Surveillance

For example, the research found 55,455 Hikvision networks in London. “From my experience of just walking around London, it would probably be several times over that. They're in almost every supermarket,” says Samuel Woodhams, a researcher at Top10VPN who carried out the study. The prevalence of Hikvision cameras overseas has caused anxieties around national security, even though it hasn’t been proved that the company transfers its overseas data back to China. In 2019, the US passed a bill banning Hikvision from holding…

Andy Garcia is explaining why, despite a desire to go back to Cuba, he would never return to the country. In an interview with The New York Times promoting his work on Father of the Bride, Garcia spoke about how the film represents the generational divide in Spanish-speaking among Latin families, his own daughters getting married around the film’s release and where he drew inspiration from for his character, an architect and father of the bride named Billy. While discussing the way Billy is an “amalgamation…

Amazon-owned Ring displays several products of their security line during the CES tech show Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020, in Las Vegas.Photo: Ross D. Franklin (AP)Sen. Ed Markey on Tuesday said that his office plans to push forward with an already yearslong investigation into “harmful surveillance practices” and “invasive data collection” facilitated by Amazon’s flagship home security product, Ring. In a letter to Amazon CEO Andrew Jassey—the handpicked replacement of ex-CEO Jeff Bezos, who transitioned to executive chairman…

Across the world, video cameras have become an accepted feature of urban life. Many cities in China now have dense networks of them, and London and New Delhi aren’t far behind.  Now France is playing catch-up. Since 2015, the year of the Bataclan terrorist attacks, the number of cameras in Paris has increased fourfold. The police have used such cameras to enforce pandemic lockdown measures and monitor protests.Concerns have been raised throughout the country. But the surveillance rollout has met special resistance in…

GABRIELLE VOINOT For Nano the creep of increased surveillance has personal resonance. She grew up in Albania as it lurched between different political regimes in the 1990s. Her father, a politician, opposed the party that was in power for part of that time. “It was a very difficult period for us, because we were all being watched,” she says. Her family suspected that the authorities had installed bugs in the walls of their home. But even in France, freedoms are fragile. “These past five years France has lived for much…

Testing wastewater for the presence of diseases has grown in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Shutterstock Wastewater surveillance involves testing sewage to obtain data about a population's health. While the technique is decades old, it has gained recent international prominence for its ability to predict pandemic surges, detect new SARS-CoV-2 variants and provide useful data when traditional testing methods…

There are major flaws in how the federal government monitors police surveillance of Americans, a new government report found, representing the first time the federal court system has acknowledged its own failure to track things like wiretaps and electronic surveillance. A study, conducted by the Federal Judicial Center, the research branch of the judicial branch of the U.S. government, says the federal court system’s annual Wiretap Report—which compiles information on local and federal law enforcement interceptions of…

When an indescribable tragedy was inflicted upon Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, we saw the predictable platitudes. We saw well-worn promises of changes that will never come. And we saw growing frustration that so many political leaders are willing to sacrifice children on the altar of the Second Amendment. But we also saw a comparatively newer element of the post-shooting ritual rear its ugly head: the increasingly insistent claims that technology can magically keep our kids safe. It won’t.In the days since the…

Google was allegedly collecting biometric data from photos without notifying users.Photo: Leon Neal (Getty Images)Google took another hit today. The tech company has settled for $100 million following a class action lawsuit in Illinois over data privacy concerns from users of the Google Photos app.Why did Google get sued?A class action lawsuit was filed by the plaintiffs against Google, alleging that the company broke Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The act states that any private company collecting…

After a shooter killed 21 people, including 19 children, in the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last week, the United States is yet again confronting the devastating impact of gun violence. While lawmakers have so far failed to pass meaningful reform, schools are searching for ways to prevent a similar tragedy on their own campuses. Recent history, as well as government spending records, indicate that one of the most common responses from education officials is to invest in more surveillance…