Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Terrorist ‘Pre-Crime’ Detector Field Tested in United States
May 28th, 2011This is the most hilariously unworkable Magic 8 Ball boondoggle that I’ve ever heard about. In the annals of grant swindling, this one has to take the cake. Via: Nature: Planning a sojourn in the northeastern United States? You could soon be taking part in a novel security programme that can supposedly ‘sense’ whether you […]
Why Are Spy Researchers Building a ‘Metaphor Program’?
May 26th, 2011Via: The Atlantic: A small research arm of the U.S. government’s intelligence establishment wants to understand how speakers of Farsi, Russian, English, and Spanish see the world by building software that automatically evaluates their use of metaphors. That’s right, metaphors, like Shakespeare’s famous line, “All the world’s a stage,” or more subtly, “The darkness pressed […]
U.S. Runs Surveillance Operations Based on Secret Interpretations of Patriot Act
May 26th, 2011Via: Wired: You may think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says it’s worse than you’ve heard. Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. But Wyden says that what Congress will renew is a […]
LAPD Chevy Caprice PPV
May 26th, 2011Via: AOL Autos: Taking a ride in a police squad car is typically an unenviable experience, but not today. Bradley teams up with our friends at the LAPD to check the tech on the all new Chevrolet Caprice PPV (Police Patrol Vehicle). From an infrared night vision camera to an automated license plate scanner, this […]
U.S. to Store Passenger Data for 15 Years
May 26th, 2011Via: Guardian: The personal data of millions of passengers who fly between the US and Europe, including credit card details, phone numbers and home addresses, may be stored by the US department of homeland security for 15 years, according to a draft agreement between Washington and Brussels leaked to the Guardian. The “restricted” draft, which […]
Facebook Is Coming for Your Children
May 23rd, 2011Via: Today: Wearing the mantle of education reform, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told attendees at a recent summit on innovation in education that, “My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age.” A really, really good way to do that, Zuckerberg said, is to let kids […]
NSA Collects as Much Data as Is Stored in the Entire Library of Congress Every Six Hours [???]
May 23rd, 2011I try to avoid the black/grey/white propaganda narratives surrounding the alleged Bin Laden assassination. The whole thing is so absurd that it’s just impossible for me to take it seriously at all. However, in my routine monitoring of stories about the NSA, I came across the claim that the agency is processing an amount of […]
Air Force Wants to Track You Forever With a Single Camera Click
May 19th, 2011Via: Wired: Don’t bother with the iris scanner or the fingerprinting machine. Leave the satellite-enabled locators and tell-tale scents back on the base, military manhunters. If an Air Force plan works out as planned, all you’ll need to track your prey is a single camera, snapping a few seconds of footage from far, far away. […]
Avoid Gate Grope, Become a ‘Trusted Traveler’
May 18th, 2011Via: USA Today: Upset with being frisked and having a naked image taken of you at airports? Increasingly, stringent air security screening methods such as these are under question. And they’re not just being questioned by travelers upset at being groped. A consensus is building among the airline industry, business and leisure travel groups and […]
The Secret Sharer
May 17th, 2011Yet again, we learn that there was a desire to generate dossiers on people that, besides the Internet, financial transactions and telephone surveillance data, included physical tracking information. Bill Binney, the NSA employee who led the team that created the ThinThread system (described below), also alleges that all email “transmitted in America” is archived and […]
