Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Google Explores +1 Button to Influence Search Results
August 30th, 2011I’ll re-post my commentary on this from 2008: Google Planning to Enable Mob Rule Ratings for Search Results. Fill it to the rim, with grim: Get Ready for New and Improved Google Results: Now Powered by the Zombie Consumer Death Cult! I have to make jokes because this is very, very grim. If you want […]
Appeals Court to Weigh NSA Dragnet Surveillance
August 30th, 2011Via: Wired: Whether the federal government and the nation’s telecommunication companies can be held accountable for allegedly funneling every American’s electronic communication to the National Security Agency without warrants is the subject of oral arguments scheduled for a federal appeals court Wednesday. At issue is a Jan. 31, 2006 lawsuit, and others that followed, alleging […]
Scared Mexicans Turn to Bogus Tracking Chip Implants
August 29th, 2011Via: Washington Post: Of all the strange circumstances surrounding the violent abduction last year of Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, the Mexican power broker and former presidential candidate known here as “Boss Diego,” perhaps nothing was weirder than the mysterious tracking chip that the kidnappers allegedly cut from his body. Lurid Mexican media accounts reported that […]
Germany: Facebook Data Collection Under Fire Again
August 25th, 2011I use a custom filter in AdBlock+ to block all Facebook nonsense. I haven’t seen one of those ‘Like’ buttons in years. (Not on my computer, anyway.) If you don’t know what this ‘Like’ button garbage is all about, it’s a little widget that site operators put all over the place that lets Facebook users […]
Cisco and Abuses of Human Rights in China
August 25th, 2011Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation: What responsibility do corporations have to consider human rights when making business deals? Are companies that build and market equipment for the purpose of surveilling and censoring pro-democracy activists in authoritarian regimes culpable when those activists are imprisoned or tortured? Do companies bear a special responsibility if they customize products to […]
British Government Discusses Riots with Social Media Firms
August 25th, 2011Via: CBC: Executives from Facebook, Twitter and Canadian BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. are meeting the British government and police Thursday in the wake of the riots to discuss how to prevent social networks from being used to plot violence. Police and politicians claim young criminals used Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry’s simple and largely […]
New York Police Department Runs Intelligence Operations Outside Its Jurisdiction with Help and Personnel from CIA
August 24th, 2011This week in The Land of the Free… Via: AP: In New Brunswick, N.J., a building superintendent opened the door to apartment No. 1076 one balmy Tuesday and discovered an alarming scene: terrorist literature strewn about the table and computer and surveillance equipment set up in the next room. The panicked superintendent dialed 911, sending […]
New York: Judge Says Warrant Required for Cell Phone Location Data
August 24th, 2011Good news? Maybe, a little. It would be better if we had amnesia affecting our knowledge of MAIN CORE, Mark Klein, Russell Tice and official, on-the-record admissions from NSA about position tracking via cell phones. *sigh* Via: Ars Technica: In recent years, the courts have struggled to decide whether the government needs a warrant to […]
New UAV for Police Can Taze People from Above
August 22nd, 2011Via: Singularity Hub: The ShadowHawk is the seven-foot, 50-lb copter that is the toy-sized dealer of destruction from Texas-based Vanguard Defense Industries. The copter is the result of three years of development. If being tased from above sounds frightening to you, I suggest you cease all criminal activities now (simply staying indoors is an option). […]
Government Transparency on Deployment of Body Scanner Technology in Surface Transit Venues and Street-Roving Vans
August 19th, 2011Via: Electronic Privacy Information Center: New documents released by the Department of Homeland Security to EPIC indicate the the agency continues to hide details about body scanners. In November 2010, EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency regarding the deployment of body scanners in surface transit and street-roving vans. In its […]
