GOP ready to step up spying case
4.28.19 "Any improper FBI surveillance activities that were conducted before or after the 2016 election must be brought to light and properly addressed," wrote Grassley and Johnson, who chair the Senate Finance and Homeland Security committees, respectively. They also raised concerns about potentially unauthorized Justice Department leaks to the press about the Russia investigation.
The Obama FBI was weaponized for political purposes
4.27.19 The Obama administration's FBI and Justice Department used unverified opposition research obtained outside of our country as ammunition to get a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to President Trump during the 2016 election. That is a fact. And they never told the FISA court judge that they were relying on opposition research. That, too, is a fact.
Young Leaders Fight Back Against Criminalization and Surveillance
4.26.19 Today, many tech-savvy youth are at least somewhat aware of the limits of their privacy online. Memes about FBI agents watching us through our cell phone cameras have been popular recently. However, this isn’t anything new. This has been a part of a long history of youth criminalization and surveillance. Most young people are unaware of the extent that we are under surveillance, and the racial and socioeconomic factors that influence who is disproportionately spied on.
Another Florida police agency wants to use real-time facial recognition surveillance
4.26.19 Real-time facial recognition, which can be used with live video feeds to automatically spot and identify anyone walking in the view of public surveillance cameras, was one of over a dozen requirements listed in the request seeking information to build a "Facial Recognition System."
Orlando Weekly reached out to PCSO, but no one was available for comment throughout this week.
Despite announcement, NSA domestic spying continues
4.26.19 ”It’s nice that they're recommending getting rid of an unconstitutional program that's in violation of their oath of office — all of them," Binney told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear on Friday.
Senators ask AG for briefing on Obama administration spying
4.26.19 Attorney General William Barr recently stunned senators in a hearing by declaring he believes the Obama administration spied on the 2016 Trump campaign and is investigating the matter.
China able to grab ‘entire digital identity’ of Western citizens, State Department says
4.26.19 “China has pioneered a societal approach to stealing innovation any way it can, from a wide array of businesses, universities, and organizations,” Wray said. “They’re doing this through Chinese intelligence services, through state-owned enterprises, through ostensibly private companies, through graduate students and researchers, and through a variety of actors working on behalf of China.”
Editorial: Don’t reauthorize mass surveillance
4.26.19 If there has been any real value in the sweeping up of everyone’s communications, it seems likely we would be hearing a different story from security officials. The nation deserves a full accounting of this disturbing episode in Orwellian surveillance overreach.
Judge Dodges Legality of NSA Mass Spying, Citing Secrecy Claims
4.26.19 EFF's case challenging NSA spying, Jewel v. NSA, has come further than any case trying to end the government's mass surveillance programs. Our clients have survived multiple efforts by the government to end the case, and they continue to push for their day in court.
BART board approves automated license plate surveillance in parking lots
4.25.19 The surveillance technology automatically converts photographs of license plates into text readable by machines, which then link to known crime databases like Be On The Look Out Alerts, AMBER and SILVER alerts to match the license plate with vehicles of interest to law enforcement agencies.
Alvaro Bedoya Highlights the Critical Connection between Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
4.25.19 [W]hen we talk about privacy only as a civil liberty, we also ignore the benefits of privacy: Surveillance threatens vulnerable people fighting for equality. Privacy is what protects them and makes it possible.
Judge Cites National Security in Ending Long-Running Lawsuit Claiming Mass Internet Surveillance
4.25.19 U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White wrote that he accepted the government's position that there was no way for the case to go forward "without grave risk to the national security.”
NSA recommends ending mass phone data collection program: report
4.24.19 The National Security Agency is recommending that the White House officially end the agency's mass collection of U.S. phone data, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Sources told the Journal that the NSA has concluded that the program, which gathered metadata on domestic text messages and phone calls, is too burdensome to maintain.
The Feds Are Dropping Child Porn Cases Instead of Revealing Info on Their Surveillance Systems
4.24.19 An array of cases suggest serious problems with the tech tools used by federal authorities. But the private entities who developed these tools won't submit them for independent inspection or hand over hardly any information about how they work, their error rates, or other critical information. As a result, potentially innocent people are being smeared as pedophiles and prosecuted as child porn collectors, while potentially guilty people are going free so these companies can protect "trade secrets."
Academics Hide Humans From Surveillance Cameras With 2D Prints
4.23.19 The 2D image (called a "patch" in the research paper) must be placed around the middle of a person's "detection box" and must face the surveillance camera at all times.
Dundee council cautioned for ‘spying’ on locals suspected of wrongdoing
4.19.19 “Of particular importance is the decision by authorising officers on the fundamental questions of necessity and proportionality and their written record of how they approached these issues. Weaknesses in this context undermine the integrity of the entire authorisation process.”
Inspectors allege officers were failing to properly describe “why (surveillance) is both necessary and proportionate”.
The IPCO also found councillors were not being given a summary of its use of RIPSA powers at the recommended rate of once a year
Trump slams 'dirty cops' at FBI over Steele dossier
4.17.19 “Wow! FBI made 11 payments to Fake Dossier’s discredited author, Trump hater Christopher Steele. @OANN @JudicialWatch The Witch Hunt has been a total fraud on your President and the American people! It was brought to you by Dirty Cops, Crooked Hillary and the DNC.”
Salesforce acquires MapAnything for its location-based intelligence products
4.17.19 MapAnything’s Salesforce, ServiceNow, and ServiceMax components allow sales managers to see customers and leads on a map-centric user interface and to sync in-the-field activities with a Foursquare-like check-in and check-out system. Fleet management companies, meanwhile, can use it to visualize vehicles’ geographic whereabouts and trigger work orders when drivers leave a defined geographical area.
Sweden’s new signals intelligence ship HSwMS Artemis launched in Poland
4.17.19 Polish shipbuilder Nauta Shiprepair Yard has launched the hull of the Swedish Navy’s new signals intelligence (SIGINT) ship.
IHA grants police access to over 400 surveillance cameras across Indianapolis
4.16.19 The Indianapolis Housing Agency is giving metro police access to its entire network of surveillance cameras across the city before the start of summer.
Serbia and Uruguay deploy Chinese biometric and surveillance technology amid growing controversy
4.16.19 “We asked about the cameras by filing FOI requests to the Ministry of Interior, and their answer was that the procurement of cameras is confidential. We asked if a data-protection impact assessment was carried out, which is an obligation under the new Serbian Law on Personal Data Protection, and the Ministry replied that the law was not being applied yet,” SHARE Policy Researcher Bojan Perkov told ZDNet. “The official responses we received from the ministry were practically the opposite of what the highest-ranking officials said in the media.”
Former top CIA official warns that U.S. intel faces "moment of reckoning" after 2016 failure
4.16.19 The U.S. intelligence community's failure to grasp the magnitude of the social media influence campaign Russia waged ahead of the 2016 presidential election may be one harbinger of a larger and more complex set of challenges its agencies will face, according to a new essay co-authored by former CIA deputy director Michael Morell.
With co-author Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Morell argues that rapid technological developments have already begun to change the rules -- if not the nature -- of collection, analysis, privacy and surveillance.
"That breakdown [in 2016] should serve as a wake-up call," Morell, who is also a CBS News senior national security contributor, writes with Zegart in an essay published Tuesday in Foreign Affairs. "The trends it reflects warrant a wholesale reimagining of how the intelligence community operates."
Singapore Police Deploy Drone-Equipped Surveillance Vehicles
4.16.19 These vehicles, called the Sky Aerial Response Command (Sky ARC), will each carry up to three drones and will also be used in cases such as tracking suspects across a large area- a forest for example. The drones are equipped with thermal imaging and can detect human presence. The drones are also capable of flying up to an altitude of a few hundred metres and will feed information and transmit images back to an integrated command and control system the SPF added further.
FBI Is Barring Chinese Academics From Entering US Because Of Spying Concerns
4.15.19 At least 30 professors from China who focus their work on social sciences and experts on government policy have had their U.S. visas reviewed or canceled in the past year. The FBI reportedly believes that China is using visiting academics to spy on U.S. citizens.
4.16.19 SenseTime, China’s surveillance giant, has offered up a fig leaf. The company says it has exited a police technology venture in Xinjiang, a western region where government efforts to crush Muslim extremism have put over a million Uighurs in re-education camps. The deal may ease some PR risk before a mooted offshore flotation, but the $6 billion startup still sells facial recognition software to security forces.
Mark Meadows: Likely We'll See Criminal Referrals From DOJ Inspector General On 2016 Surveillance Abuse
4.14.19 "So what we would find is people within the Department of Justice, primarily the FBI, would actually give information to the media, then those reports would actually come out and they would say ‘wow, we have these reports now,’ and then they would take the actual reports and use those as the probable cause to do a further investigation," Meadows said.
NUPL asks SC to stop police from surveillance, threatening its members
4.15.19 THE NATIONAL Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to issue a temporary protection order to stop state agents from conducting surveillance and allegedly threatening its members.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley calls for special counsel
4.15.19 “What we are learning is, there was misbehavior, misconduct, potentially, by the sort of political officials at the FBI, maybe the Department of Justice," Sen. Hawley said, "That there was potential spying by officials, American officials, on the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. This is just unprecedented. We need to get to the bottom of this.”
Mueller may be done, but Barr is just getting started
4.15.19 Barr has assembled a team to study the "spying" that he says took place. Specifically, he will determine whether the spying was "adequately predicated." This means asking who initiated the spying, how it was approved and what was done with the information that it produced. By answering those questions, Barr will uncover whether anyone in Hillary Clinton's campaign, along with anyone in the Obama administration sympathetic to the Clinton campaign, played a role in the spying. In purely political terms, this means that whatever conclusions are reached won't be easily disregarded by partisan Democrats as talking points advanced by conspiratorial Trumpkins. They will be the factual findings of an attorney general whose only mission is to go where the evidence leads him.
Cops Are Trying to Stop San Francisco From Banning Face Recognition Surveillance
4.15.19 The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is reportedly rushing to install face recognition technology at airports across the U.S., where the surveillance tech is used at toll booths, sporting events, and even Taylor Swift concerts. In China, the government is using the technology to track Muslim minorities. Police around that country are using facial recognition to track targets and make thousands of arrests.
Sudan’s military council names new intelligence and security chief
4.14.19 Sudan’s transitional military council has appointed Lieutenant General Abu Bakr Mustafa as the country’s new National Intelligence and Security Service chief, the council’s spokesperson said during a press conference on Sunday.
Jerry Nadler attacks Attorney General Barr over use of word ‘spying'
4.14.19 House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the notion that the U.S. government spied on President Trump’s campaign is “complete and total nonsense.”
Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police
4.13.19 The warrants, which draw on an enormous Google database employees call Sensorvault, turn the business of tracking cellphone users’ locations into a digital dragnet for law enforcement. In an era of ubiquitous data gathering by tech companies, it is just the latest example of how personal information — where you go, who your friends are, what you read, eat and watch, and when you do it — is being used for purposes many people never expected. As privacy concerns have mounted among consumers, policymakers and regulators, tech companies have come under intensifying scrutiny over their data collection practices.
FBI Man's Testimony Points to Wrongdoing Well Beyond Spying
4.12.19 From the end of 2015 to the end of 2018, Bill Priestap was assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, which meant he oversaw the FBI’s global counterintelligence efforts. In that role, he managed both of the bureau’s most politically sensitive investigations: the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information and the probe into whether Donald Trump or his campaign conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election. His testimony provides rare insight into the attitudes and thoughts of officials who launched the Russia probe and the probe of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose final report is expected to be released very soon.
How does it feel to be watched at work all the time?
4.12.19 His company gathers "data exhaust" left by employees' email and instant messaging apps, and uses name badges equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices and microphones.
These can check how much time you spend talking, your volume and tone of voice, even if you dominate conversations. While this may sound intrusive - not to say creepy - proponents argue that it can also protect employees against bullying and sexual harassment.
Humanyze calls these badges "Fitbit for your career".
On CNN, Clapper Does a 180 About FBI Spying on Trump Campaign
4.12.19 CLAPPER: Well, spying has…a term I have never liked. I never liked that term being applied to me, even though I spent 50 years in the, in the intelligence business. It, it has a bad connotation. It’s a pejorative term. It smacks of illegality, a lack of oversight, all those kind of things.
Detroit To Become America’s Second Chinese-Style Surveillance City
3.26.19 What started out as a ‘voluntary’ police-cam share program in Saginaw, Michigan has morphed into a massive 1000 surveillance camera network which includes 500 businesses in Detroit.
Detroit’s Project Green Light, spies on people in real-time at gas stations, retail stores and public housing.
4.3.19 A 2012 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court motion contained a little-noticed provision expanding the FBI’s ability to share information with foreign officials, which could have laid the groundwork for abuses against U.S. citizens, Rep. Louie Gohmert said.
Passive Radar
In a passive radar system, there is no dedicated transmitter. Instead, the receiver uses third-party transmitters in the environment, and measures the time difference of arrival between the signal arriving directly from the transmitter and the signal arriving via reflection from the object.
AI Researchers Ask Amazon to Stop Selling Face Recognition to Law Enforcement
4.3.19 Those who signed the letter include prominent voices in AI and ethics as well as Yoshua Bengio, a computer scientist who recently received the $1 million Turing Award with two colleagues for his role in developing the deep-learning technology that underpins modern AI—which is crucial to face recognition. Bengio has recently emerged as a key voice on the risks of AI.
Michael Cohen investigation involved secretive "Triggerfish" tracking device
3.19.19 Triggerfish devices — often referred to as Stingrays — mimic cell phone towers, allowing them to pinpoint a phone's location, sometimes even before it makes a call or text.
Spycops – the ‘big brother’ state in Scotland
3.18.19 Exposing the extent of undercover policing in Scotland, ‘Andrea’ renews the call for a public inquiry
Saudi App That Lets Men Track Women Cleared For Sale by Google
3.4.19 Google said it had reviewed the app — called Absher — and concluded that it did not violate any agreements, and could therefore remain on its Google Play store.
Project Raven: Using US Spies and Spying Tactics, UAE Snooped on Entire World
1.30.19 security forces had sought surveillance against two other Americans, and questioned her bosses on the find — their response was a rebuke, on the basis she wasn't meant to be able to process such information. Days later, she came upon three more American names on the hidden targeting queue — all journalists.
When Stroud kept raising questions, she was put on leave, her phones and passport confiscated.
Hackers Watched, Taunted Family Through Home Security Cameras: 'We Were Really Vulnerable’
1.24.19 A family in Auburn, Wash., felt like they were living in a real-life horror movie after realizing hackers had been watching them through their Nest home security cameras.
Police Pre-Crime ‘Minority Report’ Systems Announced
1.18.19 Couchman said: “Even more sinister is the creeping reliance on data-driven surveillance and algorithms the police use to make decisions about us – leading to conclusions which may be inaccurate or biased.”
They Spy with Their Little Eye
1.18.19 Firstly: where is the data that is being collected by these spies really going? Secondly: who is directing New Zealand’s human intelligence assets and apparatus in foreign intelligence operations? And thirdly: what is the impact for Kiwis who unwittingly cross paths with our spy agencies in a country where the legal definition of ‘threat to national security’ has been removed?
U.S. proposes to allow drone operation at night, over people
1.14.19 In 2017, President Donald Trump launched a program to expand testing of drones in what the White House said would “open the skies for delivery of life-saving medicines and commercial packages (and) inspections of critical infrastructure.”
12.27.2018 49:44 Gangstalking and tactics used by the surveillance teams against targeted individuals. 24/7 surveillance and illegal practices coordinated by the sheriffs department.
PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies.
Huawei Gear Pulled From $3 Billion U.K. Police Phone Network
12.23.2018 Huawei has come under fire from governments globally over fears its equipment could enable Chinese spying.
Facebook Allowed Some Tech Companies To Read And Delete Users’ Private Messages: NYT
12.19.2018 Since 2010, the tech giant has reportedly granted over 150 companies deeper access to users’ personal data than it has admitted.
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Surveillance Targeting Has Permitted Clear-Cut TORTURE
11.6.2018 When did it become okay to test out a whole bunch of nasty, invasive, amoral, unethical, barbaric Brain Assaultive Technology on people–calling it Surveillance, calling it Monitoring, calling it Prevention of whatever latest flavor of “Threat” or “Terrorism” the Covert Ops agencies are concocting as Cover for their evil technology-creation–which no scientist with even one ethical bone in their bodies would permit the creation of?