Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
ICE Is About to Start Tracking License Plates Across the U.S.
January 27th, 2018Via: The Verge: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians. […]
When It Comes to Voice Identification, the “NSA Reigns Supreme”
January 23rd, 2018Via: The Intercept: These and other classified documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden reveal that the NSA has developed technology not just to record and transcribe private conversations but to automatically identify the speakers. Americans most regularly encounter this technology, known as speaker recognition, or speaker identification, when they wake up Amazon’s Alexa […]
Trump Signs Bill Renewing NSA’s Internet Surveillance Program
January 19th, 2018Via: Reuters: U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he signed into law a bill renewing the National Security Agency’s warrantless internet surveillance program, sealing a defeat for digital privacy advocates.
Does the SR-72 Already Exist?
January 16th, 2018A missing trillion here, a missing trillion there… Via: Bloomberg: For years, Lockheed Martin Corp. has been developing a successor to one of the fastest aircraft the world has ever seen, the SR-71 Blackbird, the Cold War reconnaissance craft that the U.S. Air Force retired almost three decades ago. Lockheed officials have said the hypersonic […]
Democrats Just Handed Trump More Domestic Surveillance Powers
January 13th, 2018Mmm hmm. Via: NBC: Democrats have been all over the airwaves recently accusing Donald Trump of abusing the Justice Department to go after his political enemies —most notably his former opponent Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, which the Department of Justice is reportedly currently investigating based on allegation made during the 2016 presidential campaign. […]
GM Drops the Steering Wheel and Gives Robot Driver Control
January 12th, 2018Via: Bloomberg: Next year, General Motors Co. will no longer need an engineer in the front seat babysitting the robot brain that controls its self-driving Chevrolet Bolt. The steering wheel and pedals will be gone, giving total control to the machine. When GM starts testing its autonomous electric sedan in San Francisco ride-sharing fleets, it’ll […]
WD My Cloud NAS Devices Have Hard-Wired Backdoor
January 8th, 2018Via: Register: If you have a Western Digital My Cloud network attached storage device, it’s time to learn how to update its OS because researcher James Bercegay has discovered a dozen models possess a hard-coded backdoor. The backdoor, detailed here, lets anyone log in as user mydlinkBRionyg with the password abc12345cba. WD mostly markets the […]
The More I Read About Meltdown And Spectre…
January 7th, 2018The more I wonder: Are these bugs, or features?
U.S. Government Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Computers Up Sharply
January 6th, 2018Via: cnet: US Customs and Border Patrol searched more phones and laptops at the border in 2017 — 30,200 devices total. The agency released those numbers Friday along with updated guidelines on how to conduct the searches, which have become a hot button issue under the administration of President Donald Trump. A lawsuit from the […]
Security Flaws Put Virtually All Phones, Computers at Risk
January 3rd, 2018Update: Security Flaws Put Virtually All Phones, Computers at Risk Update: All Macs, iPhones and iPads Affected Via: The Verge: Apple confirmed on Thursday that all Mac and iOS devices are affected by the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws that have roiled the computing industry for the past 24 hours, resulting in a race to […]
