Privacy

The standard U.S. vaccine card is a piece of paper — and thus quite easy to forge. So Holy Name Medical Center in New Jersey has turned to blockchain for secure and valid digital vaccine cards.

U.S. data protection laws often widely permit using data for profit but are more restrictive of socially beneficial uses. We wanted to ask a simple question: Do U.S. privacy laws actually protect data in the ways that Americans want?

In Maine, police departments in Lewiston and Auburn have moved to a new encrypted radio system that cannot be picked up by civilian scanners. Proponents say the tech will help reduce misinformation and fraud.

Hackers have found their way again into T-Mobile's systems, the fourth reported breach of the company since early 2020, and this haul included sensitive personal information associated with about 48 million people.

The Newark Liberty International Airport is using facial recognition to verify passengers for boarding at a single gate in a new pilot program. The goal is to make boarding a smoother process.

A cybersecurity company that searches for weaknesses was able to obtain the personal information of about 750,000 Indiana residents who took a contact tracing survey. The company destroyed the data eventually.

A trio of U.S. senators — two Democrats and one Republican — have written a letter to Amazon about the company’s biometric payment system, Amazon One. Privacy and competition are the two main concerns.

After announcing its plan to scan users' devices for photos that qualify as child sexual abuse material, Apple is coaching employees on how to respond to customers who complain about a perceived privacy violation.

Though it did not demonstrate harm had come to students as a result of social media posts by their schools, recent research has identified risks and privacy concerns stemming from such public posts and photos.

Apple said it will scan devices for photos uploaded to the cloud that would qualify as child pornography. This decision raises questions about the company's previous commitment to user privacy.

Chris Carr, attorney general of Georgia, has sided with a large coalition of attorneys general across the country. The group wants the Federal Communications Commission to take quicker action on illegal robocalls.

Advocacy groups say they received five New York City Police Department contracts that were significantly redacted. These documents seem to violate a law that requires the NYPD to be transparent about surveillance tech.

Thanks to a judge’s permission, Hartford County authorities wiretapped a suspect’s Facebook audio calls in 2020 for a drug trafficking case. A handful of similar wiretaps have occurred in Maryland since 2018.

A lengthy investigation that involved scouring surveillance videos and using facial recognition software connected a Harrisburg man to the shooting death of a Houston truck driver, court records state.

Earlier this week, UC San Diego Health disclosed that it experienced a data breach between December 2020 and April 2021 that could have compromised sensitive patient information. The breach occurred through phishing.

The Richmond County Sheriff's Office in Georgia is employing a camera system from Altanta-based company Flock Safety to track down criminals. Those who use the system claim it's not a threat to privacy.

Between April 27 and July 16, hackers attacked Florida's unemployment insurance website. The criminals may have acquired up to about 58,000 Social Security numbers of unemployed Floridians, among other data.

Hesperia, Calif., will buy seven more automated license plate reader cameras, despite a number of residents who expressed concern that the surveillance technology could turn the city into an Orwellian dystopia.