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"Meta has apologised after inserting the word "terrorist" into the profile bios of some Palestinian Instagram users, in what the company says was a bug in auto-translation. The issue, which was first reported by 404media, affected users with the word "Palestinian" written in English on their profile, the Palestinian flag emoji and the word "alhamdulillah" written in Arabic. When auto-translated to English the phrase read: "Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom." TikTok user YtKingKhan posted earlier this week about the issue, noting that different combinations still translated to "terrorist"."

Scary but if we are not careful - could be true in the future - "Existing properties will be required to install them over a four-year period. These would supply real-time images of terrorists, criminals and paedophiles at any time of day and night. Any disconnection of a camera would immediately alert the police as prima facie evidence of wrongdoing. I have held talks with the industry on whether the cameras should be in bathrooms and bedrooms. It would clearly be nonsensical to exclude them, as terrorists and paedophiles often make use of these rooms."

"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."

"Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, was asked to act to take down terrorist-sympathising websites from his search engines during a question and answer session at the literary festival on Saturday. This weekend MPs, including the Labour politician Paul Flynn, called on the company to prevent searches listing sites for groups such as the Islamist organisation Al Shabaab. Schmidt said: "We cannot prima facie identify evil and take it down. We have taken the decision that information if it's legal, even if it's despicable, will be indexed.""

"75% 75% surveyed by Ipsos/Reuters said, "they would not let investigators tap into their Internet activity to help the U.S. combat domestic terrorism"(up from 67% in 20"

Huge chunks of the Internet will be effectively unreachable, and which sites go into the censorship bucket will be decided upon in secret, by unelected employees of big corporations, like China's Huawei. Sure, you can untick the box if you want, but as David Cameron's advisors will tell you, defaults are powerful and most users never change them.

Is too much surveillance actually harming our ability to detect terrorist plots?

"The "March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance," a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government's secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings."

"Prominent Bahraini activist Nabeel Rajab was sentenced to six months in jail on Tuesday after criticizing the country's security forces on Twitter. Rajab was arrested in October for tweeting that Bahrain's security organizations are "ideological incubators" for those who join terrorist groups."

"It's highly unlikely investigative or intelligence agencies have much of an interest in protecting the privacy of non-targeted citizens, even in non-terrorist-related surveillance -- not if it means using alternate (read: "less effective") investigative methods or techniques. It has been demonstrated time and time again that law enforcement is more interested in the most direct route to what it seeks, no matter how much collateral damage is generated. "

"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."

"Launched in response to terror attacks in New Zealand in May, where a lone gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch while livestreaming the massacre on Facebook, it calls for the "effective enforcement" of laws prohibiting the dissemination of terrorist content. It also states that all action on the issue must be consistent with the principles of a free, open and secure Internet, without compromising freedom of expression."

"In Mexico, government-exclusive spyware technology is being used to target journalists, human rights defenders, anti-corruption advocates, and international investigators. Luis Fernando Garcia, Director of R3D, explains how technology meant to track terrorists is being turned against activists"

"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.""

"That's the crux of the problem. While you can legislate to only give state agencies access to terrorists' communications, and with proper oversight and authorisation, you cannot actually build encryption that works like that. If you put a backdoor in, it's there not just for security services to exploit, but for cyber-criminals, oppressive regimes and anyone else."

"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. "

"In response to the letter's renewed spread, Guardian News and Media removed it on 15 November 2023, replacing it with the statement: "The transcript published on our website had been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualised it." In a statement on Thursday, the White House said: "There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history"."

"The European Parliament secured a ban on use of real-time surveillance and biometric technologies including emotional recognition but with three exceptions, according to Breton. It would mean police would be able to use the invasive technologies only in the event of an unexpected threat of a terrorist attack, the need to search for victims and in the prosecution of serious crime."

"The public is often supportive of the use of such tech: 59% of U.K. adults told a survey they "somewhat" or "strongly" support police use of facial recognition technology in public spaces, and a Pew Research study found 46% of U.S. adults said they thought it was a good idea for society. In China, one study found that 51% of respondents approved of facial recognition tech in the public sphere, while in India, 69% of people said in a 2023 report that they supported its use by the police. But while authorities generally pitch facial recognition as a tool to capture terrorists or wanted murderers, the technology has also emerged as a critical instrument in a very particular context: punishing protesters. "