As the sands of time shift and slide, so do the ebbs and flows of the news in the data economy. And they have washed up on the shore a new issue of WIP:
- Another day, another massive data breach
- The “Retweet” button creator deeply regrets his invention
- The U.S. police have become Amazon’s shills for surveillance tech
- The FTC revealed the Facebook fine
- One of the most sophisticated Russian spyware yet spotted in the wild
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Another day, another massive data breach
Just as the Equifax slap-on-the-wrist data breach settlement has slowly begun to drift from the headlines, another giant financial institution has swooped in to fill the void. As TechCrunch reports, CapitalOne was hit with a credit file breach that affected around 100 million Americans and six million Canadians. The breach includes stolen names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, self-reported income and more credit card application data. One person has already been arrested and detained pending trial.
The “Retweet” button creator deeply regrets his invention
A loaded weapon in the hands of a four-year-old. That’s how the creator of the retweet button, Chris Wetherell, dubbed his invention for BuzzFeed. Before the button automated the process, people had to copy/paste tweets to retweet them. The button was supposed to just integrate this functionality into the platform. But an important aspect was left out. “Only two or three times did someone ask a broader and more interesting social question, which was, ‘What is getting shared?’” Wetherell said. In retrospect, maybe it should have been asked more frequently.
The U.S. police have become Amazon’s shills for surveillance tech
In this great piece by Motherboard, we learn how police departments across the U.S. have signed confidential agreements with Amazon under which they advertise the company’s Ring doorbells. The result of Ring-police partnerships is a self-perpetuating surveillance network: the more people download Ring’s Neighbors app, the more free Ring surveillance cameras the police get to hand out to the public and the more surveillance footage the police get access to. A win-win for almost all but the public.
The FTC revealed the Facebook fine
After the unofficial reports of the record FTC fine for Facebook, the commission publicly revealed the deal. Along with the $5 billion fine, regulators also announced two separate, smaller settlements and tasked the company with establishing a new governance structure for reviewing user privacy. Critics have already called the deal a clear win for Facebook and one of the commissioners agrees with them.
One of the most sophisticated Russian spyware yet spotted in the wild
Researchers have discovered some of the most advanced and full-featured mobile surveillanceware ever seen, Ars Technica reports. Dubbed Monokle, it was created by Special Technology Centre, a St. Petersburg defence contractor that was sanctioned in 2016 by then-President Obama for helping Russia’s GRU meddle in the 2016 election. Monokle uses several novel tools, including the ability to modify the Android trusted-certificate store and a command-and-control network that can communicate over Internet TCP ports, email, text messages, or phone calls. It’s rare but dangerous.
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