Coming soon: Ubiquitous surveillance from Big Brother's wayback machine. Network World - As the price of digital storage drops and the technology to tap electronic communication improves, authoritarian governments will soon be able to perform retroactive surveillance on anyone within their borders, according to a Brookings Institute report. These regimes will store every phone call, instant message, email, social media interaction, text message, movements of people and vehicles and public surveillance video and mine it at their leisure, according to "Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Government," written by John Villaseno, a senior fellow at Brookings and a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA.
BACKGROUND: Surveillance tech companies should not sell to despots, says EU That will enable shadowing people's movements and communications that took place before the individuals became suspects, he says. "These enormous databases of captured information will create what amounts to a surveillance time machine. ... Sprint orders all OEMs to strip Carrier IQ from their hardware – Cell Phones & Mobile Device Technology News & Updates. In an attempt to distance themselves from the increasingly volatile Carrier IQ situation, we’ve been told that Sprint has ordered that all of their hardware partners remove the Carrier IQ software from Sprint devices as soon as possible. This comes after a number of dramatic turns over the past few weeks. During that time Carrier IQ was called a lot of things, from a harmless mobile intelligence company to a vicious rootkit designed to steal our personal data and sell it to the ne’er-do-wells.
In my opinion, Carrier IQ is a company that provides a service that benefits everyone with a cellphone by giving information to the carriers about when their network has problems that affects our service. Unfortunately, this software was installed in such a manner that, when discovered, there was a significant panic. This is understandable because the software was forced onto unsuspecting users with no real oversight to speak of. Some may view this as a classic “too little, too late” situation. Rep. Chabot Bans Cameras At Town Hall As Constituents Chant 'Where Are The Jobs?'
By Scott Keyes on August 23, 2011 at 11:45 am "Rep. Chabot Bans Cameras At Town Hall As Constituents Chant ‘Where Are The Jobs?’ " ThinkProgress filed this report from a town hall in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ohio constituent places tape over mouth after Rep. Chabot bans cameras at his town hall Rep. Before the event began, dozens of protesters gathered outside the auditorium with shirts that read “Tax Wall Street. Fearing pushback on issues like ending Medicare and corporate tax dodging, Chabot took an extraordinary step in order to prevent a possible “Youtube moment”: he banned constituents from filming the town hall.
Media were permitted to record the event, making the ban on citizen cameras all the more baffling. Miami Police Destroy Cell Phone Camera : Dispatches from the Creation Wars. The War on Police Accountability continues apace. In Miami Beach the police surrounded a car and opened fire on the occupants, hitting four innocent bystanders in the process.. A man in a nearby car recorded it on his cell phone, prompting the police to point their guns at him, demand the cell phone and stomp on it. Then they detained him, took him to the police station and interviewed him. Turns out that he had pulled the SIM card from the phone and hid it, so they failed in their attempts to destroy the evidence. First, police pointed their guns at the man who shot the video, according to a Miami Herald interview with the videographer.Then they ordered the man and his girlfriend out the car and threw them down to the ground, yelling “you want to be fucking paparazzi?”
To make things even worse, they also confiscated a camera from a local news crew. Here’s the video shot by the guy who had his camera smashed: » Cops Confiscate Cameras at Ohio Congressman’s Town Hall Alex Jones. Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com August 24, 2011 A congressman from Ohio had cops grab the cameras of constituents during a town hall meeting. Steve Chabot, a Republican, had cell phones and cameras confiscated in order to “prevent an embarrassing Youtube video from making the rounds,” according to Carlos Miller, who runs a blog documenting efforts by the state to stifle the First Amendment rights of photographers.
See video of the incident below. Police said the cameras were taken “to protect the constituents.” A local television station, however, was allowed to videotape the meeting and the brazen move by Chabot and the cops. Think Progress, the Soros-funded media operation, also reported the incident, primarily because Chabot is an establishment Republican and protesters outside the event called for more taxes. Media were permitted to record the event, making the ban on citizen cameras all the more baffling. In fact, neither Obama or the Republicans control the economy. Print this page. Sen. 1214_digital_storage_villasenor.pdf (application/pdf Object) DOJ's "hotwatch" real-time surveillance of credit card transactions. A 10 page Powerpoint presentation (pdf) that I recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request to the Department of Justice, reveals that law enforcement agencies routinely seek and obtain real-time surveillance of credit card transaction.
The government's guidelines reveal that this surveillance often occurs with a simple subpoena, thus sidestepping any Fourth Amendment protections. Background On October 11, 2005, the US Attorney from the Eastern District of New York submitted a court filing in the case of In re Application For Pen Register and Trap and Trace Device With Cell Site Location Authority (Magistrate's Docket No. 05-1093), which related to the use of pen register requests for mobile phone location records. In that case, the US Attorney’s office relied on authority they believed was contained in the All Writs Act to justify their request for customer location information. It took a year and a half to learn anything. Beck: "Don't Do A Google Search" Because "Google Is Pretty Deeply In Bed With The Government.
Protect Your Data During U.S. Border Searches. From Wired How-To Wiki The mandatory stop at the U.S. Customs counter when returning from an international trip usually just involves answering a few questions and getting a stamp on your passport. But recently, we've seen incidents of computer security experts with ties to WikiLeaks and white hat hackers being stopped by government agents and having their laptops and phones thoroughly inspected.
Unless you work in computer research, or if you have ties to whistleblowers or cybersecurity journalists, the chance is very, very slim that your electronics will be searched. But even if you don't think you're up to anything that would arouse the suspicion of the Feds, you should still take precautions. Also, the threat of theft or snooping is something you should pay attention to, no matter how far from home you wander. Note that these rights extend only to U.S. citizens. If you're flying internationally, be prepared for a search and protect yourself before you travel. Know the law. Android App Aims to Allow Wiretap-Proof Cell Phone Calls. FBI drive for encryption backdoors is déjà vu for security experts. The FBI now wants to require all encrypted communications systems to have backdoors for surveillance, according to a New York Times report, and to the nation's top crypto experts it sounds like a battle they've fought before.
Back in the 1990s, in what's remembered as the crypto wars, the FBI and NSA argued that national security would be endangered if they did not have a way to spy on encrypted e-mails, IMs and phone calls. After a long protracted battle, the security community prevailed after mustering detailed technical studies and research that concluded that national security was actually strengthened by wide use of encryption to secure computers and sensitive business and government communications. Now the FBI is proposing a similar requirement that would require online service providers, perhaps even software makers, to only offer encrypted communication unless the companies have a way to unlock the communications.
Few 'Net users realize that they rely on cryptography every day. TSA Agent Harold Glen Rodman Arrested In Manassas Virginia, Charged After Raping Woman – While Wearing Uniform « Our Tax Dollars At Work. MANASSAS, VIRGINIA – A Transportation Security Administration employee is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in Manassas. TSA won’t say where or what suspect does for agency The suspect, Harold Glen Rodman, 52, allegedly was wearing his uniform and displayed a badge to the victim, a 37-year-old woman. Police arrested Rodman on Nov. 20. He is charged with aggravated sexual battery, object sexual penetration, forcible sodomy and abduction with intent to defile. A TSA spokesperson confirmed that Rodman works for the agency but wouldn’t say in what capacity or where.
Police said the victim reported that she and a friend were in the 10500 block of Winfield Loop in Manassas when the suspect approached them. Police responded and canvassed the area when Rodman stepped out of his residence. Those who live in the community says they were shocked to learn that a neighbor was facing sexual assault charges. “He seems like a normal guy. Appeared Here Like this: Like Loading... Big Brother in the Home Office. Tens of thousands of programmers, writers, accountants and other workers labor at home doing contract work for companies like Google, Hewlett-Packard and NBC. The computers they use contain software that takes snapshots of what they are doing six times an hour.
The snooping occurs randomly, making it impossible for the computer user to game the system. It is probably more invasive than what happens to those working in offices, where scooting through Facebook entries, shopping on Cyber Monday, and peeping at N.S.F.W. (“Not Safe for Work”) Web sites on corporate computers is both normal and rarely observed by managers. Almost certainly, such surveillance is likely to be an increasing aspect of modern work, where remote software manages time worked, Web sites visited, keystrokes logged, and observes the informational networks established among employees. ODesk, an outsourcing company offering screen shot software, has 1.4 million contractors registered in dozens of countries. How the US Government Secretly Reads Your Email.
Somewhere, a US government official is reading through a list of those who sent or received an email from Jacob Appelbaum, a 28-year-old computer science researcher at the University of Washington who volunteered for WikiLeaks. Among those listed will be my name, a journalist who interviewed Appelbaum for a book about the digital revolution. Appelbaum is a spokesman for Tor, a free internet anonymizing software that helps people defend themselves against internet surveillance. He's spent five years teaching activists around the world how to install and use the service to avoid being monitored by repressive governments.
It's exactly the sort of technology Secretary of State Hilary Clinton praised in her famous "Internet Freedom" speech in January 2010, when she promised US government support for the designers of technology that circumvented blocks or firewalls. "There's far more data to be had after the fact, so probably these 2703(d) orders are even more common," Soghoian says. Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon. Security vendors help covert agencies spy on their own citizens: WikiLeaks. December 02, 2011, 11:26 AM — Yesterday WikiLeaks released 287 documents in what it calls The Spy Files, which describes as descriptions of the relationship between national intelligence agencies and the commercial software, security and surveillance companies they hired to provide technology that allows them to secretly listen in on cell phone conversations, text messages, email and other Internet traffic and location data.
Some even use voice-recognition technology to help identify the voices in conversations on which they eavesdrop, sometimes while looking for the opportunity to end some conversations by firing a missile to kill one of the participants. Nearly all governments spy on their own citizens and on foreigners using surreptitious spyware on computers, cell phones, GPS devices and other modern electronic devices according to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said during a panel on espionage and digital security at a conference yesterday in London. "Who here has a BlackBerry? Could the U.S. Government Start Reading Your Emails?
A new security research project is designed to scan millions of IMs, texts and emails every day. - A new security research project scans IMs, texts and emails. - The system can reportedly read a quarter billion messages a day. - It then scans the records for unusual behavior. Cherie Anderson runs a travel company in southern California, and she's convinced the federal government is reading her emails. But she's all right with that. "I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind," she says. It's likely Anderson is not alone in her concerns that the government may be monitoring what Americans say, write, and read. PHOTOS: 5 Ways to Protect Yourself Online "Every time someone logs on or off, sends an email or text, touches a file or plugs in a USB key, these records are collected within the organization," David Bader, a professor at the Georgia Tech School of Computational Science and Engineering and a principal investigator on the project, told FoxNews.com.