evacide 1 year ago

Someone in my feed with a lot of followers asked for technical advice. I was about to reply with a joke, but first I glanced at the many, many replies. I saw that my joke would not be welcome, so I did not post it. You too can learn from this wisdom.

evacide 1 year ago

Say it with me: "If you collect the data, you better have a plan for what happens when it's leaked." Furthermore, the data broker industry must be destroyed.

404 Media

Hackers Claim Massive Breach of Location Data Giant, Threaten to Leak Data

Gravy Analytics has been one of the most important companies in the location data industry for years, collating smartphone location data from aroun...

evacide 1 year ago

Elon Musk has conveniently given other social media platforms a playbook for how to suck up to the incoming Trump administration:

WIRED

Meta Ditches Fact-Checkers Ahead of Trump's Second Term

In an apparent overture to the incoming Trump administration, Meta announced sweeping changes to its content moderation, including no more fact-che...

evacide 1 year ago

What is Real Time Bidding? How does it enable mass surveillance? Why should you care about it and what needs to be done? My colleague Lena Cohen lays it all out:

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry—Here’s How

Each time you see a targeted ad, your personal information is exposed to thousands of advertisers and data brokers through a process called “real...

evacide 1 year ago

We may not be living in the darkest timeline, but we are certainly living in the stupidest.

evacide 1 year ago

Guy who was walking down the street, staring porn that was playing on his phone at full volume: what porn is so important that you could not wait until you got home?

evacide 1 year ago

I am not sure why Mastodon is the only platform I am on where ending a post with "I am not interested in debating this" gets dozens of replies, many of which are, in fact, trying to debate this.

evacide 1 year ago

You guys, I have just discovered how much an expert witness gets paid by the hour ($459 on average) and surely this is a mistake.

evacide 1 year ago

Things that have not changed since the the first Trump administration: the same groups are still in danger and the methods of surveillance are largely the same. Things that have changed: consequences of failure are more severe, there are fewer checks on power, tech companies excited to collude.

evacide 1 year ago

I know how to fight a long fight. I know how to triage and do harm reduction and how to play defense. But I am also very, very tired and I am going to need a minute before I can get back to work.

evacide 1 year ago

Looking through my closet for something to wear to the EFF Awards this week, I ruled out my sequined jumpsuit because I've worn it to a work event before. Then I remembered that the work event in question was in December of 2017.

evacide 1 year ago

If you hear a scream across the internet right now, it is the sound I am making while reading the Internet Archive v. Hachette Books appeal, which IA has lost:

WIRED

The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case

Hachette v. Internet Archive was brought by book publishers objecting to the archive’s digital lending library.

evacide 1 year ago

I am waiting on analysis from Brazilian lawyers before I weigh in on how legal Brazilian court's decision to block X is, but I can safely say that the fines for individual users accessing the site over a VPN are crazypants.

evacide 1 year ago

This is your regular reminder that Google spent billions of dollars a year making their search engine the default while Google search results became increasingly tainted, nonsensical, and useless.

evacide 1 year ago

After years of being informed that I am in the pocket of Big Tech (alas, without making a Big Tech salary), I would like to announce that, like the Olympians, I am ready to be sponsored by Parmesan cheese.

evacide 1 year ago

I have been tremendously lucky in my career, but I have absolutely seen men get paid more for the same or less work with the same or fewer qualifications and I have seen men praised as geniuses for behavior that gets me called a bitch.

evacide 1 year ago

Microsoft says they are making a bunch of changes to Recall to mitigate the many, many security and privacy problems that researchers have found over the last week:

The Verge

Windows won’t take screenshots of everything you do after all — unless you opt in

Microsoft promises changes to Recall after security concerns.

evacide 1 year ago

When AirTags first came out and I warned that they were Apple's gift to stalkers, so many Apple fanboys told me that I was overreacting.

404 Media

An AirTags Stalking Sting Operation

A man allegedly involved in a Russia-based smuggling operation is accused of placing at least seven AirTags on his ex-wife's car to surveil her.

evacide 1 year ago

Who are the "supersharers" of fake news on Twitter? Republican Middle-aged white women living in Arizona, Florida, and Texas. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl4435

evacide 1 year ago

If you, a white person, feel the need to disguise yourself as a black person for any goddamn reason, how about you just don't?