Russian intelligence agency experiences biggest hack ever; Oakland becomes 3rd US city to ban facial recognition; Equifax fined $700 million for 2017 data breach
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Kicking things off, we have a story trending on Reddit about a Russian intelligence agency who experienced its largest data leak ever. Reports say that FSB, Russias equivalent to the US’s Federal Security Service and the successor to the KGB, lost 7.5 terabytes of data. Included in the data stolen in the hack were plans to remove anonymity from Tor browsing, scraping of social media, and maybe most jarring, plans to separate Russia’s internet from that of the rest of the world. The hackers targeted one of the FSB’s contractors, SyTech, and spread the data to major news outlets following the hack.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/cfydsg/oakland_becomes_third_us_city_to_ban_police_use/
There is now a third city in the US joining the wave of banning facial recognition technology for municipal purposes, including law enforcement, and it is trending on Reddit. The city of Oakland passed an ordinance to ban the technology this week, joining Somerville and San Francisco. The ordinance cited not only an invasion of privacy as a reason for the ban, but also biased data bases and a lack of standards as major motivating factors in the decision.
https://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCAKCN1UH16Y-OCATC
Fines continue to be levied for data breaches across the planet, and a $700 million settlement from credit-reporting company Equifax has been trending on Google News. It is the largest settlement related to a data breach that we have ever seen. Equifax experienced a major data breach in 2017, which exposed the private information of around 147 million customers. As part of the settlment, Equifax has also created a $300 million restitution fund for the customers affected.