Digital Ethics

Facial recognition is just one of several AI-powered security tools showing up at schools.

The idea that FaceApp is somehow exceptionally dangerous threatens to obscure the real point: All apps deserve this level of scrutiny.

The e-commerce giant warned workers who participated in environmental protests that future comments regarding company business practices could lead to termination.

Arresting and deporting undocumented people has become lucrative because their biological, biometric data can be mined, harvested, and used to generate profit.

The company’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” Things have changed.

A Silicon Valley lobby enrolled elite academia to avoid legal restrictions on artificial intelligence.

Blame the companies surveilling you instead.

It is important that we write, podcast, and vlog on our own African digital content platforms that no one can censor or ban us from.https://t.co/VparyJVOoy— iAfrikan.com (@iafrikan) January 2, 2020

Encryption played a key role in South Africa’s political liberation.

The phone you’re using or the electric car you’re driving could be linked to child labour. Lithium-ion batteries powering most electric vehicles and cell phones contain the mineral cobalt. According to our research, cobalt mined by children and adults in appalling conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is entering the supply chains of some of the world’s biggest brands. Short of stopping the use of phones and electric cars, is there anything you can do?

Are smartphone and electric vehicle companies doing enough to cut human rights abuses out of their cobalt supply chains?

CCTV commissioner says he gets many queries about facial recognition and other tools

I learned a lot from creating my own deepfake video.

Shadowy firms collect detailed data on where we go and who we meet through our apps. Yet where is the protest that would fuel change?

This week, hacktivist and security engineer Lance R. Vick tweeted an enticing proposition along with a gut-punch headline: “Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines, tracking the locations of hundreds of thousands,” read the Washington Post link. The report revealed nearly instantaneous and sweeping adoption of smartphone-tracking platforms implemented in roughly 60 campuses, ranging from limited classroom attendance check-ins to pervasive 24/7 surveillance, mostly with fuzzy consent policies.

Cabinet Office apologises after details of more than 1,000 people posted online in error

Inspired by the work of @aral and @LauraKalbag and their Small Tech Foundation ethos, I've started actually reading privacy policies.Today I read @NotionHQ's, as I was planning to use their service more next year. Emphasis on the was. pic.twitter.com/BaAWN7L36q— Myles Lewando 🥀 (@codemacabre) December 28, 2019

Russia's neighbor has developed a blueprint for countering misinformation. Can it be exported to the rest of the world?

New users can no longer sign up for Messenger without creating a Facebook account, a spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat.

Bizarre how dudes who run tech companies can’t tell the difference between saying “hi” to everyone who walks into the room and forcing them to download an app, accumulating 1000’s of data points on them, and having them ingested into a system where their data is up for grabs.— One Ring (IoT camera) to surveil them all (@hypervisible) December 26, 2019

Attackers targeted the Epilepsy Foundation’s Twitter handle

“If you get people afraid of their neighborhood, then they will buy Ring cameras, and those cameras will, in turn, make them more afraid, because every time someone walks by and their phone buzzes, they’ll think it’s a burglar on their porch...” https://t.co/4v0ptXLo69— One Ring (IoT camera) to surveil them all (@hypervisible) December 21, 2019

Free the Slaves investigates the extant of slavery in Congo's mining industry. Conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) find their way into the supply chain of products we use every day—like laptops, cell phones and batteries. Slavery also exists in Congo's mining areas.

Technology companies are building algorithms that are fueled by vast stores of patient health information.

What we learned from the spy in your pocket.

Don’t let yourself be compromised

Facebook told two senators why it tracks users' locations even when their tracking services are turned off.

Laura Kalbag discusses the gift of personal data we give to Big Tech when we share information on its platforms, and how reviving ye olde personal website can be one way to stay in control of the content we share and the data we leak. Christmas is a time for giving, but know what you’re giving to whom.