https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/24/google-location-data-ags-lawsuit/

Attorneys general from D.C. and three states sued Google on Monday, arguing that the search giant deceived consumers to gain access to their location data.

The lawsuits, filed in the District of Columbia, Texas, Washington and Indiana, allege the company made misleading promises about its users’ ability to protect their privacy through Google account settings, dating from at least 2014. The suits seek to stop Google from engaging in these practices and to fine the company.

The complaints also allege the company has deployed “dark patterns,” or design tricks that can subtly influence users’ decisions in ways that are advantageous for a business. The lawsuits say Google has designed its products to repeatedly nudge or pressure people to provide more and more location data, “inadvertently or out of frustration.” The suits allege this violates various state and D.C. consumer protection laws.

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073828708/israel-spyware-citizens-nso-group

Israeli police have used spyware from controversial Israeli company NSO Group to hack the cell phones of Israeli citizens without judicial oversight, including activists protesting former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday.

The Israeli spyware company faces mounting global scrutiny and recent U.S. sanctions for equipping regimes with powerful surveillance tools used to target human rights activists, journalists and politicians. Recently, Palestinian activists said their phones were infected with NSO spyware.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/15/will-blockchain-fulfil-its-democratic-promise-or-will-it-become-a-tool-of-big-tech

Engineers are focused on reducing its carbon footprint, ignoring the governance issues raised by the technology

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/rohingya-refugees-sue-facebook-150-billion-over-myanmar-violence-2021-12-07/

over allegations that the social media company did not take action against anti-Rohingya hate speech that contributed to violence.

In 2018, U.N. human rights investigators said the use of Facebook had played a key role in spreading hate speech that fueled the violence.

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2021/12/07/apple-accounts-permanently-blocked/

https://therecord.media/fbi-document-shows-what-data-can-be-obtained-from-encrypted-messaging-apps/

FBI document shows what data can be obtained from encrypted messaging apps – The Record

https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-us-state-department-phones-hacked-with-israeli-company-spyware-sources-2021-12-03/

iPhones of at least nine U.S. State Department employees were hacked by an unknown assailant using sophisticated spyware developed by the Israel-based NSO Group

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/03/airtag-linked-to-car-thefts/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/03/thought-experiment-facebook-betrayal-privacy

Imagine if the postman read your mail and then sold your information to extremists who want to target you

https://www.vice.com/en/article/93bw8y/google-caught-hackers-using-a-mac-zero-day-against-hong-kong-users

The hackers had set up a watering hole attack, meaning they hid malware within the legitimate websites of “a media outlet and a prominent pro-democracy labor and political group” in Hong Kong. Users who visited those websites would get hacked with an unknown vulnerability—in other words, a zero-day—and another exploit that took advantage of a previously patched vulnerability for MacOS that was used to install a backdoor on their computers, according to Hernandez. 

Apple patched the zero-day used in the campaign in an update pushed out on September 23, according to the report.