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"Vivian Balakrishnan on why he had earlier said that TraceTogether app data would only be used for COVID-19 contact tracing. The Home Affairs Ministry has since said the data could be used for criminal investigations."

"Scientists say they can deduce the lifestyle of an individual, down to the kind of grooming products they use, food they eat and medications they take, from chemicals found on the surface of their mobile phone."

"Since the world's first CCTV camera was installed in Germany in 1942, the number of surveillance cameras around the world has grown immensely. In fact, it only took us 79 years to go from one camera to nearly one billion of these devices. In the above interactive graphic, Surfshark maps out how prevalent CCTV surveillance cameras are in the world's 130 most populous cities. "

"handy infographic showing the types of data each company admits to collecting"

"Spyware sold by an Israeli private intelligence firm was allegedly used to hack the phones of dozens of Al Jazeera journalists in an unprecedented cyber-attack that is likely to have been ordered by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to leading researchers."

"A woman who held jobs at a supermarket and a halfway house took down credit card information of customers at NTUC FairPrice, created an EZ-Link mobile account with details from a halfway house resident and combined the two to make S$41,330 worth of unauthorised EZ-Link top-ups."

"Wong opened the bag later that day and took her debit card from her purse. He then used it to top up his ez-link card with S$100 through the PayWave function at Somerset MRT Station."

"YouTube viewers are being asked to become "watchdogs" and record their use of the site to help uncover the ways in which its recommendation algorithm can lead to online radicalisation."

Some great stats on the map...

"The case was finally cracked when new legislation in January 2019 allowed police to search for matches to suspects' DNA on commercial genealogy websites, which are popular among Swedes seeking long-lost relatives."

"Earlier this year, the consultancy PwC came under fire for developing a facial recognition tool that logs when employees are away from their computer screens while working from home."

""Employers are increasingly exploiting metadata logged by software and devices for performance analytics and algorithmic control," Christl added. "MS is providing the tools for it. Practices we know from software development (and factories and call centres) are expanded to all white-collar work.""

"Zoom is not encrypting calls for free accounts with end to end encryption so they can provide law enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation with content from those calls. As protesters demonstrate in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, law enforcement has deployed a wide range of surveillance tools to monitor and track protesters－including facial recognition software and contact tracing technology. They are working to get information from every source possible to disrupt and even arrest people involved with the protests."

"Before we go deeper, it's important to note that there are two approaches to facial - or any biometric - authentication: "match on server" and "match on device." The former approach shares some of the risky aspects of facial recognition technology because it stores the details of one's most personal features-your face or your fingerprint-on a server, which is inherently insecure. There are some well-publicized examples of biometric databases being hacked, which is why so many companies are committing to only do on-device biometrics."

"Information collected includes dates of birth, addresses, marital status, along with photographs, political associations, relatives and social media IDs. It collates Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and even TikTok accounts, as well as news stories, criminal records and corporate misdemeanours. While much of the information has been "scraped" from open-source material, some profiles have information which appears to have been sourced from confidential bank records, job applications and psychological profiles."

"The submission outlines Big Blue's belief that facial recognition is fine in a "1 to 1" context such as unlocking a phone. But IBM is opposed to "1 to many" facial recognition that refers to a database to identify a face in a crowd and could therefore be used for "mass surveillance systems, racial profiling or other human rights violations.""

"To Lawmakers and School Administrators: As parents and caregivers, there is nothing more important to us than our children's safety. That's why we're calling for an outright ban on the use of facial recognition in schools. We're concerned about this technology spreading to our schools, infringing on our kids' rights and putting them in danger. We don't even know the psychological impacts this constant surveillance can have on our children, but we do know that violating their basic rights will create an environment of mistrust and will make it hard for students to succeed and grow. The images collected by this technology will become a target for those wishing to harm our children, and could put them in physical danger or at risk of having their biometric information stolen or sold. The well-known bias built into this technology will put Black and brown children, girls, and gender noncomforming kids in specific danger. Facial recognition creates more harm than good and should not be used on the children we have been entrusted to protect. It should instead be immediately banned."

"From a practical standpoint, that means government agencies, like the Portland Bureau of Police, cannot use facial recognition software for videos from body cameras, dash cams, or any other form of surveillance equipment."

"While many apps and related technologies are voluntary, other governments are enforcing their use, since health experts say at least 60 per cent of a population needs to activate them for contact tracing to be effective."