Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Extracting Audio from Visual Information
August 4th, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review: Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag photographed from 15 feet away through soundproof […]
NSA Spy Tools Were Set for NZ Installation
August 1st, 2014NSA wouldn’t need to tap the cables since the agency is already inside the boxes in the U.S., New Zealand and Aussie landing sites. What do you think Snowden was supposed to be doing at his NSA job in Hawaii? Working on his tan? Look at where the Southern Cross cables go. So let’s cut […]
CIA Admits to Improperly Hacking Senate Computers
July 31st, 2014Via: National Journal: In a sharp and sudden reversal, the CIA is acknowledging it improperly tapped into the computers of Senate staffers who were reviewing the intelligence agency’s Bush-era torture practices.
Lawyers Blocked Demo on De-Anonymising Tor
July 30th, 2014Via: Guardian: The Tor network promises online privacy by routing users’ internet traffic through a number of servers – or layers – while encrypting data. The surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden is known to have used Tor to maintain his privacy, while the documents he leaked showed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) struggled to […]
Russia Offers $111,000 to Crack Tor
July 28th, 2014Via: Ars Technica: The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) has offered a 3.9 million ruble (approximately $111,000) contract for technology that can identify the users of Tor, the encrypted anonymizing network used by Internet users seeking to hide their activities from monitoring by law enforcement, government censors, and others. In a notice on the […]
Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior
July 27th, 2014Via: SSRN: This paper uses data from Google Trends on search terms from before and after the surveillance revelations of June 2013 to analyze whether Google users’ search behavior shifted as a result of an exogenous shock in information about how closely their internet searches were being monitored by the U.S. government. We use data […]
JIBO “Family Robot”
July 25th, 2014Via: My Jibo:
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 […]
