Archive for the 'Police State' Category
Big Telecom Sold Highly Sensitive Customer GPS Data Typically Used for 911 Calls
February 7th, 2019Via: Vice: Around 250 bounty hunters and related businesses had access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint customer location data, according to documents obtained by Motherboard. The documents also show that telecom companies sold data intended to be used by 911 operators and first responders to data aggregators, who sold it to bounty hunters. The data […]
Attempts to Dance Around the Kafkaesque Nightmare in California
February 3rd, 2019This is very difficult to watch. I only made it about a third of the way through this. “There’s no law against having a garden hose in your backyard… yet. We’re waiting for them to catch on.” Anyway, one more for your herniating California-Is-Hell file folder. Via: Exploring Alternatives: Related: L.A. Coliving: PodShare
One Of The Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working With The FBI
February 1st, 2019Via: Buzzfeed: Family Tree DNA, one of the largest private genetic testing companies whose home-testing kits enable people to trace their ancestry and locate relatives, is working with the FBI and allowing agents to search its vast genealogy database in an effort to solve violent crime cases, BuzzFeed News has learned. Federal and local law […]
Prisons Across the U.S. Are Quietly Building Databases of Incarcerated People’s Voice Prints
January 31st, 2019Via: The Intercept: In New York and other states across the country, authorities are acquiring technology to extract and digitize the voices of incarcerated people into unique biometric signatures, known as voice prints. Prison authorities have quietly enrolled hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people’s voice prints into large-scale biometric databases. Computer algorithms then draw on […]
Google Will Limit Ad Blockers on Chrome
January 23rd, 2019For safety. *snort* Via: Register: Google engineers have proposed changes to the open-source Chromium browser that will break content-blocking extensions, including various ad blockers. Adblock Plus will most likely not be affected, though similar third-party plugins will, for reasons we will explain. The drafted changes will also limit the capabilities available to extension developers, ostensibly […]
Indian Government to Intercept, Monitor, and Decrypt Citizens’ Computers
December 21st, 2018Via: FastCompany: The Indian government has authorized 10 central agencies to intercept, monitor, and decrypt data on any computer, sending a shock wave through citizens and privacy watchdogs. Narendra Modi’s government late Thursday broadened the scope of Section 69 of the nation’s IT Act, 2000 to require a subscriber, service provider, or any person in […]
Google’s Earth: How the Tech Giant Is Helping the State Spy On Us
December 20th, 2018Via: Guardian: The purchase of Keyhole was a milestone for Google, marking the moment the company stopped being a purely consumer-facing internet company and began integrating with the US government. When Google bought Keyhole, it also acquired an In-Q-Tel executive named Rob Painter, who came with deep connections to the world of intelligence and military […]
Affect Recognition: Face Scanning Combined with Insane Pseudoscience
December 14th, 2018You’ll love this one. Via: The Intercept: Facial recognition has quickly shifted from techno-novelty to fact of life for many, with millions around the world at least willing to put up with their faces scanned by software at the airport, their iPhones, or Facebook’s server farms. But researchers at New York University’s AI Now Institute […]
Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Doorbell Cameras
December 14th, 2018Via: ACLU: Recently, a patent application from Amazon became public that would pair face surveillance — like Rekognition, the product that the company is aggressively marketing to police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — with Ring, a doorbell camera company that Amazon bought earlier this year. While the details are sketchy, the application describes a […]
Australia Passes Cyber Snooping Laws with Global Implications
December 6th, 2018Via: AFP: Australia Thursday passed controversial laws allowing spies and police to snoop on the encrypted communications of suspected terrorists and criminals, as experts warned the “unprecedented powers” had far-reaching implications for global cybersecurity. There has been extensive debate about the laws and their reach beyond Australia’s shores in what is seen as the latest […]
