After another week of dismally tragic news and moral failures by the powerful, it is good to know that you can at least depend on the small things. Wait, wait.
A security researcher revealed this week that DuckDuckGo, which markets itself as the internet privacy company, made an exception for Microsoft's blocking of advertising trackers on websites, sparking accusations of betraying its purported privacy. There is a rising awareness of how the stakes of online surveillance are rising as signs grow that the US Supreme Court will overturn abortion rights. More than 40 members of Congress called on the company to stop tracking location data in the future.
The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation has failed to meaningfully curb Big Tech's privacy abuses four years after it was passed. Australia's digital driver's licenses are too easy to forge. China has accused the US of espionage. We spoke to the inventor of the browser about how to handle cookie settings for privacy and those pop-ups on websites. We interviewed the CEO of Protonmail about its ambitions to offer a broader range of privacy-focused services beyond email.
There is more. We rounded up all the news that we didn't cover in-depth this week. Click on the headlines to read the full story. Stay safe out there.
A glaring hole in the privacy protections of DuckDuckGo's purportedly privacy-focused browser was discovered by a privacy researcher. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg admitted that a partnership deal he struck with Microsoft included creating a carveout that let the software giant track DuckDuckGo's users. The revelation blew a gaping hole in the company's reputation as a privacy-preserving tech firm. This capitalism thing is hard to escape.
The Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice accused the company of selling user data that it had collected under the guise of security, so it agreed to pay a $150 million fine. Users were asked to share their email and phone numbers for security reasons, but the data was sold to advertisers who wanted to target ads to their users. That bait-and-switch was in violation of an agreement with the FTC.
If the world had doubts about China's re-education camps for Muslim minorities, they should be corrected by the leak of the Xinjiang Police Files. The leak, provided by an unknown source to researcher Adrien Zenz, who in turn provided the info to a group of global media outlets, includes a vast collection of tens of thousands of internal files, manuals, and even detailed photos revealing life in one of Xinjiang's prisons. The files show shoot-to-kill orders for any prisoner attempting to escape the camps, and guidelines for shackling the inmates when they are transferred between different parts of the facility. It also includes photos of the camp's prisoners, who were as young as 15 and as old as 73, often jailed for years without trial for offenses as simple as studying Islamic texts.
The site that published leaked documents from a group of UK politicians was created by Russia-based hackers and was revealed by the UK government and researchers. The site described the leaked emails as coming from an influential group of hardline right-wing Brexit supporters, including former MI6 head Richard Dearlove. The site appears to have been created by a Russian hacker group, according to the Threat Analysis Group. The leak of Dearlove's emails should be seen as a Russian influence operation, especially since the West is still angry with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
An Iraqi man is accused of trying to assassinate former president George W. Bush in Dallas, going so far as to take video of Bush's home in November. According to the warrant, the FBI was able to stop the plot through the use of a confidential source and the surveilling of the would-be assassin's messages. The case shows how the FBI has been able to penetrate communications on apps that use end-to-end encryption through the use of undercover agents.
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