The State Of Surveillance. Slide Show >> Lost in the recent London bombings, along with innocent lives, was any illusion that today's surveillance technology can save us from evildoers.
Britain has 4 million video cameras monitoring streets, parks, and government buildings, more than any other country. London alone has 500,000 cameras watching for signs of illicit activity. Studying camera footage helped link the July 7 bombings with four men -- but only after the fact. The disaster drove home some painful reminders: Fanatics bent on suicide aren't fazed by cameras. Tomorrow's surveillance technology may be considerably more effective.
Research laboratories envision tools that could identify and track just about every person, anywhere -- and sound alarms when the systems encounter hazardous objects or chemical compounds. All of these projects are on a fast track since September 11. If terrorism becomes endemic in Europe and America, emerging surveillance tools may be abused in even more egregious ways. U.S. EXPOSING THE GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM. -----------Got CRYPTO? --Get LokMail--Protect Your Data Body----------- from his book SECRET POWER For 40 years, New Zealand's largest intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) the nation's equivalent of the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been helping its Western allies to spy on countries throughout the Pacific region, without the knowledge of the New Zealand public or many of its highest elected officials. What the NSA did not know is that by the late 1980s, various intelligence staff had decided these activities had been too secret for too long, and were providing me with interviews and documents exposing New Zealand's intelligence activities.
The activities they described made it possible to document, from the South Pacific, some alliance-wide systems and projects which have been kept secret elsewhere. WikiLeaks. Wikileaks. "Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World" This is a rush transcript.
Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: In Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World, human rights lawyer Maureen Webb argues the new global security system is threatening both American and global security, while undermining democracy worldwide. Maureen Webb joins us now in the firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now! MAUREEN WEBB: Thank you, Amy. AMY GOODMAN: Why did you focus on this as a human rights lawyer?
MAUREEN WEBB: Well, I think it’s one of the less-examined aspects of the war on terror, and I’m co-chair for a Canadian coalition of civil society groups called the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. AMY GOODMAN: You began your book with Maher Arar, with Monia’s story, actually — MAUREEN WEBB: Yes. AMY GOODMAN: — with his wife. MAUREEN WEBB: Well, I actually heard about their story on the radio, as a lot of other Canadians did, often when I was driving my kids to daycare in the mornings. How to Ditch Big Brother and Disappear Forever. Attacking Tor: how the NSA targets users' online anonymity. The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ. In August, the editor of the Guardian rang me up and asked if I would spend a week in New York, reading the GCHQ files whose UK copy the Guardian was forced to destroy.
His suggestion was that it might be worthwhile to look at the material not from a perspective of making news but from that of a novelist with an interest in the way we live now. I took Alan Rusbridger up on his invitation, after an initial reluctance that was based on two main reasons. NSA and GCHQ target Tor network that protects anonymity of web users. The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.
Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency's current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets' computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity. But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled 'Tor Stinks', states: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time.
" Trailblazer Project. Trailblazer was a United States National Security Agency (NSA) program intended to develop a capability to analyze data carried on communications networks like the Internet.
It was intended to track entities using communication methods such as cell phones and e-mail.[1][2] It ran over budget, failed to accomplish critical goals, and was cancelled. Wanted: Negotiating Text of Trans-Pacific Partnership. Reward Offered. WikiLeaks: We've got a job for you At this very moment, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP)--a trade agreement that could affect the health and welfare of billions of people worldwide--is being negotiated behind closed doors.
While 600 corporate lobbyists have access to the text, the press, the public, and even members of the US Congress are being kept in the dark. But we don't have to stand meekly by as corporate cronies decide our futures. Concerned citizens from around the world are pooling together their resources as a reward to WikiLeaks if it makes the negotiating text of the TPP public. Our pledge, as individuals, is to donate this money to WikiLeaks should it leak the document we seek. As WikiLeaks likes to say, information wants to be free.