Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Australia: No Opt-Out Rule for Airport Body Scanners
February 6th, 2012Via: ABC: Civil libertarians are worried by proposed legislation meaning passengers will not be able to opt out of undergoing full body scans at Australian airports. The Federal Government will introduce legislation this week so the technology can be rolled out in all of Australia’s international airports. The move follows a trial in Sydney and […]
Canada: Man Sends Text Message Urging Colleagues to ‘Blow Away’ the Competition at Trade Show, Has Life Turned Upside Down as Government Launches Terrorism Investigation
February 5th, 2012Via: The Canadian Press: A casual text message to work colleagues encouraging them to ”blow away” the competition at a trade show allegedly plunged a Muslim man into a terrorism probe. Telecommunications sales manager Saad Allami says the innocent message, aimed at pumping up his staff, has had devastating consequences on his life. The Quebec […]
Satellite Phone Encryption Cracked
February 4th, 2012Via: Telegraph: German academics said they had cracked two encryption systems used to protect satellite phone signals and that anyone with cheap computer equipment and radio could eavesdrop on calls over an entire continent. Hundreds of thousands of satellite phone users are thought to be affected. “We were able to completely reverse engineer the encryption […]
2010 Attack on VeriSign Just Recently Disclosed
February 2nd, 2012Via: Reuters: VeriSign Inc, the company in charge of delivering people safely to more than half the world’s websites, has been hacked repeatedly by outsiders who stole undisclosed information from the leading Internet infrastructure company. The previously unreported breaches occurred in 2010 at the Reston, Virginia-based company, which is ultimately responsible for the integrity of […]
A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors
February 2nd, 2012Via: YouTube: Experiments performed with a team of nano quadrotors at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Vehicles developed by KMel Robotics. Research Credit: jakdmsy
South Korea: Dr. Smartphone?
February 1st, 2012Not The Onion: Check. Not April 1: Check. Via: Reuters: Tired of long waits at the hospital for medical tests? If Korean researchers have their way, your smartphone could one day eliminate that — and perhaps even tell you that you have cancer. A team of scientists at Korea Advanced Institute of Science of Technology […]
Surveillance Video Becomes a Tool for Studying Customer Behavior
February 1st, 2012Via: Technology Review: Software mines security footage to help business owners see what people do once they’re inside the store. The huge success of online shopping and advertising—led by giants like Amazon and Google—is in no small part thanks to software that logs when you visit Web pages and what you click on. Startup Prism […]
Bill Would Require Independent Study of X-Ray Body Scanners
January 31st, 2012The TSA gets to choose the laboratory? Via: Pro Publica: Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the homeland security committee, plans to introduce a bill in the coming days that would require a new health study of the X-ray body scanners used to screen airline passengers nationwide. … Shortly after our report, the European […]
U.S. Detained and Deported Irish and British Citizens Over Idiotic Twitter Messages
January 31st, 2012Via: The Sun: TWO pals were barred from entering the US after innocent tweets joking about “destroying America” were picked up by the country’s anti-terror cops. US special agents monitoring Twitter spotted Leigh Van Bryan’s messages weeks before he left for a holiday in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting. Leigh, who also quipped about […]
FDA Fired Employees Who Warned Congress About Approvals of Dangerous Medical Devices
January 30th, 2012Via: Washington Post: The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show. The surveillance — detailed in e-mails and memos unearthed by six […]
