Ben Spurr has an update on a privacy travesty that has been going on for about two years: Law enforcement officers are increasingly seeking access to personal information stored on transit riders’ Presto fare cards, with requests for the data spiking by 47 per cent in 2018 compared to the year before. And while Metrolinx,…
Category: Govt
This App Wants to Track Every Homeless Person in San Francisco
Adam Popescu reports: On paper, it looks as if San Francisco shouldn’t have a homelessness problem. There are as many permanent housing beds as people who need them. The city spends hundreds of millions of dollars to help get people off the streets, and last year voters approved a measure to raise $300 million annually…
‘Inherently invasive’: FBI counter-hacking operations raise red flags over privacy
Jeff Mordock reports: To catch a hacker, sometimes you have to be a hacker. But when it’s the FBI doing the hacking, civil liberties groups get worried. The agency’s revelation this week that it joined a computer botnet attack piggybacking on the malware’s signal to track its activities has raised new questions about what is…
One Of The Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working With The FBI
Salvador Hernandez reports: Family Tree DNA, one of the largest private genetic testing companies whose home-testing kits enable people to trace their ancestry and locate relatives, is working with the FBI and allowing agents to search its vast genealogy database in an effort to solve violent crime cases, BuzzFeed News has learned. Federal and local…