The Omnopticon is rising, a million eyeballs in every corner of the Earth. And they're all looking at you, watching your every move, where you go, who you're with, what you're thinking about, and before you know it yourself.
New research harnesses AI and satellite imagery to reveal the expanding footprint of human activity at sea
Jan 2024, phys.org
They synthesized GPS data with five years of radar and optical imagery to reveal that about 75% of the world's industrial fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, with much of that fishing taking place around Africa and South Asia. More than 25% of transport and energy vessel activity is also missing from public tracking systems.
via Global Fishing Watch, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Duke University, UC Santa Barbara, and SkyTruth: Fernando Paolo, Satellite mapping reveals extensive industrial activity at sea, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06825-8.
Image credit: An array of photomultiplier tubes mounted inside the steel tank of the Eos neutrino detector - Thor Swift Berkeley Lab - Mar 2024 [link]
A CPAP Machine Can Help Some Get Better Sleep But Insurers Don't Make It Easy
Nov 2018, NPR
In an email, a Blue Cross Blue Shield spokesperson said that it's standard practice for insurers to monitor sleep apnea patients and deny payment if they aren't using the machine.
N.J. police officers’ personal information posted online by data brokers, lawsuit says
Feb 2024, nj.com
Plot twist?
To contrast an earlier incident in NJ where a college campus security officer used his access to private surveillance software to spy on students (which seems pretty impossible to find again using a basic search), this time, the email service provider for police and corrections officers leaked personal information to brokers who in turn sold it, so it was put on the web for the public to see, which includes criminals, and so it endangered an officer.
This tiny, tamper-proof ID tag can authenticate almost anything
Feb 2024, phys.org
Very smart anti-surveillance strategy
Cryptographic antitampering ID tag - They mix microscopic metal particles into the glue that sticks the tag to an object and then use terahertz waves to detect the unique pattern those particles form on the item's surface. Akin to a fingerprint, this random glue pattern is used to authenticate the item. (And this is to avoid a counterfeiter who could peel the tag off and reattach it to a fake.)"These metal particles are essentially like mirrors for terahertz waves. If I spread a bunch of mirror pieces onto a surface and then shine a light on that, depending on the orientation, size, and location of those mirrors, I would get a different reflected pattern. But if you peel the chip off and reattach it, you destroy that pattern."
via Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Ruonan Han et al, "A Packageless Anti-Tampering Tag Utilizing Unclonable Sub-THz Wave Scattering at the Chip-Item Interface," IEEE Solid State Circuits Conference (2024). www.isscc.org/
Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected, finds study
Apr 2024, phys.org
The researchers studied eight apps: Safari, Siri, Family Sharing, iMessage, FaceTime, Location Services, Find My and Touch ID. They collected all publicly available privacy-related information on these apps, from technical documentation to privacy policies and user manuals.The fragility of the privacy protections surprised even the researchers."Due to the way the user interface is designed, users don't know what is going on. For example, the user is given the option to enable or not enable Siri, Apple's virtual assistant. But enabling only refers to whether you use Siri's voice control. Siri collects data in the background from other apps you use, regardless of your choice, unless you understand how to go into the settings and specifically change that," says Lindqvist.Participants weren't able to stop data sharing in any of the apps."The online instructions for restricting data access are very complex and confusing"In the end the participants were able to take one or two steps in the right direction, but none succeeded in following the whole procedure to protect their privacy.
via Aalto University, from a paper for the 2024 CHI Conference: Privacy of Default Apps in Apple's Mobile Ecosystem, Lindqvist et al
No comments:
Post a Comment