The fast-rising Chinese AI lab DeepSeek is sparking national security concerns in the U.S., over fears that its AI models could be used by the Chinese government to spy on American civilians, learn proprietary secrets, and wage influence campaigns. In her first press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the National Security Council was "looking into" the potential security implications of DeepSeek. This comes amid news that the U.S. Navy has banned use of DeepSeek among its ranks due to "potential security and ethical concerns." DeepSeek, which currently tops the Apple App Store in the U.S., marks a major inflection point in the AI arms race between the U.S. and China. For the last couple years, many leading technologists and political leaders have argued that whichever country developed AI the fastest will have a huge economic and military advantage over its rivals. DeepSeek shows that China's AI has developed much faster than many had believed, despite efforts from American policymakers to slow its progress.

Privacy experts are sounding the alarm on a new satellite capable of spying on your every move that is set to launch in 2025. The satellite, created by startup company Albedo, is so high quality it can zoom in on people or license plates from space, raising concerns among expert that it will create a'big brother is always watching' scenario. Albedo claims the satellite won't have facial recognition software but doesn't mention that it will refrain from imaging people or protecting people's privacy. Albedo signed two separate million-dollar contracts with the U.S. Air Force and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center to help the government monitor potential threats to U.S. national security. Albedo claims the satellite won't have facial recognition software but doesn't mention that it will refrain from imaging people or protecting people's privacy.

Breaking up with people has become much more complex in the digital age, with shared logins and apps meaning your ex could be watching you long after you have split. If you have shared devices, it's perfectly possible that an ex could access your email - and from there, your bank accounts, by resetting passwords. If your partner is abusive, they can also use tech to spy on you or even track you, or use your images to make AI porn, warned cybersecurity and privacy expert, Laura Kankaala at F-Secure, speaking to DailyMail.com Even smart light bulbs can pose a problem, she explained. Cyberstalking affects millions of Americans, with three million people stalked using technology in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

From where you go to what you say to Siri and Google Assistant, most smartphone apps collect your data continuously. Companies then sell this data to advertising companies, hence why it can sometimes feel like you are recommended ads about products you mentioned in passing once. Data privacy advocate Gaël Duval said that, thankfully, it's possible to change settings so this doesn't happen. Murena believes this has measurable benefits: he says that poor data privacy and personalised adverts directly contribute to increased time spent online, impulse buying and even worsening mental health problems – as tech companies understand more about you, they will target adverts at you more precisely. Research by TASO in 2022 found that 79 percent of people were worried about online technology companies using their data, and 65 percent felt uncomfortable sharing their data to use services for free.

Imperial privacy experts have created an AI algorithm that automatically tests privacy-preserving systems for potential data leaks. This is the first time AI has been used to automatically discover vulnerabilities in this type of system, examples of which are used by Google Maps and Facebook. The experts, from Imperial's Computational Privacy Group, looked at attacks on query-based systems (QBS)--controlled interfaces through which analysts can query data to extract useful aggregate information about the world. They then developed a new AI-enabled method called QuerySnout to detect attacks on QBS. QBS give analysts access to collections of statistics gathered from individual-level data like location and demographics.

Last week the Washington Post wrote about the growing concern privacy experts are having over AI and cameras in self powered, robot vacuum cleaners like iRobot Roomba or Shark ION Robot. The point is, if these devices can see and recognize dog poop and avoid it, what other personal and private conversations can they see and hear? Remember, if they can see and hear, they can both record and transmit the data over the Internet. Now consider all the other amazing new tech we use every day. This means your personal privacy is gone forever.

At least 42 law enforcement agencies in Minnesota reportedly used Clearview AI facial recognition software, according to a Buzzfeed investigation. Questions about the softwares reliability and legal standing remain in limbo, according to law enforcement, artificial intelligence, and privacy experts. Clearview AI is a web-based platform that allows users to submit pictures for possible matches in a database of more than 3 billion images pulled from open source websites, including news sites and social media, according to the company's web page. The company also boasted of a 100% accuracy rate at one point, according to a document obtained by a public records request from Buzzfeed. However, questions about the software's reliability and legal standing remain in limbo, according to law enforcement and artificial intelligence and privacy experts.

A prominent privacy expert has warned against allowing Amazon's voice assistant Alexa into the bedroom. Hannah Fry, a mathematician with expertise in the algorithms tech companies use, said she did not use the smart speaker in upstairs rooms of her house due to revelations that it was eavesdropping on private conversations. Amazon previously denied that its Echo devices were used to spy on people but earlier this year admitted that employees listen to customer voice recordings in order to improve speech recognition. It was also revealed that recordings of personal moments were inadvertently caught up after the smart speaker was triggered by words that sounded similar to "Alexa". After requesting audio data from Amazon that had been recorded by her Echo speaker, Dr Fry discovered it had picked up conversations that were never directed at the voice assistant.

For Adam Jasinski, a technology director for a school district outside of St Louis, Missouri, monitoring student emails used to be a time-consuming job. Jasinski used to do keyword searches of the official school email accounts for the district's 2,600 students, looking for words like "suicide" or "marijuana". Then he would have to read through every message that included one of the words. The process would occasionally catch some concerning behavior, but "it was cumbersome", Jasinski recalled. Last year Jasinski heard about a new option: following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the technology company Bark was offering schools free, automated, 24-hour-a-day surveillance of what students were writing in their school emails, shared documents and chat messages, and sending alerts to school officials any time the monitoring technology flagged concerning phrases.

Even for a company as serially scandalous as Facebook, it's been a bad week for the social network. Separate investigations revealed that Facebook gave more than 150 firms access to people's private messages, while also making it impossible for users to avoid location-based ads. After months of fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, US prosecutors also finally got around to filing a lawsuit against Facebook for its data sharing practices. Individually, none of these would likely be enough to bring Facebook down, but some experts believe that, collectively, this could signal the end for the internet behemoth. David Carroll, an associate professor at Parsons School of Design in New York, said this week may finally have dealt Facebook its "knockout" blow.