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""Anonymous Korea" claimed to take down several North Korean state websites Saturday, just hours after North Korea said it has entered into a "state of war" with South Korea. North Korea's main official state website was back up and running, as of 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday. But Mashable was still unable to access three of the five listed websites that Anonymous Korea claimed to have attacked. "

"The single biggest known British political advertiser on Facebook is a mysterious pro-Brexit campaign group pushing for a no-deal exit from the EU. The revelation about Britain's Future, which has never disclosed the source of its funding or organisational structure, has raised concerns about the influence of "dark money" in British politics."

"Apple has warned the UK government that proposals in the draft Investigatory Powers Bill to demand technology firms weaken encryption would make the data of millions of law-abiding citizens less secure and make it easier for hackers to "cause chaos"."

"Surrendering our privacy to the government would be foolish enough. But what is more insidious is the Faustian bargain made with the marketing industry, which turns every location ping into currency as it is bought and sold in the marketplace of surveillance advertising. Now, one year later, we're in a very similar position. But it's far worse. A source has provided another data set, this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump's political rally turned into a violent insurrection. At least five people died because of the riot at the Capitol. Key to bringing the mob to justice has been the event's digital detritus: location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing."

"We now know targeted Facebook advertising played a big role in 2015's general election. The Conservatives spent £1.2m on Facebook advertising in 2015 - and it paid off with a majority, albeit a small one. It is understood both them and Labour plan on spending similar amounts on Facebook advertising. "

"As more governments turn to contact tracing apps to aid in their efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak, cybersecurity experts are warning this may spark renewed interest in Bluetooth attacks. They urge developers to ensure such apps are regularly tested for vulnerabilities and release patches swiftly to plug potential holes, while governments should provide assurance that their databases are secure and the data collected will not be used for purposes other than as originally intended. "

"Privacy campaigners say the plan for the regional centres revives talk of "pseudonymised information" being extracted from medical records. That refers to a process whereby some personal identifiers are removed but not enough to make information completely anonymous."

"With news that the 15 million Twitter users in the UK can now be targeted at individual postcode levels, the micro-blogging platform is selling its advertising opportunities as ultra-geographically precise, and therefore ultra-cost effective. "The key benefit of geo-targeting is that it enables advertisers, or in this case political parties, the ability to reach users in specific regions, metropolitan areas and now postcodes," Twitter said in a blog post. "

"Some have argued for much greater policing of content online, and companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have talked about hiring thousands to staff up their moderation teams.8 8. April Glaser, Want a Terrible Job? Facebook and Google May Be Hiring,Slate (Jan. 18, 2018), https://slate.com/technology/2018/01/facebook-and-google-are-building-an-army-of-content-moderators-for-2018.html (explaining that major platforms have hired or have announced plans to hire thousands, in some cases more than ten thousand, new content moderators).On the other side of the coin, companies are increasingly investing in more and more sophisticated technology help, such as artificial intelligence, to try to spot contentious content earlier in the process.9 9. Tom Simonite, AI Has Started Cleaning Up Facebook, But Can It Finish?,Wired (Dec. 18, 2018), https://www.wired.com/story/ai-has-started-cleaning-facebook-can-it-finish/.Others have argued that we should change Section 230 of the CDA, which gives platforms a free hand in determining how they moderate (or how they don't moderate).10 10. Gohmert Press Release, supra note 7 ("Social media companies enjoy special legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, protections not shared by other media. Instead of acting like the neutral platforms they claim to be in order obtain their immunity, these companies have turned Section 230 into a license to potentially defraud and defame with impunity… Since there still appears to be no sincere effort to stop this disconcerting behavior, it is time for social media companies to be liable for any biased and unethical impropriety of their employees as any other media company. If these companies want to continue to act like a biased medium and publish their own agendas to the detriment of others, they need to be held accountable."); Eric Johnson, Silicon Valley's Self-Regulating Days "Probably Should Be" Over, Nancy Pelosi Says, Vox (Apr. 11, 2019), https:/

"After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically-now it seems that almost no one is happy. Some feel that these platforms have become cesspools of trolling, bigotry, and hatred.1 1. Zachary Laub, Hate Speech on Social Media: Global Comparisons, Council on Foreign Rel. (Jun. 7, 2019), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-global-comparisons.Meanwhile, others feel that these platforms have become too aggressive in policing language and are systematically silencing or censoring certain viewpoints.2 2. Tony Romm, Republicans Accused Facebook, Google and Twitter of Bias. Democrats Called the Hearing 'Dumb.', Wash. Post (Jul. 17, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/17/republicans-accused-facebook-google-twitter-bias-democrats-called-hearing-dumb/?utm_term=.895b34499816.And that's not even touching on the question of privacy and what these platforms are doing (or not doing) with all of the data they collect."

"That was apparently the result of the US government's probing of visa applicants' social media profiles. After the search, an officer questioned the 17-year-old, who got a scholarship to study in the US, about his friends' social media activity and told him she'd found some "posting political points of view that oppose the US," the student paper noted. Despite Ajjawi's protests, the officer denied the student's entry and let him call his parents."

"Interest in so-called dazzle camouflage appears to have grown substantially since the Metropolitan police announced last week that officers will be using live facial recognition cameras on London's streets - a move described by privacy campaigners and political activists as "dangerous", "oppressive" and "a huge threat to human rights"."

"After discussing the general absurdity and creepiness of not being allowed to freely criticize the government for the order they brought to his company, he concludes by saying that he's stopped using email altogether, and "If you knew what I know about email, you might not use it either." "

"Imagine a world where an authoritarian government monitors everything you do, amasses huge amounts of data on almost every interaction you make, and awards you a single score that measures how "trustworthy" you are."

"There are clear indications that the UK government is now actively considering use of the technology as a way of easing the lockdown. If this signals an outbreak in Whitehall of tech "solutionism" - the belief that for every problem there is a technological answer - then we should be concerned. Tech solutions often do as much harm as good, for example, by increasing social exclusion, lacking accountability and failing to make real inroads into the problem they are supposedly addressing."

"Four U.S. senators today urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate claims that the very popular video app TikTok, which is owned by a company tied to China's military and government, violated a consent decree to protect children's privacy."

"The new documents reveal that a GCHQ unit dubbed the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, launched an operation called Rolling Thunder against the hacker collective in 2011. That operation included using DDoS attacks as well as malware to slow down the hackers and later identify them, as first reported by as reported by NBC News on Wednesday."

"The Chinese government is planning on implementing a system that connects citizens' financial, social, political, and legal credit ratings into one big social trustability score. The idea would be that if someone breaks trust in one area, they'd be adversely affected everywhere."

"99 percent of the names submitted to the list are accepted; the court called this "wildly loose." The database has grown from 227,932 names in 2009 to its current stratospheric heights. There is no official, public procedure for having your name removed from the list. The US government is seeking to end the trial by invoking state secrecy."

"Telegram, a messaging app created by the reclusive Russian exile Pavel Durov, is suited to running protests for a number of reasons. It allows huge encrypted chat groups, making it easier to organise people, like a slicker version of WhatsApp. And its "channels" allow moderators to disseminate information quickly to large numbers of followers in a way that other messaging services do not; they combine the reach and immediacy of a Twitter feed, and the focus of an email newsletter. The combination of usability and privacy has made the app popular with protestors (it has been adopted by Extinction Rebellion) as well as people standing against authoritarian regimes (in Hong Kong and Iran, as well as Belarus); it is also used by terrorists and criminals. In the past five years, Telegram has grown at a remarkable speed, hitting 60 million users in 2015 and 400 million in April this year. "