Tag: Cybersecurity

Meet the Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy + Social Media Is a Tool of the CIA

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

It is an uncomfortable job for anyone trying to draw the line between “harmful content and protecting freedom of speech. It’s a balance”, Aaron says. In this official Facebook video, Aaron identifies himself as the manager of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook”, determining “what is acceptable and what is not.” Thus, he and his team effectively decide what content the platform’s 2.9 billion active users see and what they don’t see.

Meet the Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy

Related:

[2011] Social Media Is a Tool of the CIA. Seriously.

Google is already helping the government write, and rewrite, history. Here, from its transparency report, are some stats on the amount of information it has either given to the government or wiped from the web based on requests by U.S. agencies:

US Government requests to remove content from Google Transparency Report

Google tells Congress the proposed antitrust bill would hinder its censorship efforts

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 9, 2022

Google continues to lobby and campaign against legislative efforts aimed at curbing its monopolistic power, this time openly, in a blog post.

Google tells Congress the proposed antitrust bill would hinder its censorship efforts

Related:

Executive Summary: Evaluating 2 Tech Antitrust Bills To Restore Competition Online:

Privacy and security: The bills would create greater incentive for companies to improve privacy and security, while carefully protecting their ability to make those improvements.

National security: In contrast to misleading claims to the contrary, the bills have multiple layers of provisions protecting American national security and do not create significant new risks. Rather, the bills can restore competitive pressure that supports American dynamism and global technology leadership.

Content moderation: The bills preserve platforms’ abilities to moderate content as they see fit. The bills create a very high bar for disgruntled complainants seeking to abuse competitive provisions to advance content moderation grievances.

Definitions of covered platforms: The bills’ definitions of covered platforms offer functional, well-informed ways to get at gatekeeping platforms of most concern, while effectively excluding smaller businesses.

A Face Search Engine Anyone Can Use Is Alarmingly Accurate

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

PimEyes is a paid service that finds photos of a person from across the internet, including some the person may not want exposed. “We’re just a tool provider,” its owner said.

A Face Search Engine Anyone Can Use Is Alarmingly Accurate

Related:

A Polish company is abolishing our anonymity:

An investigation by netzpolitik.org shows the potential for abuse of PimEyes, a free search engine for 900 million faces. Whoever’s photos have been published on the Internet could already be part of their database.

CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders

The documents reveal the expansive plan the CDC had last year to use location data from a highly controversial data broker. SafeGraph, the company the CDC paid $420,000 for access to one year of data, includes Peter Thiel and the former head of Saudi intelligence [Turki bin Faisal Al Saud] among its investors. Google banned the company from the Play Store in June.

The CDC used the data for monitoring curfews, with the documents saying that SafeGraph’s data “has been critical for ongoing response efforts, such as hourly monitoring of activity in curfew zones or detailed counts of visits to participating pharmacies for vaccine monitoring.” The documents date from 2021.

Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher who closely follows the data marketplace, told Motherboard in an online chat after reviewing the documents: “The CDC seems to have purposefully created an open-ended list of use cases, which included monitoring curfews, neighbor-to-neighbor visits, visits to churches, schools and pharmacies, and also a variety of analysis with this data specifically focused on ‘violence.’” (The document doesn’t stop at churches; it mentions “places of worship.”)

Related:

Data Broker Is Selling Location Data of People Who Visit Abortion Clinics

Location data broker SafeGraph stops selling information on visits to abortion providers

SafeGraph Provides CDC and 1000+ Organizations With Data to Fight the COVID-19 Crisis

Google Bans Location Data Firm Funded by Former Saudi Intelligence Head:

On its website SafeGraph says “We believe places data should be open for all.” In April 2017, Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, invested in SafeGraph as part of a $16 million Series A funding round. SafeGraph said it had “assembled the deepest policy thinkers.” Beyond Faisal Al Saud, SafeGraph said it had enlisted the help of former U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, author Sam Harris, Meghan O’Sullivan who ran Iraq and Afghanistan policy under President George Bush, former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Obama Mona Sutphen, and former German Minister of Defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, among others. Peter Thiel is also an investor in the company.

More investors: SafeGraph Raises $16 Million Series A

$1.5 trillion federal spending bill allocates $2.6 billion to programs that fight “disinformation” and “hate”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | March 11, 2022

The huge $1.5 trillion US federal spending bill, that’s expected to be signed into law by President Joe Biden today, allocates over $2.6 billion to “Democracy Programs” and requires these programs to combat “the misuse of social media to spread disinformation or incite hate.”

$1.5 trillion federal spending bill allocates $2.6 billion to programs that fight “disinformation” and “hate”