Techmeme
April 3, 2020, 6:20 PM

Top News

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Google uses aggregated anonymized location data from 131 countries to show which places are complying with social distancing and which aren't  —  New COVID-19 mobility reports show changes in traffic to stores, parks, transit stations, and more  —  Google is using location data gathered …
Sam Biddle / The Intercept:
Civil liberties advocates say a data-driven approach to pandemic response is compatible with individual rights, but with limits and justifications at every step  —  In less than a decade, whistleblowers like the NSA's Edward Snowden and Cambridge Analytica's Christopher Wylie helped spur …
Reuters:
Researchers are using Facebook's location data to provide daily updates to US cities and states evaluating the effectiveness of social distancing amid COVID-19  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Infectious disease researchers are using Facebook Inc mobile location data to provide daily updates …
Micah Lee / The Intercept:
Researchers: Zoom sometimes uses encryption keys issued by servers in China, uses a flawed encryption method, and hence is not suited to communicate secrets  —  Meetings on Zoom, the increasingly popular video conferencing service, are encrypted using an algorithm with serious …
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Thousands of Zoom calls found via web search using Zoom's default file naming scheme after users saved them in unprotected spaces like open AWS S3 buckets  —  Many of the videos include personally identifiable information and deeply intimate conversations, recorded in people's homes.
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Profile of Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who says the company will “probably” suspend all tracking on Zoom's sites and consider open-sourcing its code in the future  —  Covering venture capital, software and startups  —  Zoom CEO Eric Yuan's kids finally care about what he does for a living.
Eric S. Yuan / Zoom Blog:
Reuters:
Internal docs: Amazon to postpone Prime Day at least until August, expects a potential $100M hit from excess devices it may now have to sell at a discount  —  (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) is postponing its major summer shopping event Prime Day at least until August and expects potentially …
Joseph Cox / VICE:
In a court filing, CEO of NSO Group says Facebook representatives approached NSO in 2017 to buy parts of Pegasus to monitor phones of users who installed Onavo  —  Facebook representatives approached controversial surveillance vendor NSO Group to try and buy a tool that could help Facebook better monitor …
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
The new iPad Pro gets a privacy feature, first introduced on 2018 MacBooks, that disconnects hardware microphones when an attached MFi compliant case is closed  —  Recent Apple MacBooks have included an aggressive security feature that disconnects hardware microphones when the lid is physically closed.
Bloomberg:
Four democratic senators send a letter to Apple, asking whether its COVID-19 app and website comply with HIPAA and seeking info on its agreements with the govt  —  - Menendez, Harris, Booker, Blumenthal send letter to Cook  — Apple says it's not collecting answers from the screening tool
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Leaked memo: Apple told employees that its retail stores in the US will remain closed and work-from-home procedures will remain in place until early May  —  - Apple's top retail, human resources exec sends memo to workers  — Work from home to also remain in place in U.S. on Covid-19
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Apptopia and Braze study: with 59M global installs, Netflix led rivals YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ in Q1, but more time was spent on YouTube Kids  —  Netflix may still dominate global streaming, but Disney+ has made a huge splash in the United States, where it launched in November.

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Earlier Picks

Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
John Gruber / Daring Fireball: