Public Service Internet

Due to the difference of body shapes and motion patterns, each person can have specific influence patterns on surrounding WIFI signals while she moves indoors, generating a unique pattern on the CSI time series of the WIFI device," the team writes in its report. "FreeSense…is nonintrusive and privacy-preserving compared with existing methods [of human identification].

Say you're scrolling through your Facebook Newsfeed and you encounter an ad so eerily well-suited, it seems someone has possibly read your brain. Maybe your mother's birthday is coming up, and Facebook's showing ads for her local florist. Or maybe you just made a joke aloud about wanting a Jeep, and Instagram's promoting Chrysler dealerships. Whatever the subject, you've seen ads like this. You've wondered - maybe worried - how they found their way to you.

Within two weeks of its release last month, Pokemon Go, the augmented reality gaming sensation, surpassed, by one estimate, Twitter, Facebook, and Netflix in its day-to-day popularity on Android phones. Over on Apple devices, the game was downloaded more times in its first week than any app that came before it.

"Toys and other devices are collecting loads of data from children. What could go wrong?"

"we're doing anything at all we want, with personal information, possibly discriminatory and destructive, but there are a few people who will benefit from this new system versus the old, so we're ignoring costs and only counting the benefits for those people, in an attempt to distract any critics."

"Tripling as a feat of engineering, a social commentary on homelessness, and an interactive puppet show, [Ables] causes us to pause on the issue of homelessness and human-robot interaction. For a more whimsical interaction, a robot ball that follows you around is a pleasant way to get used to the presence of robots in society."

"Researchers have encountered a denial-of-service botnet that's made up of more than 25,000 Internet-connected closed circuit TV devices."

Tesco Mobile has announced a new optional scheme in which its customers can get £3 a month off their phone bill. In return, customers agree to see adverts on their lockscreen "every few times" they unlock their phone.

"A leading privacy activist says Google's lack of support for strong encryption makes second-class citizens out of people who can't afford Apple devices."

Google came under fire this week after its new Photos app categorized photos in one of the most racist ways possible. On June 28th, computer programmer Jacky Alciné found that the feature kept tagging pictures of him and his girlfriend as "gorillas."

Algorithms used in American criminal justice is found to be biased against blacks

If you searched for "three white teenagers" on Google Images earlier this month, the result spat up shiny, happy people in droves - an R.E.M. song in JPG format. The images, mostly stock photos, displayed young Caucasian men and women laughing, holding sports equipment or caught whimsically mid-selfie. If you searched for "three black teenagers," the algorithm offered an array of mug shots.

Search term brings back mainly results of black women, which some say is evidence of bias. But algorithms may just be reflecting the wider social landscape

"Dropbox is "proposing to copy the keys to your house, move in and live with you.""

Domino's pizza-company is about to test out a new feature in Australia, one that flips the script of allowing customers to track a pizza that's being delivered. Now the company wants track customers

"When a rogue researcher last week released 70,000 OkCupid profiles, complete with usernames and sexual preferences, people were pissed. When Facebook researchers manipulated stories appearing in Newsfeeds for a mood contagion study in 2014, people were really pissed. OkCupid filed a copyright claim to take down the dataset; the journal that published Facebook's study issued an "expression of concern." Outrage has a way of shaping ethical boundaries. We learn from mistakes."

Wearable sensor technology has the potential to transform health care and our understanding of our own bodies and habits. The investigation and testing of these sensors in the commercial sector offer an unprecedented opportunity to leverage biometric data, both to improve individual health through the development of better products and to advance the public good through research. However, research with wearable sensor data must be done in a manner that is respectful of ethical considerations and consumer privacy

Databox project is a new £1.5M EPSRC project led by Dr. Hamed Haddadi (QMUL) in collaboration with Dr. Richard Mortier (University of Cambridge) and Professors Derek McAuley, Tom Rodden, and Andy Crabtree (University of Nottingham) who will explore the development of the Databox as means of enhancing accountability and giving individuals control over the use of their personal data.