Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Using Mobile Phone User Location Data for ‘Crowd (Soft) Control’
March 18th, 2012shewhomeasures.com: Via: PhysOrg: Eighty-eight percent of Americans now own a cell phone, forming a massive network that offers scientists a wealth of information and an infinite number of new applications. With the help of these phone users — and their devices’ cameras, audio recorders, and other features — researchers envision endless possibilities for gathering huge […]
Former Senior U.S. Intelligence Official and Current Booz Allen Hamilton Senior Vice President Joan A. Dempsey: ‘We’re a Few Years Away from Realizing Real Quantum Processing and Quantum Computing’
March 18th, 2012Bamford lays out a narrative below about the “enormous breakthrough,” but, at the end of the day, it’s conventional computers. There’s no mention quantum computers, or even the far less “out there” photonic systems. Is Bamford’s piece a limited hangout? —Bamford Claims NSA Has Made “An Enormous Breakthrough” in Cryptanalysis And now… Via: CNN: One […]
Bamford Claims NSA Has Made “An Enormous Breakthrough” in Cryptanalysis
March 16th, 2012Well, it has been the $64,000 question for a couple of decades: Can NSA break something like PGP? While there might be other black world technologies that could be up to the task (there’s no way to know), what we do know is that a practical quantum computing capability would be, for all intents and […]
CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher
March 16th, 2012Via: Wired: More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them. Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired […]
FBI Issued Almost 300,000 National Security Letters Over the Last Decade
March 14th, 2012Via: Wired: National security letters are written demands from the FBI that compel internet service providers, credit companies, financial institutions and others to hand over confidential records about their customers, such as subscriber information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses, websites visited and more. NSLs have been used since the 1980s, but the Patriot Act expanded […]
Visual Representations of Data from Smartphone GPS Logs
March 14th, 2012Alternate title: This Is How You Look to MAIN CORE. Via: Geoloqi Blog: These are images of map generated entirely from GPS logs gathered by various versions of the Geoloqi sample application for iPhone and Android for the past 3.5 years. Once gathered, the data was run through a custom script that projects the GPS […]
Britain: CCTV at Petrol Stations Will Prevent Uninsured Cars from Being Fueled
March 14th, 2012Wow. How long until this is linked to other databases? Unpaid property taxes, unlicensed pets, overdue library books, or who knows what else??? Via: Mirror: Cameras at petrol stations will automatically stop uninsured or untaxed vehicles from being filled with fuel, under new government plans. Downing Street officials hope the hi-tech system will crack down […]
Cyborg Snails
March 14th, 2012Via: Nature: The dozen or so brown garden snails crawling around the plastic, moss-filled terrarium in Evgeny Katz’s laboratory look normal, but they have a hidden superpower: they produce electricity. Into each mollusc, Katz and his team at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, have implanted tiny biofuel cells that extract electrical power from the […]
NEW YORK STATE SET TO ADD ALL CONVICT DNA TO ITS DATABASE
March 14th, 2012Via: New York Times: New York is poised to establish one of the most expansive DNA databases in the nation, requiring people convicted of everything from fare beating to first-degree murder to provide samples of their DNA to the state. On Tuesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and state lawmakers were putting the finishing touches on […]
DARPA Director Quits Pentagon for Job at Google
March 12th, 2012So, no, she’s not in jail yet. Via: Wired: Darpa director Regina Dugan will soon be stepping down from her position atop the Pentagon’s premiere research shop to take a job with Google. Dugan, whose controversial tenure at the agency lasted just under three years, was “offered and accepted at senior executive position” with the […]
