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A startup focused on “invisible computing” Thursday unveiled a smart contact lens which delivers an augmented reality display in a user’s field of vision. The Mojo Vision contact lens offers a display with information and notifications, and allows the user to interact by focusing on certain points.

The United States and China are racing for dominance in 5G wireless connectivity. The R&D, the inventions, the technological standards and the commercial products developed and deployed in the coming months and years will determine whose inventions bring the world the next generation of wireless technology. Two companies lead in foundational research and development of 5G. Fortunately for the world, U.S.-based Qualcomm has invented and developed superior 5G core technologies. It makes a profound difference which country’s innovations a few key collaborative standards-setting bodies adopt as the foundation of the next-generation wireless infrastructure. 5G won’t be your Mom’s internet. Beyond...

Exclusive A database containing the personal details of 56.25m US residents – from names and home addresses to phone numbers and ages – has been found on the public internet, served from a computer with a Chinese IP address, bizarrely enough. The information silo appears to have been obtained somehow from Florida-based CheckPeople.com, which is a typical people-finder website: for a fee, you can enter someone's name, and it will look up their current and past addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, names of relatives, and even criminal records in some cases, all presumably gathered from public records. However, all of...

If you’re a law enforcement official who has more allegiance to ideology than to the law or to the country, where does that get you? For former FBI analyst Mark Tolson, the answer is jail — however briefly. Tolson is best-known — if he’s known at all — as the man who broke into a pro-Trump operative’s email account in October 2018, took screen-shots of some of the messages, then sent images to a reporter and offered the reporter the password, according to Politico. The unnamed member of the media turned down the opportunity. Tolson, 60, said he did it...

Funny how the environmental objectives of the "Save the Planet from the Flying Global Warming Monster" squad and that of Marxism line up so neatly. Of course you shouldn't have personal autonomy or private property. It's bad for the 'planet'. And by the planet, we mean the red planet. So it's no surprise that The Nation, where the synergy of the red and the green meet, should roll out a story like this, "If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership." ... And give up...

ToTok, an Emirati messaging app that has been downloaded to millions of phones, is the latest escalation of a digital arms race. IMAGE: The Aldar Building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where the Emirates’ signals intelligence agency and Pax AI, a data mining firm linked to ToTok, have their offices.  Photo Credit...Ben Job/ReutersWASHINGTON — It is billed as an easy and secure way to chat by video or text message with friends and family, even in a country that has restricted popular messaging services like WhatsApp and Skype.But the service, ToTok, is actually a spying tool, according to American officials...

Terrill Frantz, a cybersecurity associate professor at Harrisburg University, compares smart TVs to your smartphone. TVs on the market now have the ability to connect to the internet. They’re equipped with cameras, microphones, and in some cases, facial recognition technology. “How easy is it for somebody to hack into a smart TV,” I asked. “Well, presently, it’s fairly easy,” answered Frantz. The FBI says smart TVs are often poorly secured by their manufacturers, compared to computers or smartphones. Experts say cyber-criminals can hack in and change channels, play with the volume, and in a worst-case scenario, watch and listen to...

World-first technology to catch drivers using phones illegally is being introduced in NSW ahead of the rest of the country. Here are the mobile phone fines in each state. Drivers using a mobile phone illegally have a greater chance of getting caught from today, as NSW becomes the first place in the world to introduce mobile phone detection cameras – and other Australian states are poised to follow. A mix of 10 fixed and portable mobile phone detection cameras will be installed in NSW from today (1 December 2019); another 35 are planned over the next four years. During a...

Uber plans to record audio during rides in the United States as part of a new security feature, in its latest push to protect riders and drivers amid rising safety concerns. The feature, which is first to be piloted in some Latin American cities next month, allows users to opt in to activate an audio recording on any trip or all trips, according to internal communications viewed by The Washington Post and confirmed by Uber. In markets where it’s available, users would probably be given a blanket warning that trips are subject to recording — and that the feature will...

Police officers who download videos captured by homeowners’ Ring doorbell cameras can keep them forever and share them with whomever they’d like without providing evidence of a crime, the Amazon-owned firm told a lawmaker this month. More than 600 police forces across the country have entered into partnerships with the camera giant, allowing them to quickly request and download video recorded by Ring’s motion-detecting, Internet-connected cameras inside and around Americans’ homes. The company says that the videos can be a critical tool in helping law enforcement investigate crimes such as trespassing, burglary and package theft, and that homeowners are free...

  (Mass Private I) It is hard to imagine a more intrusive home surveillance device than a faucet or toilet that listens to everyone’s conversations, but that is just what Delta Faucet and Kohler have done.Delta Faucet’s “Voice IQ” takes advantage of where lots of people like to congregate and turns it into an Alexa eavesdropping center.“Designed with the understanding that 20 percent of all WiFi-enabled homes are equipped with a connected home device, VoiceIQ Technology pairs with existing devices to dispense the exact amount of water needed, all with a simple voice command.”Delta lets Alexa decide how much water everyone...

Federal prosecutors this week charged a Seattle woman with stealing data from more than 100 million credit applications made with Capital One Financial Corp. Incredibly, much of this breach played out publicly over several months on social media and other open online platforms. What follows is a closer look at the accused, and what this incident may mean for consumers and businesses .... Erratic (Paige A. Thompson) also posted frequently to Slack about her struggles with gender identity, lack of employment, and persistent suicidal thoughts.

Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are always watching you — even when you’re browsing pornography websites in incognito mode. What these companies might be doing with pornography-site browsing data is a mystery. Oracle, which owns a number of large data brokers and has been called a “privacy deathstar,” could, for example add data collected by trackers with its current profiles. Dr. Maris argues that this lack of disclosure is similar to the issue of sexual consent. “As in any sexual interaction, silence must not be mistaken for consent,” she said. “Individuals should have a clear understanding of the power dynamics of...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, continued to defend Democratic socialism and argued that Americans would be "delighted to pay more in taxes" if his policies are carried out. On Wednesday, Sanders attempted to sway voters into the ideology of Democratic socialism and argued in favor for what he called an "Economic Bill of Rights," where every American would have a right for items like free health care and education. He also insisted that President Trump is a "corporate socialist" for providing billions in subsidies and tax breaks for corporations. During an appearance on CNN, the Democratic candidate was asked how he...

Detectives monitored the video on flat-screen TVs inside a secure room in the sheriff’s office.

Your smart lightbulb is probably storing your wifi password in the clear, ready to be recovered by wily dumpster-divers; Limited Results discovered the security worst-practice during a teardown of a Lifx bulb; and that's just for starters: the bulbs also store their RSA private key and root passwords in the clear and have no security measures to prevent malicious reflashings of their ROMs with exploits, network probes and other nasties.

Full tile: Jeff Bezos Protests the Invasion of His Privacy, as Amazon Builds a Sprawling Surveillance State for Everyone Else IF BEZOS WERE the political victim of surveillance state abuses, it would be scandalous and dangerous. It would also be deeply ironic. That’s because Amazon, the company that has made Bezos the planet’s richest human being, is a critical partner for the U.S. Government in building an ever-more invasive, militarized and sprawling surveillance state. Indeed, one of the largest components of Amazon’s business, and thus one of the most important sources of Bezos’ vast wealth and power, is working with...

A former police clerk is accused of filming nearly 70 of his male colleagues using the restroom without their knowledge, authorities said. And where did this brazen act allegedly take place? A second-floor bathroom inside the headquarters of the Long Beach Police Department. KCAL9’s Tom Wait says the 28-year-old ex-employee — identified as Sergio Nieto — was in possession of about 115 tapes in all. Nieto has been charged with 115 misdemeanor counts of invasion of privacy. The formal complaint lists 69 victims. The videos show the men dressing and using the facilities. Officials say Nieto filmed the men using...

The Times reported late Tuesday that it obtained internal Facebook (FB) documents that show how the social media arranged to share data with more than 150 companies. The deals helped Facebook gain more users, according to the report, and its partners were able to add new features to their products while effectively avoiding Facebook’s usual privacy rules. Many of the partnerships ended years ago, but the details reported by the Times are striking. Amazon (AMZN) got access Facebook users’ names and contact information through their friends on the social network, according to the report, while Microsoft’s (MSFT) search engine Bing...

Blockchain technology has been the talk of the tech world for the last several years. That said, it is also something of a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. There are plenty of great books that effectively promote it, such as Don and Alex Tapscott’s nearly canonical Blockchain Revolution, published in 2016. Fast forward the revolution by two years. There’s more to say. George Gilder, in the most important recent book on blockchain, is here to say it. He not only dazzles but demystifies the blockchain, making vivid exactly how it is going to transform the internet and...