Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Germany: Typewriter Manufacturers See Boom in Sales
July 24th, 2014Via: The Local: German typewriter manufacturers are enjoying a boom in sales following the NSA spying scandal. A German defence manufacturer switched to typewriters last year, while last week a leading politician called for the government to use the old technology. The head of the parliamentary inquiry into spying by the US National Security Service […]
‘Back Doors’ Running on Every iOS Device
July 21st, 2014Via: ZDnet: Forensic scientist and author Jonathan Zdziarski has posted the slides (PDF) from his talk at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE/X) conference in New York called Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices. … According to one slide the iPhone is “reasonably secure” to a typical attacker and the iPhone […]
U.S. Terrorist Database Growing at Rapid Rate
July 19th, 2014Via: AP: The U.S. government is rapidly expanding the number of names it accepts for inclusion on its terrorist watch list, with more than 1.5 million added in the last five years, according to numbers divulged by the government in a civil lawsuit. About 99 percent of the names submitted are accepted, leading to criticism […]
German NSA Committee May Turn to Typewriters
July 15th, 2014Via: Ars Technica: Patrick Sensburg, chairman of the German parliament’s National Security Agency investigative committee, now says he’s considering expanding the use of manual typewriters to carry out his group’s work. In an appearance (German language) Monday morning on German public television, Sensburg said that the committee is taking its operational security very seriously. “In […]
GCHQ Has Developed Covert Tools to Seed the Internet with False Information
July 15th, 2014The headline is a huge understatement. Go through the document for a laundry list of stuff they’re up to. Via: First Look: The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web […]
Binney: “The NSA lies about what it stores.”
July 13th, 2014Via: Guardian: William Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by Washington’s move towards mass surveillance. On 5 July he spoke at a conference in London organised by the […]
Hospitals Are Mining Patients’ Credit Card Data to Predict Who Will Get Sick
July 4th, 2014Via: Bloomberg: Imagine getting a call from your doctor if you let your gym membership lapse, make a habit of buying candy bars at the checkout counter, or begin shopping at plus-size clothing stores. For patients of Carolinas HealthCare System, which operates the largest group of medical centers in North and South Carolina, such a […]
NSA Targets Tor Administrators and People Searching for Privacy Tools
July 3rd, 2014More: NSA Targets the Privacy-Conscious Via: ndr.de: The investigation discloses the following: Two servers in Germany – in Berlin and Nuremberg – are under surveillance by the NSA. Merely searching the web for the privacy-enhancing software tools outlined in the XKeyscore rules causes the NSA to mark and track the IP address of the person […]
The Military Is Already Using Facebook to Track Your Mood
July 2nd, 2014Via: Defense One: Critics have targeted a recent study on how emotions spread on the popular social network site Facebook, complaining that some 600,000 Facebook users did not know that they were taking part in an experiment. Somewhat more disturbing, the researchers deliberately manipulated users’ feelings to measure an effect called emotional contagion. Though Cornell […]
Google: Better Than 50% Chance That Loon Becomes a Reality
June 30th, 2014They also have drones: Google Buys Drone Maker Titan Aerospace. Via: Wired: Cassidy has always contended that by providing the Internet to unserved areas, his project could help make those dreams achievable. A year after the project’s public launch, he’s confident that Internet service enabled by high-altitude balloons is more than a possibility. “We’ve definitely […]
