If
it’s in the news, phishers will design an email around it.
Phishing
Attacks Increase 350 Percent Amid COVID-19 Quarantine
The
world is in quarantine, and everything is in disarray. The COVID-19
outbreak has greatly increased our usage and reliance on the
internet, giving hackers more opportunities
to scam people with
malware and phishing attacks.
According
to a report
from Google,
these nefarious actors are proving to be very successful. Google
found there were 149,195 active phishing websites in January. That
number rose by 50 percent in February to 293,235 websites. Now, in
March, there are 522,495—a 350 percent increase since the beginning
of the year.
Think
about his now. We’ll see if the court agrees with you. (I used to
follow the capabilities of satellite surveillance, now it seems
drones or even smartphones are taking the lead.)
Jennifer
Lynch of EFF writes:
Should
the fact that your neighbors can see the outside of your house mean
the police can use a camera to record everything that happens there
for more than five months? We don’t think so either. That’s why
we joined ACLU, ACLU of Massachusetts, and the Center for Democracy &
Technology in filing an amicus
brief last
week in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court arguing the Fourth
Amendment and Massachusetts’s state equivalent protect us from
warrantless video surveillance of our homes.
In
Commonwealth
v. Mora,
Massachusetts State Police secretly installed several cameras high up
on utility poles in front of Nelson Mora and Randy Suarez’s homes.
These “pole cameras” allowed officers to watch video feeds of the
two homes (and by extension everyone going in and out of the homes)
in real time, remotely control angle and zoom functions, and zoom in
close enough to read license plates. Officers recorded the footage
over a period of several months, which allowed them to go back,
search through, and review footage at their convenience. They never
got a warrant to install the cameras, and the extended surveillance
was not subject to any court oversight.
Mora
and Suarez moved to suppress the video surveillance, arguing
the
use of the cameras violated the Fourth Amendment and article 14 of
Massachusetts’s Declaration of Rights, which prohibit unreasonable
searches.
In
our amicus brief, we asked the court to recognize, as the Supreme
Court did in U.S.
v Carpenter,
that, just as collecting cell phone location data over time reveals
sensitive information about people, using stationary video
surveillance to record all activity in front of a person’s home for
months implicitly reveals so much more private, sensitive, and
intimate information than the public sees merely walking by the house
from time to time. Using this invasive surveillance, the police
could learn or infer private relationships, medical information, and
political or religious beliefs. And, as with the collection of
location data, technological advances make video surveillance cheap
and easy for law enforcement to implement, removing the practical
privacy protections that existed when the police had to rely on
physical surveillance such as covertly positioning actual officers in
front of a house (and paying those officers their full salaries).
Our
brief also informed the court about recent advances in camera
technology and digital storage and search. Cameras can now hone in
on small details with startling accuracy. For example, one company
has released a camera small enough to fit on a drone that can
identify a face from 1,000 feet and read
serial numbers on appliances from 100 feet. Casinos are
using cameras that can read
text messages off phones. And Logan Airport has a camera
that can see any object a
centimeter and a half wide from a distance of more than one and a
half football fields. Digital storage and search
capabilities also now make it possible for police departments to hold
on to surveillance footage for a long time and to search through
footage easily using keyword searches for categories like gender,
age, and “appearance similarity.” Even though the cameras that
focused on Mora and Suarez’s homes did not have all of these
capabilities, the U.S. Supreme Court has instructed that courts
should take into consideration technology that is currently in use or
in development in conducting their Fourth Amendment analysis.
Finally,
we noted that secret video surveillance like this disproportionately
impacts minority and poorer communities. The prosecutors in this
case argued that Mora and Suarez did nothing to hide their homes from
public view, so they couldn’t expect privacy from government
surveillance that would in essence “see” the same thing that a
worker on the top of a utility pole could see. However, utility
poles commonly rise 20-40 feet in the air. Only the very wealthy can
live in communities where their properties are either set back so far
from these poles as to be hidden from view or the utilities are
buried underground. Without the financial resources to live in
neighborhoods and homes like this, under the government’s
arguments, those with less means would face forced diminishment of
their privacy expectations and disproportionate surveillance in
direct proportion to their income level.
The
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court planned to hear this case on
April 7, 2020, but that date has been extended, given the current
COVID 19 crisis. We will update this post when the court issues its
opinion.
Another
version…
Greek
Data Protection Authority Issues Guidelines on Data Protection and
Coronavirus
Let
the ranting begin!
Public
Officials Can’t Block Critics from Official Social Media Accounts
Last
week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied the
Trump administration’s request for full court review of last year’s
decision
holding
that the president violates the First Amendment when he blocks
critics from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account. The denial leaves
the original panel’s decision in place, with important implications
for the public’s right to access and interact with public
officials’ social media accounts. The Second Circuit’s action is
especially welcome now, at a moment when many Americans are
especially reliant on public officials’ social media accounts—and
on other official social media accounts—for information about the
COVID-19 pandemic and about the government’s response
to
it.
Something
for my nephew, the history major. (Writing a paper comparing Corona
to the Spanish Flu)
C-SPAN
Classroom Offers New Lessons on the Economic Impact of COVID-19
C-SPAN
Classroom is
a free resource that anyone who teaches U.S. History or civics should
have bookmarked. I've written about many of their great resources
and programs over the years including their annual student video
contest and annual summer workshops for teachers.
C-SPAN
Classroom recently published a new
lesson plan that includes a set of resources for
helping students explore and learn about the current and possible
future economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The resources
include eight video clips, an analysis template, and a brainstorming
activity for students to complete individually or in online groups.
(Related)
So, nothing is really new…
“The
Public Health” in 1840
A
pamphlet published in 1840 advocates a four-pronged approach to
public healthcare that sounds remarkably like our own.
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