fuNctioN cReeP

Google/Facebook to Monitor You Like an Animal

2012-01-29T07:15:00.000-08:00

(oregonian)
Google's new plan to keep closer tabs on people isn't just another exasperating affront to online privacy. As the Supreme Court said last week, this type of business decision also affects our constitutional rights.

Google says it will start monitoring what people say and do across multiple Google products, including Gmail, search, calendar and YouTube. By compiling this personal data, the Internet giant intends to offer more tailored ads and better services, such as using geolocation data from your phone to warn when you might be late for a meeting.

The plans alarmed privacy advocates and consumer groups, already upset about Facebook's relentless push to make personal information more public. They got the immediate attention of Congress and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, both of which have investigated Google's business practices and questioned the company for its handling of data.

Also keeping watch? The Supreme Court, whose nine justices agreed that our laws regarding technology and privacy are obsolete.

Internet companies help define our notion of public and private, the court said. New technology shapes our subjective understanding of what constitutes a "reasonable" expectation of privacy. As citizens lose their expectations of privacy, they also lose a key Fourth Amendment defense against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government...
(more)

Consumers Hate Facebook/Google Privacy Changes

2012-01-29T07:07:00.000-08:00

(calgaryherald)
Google and Facebook might have finally gotten the average consumer riled up about privacy.

For the past two years, each company has experimented with different ways to divine more and more about how people live their lives on the Internet, without sparking a revolt.

But the plans the rivals announced this week, which critics say could dramatically rev up their respective abilities to gather intelligence on individual Internet users, seem to have struck a chord.

An informal and unscientific survey of Web users by USA Today found a majority speaking out against the new business practices announced by Google and Facebook.

"It's dangerous for two companies to have so much personal data, regardless of whether the specific threats of that data consolidation are immediately clear," said Sarah Downey, a privacy analyst at software maker Abine.

Compelled to tap what many experts predict will be the next big Internet motherlode - online advertising - Google and Facebook laid down very big bets, during a week when European regulators are hashing out strict new rules that could prevent much of what the tech giants seek to do.

Google signalled its intent to begin correlating data about its users' activities across all of its most popular services and across multiple devices. The goal: to deliver those richer behaviour profiles to advertisers.

Likewise, Facebook announced it will soon make Timeline - the new, glitzier user interface for its service - mandatory.

Timeline is designed to chronologically assemble, automatically display and make globally accessible the preferences, acquaintances and activities for most of Facebook's 800 million members.

Combined with the addition last week of some 60 apps specifically written for Timeline, consumers can provide a detailed account, often in real time, of the music they listen to, what they eat, where they shop - even where they jog...
(more)

Twitter Commits Social Suicide

2012-01-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

(forbes)
"Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why" - Twitter
(more)

Car Hacking

2012-01-27T10:32:00.000-08:00

(forbes)
The recent hacking of Zappos, on top of a seemingly endless series of high-profile cyber security breaches and hackavist attacks, demonstrate that cyberspace is an insecure frontier, where consumers, corporations and even governments are vulnerable to attack.

Recent research, however, shows that cyber vulnerabilities extend far beyond online targets like banks, commerce sites and social networks. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Washington recently demonstrated, for example, that it is possible to remotely hack into cars—even as they are being driven.

Hackers might infect large numbers of cars en masse via war dialing or a popular audio file and then, later, trigger them to simultaneously disengage the brakes when driving at high speed. Now there’s a horror-movie theme for you...
(more)

Google's Autonomous Car

2012-01-27T10:23:00.000-08:00

(cnet)
Google has added one more thing to the list of things it can do over the Web: tell a car where to drive.

Last December, the Internet giant was granted a patent for a method of controlling an autonomous vehicle. Specifically, it details how a vehicle can transition from being human-driven to autonomous mode.

A car could, for example, drive to a specific location and based on a visual indicator on a "landing strip," such as a bar code or radio tag, the car would then transition to autonomous operation. One could imagine, for example, bringing a car to a roadway dedicated to autonomous vehicles where the transition would take place.

In a corporate blog post last year, Google said that it has hired some of the top autonomous-vehicle engineers to enhance the state of driverless cars. It isn't very specific about how this advances its business. But distinguished software engineer Sebastian Thrun said that the company's goal is to "help prevent traffic accidents, free up people's time, and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use."

Engineers have equipped Toyota Priuses with sensors and communications that send large amounts of data back to Google's data centers to analyze and make driving decisions. In 2010, Thrun said it had logged over 140,000 autonomous miles...
(more)

Great... maybe Eric Schmidt can ride shotgun and tell us where we may and may not go.

Red Spotlights to Mark ‘Precrime’ Suspects

2012-01-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

(infowars)
In a glowing review of the rising prevalence of high-tech big brother surveillance gadgets in police force use, the Associated Press reports that East Orange, New Jersey plans to cut crime by highlighting suspects with a red-beamed spotlight– before any crime is committed– a “pre-crime” deterrent to be mounted on nearby street lights or other fixtures.

According to the report, police officers monitor hundreds of video feeds from across the city and opt to brand would-be criminals with a red glow if they believe they are about to engage in a crime, such as a street corner mugging.

“Whereas London has talking cameras, we’re about to deploy light projecting cameras, better known as light-based intervention systems.” said William Robinson, Police Chief for East Orange. He added, “The message to criminals is, we’re observing you, the police are recording you, and the police are responding.”
(more)

Hawaii May Keep Track of All Web Sites Visited

2012-01-26T06:46:00.000-08:00

(cnet)
Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site that their customers visit.

Its House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing this morning on a new bill (PDF) requiring the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents. The measure, H.B. 2288, says their "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.

H.B. 2288, which was introduced last Friday, says the dossiers must include a list of Internet Protocol addresses and domain names visited. Democratic Rep. John Mizuno of Oahu is the lead sponsor; Mizuno also introduced H.B. 2287, a computer crime bill, at the same time last week...
(more)

Joint Military Drills In Downtown LA

2012-01-25T09:02:00.000-08:00

(cbs)
If you notice a heavy military presence around downtown Los Angeles this week, don’t be alarmed — it’s only a drill.

Joint military training exercises will be held evenings through Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The LAPD will be providing support for the exercises, which will also be held in other portions of the greater Los Angeles area, police said.

Training sites “have been carefully selected to ensure the event does not negatively impact the citizens of Los Angeles and their daily routine,” a department official said.

The training, which a department official said would involve helicopters, has been coordinated with local authorities and owners of the
training sites, police said.

Police said safety precautions have been taken to prevent risk to the general public and military personnel involved.

The exercises are closed to the public, police said...
(more)

NYPD Experimenting With Drones

2012-01-24T17:33:00.000-08:00

(cbs)
They’re used in war zones for surveillance and military strikes.

But are there plans to deploy drones in the Big Apple to keep an eye on New Yorkers?

More and more people believe it’s inevitable, reports CBS 2’s Don Dahler.

Drones are unmanned aircraft that can fly at low altitudes and shoot live video — or shoot live missiles.

Surveillance cameras already dot the city’s streets, but is the NYPD exploring the use of even more eyes in the skies, in the form of drones? Some evidence points to yes.

A website named Gay City News posted an e-mail it says it acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. It’s purportedly from a detective in the NYPD counterterrorism division, asking the Federal Aviation Administration about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles as a law enforcement tool...

(more)

Big Brother Google: No Opt Out Allowed

2012-01-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

(washingtonpost)
Google will soon know far more about who you are and what you do on the Web.

The Web giant announced Tuesday it is planning to follow the activities of users across nearly all of its ubiquitous sites, including YouTube, Gmail and its leading search engine.

Google has already been collecting some of this information. But for the first time, it is combining data across its Web sites to stitch together a fuller portrait of users.

Consumers won’t be able to opt out of the changes, which take effect March 1. And experts say the policy shift will invite greater scrutiny from federal regulators of the company’s privacy and competitive practices.

The move will help Google better tailor its ads to people’s tastes. If someone watches an NBA clip online and lives in Washington, the firm could advertise Washington Wizards tickets in that person’s Gmail account.

Consumers could also benefit, the company said. When someone is searching for the word “jaguar,” Google would have a better idea of whether the person was interested in the animal or the car. Or, the firm might suggest e-mailing contacts in New York when it learns you are planning a trip there.

But, say consumer advocates, the new policy may upset people who never expected their information would be shared across so many different Web sites.

A user, for instance, may not want Google to use your social network to alert estranged friends — or your boss — that you are around the corner at a bar...
(more)

Mumbai to Add 6000 More CCTV cameras

2012-01-24T05:17:00.000-08:00

(mumbaimirror)
Three years, one month and 28 days after 26/11 terror attacks, the state government has finally cleared the proposal to buy 6,000 CCTV cameras to put Mumbai under London-style surveillance. This means that on an average 14 new cameras will keep an eye on every square kilometre.

The government had first discussed the idea of turning the entire city into a virtual fortress with 5,000 closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras immediately after the November 26, 2008 terror attacks, but the proposal was put into cold storage due to red tape. When the state and central governments came under heavy criticism after triple bomb blasts rocked the city last year, the proposal came back in favour.

Soon after the 13/7 triple blasts, a high-level team of police and home department officials led by Home Minister R R Patil, and comprising minister of state for home Satej Patil and Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik visited London to study the CCTV surveillance there.

Admitting to the delay, a home department official told Mumbai Mirror, "The proposal was to reach the state cabinet a little before 13/7, but when the triple blasts took place, we held the proposal back to expand its scope."

On Monday, the state chief secretary Ratnakar Gaikwad cleared the proposal to buy 6,000 CCTV cameras. The existing 400 cameras will be integrated into this network. All the 6,400 cameras will be connected to an integrated surveillance system that will monitor the entire city spanning 437 sq km. Take the sprawling Sanjay Gandhi National Park and other open spaces like the Aarey Colony out of this and you get an idea of the all pervasiveness of this eyes-in-the-sky network...
(more)

Tampa Installing 60 More Surveillance Cameras For Republican National Convention

2012-01-24T05:05:00.000-08:00

(wtsp)
The Republican National Convention won't just bring pomp and pageantry to Tampa this summer, it will also bring permanent security improvements in the form of eyes in the sky.

The City of Tampa has budged $2 million of its $50 million in federal convention security funds for 60 surveillance cameras to be installed downtown. Six companies, including IBM, recently submitted bids, which will be unveiled in February.

The Tampa Police Department says the high-tech eyes will help reduce the number of officers' eyes needed. Thousands of protesters are expected at the week-long event.

But critics of the cameras say the $2 million could be better spent.

"Not only is it an invasion of privacy, but it's a huge waste of taxpayers' money," said John Dingfelder, the senior attorney for the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) of Florida...
(more)

Supreme Court Backs Privacy Rights in GPS Case

2012-01-23T14:35:00.000-08:00

(wsj)
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS tracker to a suspect's vehicle, voting unanimously in one of the first major cases to test constitutional privacy rights in the digital age.

The government argued that attaching the tiny device to a car's undercarriage was too trivial a violation of property rights to matter, and that no one who drove in public streets could expect his movements to go unmonitored. Thus, the technique was "reasonable," meaning that police were free to employ it for any reason without first justifying it to a magistrate, the government said.

The justices seemed troubled by that position at arguments in November, where the government acknowledged it would also allow attaching such trackers to the justices' own cars without obtaining a warrant.

The court split 5-4 over the reasoning behind Monday's decision, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing for the majority that as conceived in the 18th century, the Fourth Amendment's protection of "persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" would extend to private property such as an automobile...
(more)

Surveillance

2012-01-23T02:17:00.000-08:00

(techcrunch)
Your phone might be spying on you. The many cameras you pass every day can recognize your face. Facebook, despite its grudging concessions, still wants you to broadcast your personal life. “Eye in the sky” drones are already watching over borders; next, they’ll patrol the Olympics. It won’t be long before police drones are omnipresent in the skies over every major city, and then every town. Welcome to the 21st century. Smile! You’re probably on TV.

Especially if you live in the kind of repressive state that imprisons its citizens without trial. (You know, like America, if the US Senate has its way.) According to both Wikileaks and that well-known bastion of the left wing The Wall Street Journal, such regimes have been buying up Western-made high-tech surveillance systems like business travellers on unlimited expense accounts. To quote the former, “companies are making billions selling sophisticated tracking tools to government buyers, flouting export rules, and turning a blind eye to dictatorial regimes that abuse human rights...”
(more)

SOPA, PIPA: Dead On Arrival

2012-01-21T05:12:00.000-08:00

(mybroadband)
Lawmakers stopped anti-piracy legislation in its tracks on Friday, delivering a stunning win for Internet companies that staged an unprecedented online protest this week to kill the previously fast-moving bills.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he would postpone a critical vote that had been scheduled for January 24 “in light of recent events.”

Lamar Smith, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, followed suit, saying his panel would delay action on similar legislation until there is wider agreement on the issue.

“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy. It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products,” Smith said in a statement.

The bills, known as PIPA (PROTECT IP Act) in the Senate and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the House, are aimed at curbing access to overseas websites that traffic in pirated content and counterfeit products, such as movies and music...
(more)

For now... (stay tuned)

Australia: 'Surveillance Planet'

2012-01-21T04:39:00.000-08:00

(zdnet)
Australian law enforcement agencies were issued 243,631 warrants to obtain telecommunications logs in the period from July 2010 to June 2011. According to Greens' Senator Scott Ludlam, that vastly overshadowed the 3500-odd legal intercepts of communications and makes us part of what privacy activist Jacob Appelbaum calls the "surveillance planet".

The data is from the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 Annual Report for the year ending 30 June 2011, which reports on the usage and effectiveness of the three categories of warrants to conduct surveillance.

To obtain a warrant to conduct an intercept — that is, to record the contents of communications — law enforcement agencies must believe that the target is involved in a serious crime for which they could be jailed for seven years or more.

However there's a much lower threshold to obtain so-called telecommunications data, which is everything except the content of the communication itself — for example, the source's internet protocol (IP) address, the addressee, and the latitude and longitude of the location a phone call was made from...
(more)

Journalist Spoofs Border Biometric Device

2012-01-21T04:32:00.000-08:00

(idg)
A Mingpao Daily journalist successfully spoofed a biometrics device of the self-service immigration clearance e-channel system at the Hong Kong-China border with fingerprint cast produced by a HK$110 (90 yuan) fingerprint cast kit bought on Taobao, according to a report by the Hong Kong-based Chinese-language Mingpao Daily.

Now with 391 devices at different borders, the e-channel system has been in use in Hong Kong since 1994. Each device take about 10 seconds to complete authentication.

The report says the journalist tested five devices located at the Hong Kong-Lo Wu border and Hong Kong-Lok Ma Chau border and managed to spoof one of the devices twice with the fingerprint cast.
(more)

Nandan Nilekani and the Biometrics Battle

2012-01-21T04:27:00.000-08:00

(ndtv)
Mr Nilekani's department has so far enrolled 20 crore (200 Million) Indians with their biometrics - his data has allegedly been described as not sound by the Home Ministry. When asked about that, Mr Nilekani diplomatically replied, "We believe that we follow due process...we have very high standards of security, we believe that it serves the purpose it does." Mr Nilekani also said that it is upto the Cabinet to decide whether his department should continue to collect biometric data, or if that exercise remains the prerogative of Mr Chidambaram's Home Ministry.

Mr Nilekani wants to extend the enrollment to all Indians - a move backed by the Planning Commission and its parent body, the Finance Ministry. But Mr Chidambaram says his ministry is already collecting biometrics for all Indian residents to set up the National Population Register or NPR, which will be the country's biggest biometric database with scans of each resident's fingerprints and irises. In addition to the duplication of work at considerable expense, Mr Chidambaram has reportedly suggested that the security of the UIDAI's database could be problematic. Others in the government have suggested it could be misused...
(more)

DARPA Project Focuses on Human Secrets

2012-01-21T04:17:00.000-08:00

(zdnet)
The U.S. agency that brought you the Internet is now angling to develop new biometric techniques for authentication that will tap computer users as human secrets.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting proposals for biometric research with the intent of developing software-based systems that identify users based on movements or habits while they use their computers or laptops.

The project, called Active Authentication (AA), would eventually move authentication from passwords and Common Access Cards to biometrics for validating the identity of users on Department of Defense IT systems.

AA isn’t focused on extending current technology, it seeks innovative ways to identify a user by collecting behavior metrics, or what DARPA calls “cognitive fingerprints” or “human secrets.” The fingerprint could include eye movement, keystrokes, mouse tracking or even language usage patterns.

The first phase of the project, slated to run until April 2013, focuses on developing methods of continuous authentication, which tracks the user at the keyboard after they log-in to ensure they are the same person who originally signed on to the computer.

“My house key will get you into my house, but the dog in my living room knows you’re not me. No amount of holding up my key and saying you’re me is going to convince my dog you’re who you say you are,” says Richard Guidorizzi, the program manager for AA. ” My dog knows you don’t look like me, smell like me or act like me. What we want out of this program is to find those things that are unique to you, and not some single aspect of computer security that an adversary can use to compromise your system...”
(more)

Edible Microchips

2012-01-21T04:10:00.000-08:00

(rightsidenews)
As technology continues to advance at an exponential rate, will we someday find ourselves living in a "scientific dictatorship" where virtually everything that we do, say and think is monitored and controlled by technology? To many of you that may sound like a wild assertion, but just keep reading. Our world is changing faster than ever before, and scientists have some absolutely wild things planned for our future. As you read this, they are feverishly developing edible microchips, cutting edge biometric identity systems, and mind reading computers.

Many futurists envision a world where someday nearly all humans are embedded with microchips and have thousands of tiny nanobots living inside of them. The idea is that we can "take control of our own evolution" and use technology to "improve" humanity. But very few of those futurists address the potential downsides. The truth is that all of this technology could one day be used by a totalitarian government to establish a dystopian nightmare where nobody has any liberties and freedoms whatsoever.

The world of tomorrow is not going to be anything like the world of today, and most people have no idea how dramatically the world is changing...
(more)

Now It Begins...

2012-01-20T01:56:00.000-08:00

(latimes)
The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it has conducted a major action to shut down MegaUpload, a popular file-sharing site widely used for free downloads of movies and television shows.

After receiving indictments from a grand jury in Virginia for racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and other charges on Jan. 5, federal authorities on Thursday arrested four people and executed more than 20 search warrants in the U.S. and eight foreign countries, seizing 18 domain names and an estimated $50 million in assets, including servers run in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

MegaUpload is a "digital locker" that allows users to store files that can then be streamed or downloaded by others. Its subsidiary site MegaVideo became very popular for the unauthorized downloads of movies and TV shows. Users whose uploaded content proved particularly popular were paid for their participation.

The websites of the Justice department and Universal Music Group, which had been involved in litigation with MegaUpload, were down on Thursday. The sites were attacked by members of the hacker group Anonymous in response to the actions against MegaUpload, according to a report on CNET News...
(more)

Wikipedia Editors Question Site's Blackout

2012-01-18T03:37:00.000-08:00

(yahoo)
Can the world live without Wikipedia for a day? The shutdown of one of the Internet's most-visited sites is not sitting well with some of its volunteer editors, who say the protest of anti-piracy legislation could threaten the credibility of their work.

"My main concern is that it puts the organization in the role of advocacy, and that's a slippery slope," said editor Robert Lawton, a Michigan computer consultant who would prefer that the encyclopedia stick to being a neutral repository of knowledge. "Before we know it, we're blacked out because we want to save the whales."

Wikipedia's English-language site shut down at midnight Eastern Standard Time Tuesday and the organization said it would stay down for 24 hours.

Instead of encyclopedia articles, visitors to the site saw a stark black-and-white page with the message: "Imagine a world without free knowledge." It carried a link to information about the two congressional bills and details about how to reach lawmakers.

It is the first time the English site has been blacked out. Wikipedia's Italian site came down once briefly in protest to an Internet censorship bill put forward by the Berlusconi government. The bill did not advance...
(more)

@Robert Lawton: "Dude, are you a fucking idiot? If this bill passes you won't be able to waste your precious volunteer hours updating your stupid fucking Wikipedia entries!"

Who Are the Drone Police?

2012-01-15T04:00:00.000-08:00

(washingtonpost)
The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized the use of hundreds of drones in U.S. airspace in recent years but offered few details on who is operating them.

This week, a privacy advocacy group filed suit to force the Department of Transportation to release its records publicly.

“Drones give the government and other unmanned aircraft operators a powerful new surveillance tool to gather extensive and intrusive data on Americans’ movements and activities,” said Jennifer Lynch, attorney for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Northern California. “As the government begins to make policy decisions about the use of these aircraft, the public needs to know more about how and why these drones are being used to surveil United States citizens.”

The FAA regulates the operation of drones domestically, and only occasionally grants permission to the federal and local agencies seeking authority to fly unmanned vehicles. But those decisions, civil liberties groups point out, are based on safety concerns, not privacy concerns.

With growing interest in drones and their applications — to patrol U.S. borders, to search for criminal suspects, even to track the spread of forest fires — privacy advocates are now showing increasing concern about the policies guiding their use.

“In my mind, the first step is to get the information from the FAA about who has authorization,” Lynch said in an interview. “We don’t really know very much right now...”
(more)

Technology Has Destroyed Privacy

2012-01-15T03:53:00.000-08:00

(seattletimes)
"FOR your security ... ." These three words are used to justify an array of technology tools that track our identity and movements in exhaustive detail — from surveillance cameras in Medina that run every incoming car's license-plate number through a police database, to the radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips embedded in Washington state driver's licenses.

With so much personally identifiable information exposed in digital form, I question whether the security we supposedly gain is worth the toll on our privacy. What's beyond question is that current laws protecting our constitutional rights have failed to keep pace with technology advances such as global-positioning systems (GPS), facial-recognition software, and portable RFID data readers.

This spring, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in the case of United States v. Jones, which pivots on the question of whether Washington, D.C., police violated Antoine Jones' Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The police attached a GPS tracker to his car without a warrant. After being tracked 24 hours a day for an entire month, Jones was convicted of drug trafficking in 2008. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in 2010, ruling that the use of GPS in this instance amounted to a warrantless search.

The Jones case is a critical opportunity for the Supreme Court to formally recognize that technology has enabled a nearly limitless degree of surveillance, which our Founding Fathers never envisioned or intended.

A police officer can follow anyone on a public street without violating reasonable expectations of privacy. But before police are allowed to attach a GPS device to a vehicle and accumulate data over time — revealing every political meeting you attend, every church you visit, and every bookstore you frequent — they should be required to show probable cause before a judge and obtain a search warrant. Otherwise, police are free to watch any of us around the clock on the chance that we might be criminals.
(more)

A Biometric Tower of Babel

2012-01-10T21:53:00.000-08:00

(huffingtonpost)
"Let us build ourselves a biometric database with its top in the heavens" is a fair and precise paraphrase coined by bloggers describing the biometric database, by comparing it to the Towel of Babel, built with arrogance and ignorance.

Following the biometric database and identification law, a creation of such a database is currently underway in Israel, one that would contain the identifying finger prints and photos of not only wanted criminals, but of every single citizen. The recent Saudi hacker's break-in into secured databases and the subsequent publication of thousands of details of Israelis' private data and credit card numbers over the Internet comes as a warning signal alerting us to freeze the plan at once...
(more)

Surveillance Toys Let You Spy on Neighbors

2012-01-10T21:46:00.000-08:00

(mnn)
A crowd gathered around a remote-control toy car and helicopter here at Sunday’s opening press reception for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) — probably drawn more than anything by the notion of something playful instead of another hardware utility.

Neither toy was exactly a novelty on first glance, however.

“We’ve always been in the R/C business,” said Ian Chisholm, marketing director for the company, Interactive Toy. “And we’ve always done very well with that.”

But the sex appeal of the new products is summed up in the name: “Wi-Spi Video Surveillance Vehicles.” Who wouldn’t get excited by that?
(more)

CES: High-Tech Privacy Killers

2012-01-10T21:38:00.000-08:00

(washingtonpost)
The thousands of devices debuting Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show here demonstrate how tech companies are poised to gather unprecedented insights into consumers’ lives — how much they eat, whether they exercise, when they are home and who they count as friends.

Silicon Valley is in a gold rush for information, highlighted by Google’s announcement Tuesday that it would incorporate data posted by users on its social networking service into the results of its main search engine.

Tailoring services and ads for consumers is where tech firms sees future riches. Today, computers, smartphones, social networks and new devices — such as health-oriented gadgets and Web-connected televisions — show the potential of companies to peer into ever more aspects of daily life.

Coming soon are Internet connected refrigerators, washing machines and other appliances that may be able to deliver information to third parties, such as utilities.

All that has some tech experts and lawmakers concerned that consumers, in their rush to snap up the latest gadgets, may be sacrificing privacy...
(more)

Microsoft Patents 'Avoid Ghetto" App

2012-01-07T06:17:00.000-08:00

(cbs)
Microsoft has been granted a patent for its “avoid ghetto” feature for GPS devices.

A GPS device is used to find shortcuts and avoid traffic, but Microsoft’s patent states that a route can be plotted for pedestrians to avoid an “unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures.”

Created for mobile phones, the technology uses the latest crime statistics and weather data and includes them when calculating a route...
(more)

Pentagon Scientists Use ‘Time Hole’ to Mask Events

2012-01-05T02:12:00.000-08:00

(wired)
Soldiers could one day conduct covert operations in complete secrecy, now that Pentagon-backed physicists have figured out how to mask entire events by distorting light.

A team at Cornell University, with support from Darpa, the Pentagon’s out-there research arm, managed to hide an event for 40 picoseconds (those are trillionths of seconds, if you’re counting). They’ve published their groundbreaking research in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

This is the first time that scientists have succeeded in masking an event, though research teams have in recent years made remarkable strides in cloaking objects. Researchers at the University of Texas, Dallas, last year harnessed the mirage effect to make objects vanish. And in 2010, physicists at the University of St. Andrews made leaps towards using metamaterials to trick human eyes into not seeing what was right in front of them.

Masking an object entails bending light around that object. If the light doesn’t actually hit an object, then that object won’t be visible to the human eye...
(more)

Facebook Is Making Us Miserable

2012-01-05T01:54:00.000-08:00

(huffingtonpost)
When Facebook was founded in 2004, it began with a seemingly innocuous mission: to connect friends. Some seven years and 800 million users later, the social network has taken over most aspects of our personal and professional lives, and is fast becoming the dominant communication platform of the future.

But this new world of ubiquitous connections has a dark side. In my last post, I noted that Facebook and social media are major contributors to career anxiety. After seeing some of the comments and reactions to the post, it's clear that Facebook in particular takes it a step further: It's actually making us miserable...
(more)

Judge: No Warrant Needed for GPS Monitoring

2012-01-05T01:41:00.000-08:00

(wired)
A Missouri federal judge ruled the FBI did not need a warrant to secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to a suspect’s car to track his public movements for two months.

The ruling, upholding federal theft and other charges, is one in a string of decisions nationwide supporting warrantless GPS surveillance. Last week’s decision comes as the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue within months in an unrelated case.

The ruling from Magistrate David Noce mirrored the Obama administration position before the Supreme Court during oral arguments on the topic in November. In short, defendant Fred Robinson, who was suspected of fudging his time sheets for his treasurer’s office job for the city of St. Louis, had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his public movements, Magistrate Noce said...
(more)

Telecommunications Surveillance Will Continue

2012-01-02T23:03:00.000-08:00

(tgdaily)
A US appeals panel has upheld the supposed constitutionality of a controversial federal law that grants immunity to telecommunications companies assisting in the surveillance of American citizens.  

The latest ruling effectively reinforces the 2008 decision of Congress to grant telecoms immunity for cooperating with the government’s intelligence-gathering activities.  

According to Judge Margaret McKeown of the 9th Circuit, the above-mentioned immunity does not "close" the courts for those wishing to challenge such actions, as only the telecommunications companies are covered by the ruling - rather than the government itself.

"The federal courts remain a [valid] forum to consider the constitutionality of the wiretapping scheme and other claims," she wrote in a ruling obtained by Reuters.   

Unsurprisingly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) issued an official statement decrying the decision.

"By passing the retroactive immunity for the telecoms' complicity in the warrantless wiretapping program, Congress abdicated its duty to the American people," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl.

"It is disappointing that today's decision endorsed the rights of telecommunications companies over those over their customers."

(more)

Happy New Year: Obama Signs NDAA

2012-01-01T22:29:00.000-08:00

(infowars)
Indeed it is a new day. Ushering in the New Year, President Obama signed legislation that helps to further destroy the principles the nation was founded upon.

President Obama, who pledged to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), has now signed it. Of course, his promise was only for public consumption. After all, lying to your enemy is what invading corporate takeover armies do. It was the Obama administration all along that demanded the indefinite detention provisions be added while at the same time telling the American people he was fighting to protect their rights. This is treason on parade, in your face all out despotism– that is, for those paying any attention!
(more)

Siri to Little Boy: "Shut the Fuck Up!"

2011-12-31T05:07:00.000-08:00

(thesun)
A lad of 12 who tried out the new iPhone 4S in Tesco was stunned when it told him: "Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***."

The phone's Siri system, which answers spoken questions, came back with the foul-mouthed insult when Charlie Le Quesne asked: "How many people are there in the world?"

Charlie's horrified mum Kim said: "The phone was a demo version and was low enough on the shelf for Charlie to have a go with it. He asked it a simple question and we couldn't believe the filth it came out with.

"I thought I must be hearing things. So we asked again and the same four-letter stuff blared out.

"I asked for the manager and after staff heard it they agreed to unplug it."

Apologetic staff at Tesco in Coventry told Kim pranksters had tampered with the phone's set-up instructions.
(more)

Move Your Domain Day

2011-12-29T01:25:00.000-08:00

(namecheap)
SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a proposed bill that would allow owners of intellectual property to block or disable any website that they consider infringes on their intellectual property.

Unfortunately, the bill takes a “carpet bombing” approach to piracy and gives intellectual property owners unprecedented powers in being able to take websites down without any sort of due process.

The bill goes so far that many people have renamed it the “Stop Online Privacy Act” because it infringes on both privacy and freedom.

Many people are worried, and rightly so, about how SOPA can hurt the internet. SOPA hurts consumers, SOPA hurts service providers, and SOPA hurts freedom of speech.

Like many service providers and competitors, we feel so strongly about SOPA that we’ve been compelled to act. We are a freedom-loving domain registrar and above all else, the rights of our customers come first.

In a statement, Richard Kirkendall, CEO of Namecheap said:

While we at Namecheap firmly believe in intellectual property rights, SOPA is like detonating a nuclear bomb on the internet when only a surgical strike is necessary. This legislation has the potential to harm the way everyone uses the Internet and to undermine the system itself. At Namecheap, we believe having a free and open Internet is the only option that will continue the legacy of innovation and openess that stands for everything we all value in our modern society.

Some of our competitors support SOPA, despite the untold damage it can do to the internet as we know it.

Because of this, we're declaring December 29th “Move Your Domain Day”, as a call-to-action for those who oppose SOPA and wish to leave service providers who support SOPA.
(more)

GoDaddy really fucked up this time!!!

Chinese Online Marriage Database Destroys Privacy

2011-12-26T04:10:00.001-08:00

(cnn)
China is launching a national online marriage database to fight bigamy, a move that has raised concerns among millions of Chinese about protection of privacy.

The Chinese government's announcement that it plans to make the database available next year comes amid reports last week that hackers gained access to the personal information of 6 million users of the China Software Developer Network, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported Saturday.

The hacking triggered widespread panic in China, and some Chinese citizens raised questions about the safety of the anticipated marriage database, Xinhua said...
(more)

Korea Extends Biometrics Scanning to All Foreigners

2011-12-26T03:56:00.000-08:00

(koreaherald)
All foreigners entering the country will undergo biometric scanning starting in the new year to combat terrorism and prevent threats to national security, said immigration officials.

According to the Korea Immigration Service on Monday, foreigners aged 17 or older will undergo fingerprint and facial scanning upon entering the county starting Jan. 1.

The program started scanning those from countries deemed high-risk by the KIS in September 2010, and has since expanded to include all foreigners choosing long-term stay here.

However, the program excludes minors, diplomatic officials and other foreign government officials. Registered foreigners currently in the country will also be exempt.

Biometric scanning will be conducted in 11 different languages including English, Chinese and Japanese.

The process potentially could double the amount of time that it takes to pass through immigration...
(more)

Japanese Engineer Invents Ass Biometrics

2011-12-23T18:51:00.000-08:00

(theverge)
Fingerprinting does an OK job at biometric identification, but since our fingertips are usually coated with potato chip grease, we wouldn’t want to trust it for mission critical applications. A Japanese researcher thinks he has the solution — a unique mathematical "butt fingerprint" that could be used to protect your car against would-be criminals.

Associate Professor Shigeomi Koshimizu at the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology in Tokyo uses a seat pressure map to generate a web of 39 indices that are used to uniquely identify a subject's rear end. Results so far have been encouraging, with average type one error (failing to correctly identify the driver's behind) of 2.2 percent, and type two error (mistakenly letting someone else drive away) of only 1.1 percent...
(more)

The False Promise of Biometrics

2011-12-23T18:46:00.000-08:00

(nytimes)
The biometric identification of manual laborers fails in 15 percent of cases, for instance: it seems that working with your hands blurs your fingerprints. This means that a significant number of workers could find themselves locked out of their welfare accounts. UID officials have said that they expect contingency plans to address such failures as they occur, but in India, contingency plans have a way of becoming standard operating procedures that enable unscrupulous officials to subvert the system. Designed as a tool of inclusion, the UID could thus become a means of exclusion...
(more)

Sniper Detectors Coming to America's Heartland

2011-12-22T23:43:00.000-08:00

(foxnews)
Gunshots ring out in the dead of night, and not a single person reports it. Yet police know exactly where the shots came from, even before they arrive on the scene.

It sounds like a scene from The Minority Report, but it's real. A new technology called ShotSpotter enables law enforcement officials to precisely and instantaneously locate shooters, and it has been quietly rolling out across America. From Long Island, N.Y., to San Francisco, Calif., more than 60 cities in the U.S. have been leveraging ShotSpotter to make their streets safer.

Minneapolis has already adopted it. And this past week three more cities from the heartland -- Flint, Mich.; Youngstown, Ohio; and Omaha, Neb. -- have begun testing or furthered plans to roll it out.

The Youngstown Police Department decided to go very public by posting frank warning signs, such as this one at the Youngstown Elementary School:

“If You Fire a Gun, We Will Find You...”
(more)

U.S. Holds On to Biometrics Database of 3 Million Iraqis

2011-12-22T20:51:00.000-08:00

(wired)
The troops have come home, the flag has been been lowered, and the Iraq War is officially in the past for the U.S. military. But the military is holding on to a major souvenir of the war: a massive database packed with retinal scans, thumb prints and other biometric data identifying millions of Iraqis. It will be a tool for counterterrorism long after the Iraq War becomes a fading memory.

U.S. Central Command, the military command responsible for troops in the Mideast and South Asia, confirms to Danger Room that the biometrics database, compiled by U.S. troops over the course of years, will remain U.S. property. “Centcom has the database,” says the command’s chief spokesman, Army Maj. T.G. Taylor, who says it contains files on three million Iraqis. The U.S.-sponsored Iraqi government, in other words, doesn’t control a host of incredibly specific information on its citizens.

For much of the war, U.S. troops carrying viewfinder-like scanning devices kept digital records of the Iraqis they encountered. Some Iraqis got their unique identifiers recorded because they were suspected insurgents on their way to detention centers. Residents of violent cities like Fallujah would only get to return home from travel if they showed U.S. troops an ID card complete with biometric data. Iraqis underwent iris scans when they wanted to join the police. So did Iraqis who worked on U.S. bases.

It was all part of an effort to answer the war’s most vexing challenge: distinguishing insurgents from Iraqi civilians. And that effort isn’t going away, even after the war technically ended. It’ll be part of U.S. counterterrorism missions for a long time to come...
(more)

Once they put you on the list, you never get off it.

Jell-O Vending Machine Uses Facial Biometrics to Dispense “Adults Only” Desert

2011-12-22T20:35:00.000-08:00

(hsnw)
As part of Jell-O’s new campaign to promote its latest desert the company is giving away free samples using a sophisticated vending machine that uses facial biometrics to keep children away.

“Temptations,” Jell-O’s new pudding is meant to be for “adults only,” so to ensure that children are not getting any free samples, its new vending machines will use facial recognition technology.

According to the company, the vending machine will automatically scan the face of every individual who approaches the machine for a sample.

“If the machine detects a child, it will shut down, asking the child to step away from the machine,” the company said in a press release.

The machine does not store any biometric information and only collects data based on gender and approximate age...
(more)

Please don't take pictures of my kid.

Privacy Advocates Sue DHS for Fake 'Friends' Monitoring Social Media

2011-12-22T16:07:00.000-08:00

(networkworld)
Privacy advocates are suing DHS for 'covert' social networking surveillance on Facebook and Twitter. EPIC's FOIA lawsuit is a result of Homeland Security refusing to turn over details about Big Brother setting up fake accounts to 'friend' you and better monitor your social media activities.

Yes, Virginia, Big Brother is watching you in social media and storing those "naughty" tweets, posts and comments. After those hot keyword terms put you on the naughty list, unlike Santa's list, it's not a redo in a year . . . that info will be stored for five years. The EFF previously warned Big Brother wants to be your online buddy on social networking sites. Then the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request asking Homeland Security for more details about the agency's plans to setup fake profiles and monitor social media users; but when no documents were produced, EPIC is now suing DHS over 'covert surveillance on Facebook and Twitter.'
(more)

Lawyer Urges Biometric System Boycott

2011-12-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

(skynews)
A lawyer is urging people to boycott the world's largest biometric database, which is being introduced across India.

The controversial programme aims to scan the eyes and take the fingerprints of most of the population over the next decade.

Each person will then be given a 12-digit number. They will be able to use the number - which serves as a key to their biometric data - to prove their identity and access India's sprawling welfare state.

But Supreme Court lawyer and human rights activist, Sanjay Barikh, says the scheme is an invasion of privacy.

He is urging citizens not to take part, claiming it will lead to unnecessary state intrusion.

"When they get the information then all the time that person will be under some kind of surveillance and it is questionable whether that information will be kept secret or whether it will be passed on to other countries and companies as well," he said.

The scheme is already well underway and more than one million people being processed every day.

The authorities claim the biometric identity project - which is called Aadhaar (foundation) - is vital if India is to eradicate poverty and beat corruption...
(more)

Biometric Attendance System Criticized

2011-12-21T23:16:00.000-08:00

(timesofindia)
The reported move of the state government to introduce biometric system of attendance for teachers and non-teaching staff of colleges and universities in Bihar has drawn sharp criticism from the academic circles. The new system would hardly be able to change the existing educational scenario in the state, they feel.

The basic idea of introducing this system is to keep a check on teachers. The biometric system will provide exact information on whether the employee was actually present or not. With the biometric system in place, the employee has to be present physically in the college and cannot mark proxy attendance, the mandarins in the state HRD feels.

Taking strong exception to the government move of implementing the biometric system, Patna University Teachers' Association general secretary Randhir Kumar Singh said it would hardly deliver any good in the institutions of higher education. Rather it would prove counterproductive.

In Patna University, classes are being run by only about 400 teachers against the required 900 teachers. Consequently, a teacher of Patna College or Patna Women's College also engages classes in the postgraduate department located at Darbhanga House. How will he move to different institutions if the biometric system is introduced, he wondered...
(more)

Facebook's Timeline is a Privacy Killer

2011-12-20T23:57:00.000-08:00

(vancouversun)
Facebook is in the process of rolling out a huge, and potentially privacy-threatening, change to the way it displays your profile on the site.

It’s called Timeline and it makes it way easier than it was before for people to dig into every single thing you’ve ever done on the site — every photo, every status update, every relationship change.

Pull up someone’s profile with Timeline enabled and you can scroll back through their entire post-Facebook history. Click on a year (say, 2007) and you’ll see everything they did in those 12 months...
(more)

Yes, Virginia, Even the LED Lights Might be 'Listening'

2011-12-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

(computerworld)
The Canadian company Waypoint Counter Surveillance sells a Universal Exotic Modulation Detector (EMD) which claims to allow "when checking radiating fields within a room, to detect, localize and demodulate unusual technical surveillance systems including visible and non visible bulb, LED, IR, UV and laser light, ultrasonic audio transmission and induction audio transmission."

At this time of year when many of us are surrounded by an inordinate amount of LED bulbs via holiday decorations, the idea of Christmas lights spying on anyone by potentially "listening" for audio seem(s) extra creepy...
(more)

RAW Destroys Your Privacy

2011-12-18T05:51:00.000-08:00

(dna)
For those agitated over the big brother snooping on their lives, there is more bad news in store as India’s external intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) has been notified by the UPA government as an “authorised agen-cy” to legally intercept phone calls, e-mails and all forms of data, voice and electronic communications with immediate effect.

This is the first time in R&AW’s history since its inception in 1967 that it has been allowed to snoop on Indian citizens in addition to its espionage activities abroad.

The notification came a few weeks ago after the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) added the intelligence organisation to the list of eight recognised law enforcement agencies that have been authorised by the Supreme Court to legally intercept communications, senior government officials confirmed to DNA.

But the move also raises questions about the government’s intentions at a time when Union communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal let it slip that the government was planning to screen social media.

According to the notification, R&AW can now post its communication interception equipment at international gateways to spy on all forms of data, be it international telephony emanating from India, or any form of electronic data including e-mails. The move raises the question about the grey area of surveillance, privacy and citizen’s rights in the absence of any form of effective oversight mechanisms...
(more)

House Cybersecurity Bill Would Establish Federal Overseer

2011-12-17T03:05:00.002-08:00

(thehill)
Members of the House Homeland Security Committee introduced a cybersecurity bill on Thursday that would establish a quasi-governmental entity to oversee information-sharing with the private sector.

Like the other cybersecurity bills offered by the House GOP, the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness (PrECISE Act) encourages private firms to share information on cyber threats but stops short of mandating new security standards for sectors deemed critical to national security...
(more)

Voice Biometrics: The New Lie Detector

2011-12-16T03:05:00.000-08:00

(thirdfactor)
Researchers in the U.S. are working towards a system that can detect if someone is lying as well as if they are angry or drunk by their voice alone, according to a Homeland Security News Wire article.

Among the researchers working on such technologies are Julia Hirschberg from Columbia University and Shrikanth Narayanan from the University of Southern California.

Hirschberg’s work is on a computer program that deconstructs an individual’s speech looking for changes in pitch, volume, pauses and other verbal cues that point towards dishonesty while Narayanan’s work is focused on a program that uses special algorithms to look for pitch, timing and intensity to discern emotions in a speaker’s voice with his other work is on a system that verbally detects drunkenness.

Most look at the potential new technology holding little potential for use in a court setting as even traditional polygraphs are rarely considered as viable evidence, however, there is potential for scanning callers in call centers to better prepare to deal with certain emotions or to determine if an official at a press conference is being honest.
(more)

"Based on the voice biometric, the jury finds you guilty!" Fuck you! What did your machine say about that pitch, timing, and intensity? Seriously though, if we're stupid enough to fall for this scheme, we're stupid enough to believe any bullshit they sell us.

Big Brother Is Shopping With You

2011-12-15T04:46:00.000-08:00

(bloomberg)
Brick-and-mortar stores have long wanted to track consumers the way online merchants do and are starting to figure out how. They’re using security cameras to monitor shopping behavior and tracking mobile phones to divine which stores people visit.

The technologies mean retailers from discount chain Family Dollar Stores Inc. (FDO) to luxury pen-maker Montblanc can make changes on the fly -- such as deploying more salespeople in a given department and moving high-margin merchandise to parts of the store where shoppers are more likely to see it.

“It’s really a game-changing experience, and this is only the beginning,” said Rodrigo Fajardo, a Montblanc brand manager, who says a six-month-old tracking system prompted him to move best-selling items to another part of his Miami store, boosting sales 20 percent. “Before we were just working based on know-how and intuition. This is designing a retail business based on real statistics...”
(more)

Media's Sick Surveillance: Waiting For Mandela to Kick

2011-12-15T04:31:00.000-08:00

(afp)
International news agencies Reuters and AP set up surveillance cameras outside former South African president Nelson Mandela's rural home, police and spokesmen for the agencies said on Thursday.

"So far we've managed to recover two cameras in a house in the village not far from Mr Mandela's house," police spokesman Mzukisi Fatyela told AFP.

"The cameras were put there without the knowledge of his family or the authorities."

He said both cameras were removed on Monday and that authorities "strongly believe" there are others set up in the village.

South Africa's Times newspaper said the CCTV cameras had been installed as long as six years ago in the house of a neighbour who lives across from Mandela's homestead in Qunu, in South Africa's Eastern Cape province.

Britain-based Reuters and US news agency the Associated Press (AP) both confirmed they had set up cameras there.

"We did have a camera and it has been removed," Reuters spokeswoman Joanne Crosby told AFP, declining to comment further...
(more)

Carrier IQ faces US probe

2011-12-15T04:17:00.000-08:00

(guardian)
US federal investigators are looking into claims that software from Carrier IQ, which is installed on about 150m mobile phones, has been used to track user activity and send data to carriers without customers' knowledge.

The Washington Post reported that executives from Carrier IQ travelled to Washington earlier this week to meet officials from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is in charge of enforcing privacy laws to protect consumers, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Meanwhile, the FBI has denied that it has ever sought any data from Carrier IQ for any of its investigations – though its director, Robert Mueller, said it was possible that some data that the FBI had received from mobile carriers might have been collected by Carrier IQ's software.

Speculation had followed the result of a Freedom of Information request in which the FBI was asked how it used that data, and responded with a "standard exemption".

Three of the four biggest US carriers – AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint – have said they use the company's software in line with their own privacy policies. In the UK, none of the carriers say that they use the software.

Apple has said that a future software update will remove the software from the iPhone, where it is used for anonymised diagnostic reports that are sent back only with the customer's agreement. The software is installed by carriers on millions of phones using Google's Android software...
(more)

Pieces of shit. Spying on us? Shame on you, corporate demons! Your time is gonna come...

UIDAI Rejected by Parliamentary Committee

2011-12-14T14:34:00.000-08:00

(bbc)
The committee, in a recent report, raised concerns about access and misuse of personal information, surveillance, profiling and securing confidential information by the government. UID authorities say that appropriate steps have been taken to ensure security and protection of data.

The committee has even questioned the implementation of the scheme, which has been held up as a success story by the authorities. It says it was originally meant for the poorest of the poor and then extended to all residents. But the committee says better-off Indians already possess many other forms of identity, and so asks how the number helps them. Authorities say the number will be a general proof of identity...
(more)

Carrier IQ Used By FBI to Spy on You

2011-12-14T04:31:00.000-08:00

(forbes)
Remember that software installed on 140 million smartphones that tracks every keystroke you make?

Smartphone users were told that Carrier IQ was only being used for diagnostic information but what exactly does this mean? And if it’s only being used for diagnostic information, why is the FBI denying a FOIA request for records of how that agency has used data from the software for law enforcement purposes?

Most importantly, if data from our smartphones is being used by the FBI without our knowledge, is this just the next frontier in domestic spying programs?
(forbes)

Police Employ Predator Drones on Home Front

2011-12-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

(latimes)
Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare...
(more)

Facial Recognition: A Warning From the FTC

2011-12-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

(eweek)
Companies need to be careful about not violating user privacy when implementing facial recognition technology in their products, the Federal Trade Commission warned.

The Federal Trade Commission would take a hard line on companies that violate consumer privacy using facial recognition technology, the agency's chairman said at a public workshop.

Government officials, privacy advocates and technology companies discussed the ethics of facial recognition and the impact on user privacy at a workshop in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8. Facial recognition technology has been integrated in a wide range of products and services, including online social networks, digital billboards and mobile apps, which raises a host of privacy and security concerns, the FTC said.

While the technology can be used in positive ways, regulators, companies and consumers must "acknowledge and address that they have the potential to run right over consumers," forcing users to reveal more information than they intended to, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said at the workshop.

Even if the technology isn’t fully mature yet, it will soon be possible for the technology to match a name with a face and be able to access data about jobs, credit history and health without the user even being aware of it, according to Leibowitz.

The FTC will “vigorously enforce the law if we see a violation” of privacy through a facial recognition feature, Leibowitz said.

Insurers and employers may soon start using facial recognition technology to find information about a potential customer or worker, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill said. "It is scenarios like these we must bear in mind as we both guide and react to how these technologies change the way we buy, sell and live," Brill said...
(more)

Bad Online Behavior Monitored by College Admissions Officials

2011-12-09T06:09:00.000-08:00

(edweek)
Stellar transcripts aside, students now have to worry about an increasing number of colleges peering at their social-networking pages online—and potentially denying their applications because of what they find there.

The number of college-admissions officials using Facebook and other social-networking sites to learn more about applicants quadrupled over the past year, according to New York City-based Kaplan Test Prep, the test preparation division of Kaplan Inc.

In the company’s 2011 survey of admissions officers from the top 500 colleges and universities, 24 percent said they have viewed publicly available pages to get a clearer picture of an applicant, while 20 percent turned to Google. Twelve percent reported that their discoveries, including photos showing underage drinking, vulgarities in blogs, and plagiarism in essays, negatively affected the chance of admission...
(more)

Mini Speedboat Drone Ready to Roll

2011-12-09T03:31:00.000-08:00

(floridatoday)
While it looks like a toy boat, the 6-foot vessel streaks across the water at more than 100 mph, carrying video cameras and sensors or a weapon.

And it’s bulletproof.

The speedboat, designed in the shape of an ocean racer, has two electric motors about the size of soda cans that generate 15 horsepower. It’s called MANTAS, for Man-portable, Tactical Autonomous System. And a Palm Bay company hopes to sell them to the military.

“These things fly across the water,” said Bruce Hanson, chief executive officer for The Software Specialists, which created the experimental vessel...
(more)

Shopper Surveillance Using XBox Kinect

2011-12-09T03:19:00.000-08:00

(technorati)
Software development company Agile Route has released shopping analytics software that uses the Microsoft XBox Kinect gaming system to track shoppers in real time. According to the company's web site, the software uses the Kinects 3-d spatial recognition capabilities to collect data about individual shopper movements. Shoppers are given a unique identifier, and multiple shoppers can be tracked at one time.

The data collected by the Kinect system are then analyzed to determine shopper movements relative to shelf locations, and real-world comparisons came be made between shopper movements when a display is set up in two different ways.

The company claims the system protects shopper privacy by not recording any personal information. Questions about how the system differentiates between shoppers over time were not immediately answered by Agile Route. If images of actual shoppers are recorded, there are some obvious privacy concerns.

The Xbox Kinect has raised privacy concerns in the past when Microsoft suggested they would use information gathered through the Kinect system to target advertising to Kinect users. Microsoft has subsequently worked hard to assure Kinect users that they will not use Kinect information for advertising.

Even when "personal information" is not collected consumers tend to dislike surveillance. Mall owner Forest City decided to pull the plug on a cell phone tracking program due to consumer complaints...
(more)

Facebook Knows What You Watched Last Summer

2011-12-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

(itworld)
Thanks to Facebook’s “frictionless sharing,” I know all kinds of things about what my friends and relatives are doing at any given moment. One thing I don’t know, though, is what movies they’re watching online.

The reason is thanks to one of the rare US privacy laws on the books, and one of the weirdest: The Video Privacy Protection Act. But it won’t be for long, if Facebook and Netflix have their way.

Yesterday the House passed HR 2471, a bill amending the VPPA that allows movie rental/streaming services to reveal the films you’ve watched, assuming you’ve given your informed written consent – which can be obtained over the Net.

In other words, by clicking Allow on Facebook, you could agree to let all your peeps know that you just watched “Hello Sister, Goodbye Life” on Netflix. Why you would want to do this, I don’t know.

Given the margin by which this 59-word snippet of law passed (303 to 116), I can’t see it getting massive opposition in the Senate or earning a presidential veto. They’ve got much bigger issues to avoid making decisions on in DC these days. So I’d consider this a done deal.

According to Maplight.org, interest groups supporting this bill – primarily the Digital Media Association, Facebook, and Netflix – have doled out over $1 million to Congressional members from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2011. House members who voted yes on the bill got an average of 73 percent more from these groups (or $2,644 on average) than those who voted no. The top recipients of the digital industry’s largesse: California Democrats Anna Eshoo ($36K) and Zoe Lofgren ($40K), and Virginia Republicans Bob Goodlatte ($28K) and Eric Cantor ($24K).

See? We do have the best Congress money can buy. Just not your money or mine...
(more)

CCTV Coming to Toledo, OH

2011-12-08T02:56:00.000-08:00

(nwohio)
Chief Diggs says the cameras will feed into a real time crime center that will record video obtained by both "overt" and "covert" cameras.

"Some of the cameras will be self-supporting, they'll be on trailers so we can move them around....The main cameras will be on polls that are already out there," Toledo Police Lt. Michael Troendle said of the cameras.

Diggs says the mix in types of surveillance will make the investment both a reactive and proactive tool in fighting crime.

Estimated to cost between $812,000 and $1.2 million Diggs says he plans to purchase the cameras as soon as he gets the necessary approval.

"Financing for the program will not be taken from the city's general fund but instead will be used from the department’s law enforcement trust fund, an account funded by assets confiscated through criminal investigations," Diggs said.

The chief adds that he will be working closely with the city's law department to make sure citizens' rights are not infringed on by adding the cameras...
(more)

Ohio Elementary School Gets Biometric Cafeteria

2011-12-08T02:46:00.000-08:00

(thirdfactor)
Munroe Elementary School in Tallmadge, Ohio is upgrading its cafeteria to be cash-free when the students return form winter break relying instead on biometrics for students to access accounts for their food, according to a Tallmadge Express article.

The change, which is designed off a system at nearby Hudson City Schools to help make lines move quicker, is part of a school overhaul of its dining program that also includes changes in the offerings to help improve the diets of the students.

The fingerprint-based systems are not entirely new to the schools, as they already been running in middle and high schools in Tallmadge. The system at Munroe will be the first to run entirely cashless without an option for students to pay in cash, which may expand to all the schools...
(more)

The kids can't opt out of this one; no cash allowed. Total bullshit. Conditioning them for a cashless society, one that can be more easily controlled and monitored. As adults, they won't even know the true meaning of freedom.

Facebook Flaw Exposes Mark Zuckerberg 'Private' Photos - And Yours!

2011-12-07T01:21:00.000-08:00

(telegraph)
Step-by-step instructions for how to circumvent Facebook’s privacy systems have been circulating online for more than two weeks.

The method, which was blocked on Tuesday, involved exploiting systems meant to stop users posting explicit material on the web's largest social network.

After reporting a public profile picture as inappropriate because of “nudity or pornography”, intruders were offered the chance to report more photographs posted by the same user. Facebook then presented them with a thumbnail gallery of private images which could be enlarged by making a simple change in the browser address bar and downloaded.

The flaw was originally publicised on a body building forum last month.

"Facebook could take action on your account should this be abused," the original poster wrote. "I urge you to use on a dummy account if you care about keeping your Facebook profile active..."
(more)

Facial Recognition: The Death of Privacy

2011-12-07T01:13:00.000-08:00

(cdt)
The key privacy interest that commercial facial recognition affects is, of course, identification of an individual through facial features alone. Without facial recognition technology, it is very difficult for a stranger to easily and quickly identify an individual on this basis. Individuals in public currently expect that most businesses and passersby cannot recognize their faces, fewer still can connect a name to their faces, and few – if any – can associate their faces with internet behavior, travel patterns, or other personal information. Facial recognition technology fundamentally changes this dynamic, enabling any marketer or random stranger to collect – openly or in secret – and share the identities and associated personal information of any individual in public.

Deployed widely enough, a network of facial recognition cameras can track millions of individuals as they move from place to place. Unlike other tracking methods, such as GPS or RFID, facial recognition does not require the tracked individual to carry any special device or tag, reducing consumers’ ability to thwart unwanted tracking. Once built, databases assembled with facial recognition for commercial use can be accessed or re-purposed for law enforcement surveillance...

(more)

The iPhone Is About To Become The FBI’s Newest Crime-Fighting Partner

2011-12-07T01:01:00.000-08:00

(cultofmac)
The system, which attaches to an iPhone and weighs 12.5 ounces, is already paying off for Florida law enforcement. Since 2004, deputies in the Pinellas County, Fla. sheriff’s office have nabbed 700 people. In Brockton, Mass., the MORIS iris scans quickly link suspects’ prior criminal history.

Forget guns, or CB radios, or even in-car computer systems. In the next year, the iPhone could become the most important crime-fighting tool a cop has at his disposal. Just as the iPhone has reshaped what we expect from smartphones, it’s now set to overhaul law enforcement. Criminals beware!
(more)

Everyone beware. Not just criminals. Every last one of us ought to beware.

Civilian-controlled Drones May Patrol Domestic Skies

2011-12-05T02:21:00.000-08:00

(dailycamera)
Drone aircraft, best known for their role in hunting and destroying terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan, may soon be coming to the skies near you.

Police agencies want drones for air support to spot runaway criminals. Utility companies believe they can help monitor oil, gas and water pipelines. Farmers think drones could aid in spraying their crops with pesticides.

"It's going to happen," said Dan Elwell, vice president of civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Association. "Now it's about figuring out how to safely assimilate the technology into national airspace."

That's the job of the Federal Aviation Administration, which plans to propose new rules for the use of small drones in January, a first step toward integrating robotic aircraft into the nation's skyways.

The agency has issued 266 active testing permits for civilian drone applications but hasn't permitted drones in national airspace on a wide scale out of concern that the pilotless craft don't have an adequate "detect, sense and avoid" technology to prevent midair collisions.

Other concerns include privacy -- imagine a camera-equipped drone buzzing above your backyard pool party -- and the creative ways in which criminals and terrorists might use the machines...
(more)

The Biometric Bracelet

2011-12-03T05:16:00.000-08:00

(readwrite)
So what's the next step, I asked? Do people start wearing biometric tokens that send signals to devices in the neighborhood, letting you know when you're in their vicinity so they can respond by tweeting you to please buy them?

Sure, why not, comes the swift response from Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Last August, as regular ReadWriteWeb readers will recall, Benioff astounded his audience at the Dreamforce conference with the mind-alteringly imminent notion that Coke machines should become aware of their customers' presence, and respond through their iPhones with bargains and loyalty points. Of course, Benioff's idea at that time relied upon the customer always having his iPhone with him. This time, at the Cloudforce conference in New York this morning, Benioff one-upped his own idea with the notion that a biometric bracelet could supply interested products and devices in the wearer's immediate vicinity with a kind of identity signal.

Benioff's suggestion was brief and simple: Not just applications, but people working remotely, can get a better understanding of customers' needs if they had vision into the context of where they are and what they're doing. As demonstrated earlier in the day, a financial sales team might have immensely greater comprehension of the urgency of a customer's needs if they were to see that she was at the bank, that she was talking to a loan officer, and that she had started filling out the paperwork for a mortgage application...
(more)

Marines Collect Biometrics in Simulation

2011-12-02T05:16:00.000-08:00

(dvids)
Military policeman with Combat Logistics Battalion 4 participated in tactical site exploitation training at the training city of Wardah-Mir, Marine Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif., Nov. 18.

The Marines conducted foot-patrols, room clearing and search operations where they collected biometric data and other evidence on citizens displaying suspicious behavior or possessing contraband.

“We are trying to give the Marines the skill set to assist the Afghan government in criminal prosecutions and to help teach the Afghan National Police these skills,” said Patrick Garrahan, law enforcement professional, Tactical Training Exercise Control Group, MAGCC Twentynine Palms.

Wardah-Mir is a city within MAGCC Twentynine Palms designed for the purpose of large-scale urban training operations and includes actors who portray both Afghan citizens and insurgents to give Marines a training environment similar to situations on the ground in Afghanistan, according to Garrahan.

The Marines practiced several TSE scenarios, including vehicle and home searches, where they also applied military operations in urban terrain techniques.

“We cordoned-off the area, provided perimeter security, and conducted room clearing before executing the TSE,” said Sgt. Joseph R. Apsey, security team leader, Company B, CLB-4.
Suspects were processed using a handheld interagency identity detection equipment system, which compared their biometric data, such as fingerprints and iris scans, to a central database, according to Apsey.

The system allows Marines to positively identify individuals wanted for questioning or detainment...
(more)

They are practicing for Afghanistan... yeah, right. Just keep telling yourself that...

UCF Rolls Out Vein Scanning at Campus Rec Center

2011-12-02T05:10:00.000-08:00

(thirdfactor)
The University of Central Florida (UCF) implemented a biometric vein scanning system in an effort to prevent unauthorized persons from entering certain campus facilities, according to a student newspaper.

The campus’ Recreation Wellness Center (RWC) is one of the first to install the system, after many complaints of too many unauthorized people being caught trying to sneak into the facility. To register students simply scan their finger over a touch pad that reads their veins.

There has been some student resistance, most complaining that their privacy is being breached and some way keeping their personal information. Others claim the system takes too much time and that the system doesn’t always work.

Campus officials responded by stating no information is actually kept, just a code that comes up on the screen and a green check mark when students check in. Adding further to note the RWC is currently going through a transition with the new system, and longs lines and system errors are expected at first...
(more)

(5 years from now) "Step right up and scan yr palm, people, for some free delicious food, courtesy of the United States Government - otherwise you can starve!"

The Spy Files

2011-12-02T04:42:00.000-08:00

(wikileaks)
When citizens overthrew the dictatorships in Egypt and Libya this year, they uncovered listening rooms where devices from Gamma corporation of the UK, Amesys of France, VASTech of South Africa and ZTE Corp of China monitored their every move online and on the phone.

Surveillance companies like SS8 in the U.S., Hacking Team in Italy and Vupen in France manufacture viruses (Trojans) that hijack individual computers and phones (including iPhones, Blackberries and Androids), take over the device, record its every use, movement, and even the sights and sounds of the room it is in. Other companies like Phoenexia in the Czech Republic collaborate with the military to create speech analysis tools. They identify individuals by gender, age and stress levels and track them based on ‘voiceprints’. Blue Coat in the U.S. and Ipoque in Germany sell tools to governments in countries like China and Iran to prevent dissidents from organizing online.

Trovicor, previously a subsidiary of Nokia Siemens Networks, supplied the Bahraini government with interception technologies that tracked human rights activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar. He was shown details of personal mobile phone conversations from before he was interrogated and beaten in the winter of 2010-2011...
(more)

Is Your Smartphone Spying On You?

2011-12-01T16:45:00.000-08:00

(cbsnews)
Earlier this year, there was a bit furor over the iPhone tracking user locations -- a charge that the Wall Street Journal made when it reported iPhones transmitting what appeared to be positions to Apple (AAPL) but which the company denied. Now Google's (GOOG) Android is in the hot seat over what a third party may be doing.

Android software developer Trevor Eckhart found that Carrier IQ, which bills itself as a provider of "mobile service intelligence solutions to the wireless industry," has software that is secretly installed on millions of Android phones and transmits almost everything users do. Carrier IQ denies the findings and threatened the researcher with legal action. Now Eckhart has posted a video showing findings that paint a damning picture of privacy for many Android phone owners...
(more)

Lieberman To Google: Ban Terrorist Content

2011-11-29T23:27:00.000-08:00

(cbs)
In the wake of news that terror suspect Jose Pimentel was operating a jihadist Blogger site, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is urging Google to implement a system that bans terrorist material.

Last week, Lieberman sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page on behalf of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that called on Google to ramp up its efforts against terrorist material on the Blogger platform.

Pimentel’s “hate-filled writings” and “bomb-making instruction links” were littered throughout www.trueislam1.com, his Google-hosted Blogger site, Lieberman noted. Pimentel has been accused of attempting to plan what’s being described as a “lone wolf” terrorist attack by using pipe bombs.

“As demonstrated by this recent case, Google’s webhosting site, Blogger is being used by violent Islamist extremists to broadcast terrorist content,” he wrote. “Pimentel’s site is just one of the many examples of homegrown terrorists using Google-hosted sites to propagate their violent ideology...”
(more)

Maybe Blogger should ban all subversive content.

Auctioning Off Our Privacy

2011-11-28T04:44:00.000-08:00

(poconorecord)
Better close your blinds. Someone is peering into your home.

Who is this creep intruding on your privacy like that?

Everyone is entitled to privacy in their home — as well as their finances, health and communication. Privacy is protected by the Privacy Act of 1974 plus a slew of U.S. Supreme Court cases and even the Bill of Rights.

That's why people post signs everywhere with the words "Private," "Private Drive" and "Private Property" in big letters. That's why people hang the universal "Privacy, Please" tag outside their hotel rooms to avoid being disturbed by the maid.

So who's violating your privacy?

A recent faculty/industry seminar hosted by the International Radio and Television Society in New York City implicates "social media." The seminar revealed that the average person spends a mind-blowing 11.5 hours per day using media such as cell phones, tablets, laptops, desktops and televisions.

More and more, we're using these devices to connect with other people on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+ and LinkedIn.

What are we doing? We're posting photos and videos; we're mapping where we are; and we're offering thoughts we would normally keep to ourselves...
(more)

Warren: Surveillance City

2011-11-28T04:37:00.000-08:00

(chicagonewscoop)
It’s an intrusive era. Insurers know that those who buy felt pads to place under table legs to avoid scratching floors are obsessives who pay their bills on time; clerks may soon not ask if you’re just browsing since they’ll know your tendency via biometrics; and tracking data can discern your politics and whether you see a psychiatrist or frequent a casino.

“The thought of Richard Nixon having access to the sort of data now available to government should make anyone shudder,” Strahilevitz said.

And data security is only as reliable as the weakest human link in the surveillance chain. Just consider how it is that Pfc. Bradley Manning, a low-level Army intelligence analyst, is accused of transferring those prodigious government files to WikiLeaks...
(chicagonewscoop)

Aadhar Blues

2011-11-28T04:29:00.000-08:00

(outlookindia)
At the centre of the debate is the UIDAI’s process of using multiple registrars and enrolment agencies to collect individual data as well as its system of relying on ‘secondary information’ via existing identification documents. While Nilekani feels this is an effective method, NPR protagonists are pushing for a method of public scrutiny in which individual data is collected directly and put up before the public to weed out any fraud.

This many-layered screening process used in NPR is what, in fact, helped villagers in Gujarat’s border areas expose ‘strangers’ (from Pakistan) on the rolls when the data was put up for public scrutiny. This reinforced the RGI’s belief that the NPR process, despite being long and painstaking, is more foolproof. The one meeting point with Aadhar is the biometrics technology, which NPR has adopted. “We are fully governed by Aadhar standards for biometrics,” says RGI and census commissioner Dr C. Chandramouli. “Our objection is to the data collection by other registrars who have a different orientation from ours. From a security point of view, they are not acceptable...”
(more)

Privacy Concerns Raised Over Mall Technology

2011-11-26T19:48:00.000-08:00

(nbcsandiego)
During this holiday season several events have sparked many to be concerned over their safety while shopping. However, a move by a local mall now has some shoppers worried about their privacy.

The Promenade mall in Temecula has begun using cellphone tracking technology in order to monitor customers in and around the shopping center, according to the North County Times.

The technology is called FootPath, and the mall’s management said Wednesday that it was completely anonymous and those worried about their data being collected should turn off their phones, the NCT reported.

"It's just a ping," Kym Espinosa, marketing director for The Promenade, told the NCT.

The "ping" will reportedly help mall officials track how people move within the space during special events as well as how long shoppers stick around before and after the event...
(more)

Senate to Vote on Bill to Use Military Against Ordinary Americans

2011-11-26T19:37:00.000-08:00

(aclu)
While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself...
(more)

Egypt’s Secret Police Renames Itself “Homeland Security”

2011-11-22T17:32:00.000-08:00

(infowars)
Egypt’s infamous state security apparatus, notorious for spying on political activists and torturing dissidents, has renamed itself “homeland security,” presumably in homage to its American namesake, which has also been used as a tool of political repression.

As part of the re-branding of dictatorship in Egypt, the same security force implicated in the imprisonment and torture of anti-Mubarak activists is busy reorganizing itself while maintaining intimidation and spying campaigns targeted against parliamentary candidates by bugging phone calls and harassing prominent critics of the ruling military regime’s bloody crackdown on protesters.

“After some initial moves to purge the security forces, attempts at systemic reform were halted, say analysts and political observers. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior, the 100,000-strong state security service has been renamed homeland security and personnel moved around,” the Financial Times reports today...
(more)

Computerised Contact Lens Will Keep You Up to Date With News and Texts

2011-11-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

(dailymail)
Imagine catching up with your texts, social networking and perhaps the news without having to log on to a computer or even glance at a smartphone.

Messages and images would simply appear in front of your eyes, generated by a computerised contact lens.

Of course, you may not always want to be bothered by such messages if you are doing anything so quaint as – for instance – reading a book or going out walking and enjoying the scenery.

But until now the concept of info-vision – the ability to stream information across a person’s field of vision – had belonged to the realms of science fiction, featuring in films such as the Terminator series or TV shows such as Torchwood.

However, scientists have developed a prototype lens that could one day provide the wearer with all kinds of hands-free information.

It could also be used to display directions and TV programmes...
(more)

Follow Your Heart

2011-11-19T04:06:00.000-08:00

(wired)
The U.S. military can see you breathing on the other side of that wall. It can even see your heartbeat racing while you crouch behind the door. But if you think running farther away or hiding in a crowd will make you invisible to the Defense Department’s sensors, you might be in for a surprise. The Pentagon’s geeks are looking to tweak their life-form finder so they can spot your tell-tale heart no matter what you do.

Darpa, the Pentagon’s mad-science shop, announced last week that it’s looking to improve on technologies that sniff out biometric signatures like heartbeats from behind walls. Dubbed “Biometrics-at-a-distance,” the program seeks to build sensors that can remotely identify humans from farther away and tell them apart in a crowd.

Seeing or “sensing” human life through walls can be a pretty helpful trick. For troops that have to clear houses in search of terrorists or insurgents, it’s always nice to know what’s on the other side of that door. Picking up “life-form readings” may sound like science fiction straight out of Star Trek, but the Defense Department has been able to do it for years now.

In 2006, Darpa developed Radar Scope,which used radar waves to sense through walls and detect the movements associated with respiration. A year later, the Army invested in LifeReader, a system using Doppler radar to find heartbeats. More recently, the military’s been using devices like the AN/PPS-26 STTW (“Sense Through the Wall“) and TiaLinx’s Eagle scanner, which can sense the presence of humans and animals through walls.

Handy though these gadgets may be, Darpa wants to one-up them with some new and better capabilities...
(more)

Hewlett-Packard Computers Underpin Syria Surveillance Project

2011-11-19T03:54:00.000-08:00

(businessweek)
Hewlett-Packard Co. equipment worth more than $500,000 has been installed in computer rooms in Syria, underpinning a surveillance system being built to monitor e-mails and Internet use, according to documents from the deal and a person familiar with the installation.

The gear made by Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett- Packard would run a Damascus monitoring center for Syrian agents to track citizens' communications, and route data, according to blueprints and the person familiar with the system. The Italian company running the project, Area SpA, bought the equipment through resellers in Italy, according to the documents and the person familiar with the deal.

More than 3,500 people have died in Syria's crackdown on protesters since March. At the same time, technicians from Area were installing and testing the surveillance system, which also includes data-storage equipment from Sunnyvale, California-based NetApp Inc., a Nov. 4 article by Bloomberg News showed...
(more)

America: Home of the Free? Not if You're Muslim

2011-11-19T03:42:00.000-08:00

(voanews)
Hundreds of Muslims staged a rally and public prayers in New York City Friday, to protest alleged ethnic and religious profiling in their community by the city's police department.

Demonstrators gathered in New York’s Foley Square chanting for an end to surveillance. They also held signs condemning the New York City Police Department for allegedly infiltrating mosques, spying on Muslim student groups, cataloguing Middle Eastern restaurants and compiling data on Arab cab drivers. The charges came to light in a recent investigative report by the Associated Press.

In a sermon at the rally during traditional Friday Muslim prayers, Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid said Muslims in the United States are unapologetic about their faith and uncompromisingly American.

“Our American identity is based on ideals, and principals and affirmation of truth. We affirm the American dream,” he said.

One of the signs at the rally said “The police watch us. Who’s watching the police?”
(more)

Nobody's watching the Pigs. That's how they get away with it. The frog in the pot, slowly boiling.

Surveillance: Here's What's In It For You

2011-11-19T03:29:00.000-08:00

(wsj)
Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents, spanning 36 companies, include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people's computers and cellphones, and "massive intercept" gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country. The papers were obtained from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near Washington, D.C., last month.

Intelligence agencies in the U.S. and abroad have long conducted their own surveillance. But in recent years, a retail market for surveillance tools has sprung up from "nearly zero" in 2001 to about $5 billion a year, said Jerry Lucas, president of TeleStrategies Inc., the show's operator.

Critics say the market represents a new sort of arms trade supplying Western governments and repressive nations alike. "The Arab Spring countries all had more sophisticated surveillance capabilities than I would have guessed," said Andrew McLaughlin, who recently left his post as deputy chief technology officer in the White House, referring to the Middle Eastern and African nations racked by violent crackdowns on dissent...
(more)

We're all fucked now. The bastards smell money. Controlling our DNA is their new market.

Facebook is Tracking You

2011-11-16T01:50:00.000-08:00

(usatoday)
Facebook officials are now acknowledging that the social media giant has been able to create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days. Facebook also keeps close track of where millions more non-members of the social network go on the Web, after they visit a Facebook web page for any reason.

To do this, the company relies on tracking cookie technologies similar to the controversial systems used by Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Yahoo and others in the online advertising industry, says Arturo Bejar, Facebook's engineering director...
(more)

Botched Cop Job Lands Gruesome Pics in Wrong Hands

2011-11-16T01:40:00.000-08:00

(vancouversun)
Addams, a 33-year-old graphic artist and Web marketing specialist, found out about the search when he arrived home to find the warrant in his mailbox and some of his painting materials missing. However, he was not aware that the police were continuing to spy on his home until one day when he saw a flash go off as he left his house.

“As I got closer [to where the flash went off] I saw that it was a hunting camera strapped to a tree. So I ripped it down off the tree,” Addams said. “I took a look [on the other side of the driveway] and I found another hunting camera.”

Addams checked the flash drive cards to see what images the cameras contained. One card was clear of any photos except the surveillance, which started on June 14 at 3 a.m., according to the time stamp.

But the other card had two files with a total of 240 pictures, including graphic images taken at crime scenes, involving a variety of police cases. Some of the photos were very disturbing, said Addams.

“If it was my or your loved ones that were on that camera, which it may very well be, it’s not something that you want to have fall into the hands of [members of the public],” Addams said...
(more)

Two Bucs Help Buy Child ID Kits to Aid Law Enforcement

2011-11-15T22:44:00.000-08:00

(tbo)
TAMPA --
Every year, thousands of children go missing. Some run away, others are abducted. A new project to provide law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to help track and identify missing children got a boost today from a couple of Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Running back LeGarrette Blount and offensive tackle James Lee contributed thousands of dollars to the FBI Citizens Academy Alumni Association to buy some 60,000 identification kits.

The kits offer parents a chance to preserve DNA and fingerprints of their children. That can help law enforcement when searching for the missing kids.

Buying the kits is a "dream come true" for Blount.

Lee said parents should make use of the kits. When children go missing "parents can come to the police and say, 'Here's a kit, can you please help my child?' " he said.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Steven Ibison said the kits are a valuable tool for law enforcement.

"A lot of times, when we have a kidnapping, we have nothing," he said. "If a child is young, there is no DNA sample, there is no blood sample, there are no fingerprints. This gives us a jump start."

Authorities know the kits won't stop children from running away or being abducted, but they do provide resources law enforcement agencies need to track them down as quickly as they can...
(more)

% of kids who get kidnapped vs % of kids who go on to commit crimes? Thanks mom. Had this perfect heist planned and executed perfectly but I left behind a single hair!

DOJ: Lying on Match.com Needs to be a Crime

2011-11-15T22:34:00.000-08:00

(cnet)
The U.S. Department of Justice is defending computer hacking laws that make it a crime to use a fake name on Facebook or lie about your weight in an online dating profile at a site like Match.com.

In a statement obtained by CNET that's scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, the Justice Department argues that it must be able to prosecute violations of Web sites' often-ignored, always-unintelligible "terms of service" policies.

The law must allow "prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider," Richard Downing, the Justice Department's deputy computer crime chief, will tell the U.S. Congress tomorrow.

Scaling back that law "would make it difficult or impossible to deter and address serious insider threats through prosecution," and jeopardize prosecutions involving identity theft, misuse of government databases, and privacy invasions, according to Downing...
(more)

WTF??? How low can They go?

Facebook Hacked: Violent Porn Displayed

2011-11-15T22:24:00.000-08:00

(washingtonpost)
widespread spam attack on Facebook has caused violent and pornographic images to be posted on some users’ profile pages, representing one of the worst security breaches in the young Web site’s history and raising concerns about its vulnerability to hackers.

The company, which acknowledged the problem Monday, said it was working to shut down the accounts responsible for the attack.

The disturbing pictures surfaced as the company tries to quell concerns about user safety and privacy. Facebook is reportedly near a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over complaints about the way it stores and shares user data. Experts said that while this latest attack didn’t appear to compromise users’ data, it was a serious security breach.

“Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us, and we are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a statement. “Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible...”
(more)

Trinidad's DNA Database

2011-11-12T05:13:00.000-08:00

(guardian)
Volney said the categories from whom non-intimate samples could be taken have expanded. He said it now included members of the protective services; holders of firearm licences; deported citizens and people from who samples were required in the interest of national security. He said DNA-testing facilities would be set up at all police stations. He said if citizens had “nothing to hide, they should have nothing to fear. Volney said the Government was committed to ensure that justice was served to the victim and the offender...
(more)

First They Came for the Tweets...

2011-11-11T06:05:00.000-08:00

(nytimes)
A federal judge on Thursday ruled that Twitter, the popular microblogging platform, must reveal information about three of its account holders who are under investigation for their possible links to the WikiLeaks whistle-blower site.

The case has become a flash point for online privacy and speech, in part because the Justice Department sought the information without a search warrant last year. Instead, on the basis of a 1994 law called the Stored Communications Act, the government demanded that Twitter provide the Internet protocol addresses of three of its users, among other things. An Internet protocol address identifies and gives the location of a computer used to log onto the Internet.

The three people came to the Justice Department’s attention because it believed they were associated with WikiLeaks.

Twitter informed the three people — Jacob Appelbaum, an American computer security expert, along with Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch citizen, and Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s Parliament — of the government’s demand for information earlier this year.

The petitioners argued in federal court that their Internet protocol addresses should be considered private information and that the demand for information was too broad and unrelated to WikiLeaks. They also argued that the order suppressed their right to free speech.

The court disagreed...
(more)

Houston Hires BRS Labs For Citywide Surveillance

2011-11-09T21:56:00.000-08:00

(marketwatch)
"BRS Labs' software has been selected by the City of Houston's video surveillance program and is being deployed in an effort to proactively identify unusual behavioral activities and notify security and law enforcement staff of the potential threats detected", according to Maurice Singleton, subject matter expert and security technology advisor for the City of Houston. Singleton further added that, "the ability to collect advanced video surveillance intelligence reflects the city's commitment to proactively identify potential threats throughout city operations."

Specifically designed to autonomously serve as the eyes and brain for large scale critical security environments, BRS Labs' software, AISight(TM), is able to attach to existing video surveillance infrastructure and watch, learn, and identify unusual behavioral patterns in real time. This advanced video surveillance technology will be incorporated into the City of Houston's critical infrastructure protection program thereby increasing the city's level of situational awareness and providing the ability to proactively identify security violations, potential criminal activity and more serious threats...
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Are we stupid? They are counting on us not to notice this shit. Facial recognition + behavioral analytics = no privacy.

Pigs on a Plane

2011-11-09T21:37:00.000-08:00

(latimes)
Lancaster city officials have unanimously approved a measure that would allow police to use a plane affixed with high-tech optical equipment to record the movements of people on the ground.

The aerial surveillance program, slated to begin by next May, will involve a piloted Cessna 172 fixed-wing aircraft that would circle the Antelope Valley city at altitudes of 1,000 to 3,000 feet some 10 hours a day.

The technology affixed to the plane and developed by Lancaster-based Spiral Technology Inc. will record video footage that will be transmitted to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department...
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High-Tech Fingerprint Scanner Replaces Keys for Automobiles

2011-11-07T20:09:00.000-08:00

(foxnews)
Tired of losing the keys to your bike? Well, now you can lose them altogether.

FIST Enterprises of Boca Raton, Florida, has developed a biometric security system that can be installed on a motorcycle, car or any vehicle, letting you start it up with the swipe of a finger.

BioSmartStart uses a small scanner that replaces the ignition key slot and can authorize up to 100 different fingerprints, which makes it suitable for commercial applications, such as use on construction equipment, and for vehicle owners with very large families. As of now, the system is only designed to work on the ignition, so you’ll still need a door key if you want to use it with a car, but a version that can also control vehicle access is in the works...
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Fun until they cut off yr finger so they can steal yr car!

Supreme Court to Hear GPS Surveillance Case

2011-11-07T20:03:00.000-08:00

(nationaljournal)
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in the case of a Washington nightclub owner convicted of dealing cocaine in part based on evidence from a GPS device attached to his SUV without a warrant.

Both sides see high stakes in United States v. Antoine Jones, a case examining the line between security and privacy, which is increasingly obscured by new technologies. Depending on which side is arguing, the case could seriously hamper investigations of criminals and terrorists alike, or it could lead to police using your own cell phone to track your every move.

Seven years ago, nightclub owner Antoine Jones came under police and FBI suspicion of drug dealing.

Investigators attached a GPS device to his Jeep Grand Cherokee and collected data about where he drove for four weeks, according to court filings. But they didn’t comply with the terms of their warrant, allowing it to lapse and violating geographical restrictions.

Nonetheless, prosecutors used GPS data—which showed Jones visiting a stash house—to prove their case, along with other evidence. Jones was sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to distribute nearly 100 kilograms—200 pounds—of cocaine...
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Wristband to Enable Phone to Track Your Activity and Sleep

2011-11-06T23:26:00.000-08:00

(america20xy)
“Bluetooth headset maker Jawbone will soon release its new Up life monitoring wristband that’s designed to help you live a more healthy life by tracking every move you make, what you’re eating, how long you’re sleeping and how many calories you burn.”

The wristbands attach to mobile phones. Apparently the user is expected to wear the wristbands 24 hours a day. The company has made it easy for them to do so by making the bands out of medical-grade, hypo-allergenic rubber, which makes the bracelets sweat-proof and water resistant.

This is yet another example of police state indoctrination-though-gadget. Such toys serve to warm the public over to an inevitable reality in which the monitoring of every aspect of one’s life by machines– which will report the information back to centralized government/corporate centers– is no longer a voluntary novelty, but a shackle nobody can get away from...
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The Unintended Consequences of Well-Intentioned Privacy Regulation

2011-11-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

(forbes)
No matter how well-intentioned, regulation often has unintended consequences. A case in point is the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), a law that mandates certain online privacy protections for children under the age of 13. A new study documents how the law has encouraged many kids—often with the help of their parents—to lie about their ages online and evade age-based restrictions. The authors also conclude that COPPA “inadvertently undermines parents’ ability to make choices and protect their children’s data.”

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. The goal of COPPA was to enhance parents’ involvement in their children’s online activities and better safeguard kids’ personal information online. COPPA is a complicated law, however, and its “parental consent” provisions have proven difficult to enforce...
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CIA Tracks Revolt by Tweet, Facebook

2011-11-06T03:45:00.000-08:00

(abcnews)
In an anonymous industrial park, CIA analysts who jokingly call themselves the "ninja librarians" are mining the mass of information people publish about themselves overseas, tracking everything from common public opinion to revolutions.

The group's effort gives the White House a daily snapshot of the world built from tweets, newspaper articles and Facebook updates.

The agency's Open Source Center sometimes looks at 5 million tweets a day. The analysts are also checking out TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that people can access and contribute to openly...
(abcnews)

Google To Index Facebook Comments As Search Results

2011-11-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

(cbsla)
If you’re finding it tough to stay off of Facebook, you may soon find it even harder to keep your words off of Google.

The Internet’s most popular — and powerful — search engine will soon expand its search index to include user comments on Facebook as part of Google’s traditional search results.

While private users will still be protected, any comments made on Facebook forms on other websites or public pages within the social networking site will be indexed and open for all the world to see.

The controversial change comes as Google looks to expand its reach to any user content currently hiding from its all-seeing search robots — usually in comment systems like the one used on Facebook and other popular sites...
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No comment.

UK Cops Using Fake Mobile Phone Tower

2011-11-03T19:16:00.000-07:00

(wired)
Britain’s largest police force has been using covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network to intercept communications and unique IDs from phones or even transmit a signal to shut off phones remotely, according to the Guardian.

The system, made by Datong in the United Kingdom, was purchased by the London Metropolitan police, which paid $230,000 to Datong for “ICT hardware” in 2008 and 2009.

The portable device, which is the size of a suitcase, pretends to be a legitimate cell phone tower that emits a signal to dupe thousands of mobile phones in a targeted area. Authorities can then intercept SMS messages, phone calls and phone data, such as unique IMSI and IMEI identity codes that allow authorities to track phone users’ movements in real-time, without having to request location data from a mobile phone carrier.

In the case of intercepted communications, it is not clear whether the network works as a blackhole where intercepted messages go to die, or whether it works as a proper man-in-the-middle attack, by which the fake tower forwards the data to a real tower to provide uninterrupted service for the user.

In addition to intercepting calls and messages, the system can be used to effectively cut off phone communication, such as in a war zone where phones might be used as a trigger for an explosive device, or for crowd control during demonstrations and riots where participants use phones to organize...
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