Through a little-discussed potential bureaucratic rule change, the Department of Homeland Security is planning to collect unprecedented levels of biometric information from immigration applicants and their sponsors — including U.S. citizens. While some types of applicants have long been required… Read More ›
Few companies have benefited from the coronavirus pandemic as much as Zoom, the online conferencing platform that has become a ubiquitous substitute for in-person interaction, work, and school. But a fight over Zoom’s right to censor speech is now brewing… Read More ›
After years of backlash over controversial government work, Google technology will be used to aid the Trump administration’s efforts to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border, according to documents related to a federal contract. In August, Customs and Border Protection accepted a proposal to… Read More ›
New York startup Dataminr aggressively markets itself as a tool for public safety, giving institutions from local police to the Pentagon the ability to scan the entirety of Twitter using sophisticated machine-learning algorithms. But company insiders say their surveillance efforts were… Read More ›
Facebook contractors tasked with sifting through some of the most heinous and traumatizing content on the internet faced a new hurdle this week when they were told to return to company offices to do their work in person as a… Read More ›
By 2013, the Obama administration had concluded that it could not charge WikiLeaks or Julian Assange with crimes related to publishing classified documents — documents that showed, among other things, evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan —… Read More ›
Federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department used “a sophisticated cell phone cloning attack—the details of which remain classified—to intercept protesters’ phone communications” in Portland this summer, Ken Klippenstein reported this week in The Nation…. Read More ›
In August, 40 federal agents arrived in Memphis. Some were already on the ground by the time U.S. Attorney Michael Dunavant announced the onset of Operation Legend and the city became, along with St. Louis, the seventh to be targeted… Read More ›
The rise of the internet-connected home security camera has generally been a boon to police, as owners of these devices can (and frequently do) share footage with cops at the touch of a button. But according to a leaked FBI… Read More ›
The economic cataclysm brought on by the coronavirus caught American consumers in an extremely precarious position — one that was evident well before more than 50 million people filed for unemployment. By the end of last year, Americans had racked… Read More ›