NEW YORK (REUTERS) – Think about the future of transportation, and you might envision the old animated show The Jetsons, with everyone flying around in personal spaceships.
Not only did that never happen, but we are still piling into creaky old subways and buses.
PARIS (AFP) – Israeli’s NSO Group is in the eye of a storm over its Pegasus spyware – but it is far from the only company helping governments with their covert surveillance operations.
Explosive claims that Pegasus was used to spy on activists and even heads of state have shone a spotlight on the software, which allows highly intrusive access to a person’s mobile phone.
But NSO are merely one player in an industry that has quietly boomed in recent years, arming even cash-strapped governments with powerful surveillance technology.
“These tools have gotten cheaper and cheaper,” said Ms Allie Funk, senior research analyst in technology and democracy at the United States think tank Freedom House.
“So it’s not just the world’s foremost intelligence agencies that can purchase them – it’s smaller governments, or local police agencies.”
Emerging economies such as India, Mexico and Azerbaijan dominate the list of countries where large numbers of phone numbers were allegedly identified as possible targets by NSO’s clients.
Professor Ron Deibert, director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab research centre, said such companies allowed governments to effectively “purchase their own NSA” – a nod to the US National Security Agency, whose own extensive surveillance was exposed by Mr Edward Snowden.
The Citizen Lab scours the Internet for traces of digital espionage by governments.
Just last week it published an investigation into another secretive Israeli company that sells spyware to foreign governments, Candiru.
It appears to have been similarly used to target dissidents and journalists, from Turkey to Singapore.
And in 2017, Citizen Lab found that Ethiopia had used spyware developed by Cyberbit – yet another Israeli firm – to infect the computers of exiled dissidents.
“There are multiple factors why we see a lot of Israeli companies,” Prof Deibert said.
One is the “openly entrepreneurial” attitude of Israel’s cyber-espionage agency Unit 8200, who “encourage their graduates to go out and develop start-ups after their military service”, he told AFP.
He added there was “a strong suspicion” that Israel gains “strategic intelligence” from this technology being provided to other governments, siphoning off some of the information gathered.
But while Israel is now facing calls for an export ban on such technology, it is not the only country hosting companies that sell off-the-shelf spyware.
SINGAPORE – Public officers reported 108 cases of data leaks by the Singapore Government last year, up 44 per cent from 75 cases in 2019.
All of the incidents were assessed to be of “medium” or “low” severity, according to the second annual report on the Government’s personal data protection efforts released on Tuesday (July 27).
Without disclosing details, its author, the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office (SNDGO), defined medium severity to mean that a government agency had suffered difficult or undesirable consequences, with minor inconvenience to individuals or businesses.
There were no severe incidents reported last year. These are incidents that damage national security or the public’s confidence, or those resulting in death or serious physical, financial or sustained emotional injury to an individual.
To date, only two such severe incidents have been reported. Both took place in 2018.
The first is the unauthorised disclosure of the confidential data of 14,200 patients from the Ministry of Health’s HIV registry. The second is the unauthorised access of 223 case files due to a vulnerability in the State Courts’ online system.
Of the 108 cases last year, six were reported by members of the public through the Government Data Security Contact Centre, an online portal launched in April last year. Details of these cases have not been released.
The rise in public sector data incidents mirrors trends in the private sector here.
Last year, local residents filed 6,100 complaints against private organisations about potential personal data breaches, said SNDGO. In 2019, 4,500 complaints were made to privacy watchdog the Personal Data Protection Commission.
“This could be due, in part, to the Covid-19 crisis accelerating the pace of digitalisation in the past year,” said SNDGO.
As more businesses conduct their activities online in the light of public health restrictions, more data is generated and exchanged. This increases the risk of data being exposed.
“Work-from-home arrangements and the use of unsecured home networks may also raise the risk of data incidents,” SNDGO said.
“These trends highlight the increased data security risks faced by the private and public sectors and… the urgency of implementing the necessary measures to safeguard personal data.”
On its part, the public sector has committed to roll out 24 key measures by the end of 2023 as part of its $1 billion investment to better safeguard citizens’ personal data.
These measures were recommended by the Public Sector Data Security Review Committee (PSDSRC), formed in March 2019 after a spate of cyber-security breaches, including Singapore’s worst data breach involving 1.5 million SingHealth patients’ data in June 2018.
The PSDSRC framework will gradually replace current practices at public agencies, many of which have devised their own protocols.
SINGAPORE – Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit and contact tracing became the norm in Singapore, Sengkang General Hospital (SKH) was already on the trail of people who came in close contact with those who had infectious diseases such as chicken pox and tuberculosis.
But instead of using Bluetooth tech like the Government’s TraceTogether tool, SKH has been using a mix of radio-frequency identification (RFID) and Wi-Fi.
NEW YORK (NYTIMES, BLOOMBERG) – More than 1,500 workers for video game maker Activision Blizzard walked out from their jobs this week. Thousands signed a letter rebuking their employer. And even as the chief executive officer apologised, current and former employees said they would not stop raising a ruckus.
Ms Shay Stein, who used to work at Activision, said it was “heartbreaking”. Ms Lisa Welch, a former vice president, said she felt “profound disappointment”. Others took to Twitter or waved signs outside one of the company’s offices Wednesday to share their anger.
Elsewhere online, fans sought to organise a boycott of Activision games in solidarity with employees.
“You can support #ActiBlizzWalkout by not playing their titles,” Twitter user Shannon wrote. The post garnered more than 2,300 retweets and over 5,000 likes. In the comments, other users suggested not logging into games or uninstalling them.
Activision, known for its hugely popular Call Of Duty, World Of Warcraft and StarCraft gaming franchises, has been thrown into an uproar over workplace behaviour issues.
The upheaval stems from an explosive lawsuit that California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed on July 20, accusing the US$65 billion (S$88 billion) company of fostering a “frat boy workplace culture” in which men joked about rape and women were routinely harassed and paid less than their male colleagues.
Activision publicly criticised the agency’s two-year investigation and allegations as “irresponsible behaviour from unaccountable state bureaucrats”. But its dismissive tone angered employees, who called out the company for trying to sweep away what they said were heinous problems that had been ignored for too long.
The intense reaction was unusual. Of all the industries that have faced sexism charges in recent years – including Hollywood, restaurants and the media – the male-dominated video game sector has long stood out for its openly toxic behaviour and lack of change.
In 2014, feminist critics of the industry faced death threats in what became known as Gamergate. Executives at gaming companies Riot Games and Ubisoft have also been accused of misconduct.
Now, the actions at Activision may signal a new phase, where a critical mass of the industry’s own workers are indicating they will no longer tolerate such behaviour.
“This could mean some real accountability for companies that aren’t taking care of their workers and are creating inequitable work environments where women and gender minorities are kept at the margins and abused,” said Associate Professor Carly Kocurek at the Illinois Institute of Technology who studies gender in gaming.
She said California’s lawsuit and the fallout at Activision were a “big deal” for an industry that had traditionally shrugged off claims of sexism and harassment. Other gaming companies are most likely watching the situation, she added, and considering whether they need to address their own cultures.
Mr Bobby Kotick, Activision’s CEO, apologised to employees Tuesday, saying that the responses to the lawsuit were “tone deaf” and that a law firm would investigate the company’s policies.
Activision, based in Santa Monica, California, said in a statement for this article that it was committed “to long-lasting change, listening and continuing the important work to create a safe and inclusive workplace that we can all be proud of”.
In interviews, seven current and former Activision employees said egregious behaviour had taken place at the company, up and down the hierarchy, for years. Three current employees declined to be named out of fear of retaliation. Their accounts of what happened at work largely align with what is laid out in the state lawsuit.