June 29th, 2019

The Chinese government is currently implementing a social credit system to monitor its 1.3 billion citizens... The gathered data is used to create mandatory social credit ratings for every citizen. These ratings will score citizens’ “general worthiness” and provide those with higher scores opportunities like access to jobs, loans, and travel. Those with lower scores will not have access to those opportunities....

While the United States government has yet to implement such a system, companies in the country are...

FTC Letter from representconsumers.org:

The Secret Surveillance Scores are generated by a shadowy group of privacy-busting firms that operate in dark recesses of the American marketplace. They collect thousands or even tens of thousands of intimate details of each person’s life – enough information, it is thought, to literally predetermine a person’s behavior – either directly or through data brokers. Then, in what is euphemistically referred to as “data analytics,” the firms’ engineers write software algorithms that instruct computers to parse a person’s data trail and develop a digital “mug shot.” Eventually, that individual profile is reduced to a number – the score – and transmitted to corporate clients looking for ways to take advantage of, or even avoid, the consumer.

Companies are using Secret Surveillance Scores to evaluate you.... These scores are used to discriminate based on income... Stores are using this scoring system to charge you higher prices... We are being spied on and scored on a wide variety of factors... The government isn’t doing anything to stop these practices...

The report gets crazier. Make sure to click above and read the whole thing.

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FBI officials reportedly visited at least 10 Americans universities since 2018 and encouraged them to take extra precaution when it comes to Chinese students or scholars affiliated with Chinese state-affiliated research institutions... According to NPR, the officials said the universities should actively monitor the Chinese nationals and review ongoing research that involves Chinese individuals and could have defense applications.

“We are being asked what processes are in place to know what labs they are working at or what information they are being exposed to. It’s not a question of just looking for suspicious behavior — it’s actually really targeting specific countries and the people from those countries.” — Fred Cate

Lake City's council approved the measure during an emergency meeting Monday night and will be paying about $462,000 via Bitcoin, by way of the city's insurer. This payment follows a similar incident in Riviera Beach, a city of 34,000 near West Palm Beach, where the city's council authorized a similar $600,000 ransom payment.

These are both signs of how increasingly sophisticated hackers are targeting cities with outdated IT infrastructure and holding them ransom for sizeable sums. And suceeding...

The bank has decided to "exit the relationships" it has with companies that provide detention services at the state and federal level and has been discussing the issue "for some time," according to a statement provided to USA TODAY.

"The private sector is attempting to respond to public policy and government needs and demands in the absence of long standing and widely recognized reforms needed in criminal justice and immigration policies," the statement read. "Lacking further legal and policy clarity, and in recognition of the concerns of our employees and stakeholders in the communities we serve, it is our intention to exit these relationships."

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam issued the permanent injunction in a California federal court, after initially ruling last month to temporarily halt the administration’s use of military funds for the border wall... The injunction halts border wall construction at different sites in New Mexico, California, Arizona and Texas, expanding Gilliam's previous ruling. Gilliam, an Obama appointee, made the ruling on the military funds in a lawsuit brought forward by several groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Sierra Club, challenging the diversion of the military funds under the scope of the national emergency order.

Politico reported that "senior Trump administration officials met on Wednesday [June 26] to discuss whether to seek legislation prohibiting tech companies from using forms of encryption that law enforcement can’t break," it was of real significance, "a provocative step that would reopen a long-running feud between federal authorities and Silicon Valley."...

Politico cited several unnamed sources in reporting that "the encryption challenge, which the government calls 'going dark,' was the focus of a National Security Council meeting Wednesday morning that included the No. 2 officials from several key agencies." The discussion focused on the lockdown of messaging apps, billed as "a privacy and security feature," which "frustrates authorities investigating terrorism, drug trafficking and child pornography."

The challenge for governments, the U.S. included, is that the privacy of messaging has become a central theme in the ongoing debate around privacy, data security and information integrity...

Earlier this month, a coalition of technology companies, privacy experts and human rights groups published an open response to a discussion document from U.K. spy agency GCHQ that suggested the idea of a ghost protocol to enable "an extra end" in end-to-end encrypted messaging, allowing governments (when required) to listen in.

The response from the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google and WhatsApp was blunt: "It would undermine the authentication process... introduce potential unintentional vulnerabilities, increase risks that communications systems could be abused or misused... It will not matter that conversations are protected by encryption. Communications will not be secure."...

Sens. Richard Burr (R) and Dianne Feinstein (D-China) floated a draft in 2016 after the San Bernadino attack, but backlash killed its process. The transition between Obama and Trump admin saw Rod Rosenstein as the Government’s top “going dark” warrior, now that he’s gone, it’s less likely that a bill like this might pass Congress, but, the fact that some decided to hold an NSC meeting suggests the issue may not remain on the back burner for long.

The media will say this is Trump trying to screw over trusted ally Japan, but it seems that in light of the North Korean issue and Chinas looming shadow, Japan wants her military and navy back. This basically helps Japan break out of the restrictions placed on them after WW2.

Its captain, Carola Rackete, 31, docked the vessel shortly before 2 a.m., after waiting in vain for two days near the port for permission to come ashore with the migrants.

The Sea Watch, which rescued 53 people off the coast of Libya on June 12, had navigated toward Italy after rejecting an offer to dock in Tripoli, Libya, which humanitarian groups do not deem safe. Thirteen migrants had been allowed to disembark in Italy for medical reasons after the rescue...

The Max software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs.

Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace -- notably India.

On Monday in the New South Wales supreme court judge Stephen Rothman found that commercial entities, including media companies, could be regarded as the publishers of comments made on Facebook, and as such had a responsibility to ensure defamatory remarks were not posted in the first place.

The judgment has potentially profound impacts on the way news organisations in Australia interact with the social media giant, and prompted immediate backlash from the country’s largest media companies.

Mr. Trump said existing U.S. tariffs would remain in place against Chinese imports while negotiations continue, but additional tariffs he's threatened to slap on other Chinese goods will not go forward for the "time being."