Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Verizon Wireless Wants to ‘Edit’ Your Internet Access
July 16th, 2012Via: Cnet: What if your wireless provider gave you Internet access and search results according to what it decided was a “priority”? As a Verizon Wireless customer, I’m furious at the idea that it would “pick favorites” over what I was actually looking for — especially if it was an emergency. But that’s just what […]
How Many Child Molestors Work for the NRO?
July 12th, 2012Via: McClatchy: One of the nation’s most secretive intelligence agencies is pressuring its polygraphers to obtain intimate details of the private lives of thousands of job applicants and employees, pushing the ethical and legal boundaries of a program that’s designed instead to catch spies and terrorists. The National Reconnaissance Office is so intent on extracting […]
What Happened When States Forced Amazon to Pay Taxes… Same Day Delivery
July 12th, 2012Disclosure: Cryptogon is an Amazon affiliate. Local retailers (including Walmart), make your time. Via: Slate: Why would Amazon give up its precious tax advantage? This week, as part of an excellent investigative series on the firm, the Financial Times’ Barney Jopson reports that Amazon’s tax capitulation is part of a major shift in the company’s […]
Google Settles with U.S. Government on Privacy Violations
July 12th, 2012Where does $22.5 million show up on Google’s list of expenses? Hmm… In other words, for Google and other companies: Do more of this. The penalty for getting caught is trivial. Via: New York Times: Google and the Federal Trade Commission are near a $22.5 million settlement agreement related to charges that Google bypassed privacy […]
Neurotechnology for Intelligence Analysts
July 12th, 2012Via: The Chronicle of Higher Education: In a small, anonymous office in the Trump Tower, 28 floors above Wall Street, a man sits in front of a computer screen sifting through satellite images of a foreign desert. The images depict a vast, sandy emptiness, marked every so often by dunes and hills. He is searching […]
New Department of Homeland Security Laser Scanners
July 11th, 2012Via: Gizmodo: Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the […]
Executive Order Grants Authority to Seize Private Communications Facilities
July 10th, 2012Via: Electronic Privacy Information Center: The White House has released a new Executive Order seeking to ensure the continuity of government communications during a national emergency. The Executive Order grants new powers to the Department of Homeland Security, including the ability to collect certain public communications information. Under the Executive Order the White House has […]
14 Incredibly Creepy Surveillance Technologies
July 10th, 2012Via: Blacklisted News: Most of us don’t think much about it, but the truth is that people are being watched, tracked and monitored more today than at any other time in human history. The explosive growth of technology in recent years has given governments, spy agencies and big corporations monitoring tools that the despots and […]
Air Force Trains Drone Pilots by Tracking Civilian Cars in U.S.
July 8th, 2012Via: New York Times: Today many of the pilots at Holloman never get off the ground. The base has been converted into the U.S. Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a […]
Drone Hijacking? That’s Just the Start of GPS Troubles
July 7th, 2012Via: Wired: On the evening of June 19, a group of researchers from the University of Texas successfully hijacked a civilian drone at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico during a test organized by the Department of Homeland Security. The drone, an Adaptive Flight Hornet Mini, was hovering at around 60 feet, locked […]
