Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Police Secretly Track Cellphones to Solve Routine Crimes
August 24th, 2015Via: USA Today: In one case after another, USA TODAY found police in Baltimore and other cities used the phone tracker, commonly known as a stingray, to locate the perpetrators of routine street crimes and frequently concealed that fact from the suspects, their lawyers and even judges. In the process, they quietly transformed a form […]
Katherine Albrecht: Windows 10 Is Full Blown Electronic Tyranny
August 24th, 2015Via: Pete Santilli:
No-Fly List Uses ‘Predictive Assessments’ Instead of Hard Evidence, U.S. Admits
August 24th, 2015Shocker. Via: Guardian: The Obama administration’s no-fly lists and broader watchlisting system is based on predicting crimes rather than relying on records of demonstrated offenses, the government has been forced to admit in court. In a little-noticed filing before an Oregon federal judge, the US Justice Department and the FBI conceded that stopping US and […]
IBM: Digital Rat Brain
August 19th, 2015Via: Quartz: In August 2014, IBM announced that it had built a “brain-inspired” computer chip—essentially a computer that was wired like an organic brain, rather than a traditional computer. These chips are designed to work like neurons—the brain’s nerve cells. Wired reported on Aug. 17 that the team working on the brain chips recently hit […]
Even When Told Not To, Windows 10 Won’t Stop Talking to Microsoft
August 18th, 2015Via: ArsTechnica: For example, even with Cortana and searching the Web from the Start menu disabled, opening Start and typing will send a request to www.bing.com to request a file called threshold.appcache which appears to contain some Cortana information, even though Cortana is disabled. The request for this file appears to contain a random machine […]
NSA Spying Relies on AT&T’s ‘Extreme Willingness to Help’
August 15th, 2015NSAT&T: Since 1985. Via: ProPublica: The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly […]
NSA Preparing Quantum Resistant Encryption Algorithms
August 15th, 2015Via: National Security Agency: IAD recognizes that there will be a move, in the not distant future, to a quantum resistant algorithm suite. Based on experience in deploying Suite B, we have determined to start planning and communicating early about the upcoming transition to quantum resistant algorithms. Our ultimate goal is to provide cost effective […]
Facial Recognition Software Moves From Overseas Wars to Local Police
August 12th, 2015The countries that run ECHELON, the largest civilian communications surveillance program in the world, have developed unified standards for biometric identification. See how this might look in the future by looking at Iraq. That’s the beta testing phase for what’s in store for the rest of us. —Cryptogon, 2007 Via: New York Times: Facial recognition […]
Windows 10 Is Possibly the Worst Spyware Ever Made
August 8th, 2015Via: Network World: The usual bumps of an OS launch are understandable and forgivable, but some of the terms of the end user service agreement for Windows 10 put the NSA to shame. Microsoft is already getting heat after it was found that Windows 10 was being auto-downloaded to user PCs without warning, and more […]
The No Download List
August 8th, 2015Via: The Register: Software export controls are being applied to blacklisted people as well as countries: and these controls apply to routine security packages such as freebie antivirus scanning software, as well as more sensitive technologies, El Reg has concluded. We’ve come to this way of thinking after investigating why Reg reader Hasan Ali was […]
