Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Surveillance Cameras Made by China Are Hanging All Over the U.S.
November 13th, 2017Via: Wall Street Journal: The Memphis police use the surveillance cameras to scan the streets for crime. The U.S. Army uses them to monitor a base in Missouri. Consumer models hang in homes and businesses across the country. At one point, the cameras kept watch on the U.S. embassy in Kabul. All the devices were […]
TSA Plans to Use Face Recognition to Track Americans Through Airports
November 13th, 2017Via: EFF: The “PreCheck” program is billed as a convenient service to allow U.S. travelers to “speed through security” at airports. However, the latest proposal released by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reveals the Department of Homeland Security’s greater underlying plan to collect face images and iris scans on a nationwide scale. DHS’s programs will […]
Big Data Meets Big Brother as China Moves to Rate Its Citizens
November 8th, 2017Behold, the biggest Magic 8 Ball ever. Via: Wired: On June 14, 2014, the State Council of China published an ominous-sounding document called “Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System”. In the way of Chinese policy documents, it was a lengthy and rather dry affair, but it contained a radical idea. What […]
Nothing to Hide
October 29th, 2017Via: Vimeo: NOTHING TO HIDE (Oct. 2016) is an independent documentary dealing with surveillance and its acceptance by the general public through the “I have nothing to hide” argument.
U.S. Widens Surveillance to Include ‘Homegrown Violent Extremists’
October 25th, 2017Mmm hmm. Via: Reuters: The U.S. government has broadened an interpretation of which citizens can be subject to physical or digital surveillance to include “homegrown violent extremists,” according to official documents seen by Reuters. The change last year to a Department of Defense manual on procedures governing its intelligence activities was made possible by a […]
Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances
October 23rd, 2017Via: Bloomberg: In doing so, companies such as Facebook Inc. are competing with defense contractors, financial firms and the U.S. government itself. Security clearances are a rare and valued commodity, whether at a bank trying to prevent hackers from stealing credit-card data and emptying accounts or at a manufacturer building parts for a stealth fighter […]
‘Why ProtonMail Is More Secure Than Gmail’
October 23rd, 2017Disclosure: I have no relationship with ProtonMail, besides being a user of the service. — While I wouldn’t assume that ProtonMail is as secure as they claim it to be, what is very clear is that far less of your personal information is going to leak from ProtonMail than it would from Gmail, which essentially […]
China Is Creating a Database of Its Citizens’ Voices to Boost its Surveillance Capability
October 23rd, 2017In other news, Google Home Capable of Voice Printing Multiple Users. Via: Time: The Chinese government has collected tens of thousands of “voice pattern” samples from targeted citizens and is inputting them into a national voice biometric database, according to a Human Rights Watch report published Monday. The idea is that an automated system, thought […]
UK Spies Using Social Media Data for Mass Surveillance
October 18th, 2017Via: TechCrunch: Privacy rights group Privacy International says it has obtained evidence for the first time that UK spy agencies are collecting social media information on potentially millions of people. It has also obtained letters it says show the intelligence agencies’ oversight body had not been informed that UK intelligence agencies had shared bulk databases […]
LAPD Becomes Nation’s Largest Police Department to Test Drones
October 18th, 2017Via: Los Angeles Times: After months of often-heated debate, a civilian oversight panel Tuesday signed off on a yearlong test of drones by the Los Angeles Police Department, which will become the largest police department in the nation to deploy the controversial technology. The Police Commission’s 3-1 vote prompted jeers, cursing and a small protest […]
