If
my job was to identify potential spies, I certainly would. After
all, spying is a job.
U.S.
Government Thinks China Is Using LinkedIn to Enlist American Spies
The U.S. government believes China is using fake
LinkedIn accounts to recruit American spies with government intel and
is calling on the company to help shut them down.
According to Reuters,
which broke the story Friday morning, intelligence and law
enforcement have placed pressure on LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft,
to thwart the budding espionage network. U.S. counter-intelligence
chief, William Evanina, is the source of the allegations and claims
to have warned the networking platform about China’s “super
aggressive” tactics on the site, including their mass-messaging of
thousands of users at a time.
...and if I wanted to sneak a spy into the US, I’d
do it through Canada.
Air Canada
admits app data breach included customers’ passport details
All 1.7 million users of Air Canada’s mobile app
have had their passwords reset by the company following a security
breach which saw hackers compromise up to 20,000 accounts last week.
A security
notice published by the company explains that it detected
“unusual login behaviour” related to the smartphone Air Canada
app between August 22-24 2018, that may have seen 20,000 profiles
“improperly accessed.”
… The company says that credit and payment
card information was encrypted, and was not compromised in the
security breach.
However, victims who have had their passport
details stolen may face serious consequences, as fraudsters could use
the details to set up accounts with insurance firms, mobile phone
operators, banks and the like if they do not require sight of the
physical passport.
… There is also a risk that a fraudster could
use the stolen information to request a new physical passport.
However, Air Canada says that the Canadian government describes
that risk as “low” provided the genuine passport holder still
has physical ownership of the document.
BBC News, however, raises the issue that
Air Canada required account passwords to merely be between 6 and 10
characters, and could not contain symbols. That, in itself, goes
against the Canadian
government’s own password advice.
Just nailing down a small part of the remaining
fraction they don’t already know about us?
Mark Bergen and Jennifer Surane report:
For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for.
But most of the two billion Mastercard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the companies never told the public about the arrangement.
Read more on Bloomberg.
Seems too simple to work. Assumes WhatsApp users
listen to radio. Is that based on their e-dossier?
WhatsApp
kicks off radio campaigns in India to tackle fake news
In a bid to crackdown on spread of fake news on
its platform, WhatsApp on Wednesday said it is rolling out radio
campaigns across various Indian states, asking people to check the
veracity of information received as a forward before they share it
with others.
“We want to tell the voters that we did
something. We don’t care if you can actually enforce the law.”
Becerra
Rips Lawmakers for 'Unworkable' Provisions in New Data Privacy Law
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra lashed
out at lawmakers for imposing “unworkable obligations and serious
operational challenges” on his office by effectively making him the
chief enforcer of the state’s sweeping new data privacy law.
In an Aug.
22 letter to legislators who helped get the law
passed in June, Becerra complained that his office is not equipped to
handle all the related duties, including quickly drafting regulations
and advising businesses about compliance with the California Consumer
Privacy Act, or CCPA.
… Becerra also questioned the legality of the
civil penalties included in the new law, which he said improperly
modified the state’s Unfair
Competition Law, or UCL.
“The UCL’s civil penalty laws were enacted by
the voters through Proposition
64 in 2004 and cannot be amended through
legislation,” Becerra wrote.
An interesting move.
Will Apple “approve” each policy?
… The tech giant announced
to developers on Thursday that all new apps as well as app
updates are required to have a privacy policy beginning October 3 of
this year. This applies to apps submitted both through Apple’s App
Store as well as TestFlight, a mobile app testing service owned by
Apple. Apple’s announcement notes that the privacy policy link or
text an [sic]only be edited when a developer submits the
latest version of their app.
… In the guidelines, Apple states that
developers must “clearly and explicitly” inform users what data
apps collect and how that data is used in their privacy policies,
confirming if there are third parties that can access that data.
Apple also states that apps that do collect data must ask for
consent, and that apps “should only request access to data relevant
to the core functionality of the app and should only collect and use
data that is required to accomplish the relevant task.”
For those of us who are serious about Privacy?
FPF
Launches Virtual Privacy Book Club
We are pleased to announce the launch of our
Privacy Book Club! The FPF Privacy Book Club will provide members
with the opportunity to read a wide range of books — privacy, data,
ethics, academic works, and other important data relevant issues —
and have an open discussion of the selected literature.
The FPF Privacy Book Club will be held on the last
Wednesday of each month. A virtual conference dial-in will be sent
to book club members, which will include a video chat, phone line,
and an online chat. You can join the Privacy Book Club by
registering here.
Please feel free to share the sign up link with your friends and
colleagues who may be interested in participating.
The
first FPF Privacy Book Club will be held Wednesday, September 26,
2018, at 2:00 pm (EST).
We are excited to share that FPF Advisory Board member and author,
Professor Woodrow Hartzog, will be joining the discussion to
introduce his book, Privacy’s
Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies,
and to answer a few questions. After hearing from Woody, we will
host an open discussion of the book for the remainder of the meeting.
To learn more
about FPF’s Privacy Book Club or to provide suggestions for future
readings, please contact Michelle Bae, FPF Berkower Memorial Fellow,
at mbae@fpf.org.
Another ‘future’ for my students to consider.
Going
Cashless: What Can We Learn from Sweden’s Experience?
Sweden is regarded
as the poster child of cashless countries and is expected to become
the world’s first cashless society by March 2023. This means that
cash will not be a
generally accepted means of payment in Sweden.
This journey has been powered by various factors such as a robust
card payment system, strong internet infrastructure, a popular mobile
payment app, supportive legal framework and a cultural mistrust of
cash.
… We found that when
cash transactions fall below 7% of the total payment transactions, it
becomes more costly to manage cash than the marginal profit on cash
sales. When this happens, an economically rational retail
management should stop accepting cash.
This is possible in Sweden because even though
cash is a legal tender, contract laws have a higher precedence than
banking and payment laws here. If a store puts up a sign that it
does not accept cash, then you, as a customer, have entered a
contract or an agreement with that store that they don’t accept
cash.
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