Want to Protect Your Data From Facebook? These Drag Queens Have Some Advice.
The pressure for Facebook to account for what it does with user data has been growing for years. In 2014, one group started to raise awareness about this with the #MyNameIs campaign, which challenges...
View ArticleMark Zuckerberg Grilled Before Congress; Paul Ryan Retires from House
Here's what you'll find on today's show:— On Tuesday, Facebook C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg apologized in a congressional hearing for the abuse of data scraped from Facebook users without their permission....
View ArticleThe Fourth Amendment Needs Your Attention
This week, Note to Self gets in our time machine, back to the Supreme Court cases that defined privacy for the digital age. Stories of bookies on the Sunset Strip, microphones taped to phone booths,...
View ArticleApple Versus Facebook
Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, and Baratunde Thurston, futurist comedian, writer, and activist, talk...
View ArticleDear (Data) Diary
Long-distance friends Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec spent a year tracking the little things in life. Thanks yous, coffees, complaints, street sounds. And each week, they turned their small-scale...
View ArticleThe Evolution of American Privacy
Every day, it seems like there’s a new story about privacy: A Facebook hack that puts the private data of millions at risk. A years-long surveillance program of personal communications by the...
View ArticleFull Show: Private Lives, Public Spaces
The story of privacy in America is long and fascinating. But suffice it to say, there was an uproar over postcards. Yes, postcards. What separates a successful movement, like the campaign for same-sex...
View ArticleA Former Zuckerberg Mentor Pushes Back
In 2006, Roger McNamee advised Mark Zuckerberg not to sell a germinating Facebook to Yahoo for one billion dollars. Then, he advised him to hire Sheryl Sandberg who was then at Google to figure out the...
View ArticleRice Bunny: The Me Too Movement Comes to China
This week we’re discussing government censorship in China, #metoo and cryptocurrency.Endless Thread is hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson, and is made by WBUR.You can listen to the show at...
View ArticleCalifornia Weighs Consumer Privacy Protections
The California Consumer Privacy Act, which passed in the summer of 2018, doesn’t go into effect until January 2020. In the meantime, a fight over how the law will regulate user data is ramping up in...
View ArticleICE Using License Plate Tracker Database to Find Undocumented People
Last week, the ACLU got their hands on almost 2,000 pages of documents detailing a $6 million partnership between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Vigilant Solutions, a company that collects...
View ArticleThe Evolution of American Privacy
Every day, it seems like there’s a new story about privacy: A Facebook hack that puts the private data of millions at risk. A years-long surveillance program of personal communications by the...
View ArticleKids These Days Will Never Get Away from Their Social Media Past
Kate Eichhorn, associate professor of Culture and Media at The New School and the author of The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media (Harvard University Press, 2019), argues the danger to...
View ArticleDigital 'Fingerprinting' Is The Next Generation Tracking Technology
With web cookies becoming easier to detect and disable on browsers, advertisers are now using a new form of digital tracking technology to target consumers. It's called 'fingerprinting,' and it allows...
View ArticleThe Rise of Drones
Arthur Holland Michael, co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, joins us to discuss his book Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of the Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us...
View ArticleWhy Law Enforcement Loves Amazon's Doorbell Camera, Ring
One of the biggest bestsellers on Amazon Prime Day earlier this month was the Ring. It's a doorbell camera, where you can see a video of who is at your front door, via your phone. Now, new reports have...
View ArticleThe Secret Life of Credit Card Data
Anytime you use a credit card, the data your purchase generates is tracked, mined, and shared...and not just by your bank.Despite a federal privacy law covering our cards, a single swipe hands your...
View ArticleThe Eleventh Hour Fight Over Fate of California's Privacy Bill
As California's legislative session ends this week, lobbyists and activists are jockeying over the fate of the California Consumer Privacy Act, known as the CCPA, which is the country's first major...
View ArticleMark Zuckerberg On The Road
Mark Zuckerberg testified before a House committee this week, facing tough questions about Facebook policies and values. Last week, he spoke at Georgetown about his views on freedom of expression. And...
View ArticleMillions of Schoolchildren Are Now Under Digital Surveillance
As parents grow increasingly anxious about school shootings, schools have turned to digital surveillance companies. These companies use AI to track what students are typing in their emails, chats,...
View Article‘Sometimes I Just Watch’
Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell talks about how Americans are welcoming surveillance devices like Ring and Nest into their homes, and — as they can now watch their front doors, babysitters,...
View ArticleWe Live On Zoom Now – And That Might Be a Problem
Since many of us have retreated to our homes in the past month, we’ve been connected to each other mostly through our screens. Work meetings, dinners, catch-ups with old friends, classes, religious...
View ArticleDistance Learning Week Three
As schools begin the third week of distance learning, Jessica Gould, WNYC reporter, and Alex Zimmerman, education reporter at Chalkbeat New York, report on how it's going, including the news that the...
View ArticleZooming Off to School
As educators around the country hunker down for what looks like months more of social distance learning, graduations and standardized tests loom, and video-chat tools have raised some eyebrows.For...
View ArticlePrivacy Concerns Mount as Coronavirus Spreads
The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 has now reached almost 1.5 million globally. As the number of cases rises, so do concerns about privacy. Around the world, privacy advocates are sounding...
View ArticleThe High-Tech, Post-COVID Life
Naomi Klein, senior correspondent for The Intercept, the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, co-founder of The Leap, a climate justice...
View ArticleWill Trump Ban TikTok?
Last week, President Trump threatened to ban TikTok over security concerns with the Chinese-owned company. Taylor Lorenz, New York Times tech reporter covering internet culture, talks about how users...
View Article421- You've Got Enron Mail!
Enron collapsed nearly 20 years ago, but chances are something you use today was affected by emails sent by 150 of the company's top employees. These emails — about meetings and energy markets but also...
View ArticleThe Cost of Facebook's Monopoly is User Privacy
In the late 1800s, Senator John Sherman pronounced: “If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the...
View ArticleLiving Under Surveillance Capitalism
The list of harms perpetuated by Facebook is at this point well-known: quieting dissent, ignoring incitement, and profiting from distortion, to name a few. But, according to Harvard professor emeritus...
View ArticleGreenland Plants, Privacy and Big Data, Rainbows. March 19, 2021, Part 2
Under A Mile Of Ice, A Climate ClueScientists studying sediment taken from a core sample of the Greenland ice sheet just 800 miles from the North Pole have found remnants of ancient plants,...
View ArticleVaccine Passport Apps Are Here. We Explain and Critique
The safest way to return to full-capacity mass gatherings is to make sure attendees have been vaccinated. The right software could help, but there are some privacy and equity concerns.On Today's...
View ArticleThe Politics of Vaccine Passports At Your School, Workplace and Favorite...
While some say COVID vaccine passports are key to safely getting back to everyday activities, others are concerned about the access and equity issues at play.On Today's Show:Dan Diamond, national...
View ArticleUndercover and Over-Exposed
This week, we consider whether information should ever be off-limits to journalists. It’s a thorny ethical question raised by FBI informants, hacked sources and shockingly intimate personal data. Plus,...
View ArticleThe Ethics of Using Legally-Obtained Personal Data in Reporting
Last week, The Pillar, a Substack dedicated to Catholic news, used a mysterious data set to identify a high ranking Catholic priest — a monsignor. From there, they outed the priest as a user of the...
View ArticleCatholic News Organization Outs Priest, Raising Concerns About Data Privacy
Last month, a Catholic news organization outed a priest as gay, and he was forced to resign. The publication reportedly used location data collected and sold by an app to reverse identify the priest....
View ArticleThe Leaked SCOTUS Opinion That Could Overturn Roe, Explained
A leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade's abortion precedent casts uncertainty over the future of reproductive rights.On Today's Show:Mary Ziegler, professor at Florida State...
View ArticleCan Our Apps Betray Us in Court?
With the recent leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court suggesting the court may overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion, privacy experts are concerned about digital...
View ArticlePeriod Tracking Apps and Digital Privacy
Kashmir Hill, tech reporter at the New York Times, discusses the digital privacy implications of the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade and heightened abortion restrictions across the country.
View ArticleTuesday Morning Politics; Period Tracking Apps and Digital Privacy;...
Coming up on today's show:Jonathan Lemire, host of “Way Too Early" on MSNBC and Politico White House bureau chief talks about the latest political news.Kashmir Hill, tech reporter at the New York Times...
View ArticleWhat Precedents Would Clarence Thomas Overturn Next?
Justice Clarence Thomas once was an outlier for his legal views. But Thomas is now the heart of the Court’s conservative bloc, and his concurring opinion in the recent abortion ruling calls out some...
View ArticleWhat Precedents Would Clarence Thomas Overturn Next?
Justice Clarence Thomas voted in the majority in last month’s abortion decision, but he issued a separate, concurring opinion articulating an extreme view that other rights derived from privacy—such as...
View ArticleWhat Precedents Would Clarence Thomas Overturn Next?
Justice Clarence Thomas once was an outlier for his legal views. But Thomas is now the heart of the Court’s conservative bloc, and his concurring opinion in the recent abortion ruling calls out some...
View ArticleNY-12 Debate Recap; 'Embedded' in the Yonkers Police Department; How Newborn...
Coming up on today's show: Brigid Bergin, WNYC's senior political correspondent, recaps the debate she moderated for the Democratic candidates in New York's redrawn 12th Congressional district, which...
View ArticleHow Newborns' Blood May be Used in Police Investigations
Dana DiFilippo, senior reporter at The New Jersey Monitor, talks about her reporting on how New Jersey has retained and used newborn blood samples in criminal investigations, raising privacy concerns....
View ArticleCameras in the Subway Cars
Earlier this week Gov. Hochul announced a plan to put cameras in every single subway car, citing people's fear of crime on the trains as a reason. Stephen Nessen, transportation reporter for the WNYC...
View ArticleInside the Meltdown at Twitter 2.0
Elon Musk's first weeks as CEO of Twitter have been marked by unrest at the company. Half the company and around 80 percent of the contract workforce was laid off. On Wednesday, November 16, Musk sent...
View ArticleThe Internet Dilemma
Matthew Herrick was sitting on his stoop in Harlem when something weird happened. Then, it happened again. And again. It happened so many times that it became an absolute nightmare—a nightmare that...
View ArticleWhy Trump’s Abortion Video Needs Some Follow-Up Questions
Former President Trump recently stated that he thinks abortion policy should be left to the states, as many in the GOP are expressing support for a national 15-week abortion ban.On Today's Show:Molly...
View ArticleWhen Products Collect Data From Your Brain, Where Does It Go?
There are products on the market that monitor your brain waves through caps or headbands: Some aim to improve mental health, sleep, or focus, while others can plunge users into virtual reality for...
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