T-Room

The Best in Alternative News

Surveillance & Technology

Latest News

at

NSA Recommends Ending Mass Phone Data Collection Program…

The National Security Agency is recommending that the White House officially end the agency’s mass collection of U.S. phone data, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sources told the Journal that the NSA has concluded that the program, which gathered metadata on domestic text messages and phone calls, is too burdensome to maintain. The White […]

at

DHS Wants to Use Facial Recognition on 97 Percent of Departing Air Passengers by 2023…

The Department of Homeland Security in a report released Wednesday said that it is aiming to use facial recognition technology on 97 percent of departing air passengers within the next four years. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is a part of Homeland Security, said that it believes it can implement facial recognition technology in […]

at

23.2 Million Hack Victims Used ‘123456″ as Their Password…

A shocking number of people who have been hacked used mind-numbingly simple passwords, according to a breach analysis conducted on behalf of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). According to data obtained from the website “Haver I Been Pwned,” more than 23 million people who were hacked used the password ‘123456,’ followed by ‘123456789’ […]

at

How GSA Is Helping the Government Embrace Automation…

The General Services Administration is doubling down on bots as a way to free employees from the more tedious aspects of their jobs, and it’s trying to help other agencies follow suit. On Thursday, GSA officials announced they are creating an interagency community of practice for robotic process automation, an umbrella term for tools that […]

at

Surveillance Video of Tesla Exploding in Shanghai Parking Lot Goes Viral…

Tesla is adamant that its cars are significantly less likely to catch fire than your average car, as Reuters reports, but that still hasn’t kept a surveillance video from spreading worldwide, showing a Tesla Model S bursting into flame and all but disappearing, Spinal Tap-style, in a parking garage reportedly in Shanghai. That location is […]

at

Facebook Quietly Notifies Public That Millions of Instagram Users Had Passwords Exposed…

While everyone was focused on the release of the Mueller report Thursday, Facebook quietly notified the public that the passwords of “millions of Instagram users” were stored in an unencrypted format on an internal server, and searchable by any employee. The company had initially said it was “tens of thousands” of Instagram users. That said, […]

at

A Mystery Agent Is Doxing Iran’s Hackers and Dumping Their Code…

Nearly three years after the mysterious group called the Shadow Brokers began disemboweling the NSA’s hackers and leaking their hacking tools onto the open web, Iran’s hackers are getting their own taste of that unnerving experience. For the last month, a mystery person or group has been targeting a top Iranian hacker team, dumping their […]

at

Redactions Hint at Unseen Depths in Assange Probe…

Not a word of substance was withheld from the U.S. indictment last week of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Federal prosecutors released a 26-page affidavit from an FBI agent almost in its entirety shortly thereafter. The U.S. government pivoted back to secrecy Wednesday, however, in disclosing an intriguing tranche of files that suggest the WikiLeaks probe […]

at

Thousands of Amazon Workers Listen to Recordings from Alexa…

Alexa is like having your own personal assistant that never asks for a raise. When prompted by a “wake word” the device listens to your commands — and so do thousands of Amazon workers, according to a Bloomberg report. Teams stationed around the world listen to and transcribe recordings, then send them back into the […]

at

Facebook Put Hidden Messages Like ‘Big Brother Is Watching’ and ‘The Masons Were Here’ in ‘Tens of Thousands’ of Virtual Reality Controllers…

Facebook said it accidentally hid bizarre and “inappropriate” messages inside “tens of thousands” of virtual-reality controllers, including “Big Brother is Watching” and “The Masons Were Here.” Nate Mitchell, the cofounder of Oculus, the Facebook-owned VR company, said on Twitter on Friday that the company inadvertently printed some unusual messages in its Touch controllers, handheld devices […]

at

Shocking Leak Reveals Facebook Leveraged User Data to Reward Friends, Punish Enemies…

As traders focused on bank earnings and the outlook for global growth, NBC News wrested the market’s attention back toward Facebook by publishing a report on what appears to be the largest leak of internal documents since the data privacy scandal that has dogged the company for more than a year erupted with the first […]

at

Unsealed Affidavit Tries to Put WikiLeaks in Cahoots With the Taliban, Bin Laden…

On Monday a federal judge in Virginia unsealed the original 2017 affidavit and criminal complaint on which Assange’s extradition request to the US is based, offering new details including chat logs between Assange and former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning, which attempt to support a single count of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” […]

Related

at

Electronic Surveillance Isn’t Spying; It’s Much More Powerful…

Attorney General William Barr used the “S” word in front of Congress and the world last week, and organized fainting spells commenced. “I believe the government spied on the Trump campaign,” said Mr. Barr in a town where semantic directness is simply not practiced among the political pharisees and their pilot fish in the media […]

at

Silicon Valley-Funded Privacy Think Tanks Fight in D.C. to Unravel State-Level Consumer Privacy Protections…

After years of ignoring the issue, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are suddenly engaged in a furious fight over enacting national legislation to establish basic online privacy rights for consumers. As with the crafting of much legislation dealing with complicated issues, legislators are relying on experts to help codify the consumer protections. In a twist that […]

at

The U.S. Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom by Glenn Greewald…

The indictment of Julian Assange unsealed today by the Trump Justice Department poses grave threats to press freedoms, not only in the U.S. but around the world. The charging document and accompanying extradition request from the U.S. government, used by the U.K. police to arrest Assange once Ecuador officially withdrew its asylum protection, seeks to […]

Related

at

SpaceX Successfully Launches Falcon Heavy…

SpaceX successfully launched its new and improved Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Thursday, more than a year after sending up a “red Roadster” in its initial test flight. The updated Falcon Heavy is now the world’s most powerful operation rocket with 27 engines firing at liftoff. It launched into the sky Thursday […]

at

Google Quietly Pushes Back on Media ‘Blacklist’ Story, but Offers No Specifics…

Google’s communications department took the time Tuesday to tweet criticism of a Daily Caller story on their media “blacklist,” but refused to answer what supposedly makes the story “purposefully misleading.” In a set of three Tweets, Google’s team insisted that the company does not “manipulate” search results “to fit a particular political ideology,” but admitted […]

This website lives off the kindness of your donations. If you would like to support The T-Room please visit our PayPal.

Any publication posted at The T-Room and/or opinions expressed therein do not necessarily reflect the views of The T-Room. Such publications and all information within the publications (e.g. titles, dates, statistics, conclusions, sources, opinions, etc) are solely the responsibility of the author of the article, not The T-Room.