transparency

Microsoft publishes first National Security Letter in transparency report

Microsoft's biannual transparency report was just released and, like many other major tech companies that have been putting out their reports recently, the company has revealed its first National Secu

Banned crime reporting app Vigilante returns as Citizen, says its ‘report incident’ feature will be pulled

Remember Vigilante? The controversial crime reporting app was kicked out of the App Store in November shortly after its release because Apple believed it encouraged private citizens to engage in, well

Cloudflare explains how FBI gag order impacted business

Cloudflare issued its biannual transparency report yesterday, detailing the government requests for user data it received during the latter half of 2016. Many tech companies make regular disclosures a

Politwoops gets a new public interest parent: ProPublica

Politwoops, the service that preserves politicians' deleted tweets for posterity and to hold them to account, has a new parent: nonprofit, public interest investigative journalism corporation ProPubli

The need for algorithmic accountability

There is a new generation of companies exerting such great influence on society that they’re essentially becoming utilities. Google, Amazon, Facebook and Uber are near monopolies that provide servic

Google’s latest transparency report shows record government data requests

Google saw a record number of data requests from law enforcement agencies worldwide during the second half of 2015 as the request total passed the 40,000 mark for the first time. That's up from 35,365

No one organizes any crime on Slack, apparently

Slack released its second annual transparency report today, revealing that it has received a grand total of one government request for user data. Just one. The number is somewhat remarkable when compa

Uber shared 14 million users’ info with the government, transparency report says

Uber released its first-ever transparency report today, following in the footsteps of other major technology companies and detailing the kinds of information it shares about riders and drivers with th

To Prevent Another Flint, Make All Open Data Machine Readable

The lead poisoning of the entire city of Flint, Michigan was preventable and should never have happened. Numerous pundits and industry experts have said this. Most of them, however, explain that if go

Politwoops Is Back Online Tracking Politicians’ Tweet Deletes

Politicians in 25 countries will be shifting a little more uneasily on their benches this week as Politwoops, the service that tracks politicians' deleted tweets, and can thus flag up attempts to edit

EFF’s 2015 Data Privacy Report Lauds Apple, Dropbox, Slams Verizon

Digital rights organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published its fifth annual Who has your back? report into online service providers' transparency and privacy practices when it

Apple Should Be More Transparent About Security

It seems that Apple has gotten embroiled in a security scandal of one sort or another every few months. It dodged Heartbleed but was hit by the very embarrassing ‘goto fail’ bug. It was

Google Sees Government Requests For Information Balloon 120% Over Four Years

Google has seen a tremendous increase in requests for information made by the government, the company revealed in an update to its Transparency Report today. The updated report includes the number of

Cory Booker Opens Stop-And-Frisk Data To The Public. Here’s Why It Might Help.

Newark Mayor and Senate candidate Cory Booker has just begun testing an innovative solution to the racial problems plaguing law enforcement’s use of stop-and-frisk: hold officers accountable by

Is Facebook Finally Going To Do Something Interesting?

<a href="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/facebook_people.jpg"><img src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/facebook_people.jpg?w=300" alt="" title="facebook_people" wi