Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
My U.S. Credit Card Was Deactivated After I Sent $20 to Wikileaks
January 26th, 2010Wikileaks is down for fund raising. I sent them $20 using my U.S. credit card. The next day, Bank of America’s Magic 8 Ball deactivated my account and sent this to me: Irregular Credit Card Activity Account: Bank of America ending in XXXX Date: 01/25/2010 We detected irregular activity on your Bank of America Credit […]
Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review
January 24th, 2010Via: EFF: A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls and emails. “We’re deeply disappointed in the judge’s ruling,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “This ruling robs […]
Britain: Police Plan to Use Military-Style Spy Drones
January 24th, 2010Via: Guardian: Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance. The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is […]
Google Sharing
January 20th, 2010I’m not saying to use (or not use) his plugin, but I like this summary of the threat. Via: Google Sharing: Google thrives where privacy does not. If you’re like most internet users, Google knows more about you than you might be comfortable with. Whether you were logged in to a Google account or not, […]
FBI Broke Law for Years in Phone Record Searches
January 19th, 2010* pfft * But rest easy, citizen, “FBI officials said they are confident that the safeguards enacted in 2007 have ended the problems.” Conveniently, the article doesn’t mention domestic NSA intercept operations. Via: Washington Post: The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that […]
Companies Building Credit Profiles Based on Twitbook Traffic?
January 17th, 2010Not The Onion. Via: creditcard.com: You probably don’t analyze the chatter or quality of your social media connections, but creditors may be doing just that. In their quest to identify creditworthy customers, some are tapping into the information you and your friends reveal in the virtual stratosphere. Before calling the privacy police, though, understand how […]
George W. Obama
January 17th, 2010Via: Village Voice: Before President Obama, it was grimly accurate to write, as I often did in the Voice, that George W. Bush came into the presidency with no discernible background in constitutional civil liberties or any acquaintance with the Constitution itself. Accordingly, he turned the “war on terror” over to Dick Cheney and Donald […]
Chinese Operation Against Google Involved Accessing the Firm’s Internal Intercept Systems
January 14th, 2010Via: Computer World: Drummond said that the hackers never got into Gmail accounts via the Google hack, but they did manage to get some “account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line.” That’s because they apparently were able to access a system used to help Google comply with search warrants […]
Google Considers Pulling Out of China and Will Provide Uncensored Search Results in Wake of Chinese Information Warfare Operations
January 13th, 2010Via: GoogleBlog: These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on […]
Taser Now Peddling Mobile Phone Surveillance System
January 11th, 2010Via: AFP: Stun gun maker Taser wants to help parents, not with jolts of electricity but with a tool which allows parents to effectively take over a child’s mobile phone and manage its use. “Basically we’re taking old fashioned parenting and bringing it into the mobile world,” Taser chairman and co-founder Tom Smith said at […]
