09 February 2021

Timely Reports from TechDirt

This is a selection taken from recent reports: techdirt.com

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Techdirt is an American Internet blog that reports on technology's legal challenges and related business and economic policy issues, in context of the digital revolution. It focuses on intellectual property, patent, information privacy and copyright reform in particular

Amazon Transparency Report Indicates Its Multiple IoT Devices Are Juicy Targets For Law Enforcement

from the ALEXA-CONSENTS-TO-A-SEARCH-ON-YOUR-BEHALF dept

Never forget the IoT device you invite into your home may become the state's witness. That's one of the unfortunate conclusions that can be drawn from Amazon's latest transparency report.

Amazon has its own digital assistant, Alexa. On top of that, it has its acquisitions. One of its more notable gets is Ring. Ring is most famous for its doorbells -- something that seems innocuous until you examine the attached camera and the company's 2,000 partnerships with law enforcement agencies.

Ring is in the business of selling cameras. That the doorbell may alert you to people on your doorstep is incidental. Cameras on the inside. Cameras on the outside. All in the name of "security." And it's only as secure as the people pitching them to consumers. Ring's lax security efforts have led to harassment and swatting, the latter of which tends to end up with people dead.

Malicious dipshits have been using credentials harvested from multitudinous breaches to harass people with Ring cameras. The worst of these involve false reports to law enforcement about activity requiring armed response. That no one has ended up dead is a miracle, rather than an indicator of law enforcement restraint. . .

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Canadian Privacy Commission Says Clearview's App Is Illegal, Tells It To Pack Its Things And Leave

from the pics-and-GTFO dept

Clearview has screwed with the wrong people. The reprehensible facial recognition AI company that sells access to its database of scraped photos and personal info managed to raise the ire of some of the most restrained and polite people in the world, as Kashmir Hill reports for the New York Times.

The facial recognition app Clearview AI is not welcome in Canada and the company that developed it should delete Canadians’ faces from its database, the country’s privacy commissioner said on Wednesday.

“What Clearview does is mass surveillance, and it is illegal,” Commissioner Daniel Therrien said at a news conference. He forcefully denounced the company as putting all of society “continually in a police lineup.”

Clearview does appear to violate Canadian privacy laws, which require consent before using personal data. This was the impetus for a yearlong investigation of Clearview by Canadian privacy commissioners. The company claimed its offering was legal because it only utilized publicly available data scraped from dozens of social media sites. The commission disagreed. . ."

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