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Hesse is one of German's states and the State's Privacy Commissioner has warned that data stored in the cloud by Office 365 could be accessed in the United States. In effect, personal information related to teachers and students would be in the cloud and available to US agencies. Michael Ronellenfitsch, Hesse's data protection commissioner stated that, even if such information was stored in European data centers, it remained "exposed to possible access by US authorities." Ronellenfitsch continued to say that public institutions in Germany "have a special responsibility with regard to the permissibility and traceability of the processing of personal data." Further, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) noted that Windows 10 sends "a wealth of telemetry data to Microsoft." BSI requested Microsoft advise them what data they take, but had received no response. Commentary suggested that data could include anything from standard software diagnostics to user content from inside applications, potential sentences from documents and email subject lines. All of which contravenes the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For the past couple of years, Microsoft has provided a localized version of Office 365, which for quite some time Ronellenfitsch had supported, stating in 2017 that schools could use Office 365, provided that they adhere to Germany's data protection laws. Recently, permission to use that local resource was rescinded, when all services were migrated back to US datacenters. Ronellenfitsch asserts that mere consent to the rules Microsoft provides is not sufficient, because the data remains compromised as the security and traceability remain dubious. Check out OUR FORUM for more.

The Global Times reported that "it is possible for Huawei to build a sustainable smartphone ecosystem on the HongMeng OS and reshape the current market dominated by Android and Apple's iOS" TheDuran via Zerohedge… Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment supplier, is set to launch its HongMeng operating system (OS) as a potential alternative to Google’s Android OS, on August 9 at Huawei’s Developer Conference, industry insiders told the Global Times Wednesday.
According to media reports, the user experience (UX) design features a brand new ringtone and notification panel, a cleaner interface for the camera, more animation and faster speed. Users can also add widgets and personalize the locked screen. Citing industry experts (most likely of Chinese origin), the Global Times reported that “it is possible for Huawei to build a sustainable smartphone ecosystem on the HongMeng OS and reshape the current market dominated by Android and Apple’s iOS”, although the new system is primarily designed for industrial automation and applications in the Internet of Things (IoT). “Given the design features of the HongMeng OS, it can be a game changer in IoT-related areas, such as driverless cars and smart homes,” Fu Liang, a Beijing-based independent industry analyst, told the Global Times. According to Huawei’s website, the HongMeng OS is built with a processing latency of less than 5 milliseconds, which is especially required in circumstances involving IoT applications that often need to transfer large amount of data simultaneously. That said, broad consumer adoption is unlikely at first: “It’s not designed for phones as everyone thinks,” Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, said in a recent interview with the French magazine Le Point.

Not only is your Google Home device listening to you, but a new report also suggests there might be a Google contractor who’s listening as well. Even if you didn’t ask your device any questions, it’s still sending what you say to the company, who allow an actual person to collect data from it. A new report from Belgian broadcaster VRT News describes the process by which Google Home recordings end up being listened to by contractors — and the scary part is that it apparently doesn’t take much, if anything, to start a recording. While the recordings are not listened to live, audio clips are sent to subcontractors. VRT, with the help of a whistleblower, was able to listen to some of these clips and subsequently heard enough to discern the addresses of several Dutch and Belgian people using Google Home — in spite of the fact some hadn’t even uttered the words “Hey Google,” which are supposed to be the device’s listening trigger. The person who leaked the recordings was working as a subcontractor to Google, transcribing the audio files for subsequent use in improving its speech recognition. They got in touch with VRT after reading about Amazon Alexa keeping recordings indefinitely. According to the whistleblower, the recordings presented to them are meant to be carefully annotated, with notes included about the speaker's presumed identity and age. From the sound of the report, these transcribers have heard just about everything. Personal information? Bedroom activities? Domestic violence? Yes, yes, and yes. While VRT only listened to recordings from Dutch and Belgian users, the platform the whistleblower showed them had recordings from all over the world – which means there are probably thousands of other contractors listening to Assistant recordings. Concerned about your privacy visit OUR FORUM.

  

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