Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Canada: Section 34 of the Online Surveillance Bill Would Give Orwellian Powers to Government-Appointed ‘Inspectors’
February 20th, 2012Via: CBC: Among other things, the bill requires ISPs to install surveillance technology and software to enable monitoring of phone and internet traffic. Section 34 is there to make sure ISPs comply. So what, exactly, does it say? Essentially, it says that government agents may enter an ISP when they wish, without a warrant, and […]
Britain: Details of Every Phone Call, Text Message, Email and Websites Visited Will Be Stored in Vast Corporate Databases for the Government to Access
February 20th, 2012Via: Telegraph: Landline and mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store the data for a year and make it available to the security services under the scheme. The databases would not record the contents of calls, texts or emails but the numbers or email addresses of who they are sent and […]
NYPD Monitored Muslim Students All Over Northeast
February 19th, 2012Via: AP: The New York Police Department monitored Muslim college students far more broadly than previously known, at schools far beyond the city limits, including the elite Ivy League colleges of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, The Associated Press has learned. Police talked with local authorities about professors 480 kilometres away in Buffalo and […]
FOIA Request Shows Which Printer Companies Cooperated With U.S. Government
February 18th, 2012Via: Slashdot: Easy enough to avoid government dots; just don’t buy printers from Canon, Brother, Casio, HP, Konica, Minolta, Mita, Ricoh, Sharp, or Xerox.
Animal Rights Group Says Drone Shot Down
February 18th, 2012Via: The Times and Democrat: A remote-controlled aircraft owned by an animal rights group was reportedly shot down near Broxton Bridge Plantation Sunday. Steve Hindi, president of SHARK (SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness), said his group was preparing to launch its Mikrokopter drone to video what he called a live pigeon shoot on Sunday when […]
Lawmaker Demands DHS Cease Monitoring of Blogs, Social Media
February 17th, 2012This social media monitoring program is an absurd limited hangout. Where’s the outrage over things like MAIN CORE and Room 641A? Via: Wired: Rep. Jackie Speier (D-California) said Thursday she wants the Department of Homeland Security to cease its social-media and news-monitoring operation. Speaking at a Homeland Security subcommittee hearing, the California lawmaker said she […]
‘As soon as we get them buying diapers from us, they’re going to start buying everything else too.’
February 17th, 2012Via: New York Times: Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do […]
Members of UK Parliament Recommend Censoring Online ‘Extremism’
February 17th, 2012Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation: In a report published last week, members of the United Kingdom Parliament concluded that the Internet plays a major role in the radicalization of terrorists and called on the government to pressure Internet Service Providers in Britain and abroad to censor online speech. The Roots of Violent Radicalisation places the Internet […]
India: Government Will Track Positions of All Mobile Phone Users
February 16th, 2012Via: The Indian Express: The government is looking to track all mobile phone users. As per amendments made to operators’ licences, beginning May 31, operators would have to provide the Department of Telecommunications real-time details of users’ locations in latitudes and longitudes. Documents obtained by The Indian Express show that details shall initially be provided […]
Printing RFIDs on Paper at Fraction of Cost of Regular RFIDs
February 16th, 2012Via: University of Montpellier Press Release: Now, researchers in France have developed a way to deposit a thin aluminum RFID tag on to paper that not only reduces the amount of metal needed for the tag, and so the cost, but could open up RFID tagging to many more systems, even allowing a single printed […]
