Surveillance Report
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Surveillance Report
Weekly news for digital freedom. Surveillance Report covers privacy, security, surveillance technology, and digital rights news to keep you safer online from the latest threats. Hosted by Henry Fisher, founder of Techlore, a leading digital rights media organization for over 10 years. Each episod...
Recent Episodes
358 episodes
Apple's Private Relay Is Leaking Your IP, Plus Fake VPN Extensions & France's Big Win
Three cracks opened up in Apple's privacy story this week: iCloud Private Relay leaking real IP addresses through DNS prefetching, WebTransport, and p...
Signal's Biggest Update In Years, Plus Rival App Stores Arrive In The Play Store
Signal just shipped its largest set of updates in years: A second phone can finally be a linked device, automatic key verification is rolling out alon...
OpenAI's Hacking Story Got Worse, Plus Iran In US Water Systems & A Felony For Wiping A Phone
OpenAI's rogue AI agent turned out to have hacked more than Hugging Face, and the more details come out, the less impressive it seems. Then Anthropic...
France Banned Social Media For Under-15s, Plus A Hidden Device In Millions Of US Cars
France has become the first country in Europe to ban social media for children under 15. Meanwhile there's real good news elsewhere: the UK's incoming...
EU Passes Chat Control Anyway, Plus Microsoft's Secure Boot Mess & the Flock Resistance
This week's a double-week catch-up: the EU just greenlit Chat Control even after Parliament voted against it, Microsoft had a brutal stretch between a...
Apple Quietly Downgrades Hide My Email, Plus Chrome Kills uBlock Origin & Google's IP Tracking
Apple is moving Hide My Email aliases to a new private.icloud.com subdomain, which makes it trivial for any app or website to spot a private email and...
Meta Hid Face-Recognition Code on 50M Phones, The UK's Device-Scanning Ultimatum & A Burner Phone Ban
Meta quietly embedded unreleased facial-recognition code, internally called "nametag" onto more than 50 million phones through its Meta AI app, then d...
Dashlane Confirms Hackers Stole Password Vaults, Pentagon Location Tracking, and Hackers Trick Meta's AI
Dashlane has confirmed hackers stole around 20 encrypted password vaults, and the company is being unusually quiet about how it happened. Plus the Pen...
A Rare Age Verification Win, AI Cameras On School Buses, And A License Plate Tracking Ban
A rare and genuine win against age verification with California following Colorado in exempting Linux and other open source operating systems from its...
A Brutal Week for Microsoft Security, Signal Threatens to Leave Canada, And Bitwarden Quietly Shifts
A brutal week for Microsoft with seven vulnerability stories, an actively exploited Exchange zero-day, the MiniPlasma exploit (rooted in a six-year-ol...
Linux's Rough Run, ICE's 20M Palantir Database & Android Good/Bad News
Linux gets hit with a third major vulnerability in as many weeks, a Palantir-built database of 20 million people, and Android delivers both bad news (...
CopyFail Explained, Utah's New VPN Law, and Microsoft Edge Keeping Passwords in Plaintext
This week's Surveillance Report covers the most severe Linux threat in years sending researchers and admins scrambling, Apple patching the bug police...
VPNs Could Make You an NSA Target, North Korea's Supply Chain Hijack & the EU Kills Chat Control
The government told you to use a VPN, but are you actually making yourself a target for NSA surveillance in the process? This week's highlight story d...
Two iOS Exploits, Google's Android Lockdown & Instagram Drops Encryption
This week's Surveillance Report covers two sophisticated zero-click iOS exploit frameworks: Coruna and DarkSword hit hundreds of millions of iPhones i...
Password Manager Vaults Aren't Private, Google Threatens Open Android, & Apple's Global Age Verification
Password managers CAN see your vault (new research reveals attack vectors), Google threatens the open Android ecosystem, Apple rolls out age verificat...
3 Mac Attacks Explained, Discord Age Verification Goes Global & Hidden Hotel Cameras
No operating system is safe, and this week, Mac users got hit from three directions at once. We cover the attacks, Discord's messy age verification ex...
FBI Can't Crack iPhone Lockdown Mode, Age Verification Hits 3 Countries, And Chat Control 1.0 Extended
The FBI couldn't crack a journalist's iPhone because of one security feature, and we'll break down exactly how Lockdown Mode stopped them. Meanwhile,...
Microsoft Gave FBI Your Encryption Keys
This week's Surveillance Report covers Microsoft handing BitLocker encryption keys to the FBI, meaning your "encrypted" Windows data isn't as secure a...
Microsoft Copilot's Security Failures Are Putting Everyone at Risk
This week's Surveillance Report covers Microsoft Copilot's ongoing security failures putting users at risk, the FTC banning GM from selling driver loc...
Microsoft Just Removed Another Way to Activate Windows Offline
This week's Surveillance Report covers Microsoft removing offline Windows activation, California's new tool to delete your data from brokers, cryptocu...
Your ChatGPT Answers Are About to Get Sponsored
This week's Surveillance Report covers OpenAI's plan to prioritize sponsored content in ChatGPT answers, what to do if you're targeted by government s...
Federal Court Just Dealt a Major Blow to Age Verification Laws
A federal court just blocked Texas's age verification law—here's why that matters for the entire US. Plus: AI police cameras exposed to the internet,...
The Law That Protects Your Online Speech Is Under Attack
This week's Surveillance Report covers the internet's free speech protections under attack as a US Senator moves to repeal Section 230. Plus: ransomwa...
Your Age Is Now Required: Australia's Social Media Ban Explained
This week's Surveillance Report covers the dangerous reality that social media bans ARE age verification, India's push for even more invasive phone su...
India Backs Down From Forced Phone App
This week's Surveillance Report covers India’s attempt to mandate a potentially invasive app on everyone’s phone, Chat Control updates in the EU with...
Microsoft's Rare Confession: Windows AI Could Leak Your Data
This week's Surveillance Report covers Microsoft's AI Disaster getting worse on multiple levels as well as Google's AI, Malware is stealing E2EE messa...
WhatsApp Leaked 3.5 BILLION Numbers
Episode 245: This week's Surveillance Report covers WhatsApp's massive phone number enumeration flaw that exposed 3.5 billion users' data through poor...
Nate Steps Down + What Happens to Surveillance Report
After 4+ years, Nate from The New Oil is stepping down from co-hosting the pod, but Surveillance Report isn't going anywhere. Here's what's changing,...
AI Browsers Are Already Risky
Episode 244: AI browsers are here and already pose huge risks, Windows 10 finally reaches end of life, Ring is partnering with Flock, many ICE stories...
Q&A: Why Don't People Care About Privacy?
Q&A243: Why don't people care about privacy? Is it true Proton is accepting Monero? How can you get involved in the fight for privacy? And more! Join...
The UK's Apple Backdoor Fight: Round 2!
Episode 243: The UK has ordered Apple to insert a backdoor into their encryption for a second time, Microsoft has removed yet more workarounds to avoi...
Windows 10's Extra Year of Updates Has a Catch...
Episode 242: Microsoft offers an extension for Windows 10 users to get security updates longer (but there's a catch), LinkedIn will start using your d...
Proton Mail Account Suspensions Explained
Episode 241: ProtonMail allegedly banned journalist accounts, Plex had a data breach, leadership changes at the EFF, and more.
Welcome to the Su...
Q&A: The Risks of Cloud-Based Password Managers
Q&A240: Are there any good reasons not to use a cloud-based password manager? Which phone should you use for a day job? What routers do we recommend?...
ChatGPT is Calling the Police on Users
Episode 240: ChatGPT is sending your messages to the police, X/Twitter is rolling out some end to end encrypted messaging that we’ll discuss, lotsss o...
Android Is Becoming the New iOS
Episode 239: Google is expanding their control over sideloading, Word documents will now save to the cloud by default, Bluesky is blocked in Mississip...
Q&A: Is Kagi Safe?
Q&A238: Our thoughts on Kagi and their Orion browser, navigating healthcare apps, thoughts on legal compensation for data breaches, and more on this w...
Are Your Passwords Safe From This New Exploit?
Episode 238: A new vulnerability affects nearly every major password manager on the market, a definitive resolution to the Apple/UK Backdoor saga, Moz...
Microsoft's Control Over Open Source Grows
Episode 237: Microsoft will integrate GitHub more deeply as GitHub's CEO resigns, data brokers were caught hiding their opt-out pages, important updat...
Q&A: Ways to Make Your Phone Private
Q&A236: A collection of phone-related questions, Cloudflare concerns, is Firefox still worth using with the recent ToS changes, and more on this week'...