Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

When the government comes for your data, tech companies can’t always tell you. But thanks to a legal loophole, companies can say if they haven’t had a visit yet That’s opened up an interesting clause that allows companies to silently warn customers when the government turns up to secretly raid its stash of customer data […]

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Reddit says government data requests more than doubled in 2018

Reddit has said the number of government requests for user data has more than doubled in 2018 than on the previous year. The news and content sharing site said in its latest transparency report, posted Wednesday, it received a 752 requests from governments during the year, up from 310 requests a year earlier. Broken down, […]

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Vietnam threatens to penalize Facebook for breaking its draconian cybersecurity law

Well, that didn’t take long. We’re less than ten days into 2019 and already Vietnam is aiming threats at Facebook after it violating its draconian cybersecurity law which came into force on January 1. The U.S. social network stands accused of allowing users in Vietnam to post “slanderous content, anti-government sentiment and libel and defamation […]

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Facebook is not equipped to stop the spread of authoritarianism

Facebook isn’t responsible for government decisions to clamp down on free expression. But the question remains: How can companies stop assisting authoritarian governments, inadvertently or otherwise?

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Apple’s 2018 transparency report shows a rise in government requests for data

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Apple may no longer be sharing how many iPhones it sells, but it’s being more transparent than ever when it comes to reporting the data requests the company receives.

The transparency report, released on Thursday, covers the first six months of 2018. The report details all the data requests Apple received from January through June of this year from governments around the world. Previously only released as a PDF, Apple’s transparency report this year comes with a brand new interactive website that helps breakdown the data visually.

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In revamped transparency report, Apple reveals uptick in demands for user data

Apple’s transparency report just got a lot more — well, transparent. For years, the technology giant released a twice-a-year report on the number of government demands it received. It wasn’t much to look at in the beginning; a seven-page document with only two tables of data. Once in a while, Apple would tack on a […]

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YouTube announces it removed more than 58 million videos last quarter

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YouTube has released its latest transparency report on Thursday detailing the content its removed from the platform this past quarter. 

The YouTube Community Guidelines report released on Thursday mainly focuses on videos that were removed from the site due to violations of the company’s policies. In total, YouTube removed more than 58 million videos between July 1 and September 30 of this year for breaking community guidelines.

In a blog post announcing the release of the latest report, YouTube boasts of its faster response in enforcing its policies from previous quarters. The company also announced some firsts for its latest transparency report. Read more…

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Twitter releases 2018 Transparency Report including policy violation stats for the first time

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Twitter released its biannual Transparency Report on Thursday outlining current trends in government information requests, content removal requests, and other privacy matters regarding the network.

This year’s report marks the thirteenth time in the company’s history that Twitter has expounded on its privacy practices in such tremendous detail. The new report also expands on the type of data Twitter is making publicly available.

In a blog post published in tandem with the Transparency Report, Twitter explains that for the first time ever, along with government requests for information and content removal, the company has included stats on the enforcement of Twitter’s own policies. Read more…

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Twitter says governments are ramping up their demands for user data

Twitter says the number of government demands for data on its users has shot up in the past year. In its latest transparency report out Thursday, the social media giant said it received 10 percent more requests between January and June than on its previous reporting period — the largest percentage increase in three years. […]

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Smart home makers hoard your data, but won’t say if the police come for it

A decade ago, it was almost inconceivable that nearly every household item could be hooked up to the internet. These days, it’s near impossible to avoid a non-smart home gadget, and they’re vacuuming up a ton of new data that we’d never normally think about. Thermostats know the temperature of your house, and smart cameras […]

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T-Mobile quietly reveals uptick in government data demands

T-Mobile has revealed an uptick in the number of demands for data it receives from the government. The cellular giant quietly posted its 2017 transparency report on August 14, revealing a 12 percent increase in the number of overall data demands it responded to compared to the previous year. The report said the company responded […]

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Twitter claims more progress on squeezing terrorist content

Twitter has put out its latest Transparency Report providing an update on how many terrorist accounts it has suspended on its platform — with a cumulative 1.2 million+ suspensions since August 2015. During the reporting period of July 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017 — for this, Twitter’s 12th Transparency Report — the company says a total […]

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