Archive for the 'Police State' Category
San Juan: The Venezuelan City Where Nothing Works Anymore
August 1st, 2018Via: AFP: Power blackouts are daily fare, running water comes only once a month, cash machines are empty and waiting for a bus can take hours. Welcome to San Juan de los Morros in Venezuela, where nothing works. “They send (running) water once a month. The rest of the time we have to buy it,” […]
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 […]
NSA’s Wiretap Rooms in Eight U.S. Cities
June 25th, 2018Via: The Intercept: THE SECRETS ARE hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not […]
Supreme Court Says Warrant Necessary for Phone Location Data
June 22nd, 2018Via: Cnet: The US Supreme Court has ruled in favor of digital privacy. In a 5-4 decision on Friday the justices said that police need warrants to gather phone location data as evidence for trials. That reversed and remanded a decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Carpenter v. United States is the first […]
We Are All Prisoners of the Surveillance State
June 20th, 2018Via: The Rutherford Institute: We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers. Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked […]
Police Dogs Trained to Find Hidden Electronic Storage Devices
June 12th, 2018Via: cnet: Only one out of every 50 dogs tested qualifies to become an electronic storage detection, or ESD, dog, says Kerry Halligan, a K-9 instructor with the Connecticut State Police. That’s because it’s a lot harder to detect the telltale chemical in electronics than it is to sniff out narcotics, bombs, fire accelerants or […]
Homeland Security’s Massive New Database Will Include Face Recognition, DNA, and Peoples’ “Non-Obvious Relationships”
June 10th, 2018Via: EFF: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly building what will likely become the largest database of biometric and biographic data on citizens and foreigners in the United States. The agency’s new Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) database will include multiple forms of biometrics—from face recognition to DNA, data from questionable sources, […]
Not The Onion: Knives Too Sharp in Britain
May 27th, 2018Via: Telegraph: A judge has proposed a nationwide programme to file down the points of kitchen knives as a solution to the country’s soaring knife crime epidemic. Last week in his valedictory address, retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge spoke of his concern that carrying a knife had become routine in some circles and […]
Pentagon Worked with “Private-Sector Organizations” on Plan to Verify Identity with Mobile Phones
May 23rd, 2018Via: Nextgov: The Defense Department is funding a project that officials say could revolutionize the way companies, federal agencies and the military itself verify that people are who they say they are and it could be available in most commercial smartphones within two years. The technology, which will be embedded in smartphones’ hardware, will analyze […]
