#privacy-and-surveillance

#privacy-and-surveillance

This month, a judge ordered the University of Pennsylvania to justify its refusal to collect and disclose the names and personal contact information of Jewish faculty, staff and students to the federal government. Late last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Penn to force compliance with this chilling demand, made in the name of fighting antisemitism. Jewish and non-Jewish community members at Penn and beyond have united to support the university's resistance to compiling and releasing data about members of campus Jewish organizations,

The new proposals mean travelers will likely soon be obliged to share their social media history, phone numbers and email addresses as part of the travel authorization process. The DHS said the proposal, which will reportedly come into effect on February 8, 2026, unless challenged in court beforehand, originated from US President Donald Trump's January order for arrivals to be "vetted and screened to the maximum degree."

"I wasn't allowed to stay in certain societies because I am a woman," Sikdar said. "If you're single or divorced, landowners said they can't allow it."

Caroline Wilson Palow, legal director of the campaign group Privacy International, said the new order might be "just as big a threat to worldwide security and privacy" as the old one. She said: "If Apple breaks end-to-end encryption for the UK, it breaks it for everyone. The resulting vulnerability can be exploited by hostile states, criminals, and other bad actors the world over."

Governments are increasingly relying on data-intensive systems, both to wage wars and to administer public services. These systems, increasingly provided by the same firms using similar tools, will come to affect our day-to-day lives whether we are in war zones or town squares. This is the era of Militarisation of Tech. The technologies that our governments rely on to deliver services and pursue their objectives are becoming increasingly data-intensive and militarised, which threatens our privacy, dignity, and autonomy.

Pew Research asked U.S. adults if certain behaviors in public, such as cursing or smoking, were acceptable. The above are the results for four age groups. For every behavior, the percentage of people who said it was rarely or never acceptable increased with age. Television and movies (and my own experiences) would tell you that sounds about right, but for some reason the clear trend surprised me. A quiz with the behaviors lets you get in on the action to see how crotchety you are.