Archive for the 'Police State' Category
9/11: What 17 Years of Lies Have Done to Us
September 12th, 2018Via: Richard Dolan:
Are New York’s Free LinkNYC Internet Kiosks Tracking Your Movements?
September 10th, 2018Via: The Intercept: LinkNYC kiosks have become a familiar eyesore to New Yorkers. Over 1,600 of these towering, nine-and-a-half-foot monoliths — their double-sided screens festooned with ads and fun facts — have been installed across the city since early 2016. Mayor Bill de Blasio has celebrated their ability to provide “the fastest and largest municipal […]
IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage to Develop Technology That Lets Police Search by Skin Color
September 6th, 2018Via: The Intercept: In the decade after the 9/11 attacks, the New York City Police Department moved to put millions of New Yorkers under constant watch. Warning of terrorism threats, the department created a plan to carpet Manhattan’s downtown streets with thousands of cameras and had, by 2008, centralized its video surveillance operations to a […]
Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level
September 4th, 2018Via: New York Times: A state’s capacity to spy on its citizens has grown exponentially in recent years as new technology has meant more aspects of our lives can be observed, recorded and analyzed than ever before. At the same time, much to the frustration of intelligence agencies around the world, so has the ability […]
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 […]
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 […]
