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Disinformation from China floods Taiwan’s most popular messaging app - 8 octobre 2020
A messaging tool called Line has been used to spread false information about Covid-19 and downplay reports of human rights abuses in China
Back in November 2018, Taiwan was targeted by a massive disinformation campaign. The aim of this effort, widely attributed to Beijing, was to influence midterm election (...)
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Cambodia plans to launch China-style internet firewall - 3 octobre 2020
Prime Minister Hun Sen has leveraged the pandemic to accelerate a long-running crackdown on dissent. Surveillance of social media has led to the arrest of journalists and dozens of members of the public.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has leveraged the pandemic to accelerate a long-running crackdown on dissent. (...)
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Sidestepping disaster, UK’s coronavirus app launches - 22 septembre 2020
In May, we wrote about a new Covid-19 tracking app that the UK government was trialing on the Isle of Wight. The app’s launch has been plagued with problems after the government initially spent $13.5 million building a product earlier in the summer, only to find it didn’t work properly on iPhones.
The UK government (...)
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How San Francisco police surveillance closed in on Black Lives Matter protests - 19 septembre 2020
Activists and privacy advocates say police use of indiscriminate monitoring erodes fundamental freedoms
When Marquise Rosier joined hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters on May 31 in downtown San Francisco, he knew that the police would have their eyes on him.
“My thought process going in was ‘Yeah, I know for (...)
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Education monitoring tech soars as result of Covid-19 - 27 août 2020
The coronavirus pandemic and the closure of schools across the world has created a boom in education tech software. According to Crunchbase, a site that tracks startup industry trends, five times as many families joined ClassDojo in the last week of March than in any week in the company’s history.
School closures (...)
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A school communication app gamifies the classroom - 25 août 2020
Parents says the popular app ClassDojo raises fears about teacher bias
Moises Valencia is a single father. His overalls and bright yellow safety vest are splattered with what looks like paint. Between working two jobs, he often struggles with making it to parent teacher conferences and events at his son’s school (...)
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“We are being watched by thousands of CCTV cameras.” Life in India’s most-surveilled city - 25 août 2020
Hyderabad’s IT industry brought jobs and growth to the city. Critics now say the same technology is being used to watch the moves of every citizen
In July, Imran received in the mail a traffic violation ticket from his local police department. He had been issued a fine equivalent to $13. The letter showed an image (...)
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Surveillance and security in Delhi’s schools - 25 août 2020
In a bid to boost classroom discipline, Delhi is installing 150,000 cameras in government-run schools across the city
A large flat-screen TV flickers for a second before the images appear : uniformed students studying in a classroom ; a teacher walking down a hallway ; the wide, bustling street outside the gates. (...)
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Investors pressured to cut ties to Xinjiang - 19 août 2020
Campaign groups are calling for individuals and corporations to ensure that the brands they support have no links to Beijing’s ongoing abuses of Uyghur human rights
Investors are being urged to pull their money out of companies that have links with China’s ongoing campaign of detention and forced labor in the (...)
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Egypt’s TikTok crackdown targets young female influencers - 17 août 2020
A vaguely defined cybercrime bill has seen the government convict Egyptian social media stars with millions of followers
When Mawada Eladhm began posting videos on TikTok, she had no idea that being an online influencer in Egypt was so perilous. Despite having three million followers, she became the target of (...)
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The twenty most-surveilled cities in the world are all in China - 31 juillet 2020
In February, Coda Story’s Megha Bahree covered how, in a bid to boost classroom discipline, Delhi was installing 150,000 cameras in government-run schools across the city. Now, a new report shows how surveillance camera numbers are exploding in cities across the world – and finds little correlation between the (...)
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Military-backed company in Myanmar seeks control of the country’s internet - 24 juillet 2020
In authoritarian countries, armed forces wield huge power over digital spaces
Myanmar’s military sought influence, power, and money via a Facebook disinformation campaign to benefit a telecoms company backed by the country’s armed forces.
A recently exposed disinformation campaign on Facebook has highlighted the (...)
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Foreign workers in the Gulf still can’t call home - 24 juillet 2020
Our story featured a Filipino administrator in a labor camp near Doha and found that because most free Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) apps such as WhatsApp and Skype, Facetime were blocked by authorities in Gulf countries like Qatar, Oman and United Arab Emirates, migrants were hardly able to communicate with (...)
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Germany’s coronavirus tracing app eases privacy concerns - 20 juillet 2020
Last month, Germany released a coronavirus tracing app that has eased the concerns of digital rights activists and the privacy-sensitive German public.
Released on June 16, the “Corona-Warn-App” uses Bluetooth to detect and contact people who may have been exposed to someone who has contracted the coronavirus. (...)
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Russian opposition files lawsuit against Moscow’s use of facial recognition tech - 13 juillet 2020
Last November Felix Light reported that Russia is building one of the world’s largest facial recognition systems. He wrote about Moscow’s increasing use of facial recognition technology in policing, which raised fears among privacy advocates and tech experts that the city could exploit mass surveillance.
Earlier (...)
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Ethiopia’s internet shutdown is silencing migrant workers stranded in Lebanon - 13 juillet 2020
Caught between an economic crisis and a news blackout, this vulnerable community is struggling to be heard
On Friday July 3, Ethiopian activists planned to gather outside their national consulate in Beirut in protest against the kafala system — a form of employment sponsorship that operates across the Middle East (...)
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Surveillance of minority Muslims in southern Thailand is powered by Chinese-style tech - 1er juillet 2020
Mandatory biometric registration has left many Malay Muslims distrustful of the state and concerned about how new technologies will impact their lives
When Arief’s cell phone service was cut off, it came as no surprise. He had refused to visit the local branch of his mobile provider and give his fingerprints and a (...)
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The UK spent millions on a Covid-19 tracking app and then abandoned it - 30 juin 2020
Last month, Amber Beard tested out and wrote about a new Covid-19 tracking app that the UK government was trialing on the Isle of Wight.
Beard explained how the app, named NHS Covid-19, was initially met with enthusiasm by residents and that a reported 65% downloaded it.
However, NHS Covid-19 — which used (...)
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Follow-up : When surveillance tech has ties to white supremacy - 13 juin 2020
Banjo’s contract with the state gave the company live access to an unprecedented number of government data streams, including 911 calls, traffic and CCTV cameras. The real time access to this vast amount of information used artificial intelligence to alert first responders across Utah to crimes and other public (...)
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Scaled-up surveillance : the EU builds a massive biometric database - 12 juin 2020
An upcoming biometrics repository will hold the records of 300 million people and could hand a potentially powerful surveillance tool to its member states
At its headquarters in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, on the Baltic Coast, a little-known European Union body is building one of the world’s largest biometric (...)
