Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
U.S. Policymakers Mull Creation of Domestic Intelligence Agency
October 22nd, 2008Via: CNN: The United Kingdom has MI-5, which roots out spies and terrorists in the British Isles. Canada has CSIS — the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Now Congress is asking: Should the U.S. have its own domestic intelligence agency? On Monday, at the request of Congress, the RAND Corporation outlined the pros and cons of […]
Centuries of British Freedoms Being ‘Broken’ by Security State
October 21st, 2008Full text. Via: Telegraph: Centuries of British civil liberties risk being broken by the relentless pressure from the ‘security state’, the country’s top prosecutor has warned. Outgoing Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald warned that the expansion of technology by the state into everyday life could create a world future generations “can’t bear”. In […]
DARPA Contract Description Hints at Advanced Video Spying
October 20th, 2008More inputs for Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation. Via: Washington Post: Real-time streaming video of Iraqi and Afghan battle areas taken from thousands of feet in the air can follow actions of people on the ground as they dig, shake hands, exchange objects and kiss each other goodbye. The video is sent from unmanned […]
Paris to Quadruple Number of CCTV Cameras
October 20th, 2008Via: Telegraph: Paris will quadruple the number of closed-circuit police cameras in its streets by the end of next year, after President Nicolas Sarkozy’s promise to emulate London in an attempt to track crime and terrorism threats. While the Paris metro and rail networks already operate around 9,500 CCTV devices, police have only 330 at […]
UK: Passports Will Be Needed To Buy Mobile Phones
October 19th, 2008Via: Times: Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the […]
Australia: No Opt-Out of Filtered Internet
October 17th, 2008Would you like filtered, or filtered? Via: Computerworld: Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say. Under the government’s $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a […]
Orwellian U.K. Angers People With Tree Cameras, Snooping Kids
October 10th, 2008Via: Bloomberg: Hidden in foliage next to a path in the southeast England seaside town of Hastings are digital cameras. Their target: litterbugs and dog walkers. The electronic eyes feed images to a monitoring unit, where they’re scanned and stored as evidence to prosecute people who discard garbage or fail to clean up after pets, […]
U.S. Allegedly Listened In on Calls of Americans Abroad—I Know, You’re Shocked
October 10th, 2008This is probably the biggest not-news-to-you-or-me post ever to appear on Cryptogon. What is described below has been standard operating procedure for NSA for decades. What seems strange, though, is the amount of mundane traffic that is winding up in the queues of the human analysts. This could mean a few things: 1. The ECHELON […]
UK: Government Will Spy on Every Call and E-mail
October 6th, 2008Mmm hmm. Via: Telegraph: Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain. GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project. Hundreds of clandestine […]
Australia Plans Mass Surveillance System
September 29th, 2008Via: The Australian: CRIMTRAC’s planned automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system could become a mass surveillance system, taking as many as 70 million photos of cars and drivers every day across a vast network of roadside cameras. State and federal police forces want full-frontal images of vehicles, including the driver and front passenger, that are […]
