Technology companies have spent the past year in a manic sprint to reimagine (or at least re-market) their wares as coronavirus response tools, with often less than stellar results. Next up is telecom mammoth Verizon, whose latest initiative cashes in… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘Technology’
How Oracle Sells Repression in China
Police in China’s Liaoning province were sitting on mounds of data collected through invasive means: financial records, travel information, vehicle registrations, social media, and surveillance camera footage. To make sense of it all, they needed sophisticated analytic software. Enter American… Read More ›
Amazon Hired Koch-Backed Anti-Union Consultant to Fight Alabama Warehouse Organizing
Amazon is bringing on a set of well-trained union suppression consultants in its high-profile fight to keep its massive warehouse workforce free of organized labor. The Seattle-based conglomerate recently retained a consultant named Russell Brown to help thwart the union election… Read More ›
How the LAPD and Palantir Use Data to Justify Racist Policing
The killing of George Floyd last May sparked renewed scrutiny of data-driven policing. As protests raged around the world, 1,400 researchers signed an open letter calling on their colleagues to stop collaborating with police on algorithms, and cities like Santa… Read More ›
Millions of Leaked Police Files Detail Suffocating Surveillance of China's Uyghur Minority
The order came through a police automation system in Ürümqi, the largest city in China’s northwest Xinjiang region. The system had distributed a report — an “intelligence information judgment,” as local authorities called it — that the female relative of… Read More ›
What You Should Know Before Leaking a Zoom Meeting
As more and more meetings take place over the videoconferencing service Zoom, it stands to reason that journalists will receive more and more audiovisual material leaked from such gatherings. This new leak medium poses unique challenges, requiring care to avoid… Read More ›
On Telegram, the Paramilitary Far Right Looks to Radicalize New Recruits Ahead of Inauguration Day
In the wake of last week’s deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol Building, a publicly accessible chat group devoted to sparking a civil war is telling its thousands of subscribers that the moment they have all been waiting for is… Read More ›
Facebook and Twitter Finally Do Slightly More Than Literally Nothing About Trump
U.S. President Donald Trump uses his cellphone as he holds a roundtable discussion with governors in Washington, D.C., on June 18, 2020. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images The swirling of the last dregs of the Trump administration around the drain has… Read More ›
SolarWinds Hack Infected Critical Infrastructure, Including Power Industry
The hacking campaign that infected numerous government agencies and tech companies with malicious SolarWinds software has also infected more than a dozen critical infrastructure companies in the electric, oil, and manufacturing industries who were also running the software, according to… Read More ›
Facebook Managers Trash Their Own Ad Targeting in Unsealed Remarks
Facebook is currently waging a PR campaign purporting to show that Apple is seriously injuring American small businesses through its iOS privacy features. But at the same time, according to allegations in recently unsealed court documents, Facebook has been selling them… Read More ›