This sounds a lot like the Chinese approach to monitoring and controlling social behavior:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55133141

Technology giant Microsoft has filed a patent for a system to monitor employees' body language and facial expressions during work meetings and give the events a "quality score".

 

This sounds a lot like the Chinese approach to monitoring and controlling social behavior:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55133141

 

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/12/an-ios-zero-click-radio-proximity.html

For 6 months of 2020, while locked down in the corner of my bedroom surrounded by my lovely, screaming children, I've been working on a magic spell of my own. No, sadly not an incantation to convince the kids to sleep in until 9am every morning, but instead a wormable radio-proximity exploit which allows me to gain complete control over any iPhone in my vicinity. View all the photos, read all the email, copy all the private messages and monitor everything which happens on there in real-time.
...

Of course, an iPhone isn't designed to allow people to build capabilities like this. So what went so wrong that it was possible? Unfortunately, it's the same old story. A fairly trivial buffer overflow programming error in C++ code in the kernel parsing untrusted data, exposed to remote attackers.


In fact, this entire exploit uses just a single memory corruption vulnerability to compromise the flagship iPhone 11 Pro device. With just this one issue I was able to defeat all the mitigations in order to remotely gain native code execution and kernel memory read and write.

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/economy/china-digital-yuan-currency-intl-hnk/index.html

"In essence, the digital yuan can help strengthen the state's surveillance and control over the economy and society,"

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/economy/china-digital-yuan-currency-intl-hnk/index.html

People will revert to using large stones for private currency transactions.

 

A taste of what the government has had over the last few decades.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/790/1

https://www.capellaspace.com/sar-101-an-introduction-to-synthetic-aperture-radar/
SAR 101: An Introduction to Synthetic Aperture Radar


https://www.capellaspace.com/capella-unveils-worlds-highest-resolution-commercial-sar-imagery/

We are unveiling the highest resolution commercial SAR imagery available in the market at 50 cm x 50 cm resolution in our new Spotlight or “Spot” imaging mode. Our Spot product is a specialized mode that allows for long exposures over an area of interest (AOI) and results in a beautiful and crystal-clear SAR imagery. This new 50 cm x 50 cm imagery is collected by dwelling our satellites over an AOI for a long period. Think of it as a long exposure on your digital camera when you are trying to collect more light into your sensor. Except we are doing a very long exposure looking at a single location on Earth while traveling at 7.5 km per second in space. Our satellites have been designed with the capability to dwell on a single location for as long as 60 seconds.

https://www.capellaspace.com/no-sar-cant-see-through-buildings/

We were surprised that this announcement caused so much debate but realized how not everyone understands SAR and how misunderstood science can lead to misinformation. As a result, we are committed to producing more educational resources around SAR technology to broaden everyone’s awareness of its amazing potential.

SAR is very different from the optical photographs that are built for interpretation by the human eye and we will explain why a ghost-like image of Tokyo is actually an artifact of SAR imagery distortion and not an “X-Ray of a City”.

As you can see in the above diagrams, objects are identified by their distance from the radar, not their distance projected ono the ground. Taller objects have certain points that are closer to the radar than some shorter objects that may be closer on the ground. When we project a radar image onto the ground, this phenomenon ends up distorting the image.

One of our radar scientists accurately described the phenomenon: It helps to think of it just as your brain’s interpretation of a two dimensional representation of the coherent sum of backscatter responses from electromagnetic waves.

 

Headline: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55412230
Signal: Cellebrite claimed to have cracked chat app's encryption

Response: https://signal.org/blog/cellebrite-and-clickbait/
No, Cellebrite cannot 'break Signal encryption.'

Yesterday, the BBC ran a story with the factually untrue headline, “Cellebrite claimed to have cracked chat app’s encryption.” This is false. Not only can Cellebrite not break Signal encryption, but Cellebrite never even claimed to be able to.

Since we weren’t actually given the opportunity to comment in that story, we’re posting this to help to clarify things for anyone who may have seen the headline.

This world of ours
Last week, Cellebrite posted a pretty embarrassing (for them) technical article to their blog documenting the “advanced techniques” they use to parse Signal on an Android device they physically have with the screen unlocked.

 

 

https://www.neowin.net/news/linux-b...ending-buggy-patches-in-the-name-of-research/

Greg Kroah-Hartman, who is one of the head honchos of the Linux kernel development and maintenance team, has banned the University of Minnesota (UMN) from further contributing to the Linux Kernel. The University had apparently introduced questionable patches into the kernel of Linux.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=University-Ban-From-Linux-Dev

 

Facebook v Apple: The ad tracking row heats up​

A new feature is being introduced to iPhones and iPads this week which is causing a huge rift between Apple and Facebook. It will allow device users to say no to having their data collected by apps.

 

https://theintercept.com/2021/05/03/car-surveillance-berla-msab-cbp/

So data-hungry government agencies have increasingly moved to exploit the rise of the smart car, whose dashboard-mounted computers, Bluetooth capabilities, and USB ports have, with the ascendancy of the smartphone, become as standard as cup holders. Smart car systems are typically intended to be paired with your phone, allowing you to take calls, dictate texts, plug in map directions, or “read ”emails from behind the wheel. Anyone who’s taken a spin in a new-ish vehicle and connected their phone — whether to place a hands-free call, listen to Spotify, or get directions — has probably been prompted to share their entire contact list, presented as a necessary step to place calls but without any warning that a perfect record of everyone they’ve ever known will now reside inside their car’s memory, sans password.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-n...urn-car-data-destroy-suspects-alibis-n1251939

"I hear a lot of analogies of cars being smartphones on wheels. But that's vastly reductive," said Andrea Amico, founder of Privacy4Cars, which makes a free app that helps people delete their data from automobiles and makes its money by offering the service to rental companies and dealerships. "If you think about the amount of sensors in a car, the smartphone is a toy. A car has GPS, an accelerometer, a camera. A car will know how much you weigh. Most people don't realize this is happening."

 

https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/12/krack_hack_wifi/

Tech industry quietly patches FragAttacks Wi-Fi flaws that leak data, weaken security
Dozen design, implementation blunders date back 24 years

 

Microsoft president: Orwell’s 1984 could happen in 2024​

“We’re in a geo-political strategic conflict with China,” he said. “The way to win is to marshal our resources together to have national and global strategies for the democracies to win in AI.

“If we don’t, we’ll be looking at a future where other values will be imposed on us.”

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-57394831

How did the ANOM sting work?
The FBI began operating an encrypted device network called ANOM, and covertly distributed devices with the chat app among the criminal underworld via informants.
The idea for the operation came after two other encrypted platforms were taken down by law enforcement agencies, leaving criminal gangs in the market for new secure phones.
The devices were initially used by alleged senior crime figures, giving other criminals the confidence to use the platform.

• The man who accidentally helped FBI spread spy app

"You had to know a criminal to get hold of one of these customised phones. The phones couldn't ring or email. You could only communicate with someone on the same platform," the Australian police explained.

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7b4gg/anom-phone-arcaneos-fbi-backdoor

We Got the Phone the FBI Secretly Sold to Criminals

 

Apple to scan iPhones for child sex abuse images​

Before an image is stored onto iCloud Photos, the technology will search for matches of already known CSAM.

The system works by comparing pictures to a database of known child sexual abuse images compiled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and other child safety organizations.

 

https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Technical_Summary.pdf
https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Apple_PSI_System_Security_Protocol_and_Analysis.pdf

I guess we will see how long NeuralHash will remain secure from intentional image hash collisions as the system is flooded with known image triggers from sites beyond law enforcement.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadget...ain-new-york-s-vaccine-passport-apps-n1276037

“This whole ecosystem is a house of cards, built ultimately on top of the CDC paper card, which we know is difficult to verify and easily forged,” Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy researcher based in Oakland, California, who formerly was chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, said by email.

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k78ygn/researchers-create-master-faces-to-bypass-facial-recognition

Researchers Create 'Master Faces' to Bypass Facial Recognition

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.01077.pdf

Our results imply that face-based authentication is extremely vulnerable, even if there is no information on the target identity. This is true for all three face recognition methods, with some differences in the obtained success probability