Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
Attorney General Bob Ferguson, State Senator Manka Dhingra, State Representative Vandana Slatter, Alicia Hupprich, and Courtney Normand of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates joined NPI’s Andrew Villeneuve to unveil our April 2023 My Health, My Data Act poll finding at a press conference in Olympia.
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“The importance of abortion policy in the current midterms compared with four years ago has shifted the most among Democrats,” says the polling institute.
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“The betrayal of America’s professed principles was the friendly fire of the war on terror,” Carlos Lozada writes.
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“Though drivers may not realize it, tens of millions of American cars are being monitored,” reports The Washington Post, “and the number increases with nearly every new vehicle that is leased or sold. The result is that carmakers have turned on a powerful spigot of precious personal data, often without owners’ knowledge, transforming the automobile from a machine that helps us travel to a sophisticated computer on wheels that offers even more access to our personal habits and behaviors than smartphones do.”
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“Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card? Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet, a Quartz investigation has revealed.”
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“Major technology companies and civil liberties groups have joined Facebook in a closed courtroom battle over secret government access to social media records,” reports The Washington Post’s Ann Marimow.
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Today in Republican idiocy, we present a ridiculous statement by Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who is sadly lacking any sense.
Launch“States have started writing their own legislation to protect broadband privacy after Congress voted to repeal regulations that would have required internet providers to obtain their customers’ consent before collecting their personal information,” reports Matt Volz for The Associated Press.
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Let the police, FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security do their jobs. They do it far better than you realize. Harrop fails to accept
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Edward Snowden says Hillary Clinton’s bogus statements show a “lack of political courage” “Hillary Clinton twice this week has insisted, contrary to the facts, that
LaunchI can think of nothing that has done more harm to the Internet than ad tech… It interferes with everything we try to do on
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NSA spying relies on AT&T’s ‘extreme willingness to help’ “The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the
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When a company is put up for sale, in many cases, your data is, too Some Internet companies claim they will not sell users’ data,
LaunchThousands gather across Canada to protest Bill C-51 The Globe and Mail reports on the large demonstrations that took place yesterday in protest of Bill
LaunchThe great SIM heist: How spies stole the keys to the encryption castle Using documents provided by Edward Snowden, The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill and Josh
LaunchPRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Where there is a situation in which we’re trying to get a specific case of a possible national security threat — is
LaunchShades of Orwell’s 1984: Samsung reveals its SmartTV is always listening The Daily Beast’s Shane Harris reports, “You may be loving your new Internet-connected television
LaunchThat we can identify government officials, journalists and politicians with the help of a wireless network and their less thoughtful use of online services demonstrates
LaunchA blimp sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace flies above an NSA datacenter in Utah. The blimp reads “NSA Illegal Spying Below”; its flight coincided with the launch of StandAgainstSpying.org. (Photo courtesy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reproduced with permission)
LaunchSupreme Court of Canada delivers huge victory for Internet privacy Blogger Michael Geist breaks down the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in R. v Spencer,
LaunchThe privacy announcements today are a political smokescreen to enable Facebook to engage in more data gathering… They claim to protect user privacy at the
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