Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Google and Mastercard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales in Stores
September 3rd, 2018Via: Bloomberg: For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for. But most of […]
Senate Democrats Are Circulating Plans for Government Takeover of the Internet
August 17th, 2018Via: Reason: A leaked memo circulating among Senate Democrats contains a host of bonkers authoritarian proposals for regulating digital platforms, purportedly as a way to get tough on Russian bots and fake news. To save American trust in “our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets,” it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into […]
Google Tracks Your Movements, Like It or Not
August 13th, 2018Mmm hmm. Via: AP: Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to. An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used privacy settings that say they will prevent […]
Hacker Finds Hidden ‘God Mode’ on Old x86 CPUs; ‘These Backdoors Probably Exist Elsewhere’
August 12th, 2018One more for your herniating Compromised Down to the Silicon file folder. Via: Tom’s Hardware: Some x86 CPUs have hidden backdoors that let you seize root by sending a command to an undocumented RISC core that manages the main CPU, security researcher Christopher Domas told the Black Hat conference here Thursday (Aug. 9). The command […]
Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China
August 1st, 2018Via: The Intercept: Google is planning to launch a censored version of its search engine in China that will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can reveal. The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December […]
Federal Air Marshals Wasting Time and Resources Monitoring Passengers Almost at Random
July 29th, 2018Obviously, the chances of this stopping a terrorist incident are somewhere between slim and none. So, if it’s not going to stop an incident, what is it going to do? Is the purpose of this to facilitate a “terrorist” incident, by distracting personnel away from actual threats? Hmm. Via: Boston Globe: Federal air marshals have […]
More and More of What We Do Depends on Government Permission
July 24th, 2018Via: Reason: Do you have permit for that? If you want to keep that permit, you’d better do as you’re told. Increasingly, that’s the theme of modern America. More and more of what we do is dependent on permission from the government. That permission, unsurprisingly, is contingent on keeping government officials happy. Rub those officials […]
Face Scanning at NYC Toll Plazas
July 23rd, 2018Via: New York Post: Big Governor is watching you. Facial-recognition cameras at bridge and tunnel toll plazas across the city are already scanning drivers’ visages and feeding them into databases to catch suspected criminals, Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed Friday. “When it reads that license plate, it reads it for scofflaws .?.?. [but] the toll is […]
Digital Ads Are Starting to Feel Psychic
July 17th, 2018Via: The Outline: Earlier this year, my friend Max gave me a knife from Japan as a gift. That evening, as I was lying in bed looking at Instagram, I scrolled passed an ad of what looked like exactly the same knife. I did a double take, got out of bed, retrieved the knife from […]
1981: ‘Notes On NSA ESP Concerns/Guidelines’
July 15th, 2018URL of source at CIA: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/nsa-rdp96x00790r000100030037-5 Local copy on Cryptogon (avoids a visit to CIA, in case you care). Via: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Electronic Reading Room: The number of NSA persons with operating ESP capabilities should be isolated by type and quality.
