Notices by Lisa Kalayji (lisakalayji@infosec.exchange)

@douglasvb
There's literally a policy strategy in San Francisco - Vision Zero - to eliminate the crisis level of pedesrrian deaths in the city, and the mayor is going out of his way to increase them instead. Just... wow.

Me, about once every six months: "I should move to San Francisco"
San Francisco:

https://abc7news.com/post/waymo-robotaxis-will-soon-allowed-drive-car-free-section-market-street-mayor-daniel-lurie-says/16153575/

Because Monday, that's why ❄️⛄

The world is ugly, but the earth is beautiful. Go outside, smell a flower, breathe the breeze, look at the sky, pet a dog. Spring is on its way.

#DogsOfMastodon #Spring

I'm just on the internet, innocently perusing baking supplies, when suddenly I am accosted with the knowledge that *this* exists.

What?!?!!!

https://www.mccormick.com/spices-and-flavors/extracts-and-food-colors/extracts/butter-extract

"The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner has stepped down from her role at the agency over Department of Government Efficiency requests to access Social Security recipient information...

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for the preservation of Social Security benefits, said of DOGE’s efforts that “there is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is. And my understanding is that it has already occurred.”

“SSA has data on everyone who has a Social Security number, which is virtually all Americans, everyone who has Medicare, and every low-income American who has applied for Social Security’s means-tested companion program, Supplemental Security Income.”

“If there is an evil intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/social-security-head-steps-down-over-doge-access-of-recipient-information-ap-reports

#DOGE #Security #InfoSec #Privacy #Data #SocialSecurity

Got a friend who usually gets most of his news from his Insta feed to switch to an RSS reader (he'd never heard of them and was ✨dazzled✨ by it). He's still on Insta foe the time being, but I'm counting it as a small win.

"According to the union, the wholesale giant recently reported $254 billion in annual revenue and $7.4 billion in net profits, which marked a 135% increase since 2018.

"Yet, despite these record gains, the company refuses to meet the Teamsters' demands for fair wages and benefits that reflect the company's enormous success," the union said."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/costcos-unionized-workers-vote-authorize-nationwide-strike/story?id=117875222

#Union #Strike #Costco #Capitalism

I need the tech CEOs to slow down the pace at which they crank up their awfulness. Getting off All The Shitty Things takes a lot of work, and there are only so many hours in a day.

#SilentSunday #DogsOfMastodon

In today's episode of "yes, corporations amassing data about you is always bad, no, it doesn't matter whether you think you have something to hide":

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/12/whistleblower-finds-unencrypted-location-data-for-800000-vw-evs/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned

#Privacy #Tech #Data #InfoSec #Surveillance #Cars #Transportation

"After the Cybertruck explosion outside of the Trump International Hotel in Vegas on Wednesday, Elon Musk remotely unlocked the Cybertruck for law enforcement and provided video from charging stations that the truck had visited to track the vehicle’s location...

With Teslas, it is not just remote unlocking and tracking ability that shows who holds the power here... It’s the fact that random Tesla workers spied on customers using onboard cameras and shared them with each other. It’s the fact that cops see Teslas near crime scenes as potential sources of video footage.

But surveillance and data collection and sharing that is justified or trialed in extreme situations one day becomes commonplace for more run-of-the-mill situations later on. In the aftermath of the San Bernardino mass shooting, Apple famously refused to help law enforcement break into the shooter’s iPhone or undermine its security because doing so would lead to less privacy for everyone. The type of third-party hacking capability that the FBI used to eventually get into the shooter's iPhone in what was then an extreme occurrence is now a capability that even local police have and is used every single day."

https://www.404media.co/elon-musk-uses-cybertruck-explosion-to-show-tesla-can-remotely-unlock-and-monitor-vehicles/

#Privacy #Data #Tech #Police #Surveillance #Tesla #ElonMusk #CivilRights