stokes had not obtained consent from the neighbour and that there was no public interest in the material.
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has been "critically" exposed to cyberattacks since 2019, which could threaten train safety, according to a watchdog report. The report also claims the transit authority had failed to address 50 of the cybersecurity recommendations offered to it by oversight agencies. WMATA was hacked by a computer in Russia this year, the watchdog found, and has employed Russia-based IT workers. The vulnerability of transit systems to cyberattacks is well known, with transit agencies said to have the weakest cybersecurity when compared to other major sectors. There have been calls for the WMATA to beef up its cybersecurity in the wake of declining ridership during the Covid-19 pandemic and a shift towards the use of mobile fare cards and remote train piloting technology.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned companies regarding the use of facial recognition and other biometric identifiers in transactions with customers, urging them to weigh the risks against the benefits and consider whether they really require its use. The FTC fears that companies will collect biometric data revealing personal information about consumers including attendance at political or union events or visits to medical professionals. By collecting such information, it is likely to increase the risk of malicious actors accessing consumers' personal devices or bank accounts, said the regulator. Furthermore, consumers, may be unaware their biometric data is being harvested, said the FTC, adding that it will continue to use its enforcement power against companies that do not fully inform consumers about their data collection policies and fail to protect the information collected, or assure that the technology does not disproportionately hurt any particular demographic.
TV presenter Chris Tarrant is campaigning against plans for the expansion of mews houses in Marylebone, London, submitting an objection to Westminster Council regarding the plans. The proposals aim to add a basement floor, a mansard roof-level extension and alterations to windows and doors. Tarrant has argued that such developments risk destroying the integrity and character of the city in favour of the towers in Canary Wharf or Dubai. Other objections have argued that the proposed expansion would be “completely out of character” and also raise privacy and privacy concerns.
The Online Safety Bill currently being debated in the UK would lead to government-mandated mass surveillance of the country’s smartphones, with opaque databases and potential flaws that could be exploited by hostile states and hackers, warns Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation. As written, the legislation would nullify end-to-end encryption that protects users from cyber criminals and repressive regimes. Whittaker urges the British parliament to consider other measures to protect vulnerable internet users, rather than stripping the public of fundamental privacy rights. The original objective of the bill was to protect children online.
The Online Safety Bill currently being debated in the UK would lead to government-mandated mass surveillance of the country’s smartphones, with opaque databases and potential flaws that could be exploited by hostile states and hackers, warns Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation. As written, the legislation would nullify end-to-end encryption that protects users from cyber criminals and repressive regimes. Whittaker urges the British parliament to consider other measures to protect vulnerable internet users, rather than stripping the public of fundamental privacy rights. The original objective of the bill was to protect children online.
Meta (formerly Facebook) has been given a €1.2bn ($1.34bn) from the Irish Data Protection Commission over violating its rules regarding the transfer of user data to the US. Five months was given to the company to eliminate any future transfer of personal data to the US, while six months was given for the processing of previously sent European citizens’ personal information in the US to cease. Meta President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, responded to the ruling by stating it was flawed, unjustified, and praised that it is a dangerous precedent for the various companies that transfer data between the EU and US.
Meta has been fined a record €1.2bn ($1.3bn) by the European Union, which says the social media firm must stop transferring users' data to the US by October. The decision updates a legal row that started in 2013 when Austrian lawyer and privacy campaigner Max Schrems complained about Facebook's handling of data following revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden about US electronic surveillance. Meta said it would appeal the punishment and apply for the decision to be put on hold by the courts. The EU's penalty is the largest since the bloc's tough privacy regime became law five years ago.
Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency initiative backed by Silicon Valley luminaries such as Marc Andreessen and Sam Bankman-Fried, is gaining renewed momentum with its plan to create “World ID,” which will use the biometric data of iris scans to distinguish between people and bots. The scheme garnered negative feedback for scanning half a million irises during its “field test” using a chrome sphere named “the orb,” though it still has a valuation of $1bn and is allegedly about to secure a further $100m. Critics claim the Worldcoin Foundation, which was established by its digital-token allocation system and claims a database of 1.7 million iris-originated codes, lacks transparency, as it is based in the Cayman Islands. Some hackers have also stolen credentials from its employee "operators," including recruiters who sign people up. The company now hopes to integrate its app, which offers crypto transactions, with more traditional financial services in future.
