Online Publications about Privacy and Surveillance

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This is a list of online publications that I like to follow


(credit codastory.com)

Coda Story’s Authoritarian Tech

Of all this is the one I recommend the most. They talk about topics that are barely covered in the traditional media and in their newsletter they provide nice summaries and links to dig deeper into the topics. And their a non-profit! If you want some meaningful journalism, I suggest you take a look at them. And also, if you keep being regular there, remember to thank them with a donation :wink:

The Markup

Another non-profit newsroom dedicated exclusively to privacy issues. Founded by Julia Angwin, the author of a best-selling privacy book.

NY Times’ Privacy Project

NY Time’s attempt covering the privacy debate. Some opinion articles are quite valuable but they also provide voice to tech companies to [sweep under the rug] the privacy concerns about them (some serious double-think, if you ask me)

About: Intel

The Intercept’s Tech Series

The Intercept is the news website co-founded by Glen Greenwald, the journalist that broke the Snowden story. They do some of the best reporting I see today.

https://theintercept.com/technology/

The Privacy Issue

ElPais’s Retina Series (Spanish)

From one of the most prominent Spanish newspapers, it’s a series of black mirror-like series. If you read Spanish or translate it with deepl.com you’ll find some very nice articles.

https://retina.elpais.com/tag/privacidad_internet/

Tic Tank

O TICtank partilha informação sobre estudos ou investigação científica nas tecnologias e os respectivos impactos sociais, entre outros assuntos de interesse.

Digital Privacy News

Informing you without watching you: https://digitalprivacy.news/
This one does not seem to be real journalism. They seem to have an agenda as they have an instance where they interviewed someone about a private version of the tor network, and got negative feedback of the product on the interview. Instead of posting both positions, they dismissed the negative one and only promoted the product. This is the resulting article.


Press Releases / Blogs

(from Privacy non-profits)

These can also be a good place to look for news on privacy and surveillance.

EFF’s deeplinks

The Electronic Fronteer Foundation’s blog has a lot of insights (though most of it tents to be US-specific).

Privacy International

The UK-based global non-profit works on making govenments and organizations accountable for privacy violations.
https://www.privacyinternational.org/news

NYOB

NYOB is a eu-based non-profit founded by Max Schrems that currently focuses on leveraging the GDPR to fight court cases against organizations and governements.

EDRI (European Digital Rights)

It’s an association of digital rights organizations throughout Europe. Though not all members focus on privacy and as such not all publications are privacy-related. Edri-gram is their biweekly newsletter.

La Quadrature du Net

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If you have some other interesting news resources like these, please contribute with their links down below :slight_smile:

Yet another excellent article by El Pais Retina

https://retina.elpais.com/retina/2019/09/02/tendencias/1567429625_224813.html#?ref=rss&format=simple&link=guid

Just a few revelvant (translated) quotes:

You have an endless number of things to hide and an endless number of things to fear, and the fact that you don’t go around publishing your passwords or handing out copies of your house keys is proof of that.

The problem is not in the monetary value of the data. “Technically, Facebook doesn’t sell your data. And neither does Google,” says Véliz. What they sell is their power over you, their ability to show you ads and their ability to predict your behavior. “Google and Facebook are not in the data business. They’re in the business of power.”

Later on in the article it also gives a great insight on how we can show people that they already protect their privacy in similar ways we can do online:

Imagine someone asking for your phone in a bar and not taking no for an answer. What would you do? Maybe you’d be tempted to give him/her a fake number," she explains. Giving false names is just one of the tools: we can also use privacy extensions in Internet browsers, disconnect networks from our devices when we don’t need them.

Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics

They also mention that the writer, a Research Fellow t the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford is working a forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics in case someone is interested.

And she is also the Director of the research programme ‘Data, Privacy, and the Individual’ at the IE’s Center for the Governance of Change (Madrid) (source)

There is another news organization that may be publishing articles about privacy in the future.

They haven’t started publishing yet, but it seems promising. The main editor is Julia Angwin that wrote the great introductory book on privacy called “Dragnet Nation”. You can visit them on the link below

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Update: “The Markup” has just stated publishing

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I guess it also makes sense to include press releases / blogs from non-profits like LaQuadrature. I’ve added a section for that. Thanks

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Removed this source following a discussion on our public chat.

This one is a classic https://cryptome.org/

@kgallagher