What's that? A week with nearly as much good news as bad in the world of privacy and security? It's true! Especially the privacy part.
On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a hotly anticipated ruling in Carpenter v. United States[1], establishing that the government will need to get a warrant if it wants to track your location with cell sites. Meanwhile in California, it looks like residents might soon benefit from a privacy law[2] that grants unprecedented power—in the US, anyway—over what data companies collect and what they do with it. And while this isn't privacy related, strictly speaking, Apple's new partnership with startup RapidSOS[3] will push iPhone owners' locations to dispatchers during 911 calls, saving first responders valuable minutes and almost certainly saving lives.
It's not all sunshine and lollipops, of course. The same hacker group that meddled with the PyeongChang Olympics appears to be back, this time swinging at biochem labs[4] in Europe. The hacking threat from China has escalated in step with trade war rhetoric[5]. Pretty much every streaming device is vulnerable to the same type of DNS rebinding attack[6]. Iran's ban of encrypted messaging app Telegram[7] has had a serious, layered impact on the country's citizens. And deep fakes will make the already complicated issue of Twitter mob justice even more so[8].
But wait, there's more! As always, we’ve rounded up all the news we didn’t break or cover in depth this week. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
The Major Mobile Carriers Stop Selling Location Information[9]
After a public blow-up around the sharing of location data with third parties