Direct link to video: https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1790799859899056132/pu/vid/avc1/1280x720/wisC0cfRP427swkT.mp4?tag=12

A feature Google demoed at its I/O confab yesterday, using its generative AI technology to scan voice calls in real time for conversational patterns associated with financial scams, has sent a collective shiver down the spines of privacy and security experts who are warning the feature represents the thin end of the wedge. They warn that, once client-side scanning is baked into mobile infrastructure, it could usher in an era of centralized censorship.

Apple abandoned a plan to deploy client-side scanning for CSAM in 2021 after a huge privacy backlash. However, policymakers have continued to heap pressure on the tech industry to find ways to detect illegal activity taking place on their platforms. Any industry moves to build out on-device scanning infrastructure could therefore pave the way for all-sorts of content scanning by default — whether government-led or related to a particular commercial agenda.

Meredith Whittaker, president of the U.S.-based encrypted messaging app Signal, warned: “This is incredibly dangerous. It lays the path for centralized, device-level client side scanning.

“From detecting ‘scams’ it’s a short step to ‘detecting patterns commonly associated w[ith] seeking reproductive care’ or ‘commonly associated w[ith] providing LGBTQ resources’ or ‘commonly associated with tech worker whistleblowing.’”

• Arizona's Attorney General, Kris Mayes, filed two lawsuits against Amazon on Wednesday for allegedly engaging in deceptive business practices and maintaining monopoly status. The first lawsuit accuses the company of using dark patterns to keep users from canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions, violating Arizona's Consumer Fraud Act. This is similar to a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Amazon in June.

• The second lawsuit alleges that Amazon unfairly maintains its monopoly status through agreements with third-party sellers that restrict them from offering lower prices off of the platform than they do on Amazon, violating Arizona's Uniform State Antitrust Act. This practice has also been targeted by other state attorneys general in cases filed against Amazon.

• Additionally, the lawsuit accuses Amazon's Buy Box algorithm of being biased towards first-party retail offers or sellers who participate in Fulfillment By Amazon, leading consumers to overpay for items that are available at lower prices from other sellers on Amazon. This aspect is also reflected in the FTC's recent antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, which has been joined by more than a dozen state attorneys general.

• Arizona seeks to stop Amazon from engaging in these allegedly deceptive and anticompetitive practices and award civil penalties and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/12699069

Instagram and Facebook under EU investigation for causing child addiction and harm

Here's a $120usd FLIR - how does it compare with a cheap plug in USB phone module?

Guess it's just missing a mounting case?

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/25062075

New development policy: code generated by a large language model or similar technology (e.g. ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot) is presumed to be tainted (i.e. of unclear copyright, not fitting NetBSD's licensing goals) and cannot be committed to NetBSD.

https://www.NetBSD.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

I revised the title many times. Am I giving the impact breadth of what it could be without veering into click-bait?

Bluetooth Low Energy MESH Network, it is built into the OS without any noted country exemption. Although there be will many air gaps, that is not what I mean.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/apple-and-google-deliver-support-for-unwanted-tracking-alerts-in-ios-and-android/

Some questions that came to mind reading it?

• Can China even pull it out of the OS for good measure, hack it?
• Even with topology of some enable, others disable, others wanting security will be reading bluetooth MAC addresses of un-consenting, disabled, for tracking of others whom have enabled, even if they are not being targeted. See below screenshots from the Internet Engineering Task Force presentation.
• Is the Bluetooth freqz and combinatory fields bio-active in any regard of it's function? Do plants stay healthy around "high intake" Bluetooth whatever that may be?
• They mentioned other devices and Industry being involved, how many devices to we expect to also use this protocol in the future?
• If we mapped it out, all of these devices thus operating, mapped out of the whole network with a Supercomputer, real-time, how much energy do you think it would be? How many BLE pulses per second, in a busy metropolitan area?
• Who pushed for this TRACKING NETWORK I will be partcipating in whether I like or NOT (uptake)?
• Where was the pre-planning market and socio-economic research on this presented beforehand?
• If entities very intent on tracking you, will just disable/refuse the protcol, then why instead would Apple and Alphabet whom introduced the vulnerability, just ...make thier own implementation secure?

So we're going to skip this useless marketing-speak on 9to5 Mac - Here’s how the new Cross-Platform Tracking Detection works in iOS 17.5

As far as I can tell, there is nothing that says it doesn't perform assessment of the MAC address in range, all of them, for "your" security of course. In fact, it seems in line with what they want to accomplish: Track all the trackers? Later safeguard them with a "Safefilter" online database check when Phone starts?

Did I get it wrong?

The Federal Trade Commission's Office of Technology has issued a warning to automakers that sell connected cars. Companies that offer such products "do not have the free license to monetize people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service," it wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Just because executives and investors want recurring revenue streams, that does not "outweigh the need for meaningful privacy safeguards," the FTC wrote.

In 2023, the Mozilla Foundation published an extensive report examining the various automakers' policies regarding the use of data from connected cars; the report concluded that "cars are the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy."

The FTC is not taking specific action against any automaker at this point. Instead, the blog post is meant to be a warning to the industry. It says that "connected cars have been on the FTC's radar for years," although the agency appears to have done very little other than hold workshops in 2013 and 2018, as well as publishing guidance for consumers reminding them to wipe the data from their cars before selling them.

The FTC says the easiest way to comply is to not collect the data in the first place.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/12670977

iPhone owners say the latest iOS update is resurfacing deleted nudes