Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
How CIA’s Palantir Wired Washington
August 14th, 2016Via: Politico: When a little-known Silicon Valley software startup began vying for national security contracts, it went up against an entrenched bureaucracy and opposition from major contractors skilled in the Washington game. But quickly, Palantir began pulling pages from the defense industry’s own playbook — bulking up on lobbyists, challenging the Pentagon’s contracting rules and […]
90-Year-Old Cryptanalytic Efforts Must Stay Secret, Says NSA
August 9th, 2016Via: The National Security Archive: The National Security Agency is withholding 90-year-old information on early American cryptanalytic efforts against Russia and the Soviet Union from a 20-year-old document on the grounds that releasing the information could “reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to national security.” Specifically, the NSA claims that the release […]
Australia’s Insane Decision to Collect Names in Latest Census
August 9th, 2016Via: Salinger Privacy: Although there are certainly heightened privacy and security risks of accidental loss or malicious misuse with storing names and addresses, the deliberate privacy invasion starts with the use of that data to create a Statistical Linkage Key (SLK) for each individual, to use in linking data from other sources. Please don’t believe […]
Researchers Crack Open Unusually Advanced Malware That Hid for 5 Years
August 9th, 2016Via: Ars Technica: Security experts have discovered a malware platform that’s so advanced in its design and execution that it could probably have been developed only with the active support of a nation state. The malware—known alternatively as “ProjectSauron” by researchers from Kaspersky Lab and “Remsec” by their counterparts from Symantec—has been active since at […]
BBC to Spy on Internet Users Watching BBC Without Paying TV Licence Fee
August 5th, 2016Via: Mirror: The BBC is to spy on internet users in their homes – and sniff out those watching iPlayer without paying the TV Licence fee. The Beeb is set to employ Wi-Fi detection vans to prosecute people illegally watching its programmes online. From September the broadcaster will use information from private Wi-Fi networks in […]
iPhone Case to Monitor Device’s Radios for Surveillance Activity
July 21st, 2016Of course, inexpensive signal blocking pouches can prevent phones from communicating. You have to test them to make sure that they’re actually blocking the signals. See: Black Hole Faraday Bags, for example. This thing below, however, will tell you when something dodgy is happening. (Much better than my warm-to-the-touch-dead-battery indicator.) Via: Wired: A mockup of […]
‘Pokémon Go’: Government Surveillance App?
July 14th, 2016For commentary on this, I’d mainly offer my 2012 piece: Ingress: Google’s Strange New Game Flash forward to 2016 and Pokémon Go offers the same soft control, but now with mass appeal. You might be thinking, mass appeal? What? With 10-year-olds? It turns out that in the swipetarded zombie apocalypse, “Pokémon Go tops Twitter’s daily […]
How “Fansmitter” Malware Can Steal Data from Air-Gapped Computers
June 30th, 2016Via: MIT Technology Review: Changing a computer’s fan speed produces an audio signal that can be hijacked to steal data, say computer security experts who have tested the technique. … Fansmitters are simple in principle. Almost all computers use fans to cool the main CPU and the graphics card, and to pump air through the […]
Google Wants to Slither Into Public Transportation
June 27th, 2016Via: Guardian: Sidewalk Labs, a secretive subsidiary of Alphabet, wants to radically overhaul public parking and transportation in American cities, emails and documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. Its high-tech services, which it calls “new superpowers to extend access and mobility”, could make it easier to drive and park in cities and create hybrid public/private […]
The Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply to Your Home Computer
June 24th, 2016Via: EFF: In a dangerously flawed decision unsealed today, a federal district court in Virginia ruled that a criminal defendant has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in his personal computer, located inside his home. According to the court, the federal government does not need a warrant to hack into an individual’s computer. … The implications […]
