This is troubling. Jeffrey Schweers reports from Florida: State police brandishing firearms Monday raided the home of Rebekah Jones, the former Department of Health data scientist who built the state’s much-praised COVID-19 dashboard before being fired over what she said was refusing to “manipulate data.” “They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at…
Category: Featured News
Sensitive Data Leak From Baidu Apps Allows Lifetime User Tracking According To Researchers
Alicia Hope reports: Palo Alto Network researchers discovered that apps from the Chinese tech company Baidu were leaking sensitive data that could allow lifetime user tracking. Unit 42 researchers used machine learning-based threat detection mechanisms to discover the apps implicated in the sensitive data leak. Americans have downloaded the apps more than 6 million times…
Public interest groups take aim at Pasco sheriff’s data-driven policing programs
Unsurprisingly, there is pushback against a Pasco sheriff’s program (previously noted on this site, here). Neil Bedi and Kathleen McGrory report: Civil liberties groups are vowing to take action after a Tampa Bay Times investigation revealed organized harassment of Pasco County residents and data-driven profiling of Pasco’s schoolchildren by the Sheriff’s Office. One public interest law firm…
Researchers Explore Privacy Techniques to Protect Against Re-Identification of Genomic Information
Libbie Canter of Covington & Burling writes: It’s the stuff of science fiction: adversaries extract DNA information from a cup of coffee or postage stamp and use it infer one’s most private traits. However, a recently released study entitled, “Data Sanitization to Reduce Private Information Leakage from Functional Genomics” discusses how this can be achieved,…