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i read it all so you dont have to - 4/2/20

Apr 2, 2020

If I’m reading between the lines correctly, it looks like the US Government is using data brokers, a group of companies many regard as shady due to their privacy practices, to track our locations to help control the virus.

As WSJ reports:

The federal government, through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and local governments have started to receive analyses about the presence and movement of people in certain areas of geographic interest drawn from cellphone data, people familiar with the matter said. The data comes from the mobile advertising industry rather than cellphone carriers.
The aim is to create a portal for federal, state and local officials that contains geolocation data in what could be as many as 500 cities across the U.S., one of the people said, to help plan the epidemic response.

The “mobile advertising industry” has been at the forefront of tracking our movements online and, apparently, in real life as well. It’s a little unnerving that they can do this, and even more so that their normal business outside of a crisis is to sell this capability to other companies.

Here’s more on the subject from Motherboard, about companies that even more concerning: We Saw NSO's Covid-19 Software in Action, and Privacy Experts Are Worried

Karl Sharro @KarlreMarks

Look at the light at the end of the tunnel, when this is over we will be living in a police state with a collapsed economy.

We’re in an economic crisis, which means some people are thinking about withdrawing cash. A few US banks have reported running low on cash already. For some reason most of the stories I’ve seen have to do with New York.

If you’re reading this your money is probably safe. The FDIC has been out messaging the good advice that you’re most likely fine if your money is in a US Bank, and it’s safer in a bank than under your bed.

FDIC Gov @FDICgov

Forget the mattress! Keeping large sums of cash at home is risky. The best place to protect your money is in an FDIC-insured bank where it’s safe and sound. Learn how the FDIC safeguards your #money at FDIC.gov/deposit

However, in other countries the situation may not be so cozy:

OnlyFans is having a moment:

Blake Montgomery @blakersdozen

OnlyFans reporting 3.5 million new signups in March, 60,000 of them new creators, per an email from the company. In the first two weeks of March alone that was a 75% increase from the normal level.

Now, I don’t know what OnlyFans is. But I have heard that lots of payment processors don’t like the types of payments being made to and from the site. If people are doing things that are legal, maybe the payment processor shouldn’t care what they are doing. If only there was a better way.

Lots of people are worried about the EARN IT act, which is the latest chapter in the government’s long running war on encryption. Here’s a good tweet about that.

Riana Pfefferkorn @Riana_Crypto

You are a co-sponsor of a bill that everyone, including you, knows is a Trojan horse for banning end-to-end encryption. Your bill would FORCE Zoom to do a crappy job protecting privacy and security. #EARNITAct

Richard Blumenthal @SenBlumenthal

Millions of Americans are now using @zoom_us to attend school, seek medical help, & socialize with their friends. Privacy & cybersecurity risks shouldn’t be added to their list of worries. I'm calling for answers from Zoom on how it handles our private data. https://t.co/CEg1P3T3S1 https://t.co/Vl9XyvxZjb

Cloudflare launched a tool for families to censor the internet for their kids. Seems like a fine enough idea. I know I looked at some pretty weird stuff as a kid and it probably screwed me up for life.

The problem is that their filter blocked LGBTQIA+ and sex education content. There are situations where that could be lifesaving material for a person.

It seems they got the message. But it’s another example of how badly calibrated content censorship tends to be. Youtube has run into similar issues with demonetizing this category.

Sarah Jamie Lewis @SarahJamieLewis

Credit where credit is due, Cloudflare have now stopped censoring LGBTQ related sites as "Adult Content". When you set up as a censor you assume moral responsibility for your blocking decisions. It is not a role that should be taken on lightly or by the unprepared.

Matthew Prince 🌥 @eastdakota

@SarahJamieLewis @bagmangood @dok2001 https://t.co/bxCh45JePW

And in censorship of a different sort, Turkmenistan straight up banned their media from mentioning the word “coronavirus” to stymie criticism of its response.

Someone found a way to bring payment processing to animal crossing.