Tootfinder

The UK has ramped up the use of facial recognition, AI, and internet regulation to address crime and other issues, stoking concerns of surveillance overreach (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/t…

Has Britain Gone Too Far With Its Digital Controls?
British authorities have ramped up the use of facial recognition, artificial intelligence and internet regulation to address crime and other issues, stoking concerns of surveillance overreach.

Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance
The Swiss government could soon require service providers with more than 5,000 users to collect government-issued identification, retain subscriber data for six months and, in many cases, disable encryption.
🇨🇭 https://

Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance
Swiss-based providers of secure email, VPNs and other digital services say a pending government proposal would be catastrophic to their ability to protect the privacy of users.

Across China, tens of thousands of people tagged as troublemakers are trapped in a digital cage,
barred from leaving their province and sometimes even their homes
by the world’s largest digital surveillance apparatus.
Most of this technology came from companies in a country that has long claimed to support freedoms worldwide -- the United States.
⚠️ Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state,…

How Silicon Valley enabled China's digital police state
An AP investigation reveals that U.S. technology companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known. Firms including IBM, Dell, and Cisco sold billions in technology to Chinese police and government agencies, despite repeated warnings that such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities. Critically, American surveillance technologies allowed a b…

https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surveillance-silicon-valley-uyghurs-tech-xinjiang-8e000601dadb6aea230f18170ed54e88
“Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built …

How Silicon Valley enabled China's digital police state
An AP investigation reveals that U.S. technology companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known. Firms including IBM, Dell, and Cisco sold billions in technology to Chinese police and government agencies, despite repeated warnings that such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities. Critically, American surveillance technologies allowed a b…

Switzerland proposes regulations forcing service providers to collect user IDs and disable encryption, threatening its status as a haven for privacy tech firms (Suzanne Smalley/The Record)
https://therecord.media/switzerland-digital-privacy-law-proton-priv…

Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance
Switzerland-based providers of secure email, VPNs and other digital services say a pending government proposal would be catastrophic to their ability to protect the privacy of users.

I would have thought that someone like Epstein didn't set up a Yahoo Mail account to coordinate illegal activities, but would have paid someone to set up his own email server.
That's a stark reminder to all the people saying "just setup your own Mastodon server" or similar things about personal digital autonomy.

Jeffrey Epstein’s Yahoo Inbox Revealed
Plus: ICE deploys secretive phone surveillance tech, officials warn of Chinese surveillance tools in US highway infrastructure, and more.

Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance https://therecord.media/switzerland-digital-privacy-law-proton-privacy-surveillance

Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance
[…] From passports to colonial passbooks, from welfare cards to border regimes, the apparatus of identification has always been tied to domination. Digital ID is simply the latest iteration of this long history, but with a scale and sophistication that makes its dangers even more profound. […]
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Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance - Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement
The world is entering an era where identity is no longer a matter of personal relationships, lived experience, or even paperwork. Increasingly, it is reduced...

Next week, on the 14th of October, the EU will attempt to push through a new law called "Chat Control." They claim this law is necessary to protect children from harmful individuals—and let’s be clear, protecting children is crucial. But here’s what’s really happening: the EU wants to scan every phone, tablet, and computer. This includes your photos, files, and every message you’ve sent or will send. 448 million people will be under 24/7 surveillance.
You might say, "I ha…

Fascism is once again rising across the world, creeping in through surveillance capitalism, mass data harvesting, chat control laws, UK-style age verification, and endless new tools of digital censorship presented as safety.
Freedoms vanish piece by piece through biometric borders, predictive policing, restrictions on protest, voter suppression, book bans, and the relentless spread of authoritarian policies disguised as order. What seemed impossible a decade ago is now routine.
T…

If you are a citizen of the EU and are concerned about government surveillance of our private chats, photographs and documents, it is important to take action before October. This tool: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ will easily enable you to draft an email to send to your MEPs.
Specifically,

Investigation: IBM, Dell, Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, and other US tech companies helped design and build China's vast digital surveillance state (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surve…

Validating Terrain Models in Digital Twins for Trustworthy sUAS Operations
Arturo Miguel Russell Bernal, Maureen Petterson, Pedro Antonio Alarcon Granadeno, Michael Murphy, James Mason, Jane Cleland-Huang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16104

Validating Terrain Models in Digital Twins for Trustworthy sUAS Operations
With the increasing deployment of small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) in unfamiliar and complex environments, Environmental Digital Twins (EDT) that comprise weather, airspace, and terrain data are critical for safe flight planning and for maintaining appropriate altitudes during search and surveillance operations. With the expansion of sUAS capabilities through edge and cloud computing, accurate EDT are also vital for advanced sUAS capabilities, like geolocation. However, real-world sUAS de…

Protecting Persona Biometric Data: The Case of Facial Privacy
Lambert Hogenhout, Rinzin Wangmo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03035 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.…

Protecting Persona Biometric Data: The Case of Facial Privacy
The proliferation of digital technologies has led to unprecedented data collection, with facial data emerging as a particularly sensitive commodity. Companies are increasingly leveraging advanced facial recognition technologies, often without the explicit consent or awareness of individuals, to build sophisticated surveillance capabilities. This practice, fueled by weak and fragmented laws in many jurisdictions, has created a regulatory vacuum that allows for the commercialization of personal i…

VisAug: Facilitating Speech-Rich Web Video Navigation and Engagement with Auto-Generated Visual Augmentations
Baoquan Zhao, Xiaofan Ma, Qianshi Pang, Ruomei Wang, Fan Zhou, Shujin Lin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03410

VisAug: Facilitating Speech-Rich Web Video Navigation and Engagement with Auto-Generated Visual Augmentations
The widespread adoption of digital technology has ushered in a new era of digital transformation across all aspects of our lives. Online learning, social, and work activities, such as distance education, videoconferencing, interviews, and talks, have led to a dramatic increase in speech-rich video content. In contrast to other video types, such as surveillance footage, which typically contain abundant visual cues, speech-rich videos convey most of their meaningful information through the audio …

Strategic Analysis of Dissent and Self-Censorship
Joshua J. Daymude, Robert Axelrod, Stephanie Forrest
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03731 https://arxiv.org/p…

Strategic Analysis of Dissent and Self-Censorship
Expressions of dissent against authority are an important feature of most societies, and efforts to suppress such expressions are common. Modern digital communications, social media, and Internet surveillance and censorship technologies are changing the landscape of public speech and dissent. Especially in authoritarian settings, individuals must assess the risk of voicing their true opinions or choose self-censorship, voluntarily moderating their behavior to comply with authority. We present a…

Cyber security of Mega Events: A Case Study of Securing the Digital Infrastructure for MahaKumbh 2025 -- A 45 days Mega Event of 600 Million Footfalls
Rohit Negi, Amit Negi, Manish Sharma, S. Venkatesan, Prem Kumar, Sandeep K. Shukla
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15660

Cyber security of Mega Events: A Case Study of Securing the Digital Infrastructure for MahaKumbh 2025 -- A 45 days Mega Event of 600 Million Footfalls
Mega events such as the Olympics, World Cup tournaments, G-20 Summit, religious events such as MahaKumbh are increasingly digitalized. From event ticketing, vendor booth or lodging reservations, sanitation, event scheduling, customer service, crime reporting, media streaming and messaging on digital display boards, surveillance, crowd control, traffic control and many other services are based on mobile and web applications, wired and wireless networking, network of Closed-Circuit Television (CC…