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Big Brother meets Big Tech: Memo reveals military spies can just BUY personal data with tax money – no need for warrant

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Using smartphone information bought from data brokers enabled the US Defense Intelligence Agency to spy on people without a warrant, including some Americans, the DIA admitted in a memo to a senator that’s now been made public.

The Defense Intelligence Agency focuses on foreign threats, but has searched for movements of American citizens at least five times over the past two and a half years, using cell phone data collected and sold by commercial brokers, according to an unclassified memo sent this week to Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon).

That specific time frame is due to the US Supreme Court decision in Carpenter v. United States, dated June 2018, which held that the government must obtain a warrant to get location data on cell phone users. However, the DIA “does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially available data for intelligence purposes,” the New York Times reported on Friday, citing the memo to Wyden.

Makers of many smartphone apps can and do log the users’ locations, which are often sold to brokers – and they, in turn, resell it to advertisers as well as law enforcement and spies, apparently.

‘MuslimPro sold us out’: Report exposes many apps selling your LOCATION DATA to US military Special Operations Command

In what is perhaps the most famous example yet, Vice reported in November that US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) had used cutouts to buy data on users of MuslimPro, a prayer schedule app downloaded by some 100 million people.

DIA did not identify which broker it was buying the data from, saying only that they sold bulk records that did not separate Americans from foreigners. Instead, the military spies filter the records for those that “appear to be” on US soil and place them in a separate database, the Wyden memo revealed. That database can be accessed only with special approval, and has so far been granted five times for “authorized purposes.”

The memo came in response to a query sent by Chris Soghoian, Wyden’s privacy and cybersecurity aide who previously worked at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as the chief technologist.

Wyden is interested in the subject because he has proposed additional safeguards on privacy of Americans, which the Oregon senator hopes will be included in the upcoming legislation reviving several provisions of the expired PATRIOT Act.

The previous attempt to do so stalled in the divided Congress due in part to objections from President Donald Trump, who cited the abuse of FISA warrants to spy on his campaign to demand changes – which neither Democrats nor his own Republicans were willing to make. Democrats now have the slim majority in both the House and the Senate, as well as the presidency.

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How much YouTube pays for 1 million views, according to creators

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  • YouTube creators earn money from Google-placed ads on their videos.
  • A number of factors determine how much money they make, including video views.
  • Creators said how much YouTube pays for 1 million views ranged from $3,400 to $30,000.

While many factors — content niche and country, among them — determine how much money a YouTuber earns on any particular video, the number of views it gets is perhaps the most significant.

When a YouTube video hits 1 million views, there’s almost a guaranteed big payday for its creator. In some cases, creators can make five-figures from a single video if it accrues that many views.

Three creators explained how much money YouTube had paid them. YouTube pays $3,400 to $30,000 for 1 million views, these creators said.

When tech creator Shelby Church spoke with Insider, she had earned $30,000 from a video about Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). At the time, the video had accrued 1.8 million views.

Her RPM rate — or earnings per 1,000 views — are relatively high, she said, because of her content niche. Business, personal finance, and technology channels tend to earn more per view.

“YouTubers don’t always make a ton of money, and it really depends on what kind of videos you’re making,” she said.

Influencers can earn 55% of a video’s ad revenue if they are part of YouTube’s Partner Program, or YPP. To qualify for the program, they must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on their long-form videos.

They can also make money from shorts, YouTube’s short-form video offering. In order to qualify, creators need to reach 10 million views in 90 days and have 1,000 subscribers. YouTube pools ad revenue from shorts and pays an undisclosed amount to record labels for music licensing. Creators receive 45% of the remaining money based on their percentage of the total shorts views on the platform.

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Tesla employees shared sensitive images recorded by cars – Reuters

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Some pictures were turned into memes and distributed through internal chats, former workers told the agency

Tesla workers shared “highly invasive” images and videos recorded by customers’ electric cars, making fun of them on internal chat groups, several former employees of Elon Musk’s company have told Reuters.

The electric-car manufacturer obtains consent from its clients to collect data from vehicles in order to improve its self-driving technology. However, the company assures owners that the whole system is “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy,” the agency pointed out in its report on Thursday.

According to nine former workers who talked to the agency, groups of employees shared private footage of customers in Tesla’s internal one-on-one chats between 2019 and 2022.

One of the clips in question captured a man approaching his electric car while he was completely naked, one of the sources said.

Tesla recalls over 360,000 cars over self-driving threat

Others featured crashes and road-rage incidents. One particular video of a Tesla hitting a child on a bike in a residential area spread around the company’s office in San Mateo, California “like wildfire,” an ex-employee claimed.

“I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected… We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids,” another former worker told the agency.

Seven former employees also told Reuters that the software they used at work allowed them to see the location where the photo or video was made, despite Tesla assuring its customers that “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.”

The agency noted that it could not obtain any of the pictures or clips described by its sources, who said they were all deleted. Some former employees also told the journalists that they had only seen private data being shared for legitimate purposes, such as seeking assistance for colleagues. Tesla did not respond when approached for comment on the issue by Reuters.

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Nordic nation’s military bans use of TikTok – media

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Sweden’s Defense Ministry has reportedly barred employees from using the Chinese-owned app on their work phones

Sweden’s military has reportedly cracked down on TikTok, decreeing that staff members are no longer allowed to use the Chinese-owned video-sharing application on their devices at work because of security concerns.

The Swedish Defense Ministry on Monday issued its decision, which was viewed by Agence-France Presse, banning the use of TikTok. Security concerns were raised based on “the reporting that has emerged through open sources regarding how the app handles user information and the actions of the owner company, ByteDance,” the ministry said.

The move follows similar restrictions imposed by other EU countries in recent weeks. For example, France banned government employees from downloading “recreational applications,” including TikTok, on their work phones. Norway barred use of the app on devices that can access its parliament’s computer network, while the UK and Belgium banned it on all government phones. Denmark’s Defense Ministry and Latvia’s Foreign Ministry imposed their TikTok bans earlier this month.

China responds to TikTok allegations

“Using mobile phones and tablets can in itself be a security risk, so therefore we don’t want TikTok on our work equipment,” Swedish Defense Ministry press secretary Guna Graufeldt told AFP.

The US, Canada and New Zealand previously banned their federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, citing fears of ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Members of Congress may try to ban the app from the US market altogether after testimony at a congressional hearing last week by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew failed to ease their security concerns. “They’ve actually united Republicans and Democrats out of the concern of allowing the CCP to control the most dominant media platform in America,” US Representative Mike Gallagher said on Sunday in an ABC News interview.

Chinese officials have denied claims that TikTok is used to collect the personal data of its American users. “The Chinese government has never asked and will never ask any company or individual to collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters last week. She added that Washington has attacked TikTok without providing any evidence that it threatens US security.

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