Number Plate Readers Undermine Neighbourhood Privacy & VoteRef Doxxes People with Only a Name (Issue 42, 2025)
On top of that, AI is taking people's rights as well as their jobs, while plenty of discussion is being had in regard to voter privacy & potential misuse of technologies deployed during election time.
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In this edition:
Number Plate Readers Undermine Security of Neighbourhoods Around the World
Defense Forensics & Biometrics Agency Self-Reports on their “War Against Anonymity”
Another Privacy Breach at Amazon Exposes Profiling of Own Employees
Warrants are Debatable According to Secret Service E-mails
Tinder, MyFitnessPal, Candy Crush - your Favourite Apps Leaking your Location Data
AI are Now Taking Workers’ Rights as well as their Jobs
Georgia’s Slippery Slope to Purging Mass Voter Eligibility
VoteRef Doxxes People’s Voting History, Address, Age & More with Only a Name.
Number Plate Readers Undermine the Security of Neighbourhoods Around the World
Automated licence plate readers (ALPRs) are a risk to the privacy of citizens. Vehicle licence plates are connected to people’s private information like their name, address, even social security numbers. The ALRPs track all vehicles with legible license plates that drive past them.
The Policing Project from the NYU School of Law states the benefits, which include reducing crime, and the costs - such as false alerts, misuse for personal reasons by officers, privacy and over policing. This is all without mentioning the potential of data leaks to the dark web and other unwanted corners of the internet.
DeFlock is an open-source site named after one of the largest manufacturers of ALPRs in the US - Flock. It shows users exactly where these licence plate readers are located. Currently, it tracks them all over the world with easy to use search functions and an interactable map. It is far from a complete list as the data is being supplied by regular people.
If you have seen any of these cameras in your neighborhoods that aren’t displayed on the map, you can report them on their website.
Defense Forensics & Biometrics Agency Self-Reports on their War Against Anonymity
The Defense Forensics & Biometrics Agency (DFBA - a U.S. Army Agency) publishes on their Youtube and Vimeo pages a short and shorter video explaining the Agency's purpose and what data it can supply to other government agencies, specifically citing their “war on anonymity” as a cause.
This video first describes the collection of biometric data from items brought back from the military, such as bombs, but later mentions cross-referencing that data (eg. fingerprints) with those of people who wish to board flights or come into the U.S, implying that DFBA provides their biometric data collection to border control authorities.
A 2018 article from Military Spot notes that the FBI, in tandem with the DFBA, “inaugurated” biometric operations in the US. The DFBA reportedly maintains an Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) database, which is a generic term for an enterprise software platform, typically commercially created and provided.
The DFBA is named as a user of ABIS platforms as early as the U.S’ war in Afghanistan back in 2012 - which contained the biometric profiles on millions of individuals in Afghanistan, “some of whom had already been classified as most-wanted terrorists.”
In a more recent video from 2022, the DFBA mention that they work in collaboration with the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Department of Justice. The threat is the increasing and pervasive use of the ABIS type of platform across governments from local to federal and across countries, the possible cross-integration of these platforms and then their AI-fication.
Another Privacy Breach at Amazon Exposes Profiling of Own Employees
Collection of public data and regulations (or lack thereof ) surrounding its storage, remains a topical issue of the day.
In November last year, 2.8 million lines of Amazon employee data were published to a crime-focused forum; names, work contact information, email addresses, desk phone numbers and work locations were released to the public.
This breach occurred due to a third-party service provider who was given this information, however Amazon asserts that the provider only had access to contact information and not more sensitive details, such as social security numbers. We would argue one’s physical place of employment falls into the ‘sensitive’ category.
While Amazon claims the provider has since fixed the underlying security vulnerability, a cybersecurity firm has established that this was just one of many leaks and not only from Amazon.
Warrants are Debatable According to Secret Service E-mails
Documents from the Secret Service, procured through the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that intelligence agencies are using a powerful surveillance application known as Locate X, which allows a person’s precise movements to be tracked at the click of a mouse. One such example given is the ability to follow people's trips across state lines, to for example, abortion clinics, and then to their likely place of residence.
Locate X’s Terms of Service specify that the tool can only be used for research purposes and cannot be used as evidence in court cases, nor allows the mention of the technology in legal proceedings at all. However internal emails reveal that not all officials know how to use the tool ‘legally.’
Locate X works by using location data, likely sold to the company by third party applications. These, seemingly harmless apps, have your geo-location consent via their terms of service to collect this data. It’s on this flimsy basis that Agencies argue the requirement for a warrant is questionable, as it was provided to the initial application that you consented to see your whereabouts.
Tinder, MyFitnessPal, Candy Crush - your Favourite Apps Leaking your Location Data
Hacked files from Gravy Analytics, a location data company, reveal which apps are being used to collect your location data. Knowingly or not, some of the most popular apps globally are co-opted by the advertising industry to harvest your information, which can ultimately end up with law enforcement agencies (see article above.)
Location data leaks come from widespread and seemingly harmless apps across both Android and iOS; such as pregnancy tracking apps, games like Candy Crush, religious prayer apps and a whole lot more. It is possible that app developers are none the wiser, as the leaks occur through the advertising ecosystem and not code-developed by the app creators.
Historically, app developers did include bundles of code that collected location data from users. Today, commercial and government parties can use the online advertising channel “Bid Stream”, which works by bidding in real time to place ads inside apps. What is not widely known is that the process also leaks to vendors sensitive information, like the location of your device - which is not something you knowingly consent to.
And yet, privacy breaches on such a massive scale are not making headlines.
AI are Now Taking Workers’ Rights as well as their Jobs
Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity AI (“an AI-powered, trusted answer-engine”, similar to ChatGPT) offered to “help” The New York Times Chairman during an employee strike of well over 600 workers asking for fairer pay and job protections. It’s unclear what services exactly Perplexity AI could offer, but it appears as though the company insinuated bypassing NYT human workers in some capacity.
This event is especially ironic as Perplexity AI has been sued by numerous media organizations, such as The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Financial News, and Barron’s for lifting human journalists’ work and copyright infringements. The tool allegedly works by scouring the internet to '“gather information from authoritative sources and then compile the content into an easy-to-understand answer in response to a user’s question or prompt.”
Perplexity AI, and others like it, pose an issue for content-producing industries, making newspapers redundant and taking away both clicks and ad revenue. As for workers, while the AI portfolio is full of everybody else’s work, it doesn’t require breaks, pay, nor does it have the ability to go on strike.
Georgia’s Slippery Slope to Purging Mass Voter Eligibility
Eagle AI is a program created in the aftermath of the 2020 Elections to challenge “dubious” voter registrations - and which was almost implemented in Columbia County, GA, before the 2024 Presidential Elections.
The program is designed to look for any discrepancy in voter rolls and when run through roughly 8 million voter registrations, it found 1.4 million typos. This means there were inexact matches of voters' names or addresses, and on this basis, these registrations could have been purged due to “ineligibility.”
Although the software wasn’t put to use in the 2024 Elections, the Executive Director of Columbia County’s Board of Elections said that the County didn’t use Eagle AI only because it didn’t have enough time to be trained in its use. Due to the software’s otherwise positive reception with lawmakers, it could be utilised in future elections. A slippery slope?
VoteRef Doxxes People’s Voting History, Address, Age & More with Only a Name.
Like Eagle AI (above), VoteRef is a website that was also created following disputes over the 2020 Election results. The site publishes voter rolls for easy public viewing, which include the names, addresses, voting history (!) and age of any registered voter - currently available in 19 States.
Voter rolls are usually of interest only to party candidates for their campaigns, and although technically public, the process to obtain such information used to take time and effort. VoteRef makes all of this information accessible to anyone, at any time.
As we know, politics is a highly divisive subject, meaning this public information can have a negative impact on people’s lives. In an interview with NPR, reporter Megan O'Matz states that elections officials have worries about intimidation of voters, “Just think about this - let's say you notice your neighbour had a sign in his yard for Trump, then you look [them] up and find that that person didn't vote in 2020. Is that neighbour going to be put on the spot?”
Politics aside - anyone can find out your address and age by simply typing in your name. Yikes!
That concludes this edition of Your Worldwide INTERNET REPORT!
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