Alexis Hancock and Hayley Tsukayama write: A COVID vaccine has been approved and vaccinations have begun. With them have come proposals of ways to prove you have been vaccinated, based on the presumption that vaccination renders a person immune and unable to spread the virus. The latter is unclear. It also raises digital rights concerns, particularly if…
Category: U.S.
FTC to launch sweeping privacy study of top tech platforms
Ashley Gold reports: The Federal Trade Commission will announce Monday that it’s launching a new inquiry into the privacy and data collection practices of major tech firms including Amazon, TikTok owner ByteDance, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook as well as its subsidiary WhatsApp, Axios has learned. The big picture: The move comes amid broader scrutiny for…
U.S. Schools Are Buying Phone-Hacking Tech That the FBI Used to Investigate Terrorists
Tom McKay and Dhruv Mehrotra report: In May 2016, a student enrolled in a high-school in Shelbyville, Texas, consented to having his phone searched by one of the district’s school resource officers. Looking for evidence of a romantic relationship between the student and a teacher, the officer plugged the phone into a Cellebrite UFED to…
Amazon Sued For Wiretapping Drivers’ Closed Facebook Groups
Kirsten Errick reports: On Friday, Amazon Flex Driver Drickey Jackson alleged that Amazon “wiretapp(ed) the electronic communications of Amazon Flex Drivers’ closed Facebook groups,” according to a class action complaint filed in the Souther District of California. The complaint noted that “in addition to its own drivers, Amazon contracts out to over 800 service delivery partners. These…