Monique O. Madan and Wesley Callow from The Markup walk us through each step to safely purchase, set-up, and connect an off-the-grid phone, using multiple email accounts, and thereafter how and when to use it, keeping it otherwise turned off and not connected to WiFi.
Jordan Furlong states that “If anyone’s going to speak up, it should be law firms. If anyone’s going to take a stand, it should be law firms.” This position resonates as more than 20 major law firms have been directed by Trump’s EEOC to provide information about their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) related employment practices.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring; US cities warn of wave of unpaid parking phishing texts; OPM watchdog to investigate IT risks tied to DOGE’s agency access; and A Brand-New Botnet Is Delivering Record-Size DDoS Attacks.
The Trump administration announced on March 12, 2025, that it is “reconsidering” more than 30 air pollution regulations in a series of moves that could impact air quality across the United States. “Reconsideration” is a term used to review or modify a government regulation. While Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin provided few details, Prof. Richard Peltier discusses how the breadth of the regulations being reconsidered affects all Americans. They include rules that set limits for pollutants that can harm human health, such as ozone, particulate matter and volatile organic carbon.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: 89% of enterprise AI usage is invisible to the organization; The Digital Packrat Manifesto; Cellebrite Is Using AI to Summarize Chat Logs and Audio from Seized Mobile Phones; and Flock Threatens Open Source Developer Mapping Its Surveillance Cameras.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Trump has purged government websites; The Wayback Machine is trying to preserve the record; Turn off your read receipts. They’re a security risk; You can now easily remove personal info from Google Search results; Google plans to end SMS verification in favor of QR codes; and Verizon isn’t doing enough to protect customers from robocall scams.
On February 2, 2025 OpenAI released Deep Research, an AI agent capable of completing multi-step research tasks and synthesizing large amounts of online information. OpenAI’s chief product officer Kevin Weil said it can complete complex research tasks in minutes that might take a person many hours or days, according to The New York Times, adding that it should be particularly useful for people in fields such as finance, science and law. Robert Ambrogi created a comprehensive and expertly crafted series of prompts to evaluate Deep Search’s ability to research and analyze the legality of the Trump administration’s temporary pause of federal grant and financial assistance programs, and then to outline the potential legal remedies available to recipients of those grants and financial assistance.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Musk Ally Demands Admin Access to System That Lets Government Text the Public; How Phished Data Turns into Apple & Google Wallets; Identity is the Breaking Point—Get It Right or Zero Trust Fails; Chase Says Making Payments Over Social Media Is Too Messy, Will Block Zelle Transactions; and FTC Launches Inquiry into Big Tech Censorship Practices.
Research librarian Alejandro Paz and policy scholar Eric Nost, who belong to a network called the Public Environmental Data Partners, a coalition of nonprofits, archivists and researchers who rely on federal data in our analysis, advocacy and litigation, are working to ensure that data remains available to the public.
Jerry Lawson’s opinion of the new book, Generative AI for Dummies, is that it demystifies the complex world of generative AI for audiences from all walks of life. If you’re after a fast, engaging, and practical introduction to AI—and maybe even a little chuckle or two along the way—this book delivers.