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"Ransomware hunters: the self-taught tech geniuses fighting cybercrime"

"The principle of privacy, if we want privacy, needs to be fought for at every level. It has become a terrible cliche to talk about George Orwell's nightmare vision of 1984, but read the book again and be reminded of the horror it depicts. And then realise how short a step it is from the telescreen to your iPhone screen."

" With more than 40% of the world's estimated 7,000 languages "endangered and at risk of extinction", an army of tiny publishers is fighting an unsung battle to save them. UK press Diglot Books is one of them, and this week took on the might of Amazon to get its Cornish children's story out to readers. Told by the internet giant that Matthew and the Wellington Boots (Matthew ha'n Eskisyow Glaw in Cornish, or Kernewek) would not be made available through Kindle Direct Publishing because it was in a language that is "not currently supported" by the platform, Diglot petitioned the retailer."

""The fights between bots can be far more persistent than the ones we see between people," said Taha Yasseri, who worked on the study at the Oxford Internet Institute. "Humans usually cool down after a few days, but the bots might continue for years.""

"Twitter has deleted more than 125,000 accounts linked to terrorists since mid-2015, the company announced, offering some of the most detailed insight yet of how Silicon Valley is collaborating with western governments in its fight against Islamic State."

"Tufekci describes how insurgent, democratic movements were early arrivals to the internet, and how clumsy authoritarians' attempts to fight them by shutting the net down only energized their movements. But canny authoritarians mastered the platforms, figuring out how to game their automated algorithms to upvote their messages, and how to game their moderation policies to banish their adversaries."

"Facebook enables advertisers to promote content to nearly 900,000 people interested in "vaccine controversies", the Guardian has found. Other groups of people that advertisers can pay to reach on Facebook include those interested in "Dr Tenpenny on Vaccines", which refers to anti-vaccine activist Sherri Tenpenny, and "informed consent", which is language that anti-vaccine propagandists have adopted to fight vaccination laws."

"An AI system developed by Chinese tech company Baidu that uses an infrared sensor and AI to predict people's temperatures is now in use in Beijing's Qinghe Railway Station, according to an email sent to Baidu employees that was shared with VentureBeat."

"The system uses AI to predict situations before they occur - thus informing on how resources could be better allocated - and to provide insights for better decision-making."

"Since Moonshot was founded, there has been a radical shift in the perception of technology's role when it comes to extremist terrorism. "Five years ago, there were still people inside the government who thought tech was for the kids," Frenett says. "There was a sense that it was almost amusing that terrorists were on the internet. You don't get that any more. Likewise, five years ago there were some great organisations doing great work on the violent far-right, but again it was almost seen as niche. That's no longer the case.""

"There, a Facebook-fuelled tsunami of lies had assisted an authoritarian into power. And she had seen where that had led: to opponents of the state being killed in their homes or turning up dead in ditches. As a Filipino American with a foot in both countries - she calls herself "the first of the CNN hybrids" - she was perfectly positioned to warn America about what happens when a populist president is allowed to spread out-of-control lies across a vast, unregulated tech platform. "A lie told a million times becomes a fact," she repeated again and again."

""It's really easy to lose track on social media," Bowman said. "And most people are not on Twitter, but this stuff percolates on to Facebook, WhatsApp chats, everywhere." The ambition, Ritchie says, is not "for Toby Young to tweet, actually I was wrong. They're in an ideological system where they're not interested in a real debate. It's for the person who hears someone say something bizarre, and thinks, I don't know how to reply to that.""

"Google and Facebook are both fighting against legislation currently before the parliament that would force them to enter into negotiations with news media companies for payment for content, with an arbiter to ultimately decide the payment amount if no agreement can be reached. On Friday, the pair escalated the dispute by threatening to remove the Google search engine from Australia and Facebook to remove news from the Facebook feeds of all Australian users."

"In these cases, we call the SDKs "trackers" or "tracker SDKs." We follow the lead of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, and other digital rights organizations and use the term broadly: "Trackers" encompasses traditional advertisement surveillance, behavioral, and location monitoring. Legitimate uses may include user feedback mechanisms, telemetry, and crash reporters. App developers have decided to include tracker SDKs in apps for a variety of reasons, and we do not categorize all usage of trackers as malicious or condemn the app authors. Additionally, given the complexity and pace of software development, some developers may not be aware that trackers are in their app or may not know the full implications of bundling such code before publishing."

"Fighting the creep of government use of face surveillance and the related risks can seem overwhelming. Police agencies, and the spy tech vendors that profit from the growth of a surveillance state, have much to gain by deploying this invasive spying technology. "

"Activists from Fight for the Future prowled the halls of Congress in "jumpsuits with phone strapped to their heads conducting live facial recognition surveillance" to "show why this tech should be banned.""

"Prolific digital rights activism organization Fight for the Future has partnered with the group Students for Sensible Drug Policy to stop facial recognition technology from coming to college campuses. "