Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Groklaw Legal Site Shuts Over Fears of NSA Email Snooping
August 20th, 2013Via: Guardian: The award-winning legal analysis site Groklaw is shutting because its founder says that “there is no way” to continue to run it without using secure email – and that the threat of NSA spying means that could be compromised. “There is now no shield from forced exposure,” writes the site’s founder, Pamela Jones, […]
Obama Administration Asks Supreme Court to Allow Warrantless Cellphone Searches
August 20th, 2013Via: Washington Post: If the police arrest you, do they need a warrant to rifle through your cellphone? Courts have been split on the question. Last week the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve the issue and rule that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless cellphone searches.
New Software Forces You to Pay Attention During Company Training
August 18th, 2013Attending to multiple streams of information and entertainment while studying, doing homework, or even sitting in class has become common behavior among young people—so common that many of them rarely write a paper or complete a problem set any other way. —Students can’t resist multitasking, and it’s impairing their memory And now… Via: Bloomberg: Online […]
Two US Senators on Intelligence Committee: Thousands of Annual Violations by NSA of Its Own Restrictions Were ‘The Tip of The Iceberg’
August 17th, 2013Via: Guardian: Two US senators on the intelligence committee said on Friday that thousands of annual violations by the National Security Agency on its own restrictions were “the tip of the iceberg.” “The executive branch has now confirmed that the rules, regulations and court-imposed standards for protecting the privacy of Americans’ have been violated thousands […]
Google: If You Use Gmail, You Have ‘No Legitimate Expectation Of Privacy’
August 14th, 2013Via: Business Insider: If you happen to be one of the 400 million people who use Google’s Gmail service for sending and receiving emails, you shouldn’t have any expectation of privacy, according to a court briefing obtained by the Consumer Watchdog website. In a motion filed last month by Google to have a class action […]
Democracy Now On Amazon and Jeff Bezos
August 14th, 2013Disclosure: I have an affiliate relationship with Amazon. The Democracy Now discussion below contains some legitimate gripes about Amazon, which I’ve covered on here in the past. The most disturbing thing about Amazon (to me) is their work with CIA to build the agency’s new cloud computing infrastructure (news circa March 2013). That’s bad. But […]
‘The Era of Ubiquitous Listening Dawns’
August 13th, 2013Via: MIT Technology Review: The Moto X, the new smartphone from Google’s Motorola Mobility, might be remembered best someday for helping to usher in the era of ubiquitous listening. Unlike earlier phones, the Moto X includes two low-power chips whose only function is to process data from a microphone and other sensors—without tapping the main […]
Clean Green Surveillance Drone
August 13th, 2013Via: Wired: A new small unmanned aircraft system (UAS) boasts something no other has been able to do thus far: continuous flight for 9 hours and all on the clean energy of solar power. AeroVironment‘s 13-pound Puma AE can be assembled and hand-launched in minutes and requires no infrastructure for launch or landing, making them […]
Obama’s NSA “Reform” Panel Will Report to James Lied-To-Congress Clapper
August 13th, 2013Via: Ars Technica: President Obama held a news conference on Friday at which he promised reform—but groups who wanted to see real reform in the surveillance area were understandably skeptical. Obama made promises that he would “work with Congress” to produce better oversight, but he treated the recent leaks about NSA spying as more of […]
‘A Cookie for the Real World’: Devices Hidden in London’s Recycling Bins Track Smartphones
August 11th, 2013Via: Wired: The unique identifying numbers of over half a million smartphones have been recorded by a network of recycling bins in central London. Hundreds of thousands of pedestrians walking past 12 locations unknowingly had the unique MAC address of their smartphones recorded by Renew London. Data including the “movement, type, direction, and speed of […]
