Pakistan has authorised its powerful spy agency to tap phone calls and messages, tightening the army’s grip on the South Asian nation.

Citizens and human rights advocates have criticised the move amid fears it could be weaponised to suppress political opponents and throttle dissent.

The ISI, which is run by the military, will be able to legally intercept and trace phone calls and messages in the interest of "national security".

Federal law minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told the parliament that the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications has been advised of the authorisation in an 8 July notice.

”Anyone who misuses the law will face action," he said on Tuesday while claiming that the authorisation is limited to tracking criminal and terrorist activities and that the government will ensure it doesn’t infringe people's lives and privacy.

The use of selfies to verify identity online is an emerging trend in some parts of the world since the pandemic forced more business to go digital. Some banks – and even governments – have begun requiring live images over Zoom or similar in order to participate in the modern economy. The question must be asked, though: is it cyber smart?

Just last Monday the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam began requiring face scans on phone banking apps as proof of identity for all digital transactions of around $400 and above.

The nation's residents are not able to opt out of the banking rules, despite Vietnam regularly finding itself ranked poorly when it comes to internet privacy or cyber security.

Local media has weighed in to suggest that selfies will not improve security. And just days into the new regime, some apps have already been called out for accepting still photos instead of a live image of the individual.

Brazil’s data protection authority (ANPD) has banned Meta from training its artificial intelligence models on Brazilian personal data, citing the “risks of serious damage and difficulty to users.” The decision follows an update to Meta’s privacy policy in May in which the social media giant granted itself permission to use public Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram data from Brazil — including posts, images, and captions — for AI training.

The decision follows a report published by Human Rights Watch last month which found that LAION-5B — one of the largest image-caption datasets used to train AI models — contains personal, identifiable photos of Brazilian children, placing them at risk of deepfakes and other exploitation.

cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/2005038

I know this is an outrageously bad idea, I don't need convincing. I am just looking for some more information and discussion on what exactly the exposure and surveillance risk is.

I'm asking both for my own education (I am still very green to networking), and to better explain to people in my life if and why they should care.

1. Is it true that traffic can be tracked and logged by ISP through DNS lookups, as these routers are preconfigured to use their internal dns service?

2. If this is changed (like base.dns.mullvad.net), how much does this actually mitigate the risk here?

3. What about when a VPN (mullvad) is also being used at all times? Would it then be "overly paranoid" to fear this untrusted box all the traffic goes through?

I personally take a conservative approach to things like this and assume it's an unacceptable risk, but I don't really understand what the truth is.

Thank you in advance for your time and thoughts.

EDIT: I'm asking about US and US adjacent areas

Here is the website if you want to take a look yourself: https://zerotrace.org/

Social: https://www.instagram.com/zerotracepen/

You'll need to copy and paste the links, I didn't want to send them any direct traffic.

The ads seem to be targeted at younger and less tech-literate audiences. There are some comments on the posts joking/accusing them of being a honeypot, and the "company" is pretending to not understand.

Ignoring all the over the top outfits and video edits, here are some of their claims:

New Technological Advancement

Cybersecurity Experts Have Finally Found A Solution To Tor’s Vulnerabilities

Are You still using Tor Browser and a VPN? STOP! You already know you could expose yourself with one wrong click. Why leave it to chance?

Cybersecurity experts are redefining what achieving true anonymity really requires.

Who Is This For?

Gun Store Owners Private Investigators Construction Management Cybersecurity Audits

In partnership with Debian, Tor, Electrum

A lawsuit accusing Google of breaking America's child privacy laws will proceed to trial as a judge denied the web goliath's motion to throw out the case.

Filed in June last year, the suit alleges Google ignored state child privacy laws in California, Florida, and New York, which prohibit targeted advertising to children under the age of 13 and collecting their data.

Specifically, the suit is going after Google for setting up a program in 2015 called Designed for Families (DFF). That essentially allowed developers to declare their apps were all above board regarding advertising to children and that only appropriate content would be shown. Apps verified as such by the DFF program would be presented to parents in the Google Play store as safe for kids.

This was an interview on ABC (Australian public broadcaster) with Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker. It covered some points relevant to the discussions on Signal and encrypted messaging, with a small bit on AI at the end. The original title of the video is bad.

Key points in the video:

• 1:30 - Should platforms be held responsible for [the content]
• 3:15 - (paraphrased) Governments want law enforcement to have access to encrypted communications, why not?
• 4:15 - (paraphrased) What if people are using it for criminal behaviour
• 7:00 - (paraphrased) Random AI section

Today EU governments will not adopt their position on the EU regulation on “combating child sexual abuse”, the so-called chat control regulation, as planned, which would have heralded the end of private messages and secure encryption. The Belgian Council presidency postponed the vote at short notice. Once again the chat control proposal fails in Council.

A controversial European Union legislative proposal to scan the private messages of citizens in a bid to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is a risk to the future of web security, Meredith Whittaker warned in a public blog post Monday. She’s the president of the not-for-profit foundation behind the end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging app Signal.

“There is no way to implement such proposals in the context of end-to-end encrypted communications without fundamentally undermining encryption and creating a dangerous vulnerability in core infrastructure that would have global implications well beyond Europe,” she wrote.

The most recent European Council proposal, which was put forward in May under the Belgian presidency, includes a requirement that “providers of interpersonal communications services” (aka messaging apps) install and operate what the draft text describes as “technologies for upload moderation”, per a text published by Netzpolitik.

Last month, Euractiv reported that the revised proposal would require users of E2EE messaging apps to consent to scanning to detect CSAM. Users who did not consent would be prevented from using features that involve the sending of visual content or URLs it also reported — essentially downgrading their messaging experience to basic text and audio.

The EU’s own data protection supervisor has also voiced concern. Last year, it warned that the plan poses a direct threat to democratic values in a free and open society.

Pressure on governments to force E2EE apps to scan private messages, meanwhile, is likely coming from law enforcement.

Back in April European police chiefs put out a joint statement calling for platforms to design security systems in such a way that they can still identify illegal activity and send reports on message content to law enforcement. Their call for “technical solutions” to ensure “lawful access” to encrypted data did not specify how platforms should achieve this sleight of hand

cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/1846370

Hello all,

Just wondering if there are any projects involving lemmy and .onion

I searched and didn't see anything but I figured I'd ask

If not is there a reason this isn't possible? Or has nobody cared to do it yet?

When I have to visit r****t I use a libreddit hidden service, and there are quite a few to choose from. Am I correct to think a similar mirror should be about as easy to implement for Lemmy?

an onion only instance where it never touches the clearnet would be really cool too but it would probably be a ghost town (sadly).

Love to hear your thoughts

Thanks

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/34636917

Last month, Wells Fargo terminated over a dozen bank employees following an investigation into claims of faking work activity on their computers, according to a Bloomberg report.

A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) search conducted by Ars confirmed that the fired members of the firm's wealth and investment management division were "discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work."

A rise in remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote worker surveillance techniques, especially those using software installed on machines that keeps track of activity and reports back to corporate management. It's worth noting that the Bloomberg report says the FINRA filing does not specify whether the fired Wells Fargo employees were simulating activity at home or in an office.

We do not know exactly what technique(s) the fired employees used to simulate keyboard activity, but several options exist for would-be work-shirkers. Those options include software that simulates keyboard presses (like AutoHotkey) and physical devices sold on Amazon for around $30–$60 that use a motor or solenoid and a small arm to push a real keyboard at random intervals.