Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Homeland Security Tracks License Plates At Gun Shows
October 5th, 2016Via: ZeroHedge: Newly discovered emails from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), reveal efforts of the federal government to track American citizens who visit gun shows across the country. The discovery came via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Wall Street Journal that revealed internal emails from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement […]
Yahoo Secretly Scanned Customer Emails for U.S. Intelligence
October 4th, 2016Via: Reuters: Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The company complied with a classified U.S. government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest […]
Not The Onion: ‘A Robot Baby Intended to Make Lonely People More Happy’
October 3rd, 2016Via: Independent: Toyota has created a tiny robot baby that it hopes can make lonely people more happy. The company’s Kirobo Mini is meant to help provide a companion. It looks like a baby – and could even serve that purpose for people in Japan, where it will be sold and where falling birth rates […]
AI Legion of Doom: Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft Form AI Partnership
September 28th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch: The world’s largest technology companies hold the keys to some of the largest databases on our planet. Much like goods and coins before it, data is becoming an important currency for the modern world. The data’s value is rooted in its applications to artificial intelligence. Whichever company owns the data, effectively owns […]
Real Headline: “Get Ready for Freeways That Ban Human Drivers”
September 22nd, 2016Sure, they lead with the safety argument, but what you’re going to wind up with is something like this: Didn’t pay taxes? “Driving disabled. Would you like to pay overdue taxes, penalties, fees and interest now?” Didn’t pay parking fine? “Driving disabled. Would you like to pay your fine now?” Children not vaccinated? “Limited destinations. […]
German Spies ‘Systematically Violating Constitution’
September 5th, 2016Via: thelocal.de: The BND, Germany’s version of the CIA, has been accused of massive breaches of the constitution in a leaked report by the government’s representative for data protection. “The BND [Bundesnachrichtendienst] systematically lifted and used personal data without a legal basis to do so,” wrote Federal Data Protection Commissioner Andrea Voßhoff in a report […]
Chicago: “Array of Things”
August 29th, 2016Via: USA Today: The Windy City has begun installing what sounds and looks a whole lot like a Fitbit that can measure the vitals of a bustling metropolis. Chicago, which partnered on the project with researchers at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory and several corporations, last week installed the first two of […]
Amazon and the CIA Want to Teach AI to Interpret Satellite Imagery
August 25th, 2016Via: MIT Technology Review: Why can’t computers watch the Earth from above and automatically map our roads, buildings, and trash heaps? Satellite operator DigitalGlobe is teaming up with Amazon, the venture arm of the CIA, and chipmaker Nvidia to try to make it happen. In a joint project, DigitalGlobe today released satellite imagery depicting the […]
Make Your Time: Hacking Group Purportedly Hacked NSA-Linked Equation Group, Auctioning Cyber Weapons
August 15th, 2016Real or fake, I couldn’t stop chortling while reading the text. I think I know the author. Via: Computerworld: Quite honestly this could be fake – even the broken English announcement could be faked to make the attackers seem to not use English as their native language – but the Shadow Brokers said on GitHub: […]
In Bungled Spying Operation, NSA Targeted Pro-Democracy Campaigner
August 15th, 2016Via: The Intercept: Tony Fullman is a middle-aged former tax man and a pro-democracy activist. But four years ago, a botched operation launched by New Zealand spies meant he suddenly found himself deemed a potential terrorist — his passport was revoked, his home was raided, and he was placed on a top-secret National Security Agency […]
