Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines - The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/24/colleges-are-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-locations-hundreds-thousands/

Short-range phone sensors and campuswide WiFi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health.

But some professors and education advocates argue that the systems represent a new low in intrusive technology, breaching students’ privacy on a massive scale. The tracking systems, they worry, will infantilize students in the very place where they’re expected to grow into adults, further training them to see surveillance as a normal part of living, whether they like it or not.

It Seemed Like a Popular Chat App. It’s Secretly a Spy Tool. - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/22/us/politics/totok-app-uae.html

ToTok, an Emirati messaging app that has been downloaded to millions of phones, is the latest escalation of a digital arms race.

ToTok is a cleverly designed tool for mass surveillance, according to the technical analysis and interviews, in that it functions much like the myriad other Apple and Android apps that track users’ location and contacts.

On the surface, ToTok tracks users’ location by offering an accurate weather forecast. It hunts for new contacts any time a user opens the app, under the pretense that it is helping connect with their friends, much like how Instagram flags Facebook friends. It has access to users’ microphones, cameras, calendar and other phone data. Even its name is an apparent play on the popular Chinese app TikTok.

China Government Spreads Uyghur Analytics Across China

https://ipvm.com/reports/ethnicity-analytics

This exposes that Uyghur persecution and discrimination goes far beyond Xinjiang and is being built on video surveillance technologies

Federal Court Rules Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional - American Civil Liberties Union

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-rules-suspicionless-searches-travelers-phones-and-laptops

GOVERNMENT MUST HAVE REASONABLE SUSPICION OF DIGITAL CONTRABAND BEFORE SEARCHING ELECTRONIC DEVICES AT THE U.S. BORDER

China Sharpens Hacking to Hound Its Minorities, Far and Wide - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/technology/china-hackers-ethnic-minorities.html

showing a new determination by Beijing to push its surveillance state beyond its borders.

Australia concluded China was behind hack on parliament, political parties – Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-china-cyber-exclusive/exclusive-australia-concluded-china-was-behind-hack-on-parliament-political-parties-sources-idUSKBN1W00VF

The report, which also included input from the Department of Foreign Affairs, recommended keeping the findings secret in order to avoid disrupting trade relations with Beijing

Sources say China used iPhone hacks to target Uyghur Muslims - TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/31/china-google-iphone-uyghur/

Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US - The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest

the high-altitude balloons promise a cheap monitoring platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods

Cisco to pay $8.6 million for selling video surveillance software it knew was vulnerable to hackers - WP

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/31/cisco-pay-million-fine-selling-government-hackable-surveillance-technology/

The settlement marks the first time a company has been forced to pay out under a federal whistleblower law for failing to have adequate cybersecurity protections.

The Kazakhstan government is making ISPs force users to install a government-issued certificate on all devices and in every browser to intercept HTTPS traffic - ZDNet

https://www.zdnet.com/article/kazakhstan-government-is-now-intercepting-all-https-traffic/