(3.2.2015) Police forces in England and Wales have uploaded up to 18 million „mugshots“ to a facial recognition database – despite a court ruling it could be unlawful.

(14.4.2014) Beyond the size of the database, the documents obtained by EFF‘s Freedom of Information Act requests also showed that database includes 4.3 million images obtained for „non-criminal purposes.“

(5.5.2016) EURODAC wurde vor 16 Jahren als grenzpolizeiliches Zentralsystem in Luxemburg eingerichtet, der Betrieb begann in 2003.

„Hierfür eine verfassungskonforme Rechtsgrundlage zu schaffen, das wäre eine schwierige Aufgabe“, sagte der netzpolitische Sprecher der Grünen-Bundestagsfraktion, Konstantin von Notz.

A former Defense Intelligence Agency officer has taken to LinkedIn to point out to all of us griping about the broken Vulnerability Equities Process — exposed by hackers holding NSA zero-days — have it all wrong. Michael Tanji says the NSA isn‘t here to protect developers from malicious attacks. It never was and it‘s never going to be.

Just as it serviced murderous regimes in Central America in the 1980s, Israel will now be exporting forms of repression to Honduras‘ abusive government.

All dies hindert die Bundesregierung nicht daran, seinen Etat weiter zu erhöhen, schließlich benötigt sie für ihre weltpolitischen Ambitionen einen möglichst starken BND. Deshalb hat der Dienst 300 Millionen Euro für seine Strategische Initiative Technik bekommen, die seine Spionagefähigkeiten im Internet zumindest in die Nähe derjenigen der NSA katapultieren soll; deshalb bereitet die Bundesregierung ein neues BND-Gesetz vor, das ihm neue Spielräume verschafft.

In February 2015, the FBI took control of Playpen, the largest dark web child pornography site at the time. But instead of shutting the site down, the agency kept it going for just under two weeks, in order to deliver malware to its visitors in the hope of identifying suspects in its investigation.

Newly filed court exhibits now suggest that the site performed substantially better while under the FBI‘s control, with users commenting on the improvements. The defense for the man accused of being the original administrator of Playpen claims that these improvements led to the site becoming even more popular.

(22.8.2016) Bilder von Überwachungskameras an Bahnhöfen und Flughäfen sollen anlasslos und automatisch mit Datenbanken abgeglichen werden. Taucht das Gesicht eines „Verdächtigen“ auf, schlägt das System Alarm. Eine Projektgruppe im Innenministerium arbeitet schon an der Einführung des Systems, für das Datenschützer keine gesetzliche Grundlage sehen.

Over the last few weeks there‘s been plenty of controversy over plans on the Côte d’Azur in the south of France to ban burkinis — a kind of full body bathing suit favored by some Muslim women. As the Guardian pointed out recently, the whole thing seems like a „bizarre inversion“ of Muslim countries where making sure women are covered is enforced:

Legislators and law enforcement (for the most part…) have been hesitant to demand companies build backdoors into their encryption schemes. The unwillingness to cross this government overreach line hasn‘t really tempered cursing of the impending darkness, however. That remains, largely propelled by a few of law enforcement‘s loudest mouths, who haven‘t seen a problem nerds can‘t solve, even after the nerds have told them repeatedly the problem (safely backdoored encryption) is unsolvable.