Sunday, November 27, 2016

A guide for US Intelligence agencies?
Paul Bernal writes:
You might not have noticed thanks to world events, but the UK parliament recently approved the government’s so-called Snooper’s Charter and it will soon become law.  This nickname for the Investigatory Powers Bill is well earned.  It represents a new level and nature of surveillance that goes beyond anything previously set out in law in a democratic society.  It is not a modernisation of existing law, but something qualitatively different, something that intrudes upon every UK citizen’s life in a way that would even a decade ago have been inconceivable.
The bill requires internet and telecoms companies to keep records of every website or app we use and all our phone calls and messages for 12 months.  It leaves us in the unenviable position of leading the world in the legalisation of surveillance.  And it will likely be used by more authoritarian regimes around the globe as evidence that mass surveillance, online hacking and encryption backdoors are perfectly fine.
Read more on The Conversation.


It’s an easy way to gather information.
James Walker writes:
Concerns have been raised over the privacy afforded by caller ID apps such as Truecaller and CM Security.  The apps are storing the details of billions of people in publicly searchable databases.  People who have never used an app are also affected.
Three billion phone numbers and identities have been collected by the likes of Truecaller, Sync.ME and CM Security, according to a report by FactWire that was published in the Hong Kong Free Press earlier this week.
Read more on Digital Journal.  And if you missed it, I had reported earlier this week that the privacy commissioner of Hong Kong had followed up on the concerns.


Perspective.
Value of Payments Provider Stripe Doubles to $9.2 Billion
Stripe Inc., a start-up that offers software and services that process payments for businesses, has raised another round of private funding that values the company at just under $9.2 billion, according the company’s investors.
That valuation is nearly double what Stripe was worth nearly a year and a half ago.
   In addition to payments processing, Stripe offers a payment fraud prevention product and a tool kit called Stripe Atlas that allows entrepreneurs around the globe to register their new businesses as United States-based companies with a United States bank account, Stripe payments tools and basic legal, tax and computing services from the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Amazon Web Services.  Atlas decreases the time it takes to set up a company from months to days.
   “Stripe’s momentum as the underlying platform for online commerce is just accelerating when you think about the fact that less than 10 percent or so of commerce is online today,” Mr. Taneja said.  

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