Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
FOIA’d Documents Raise New Questions About Airport Body Scanner Radiation Risks
June 27th, 2011Cancer clusters… Via: Electronic Privacy Information Center: In a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, EPIC has just obtained documents concerning the radiation risks of TSA’s airport body scanner program. The documents include agency emails, radiation studies, memoranda of agreement concerning radiation testing programs, and results of some radiation tests. One document set […]
U.S. Government Launching Antitrust Investigation of Google
June 24th, 2011Oh sure. I bet Google is quivering with fear. Via: Wall Street Journal: Federal regulators are poised to hit Google Inc. with subpoenas, launching a broad, formal investigation into whether the Internet giant has abused its dominance in Web-search advertising, people familiar with the matter said. The civil probe, which has the potential to reshape […]
Sinister Public-Private Partnership to Spy on Web Users
June 23rd, 2011Via: Guardian: When President Eisenhower left office in 1960, he provided the American people with a warning. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Sixty years later, […]
DARPA: Mind’s Eye Program
June 23rd, 2011Via: SRI: SRI International is leading a team to design a visual intelligence system, known as VIGIL (Visual Intelligence Grounded in Learning), to enable a new era in unmanned robotic surveillance. The SRI team is being funded through the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) Mind’s Eye program. VIGIL will be integrated with other […]
When Secret Sats Spy on Us, Monsieur Legault Spies Back
June 22nd, 2011Via: Wired: From mysterious robotic space planes to giant spy satellites the size of school buses, space is teeming with secret American hardware meant to gaze down on insurgents, terrorists and, well, everybody on the third rock from the sun. For mere proles like you and me, it can be hard to get a straight […]
Spying Devices Found on Thousands of Hong Kong Cars
June 20th, 2011Via: Discovery News: Note to drivers and passengers travelling through Hong Kong: Mum’s the word. Chinese authorities have allegedly been spying on Hong King motorists after a device installed on throusands of vehicles was discovered to contain hardware suitable for eavesdropping. According to a report in Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, recording devices were installed […]
Hiding Surveillance and Killer Drones in Plain Sight
June 20th, 2011Via: New York Times: Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds. The […]
NSA Allies with Internet Carriers to Thwart Cyber Attacks Against Defense Firms
June 17th, 2011Oh sure. Via: Washington Post: The National Security Agency is working with Internet providers to deploy a new generation of tools to scan e-mail and other digital traffic with the goal of thwarting cyberattacks against defense firms by foreign adversaries, senior defense and industry officials say. The novel program, which began last month on a […]
U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors
June 13th, 2011Mmm hmm. See: The American Culture Bomb: Satire from the Onion and a Long Forgotten U.S. Army War College Essay There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and […]
Britain: Sign Into the Dole Website with Facebook
June 13th, 2011Via: Register: Facebook and other social networks could be used by British citizens to sign into public services online, The Register has learned. A Cabinet Office spokeswoman confirmed to us this morning that the department was speaking to “a range of industry” about its ID assurance scheme, a prototype for which is expected in October […]
