Month: September 2020

–       Amnesty International investigation reveals that three European tech companies based in France, Sweden and the Netherlands sold digital surveillance systems to China’s public security agencies with the risk of direct use in China’s mass surveillance programs. (Amnesty International)

–       Facebook plans to permit people to claim ownership over images and moderate where those images appear across the Facebook Platform, including Instagram. Where there are multiple claims over an image, Facebook will yield to who filed first and an appeal can be made using Facebook’s IP reporting forms. (The Verge)

–       Recent lawsuit filed last week against Facebook alleges that Apple’s iOS 14 software indicates the use of iPhone cameras by Instagram to spy on people. (CNET)

–       The SCALES-OKN (Systematic Content Analysis of Litigation EventS Open Knowledge Network) team plans to build an AI powered data platform over the next three years that enables access to court records and analytics. (Scales)

–       President Trump announces that the government is looking into concrete legal steps against social media sites that are censoring conservatives online and nudged Republicans to open their own investigations into the matter. (The Washington Post)

–       John Hancock partners with Amazon to integrate Amazon Halo with John Hancock’s life insurance for its Vitality customers. (Coverager)

–       Senate Committee revisits the need for federal data privacy legislation despite past failed attempts at same. (Compliance Week)

–       Subscribe to Surveillance technology Oversight Project YouTube channel here.

(compiled by JSD Fellow Ngozi Nwanta)

• PRG’s own Albert Fox Cahn (director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project) has co-founded a new podcast, Surveillance and the City. Check it out here.
• On September 22 at 11am Eastern, global experts (including many PRG members) will weigh in at a town hall titled “Contextual Integrity of Contact Tracing.” Details here.
• The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project has been publishing great work lately exploring COVID-19’s effects on surveillance trends, including:
  • increasing surveillance of schoolchildren;
  • justice issues in online courts during COVID-19; and
  • contact tracing in higher education.
• Last week, Apple and Google announced a change in their mobile-phone-based contact tracing framework. Instead of providing a backbone on which government actors must create their own apps to notify people of potential exposure, the companies will now provide their own notification software.
• A few days ago, Facebook announced a new research partnership aiming to understand the impact of Facebook and Instagram on users’ political attitudes. Instead of conducting the research solely internally, Facebook has selected 17 external researchers with which it will partner. Users will be paid to stay off of their accounts throughout the election cycle, and the researchers will conduct studies to see the difference between their political attitudes and beliefs and those who continue to be users, among other research topics.