Bill Aimed At Shutting Off NSA's Water Starts Moving Forward AgainThe attempt to nerf the NSA's new data center in Utah continues. As we covered here at the beginning of this year, legislators and activists began pushing a bill that would cut off the NSA's water supply if it continued to gather data on American citizens. It's an interesting move, one that leverages the states' abilities to combat o... (more)
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Baltimore Prosecutors Withdraw Evidence Rather Than Talk About Police Department's Stingray UsageThey justify the use of Stingray devices (IMSI catchers/cell tower spoofers) by pointing out how great they are at catching criminals. They justify the secrecy surrounding them by claiming the release of any details will compromise investigations. And then they pull something like this. ... (more)
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Detekt: A New Malware Detection Tool That Can Expose Illegitimate State SurveillanceRecent years have seen a boom in the adoption of surveillance technology by governments around the world, including spyware that provides its purchasers the unchecked ability to target remote Internet users' computers, to read their personal emails, listen in on private audio calls, record keystrokes and passwords, and remotely activate their computer's camera or microphone. EFF, together with Amnesty International, Digitale Gesellschaft, and Privacy International have all had experience assisti... (more)
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2nd Grader's Homework Teaches 'The Government GIVES Us Our Rights'Apparently this homework sheet given out to 2nd graders about “Being a Good Citizen” is teaching them that the government GIVES us our rights.
And the government doesn’t just give us our rights, but the government specifically gives us “special privileges called rights.”
2. When you are a citizen you have rights. Rights are special privileges the government gives you. In our country, you have free speech. You are also given the righ ... (more)
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Feds Put Fake Cell Towers On Planes, Spied On Tons Of Innocent AmericansThe Wall Street Journal broke the news that the DOJ has been spying on tons of innocent Americans by putting fake mobile phone towers on airplanes and scooping up all sorts of data from people who thought they were connecting to regular mobile phone towers. The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional arou ... (more)
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Court Says By Agreeing To AOL's Terms Of Service, You've 'Consented' To Search By Law EnforcementThe ACLU's Jameel Jaffer alerts us to a district court ruling in NY that effectively says that by merely agreeing to AOL's terms of service, you've waived your 4th Amendment rights. The case is the United States v. Frank DiTomasso, where DiTomasso is accused of producing child porn -- with most of the evidence used against him coming from AOL.... (more)
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To Nobody's Surprise, Australian "Terrorism" Law May Be Used for Copyright EnforcementAs we foreshadowed, a new law requiring mandatory data retention by ISPs was introduced into the Australian federal parliament last week. In the few days since then, there have been claims and counter-claims about whether data obtai... (more)
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Wisconsin Town Sends In The BearCat Tank To Collect Civil Fine From Seventy-Year-OldSo, hey, let's say you're an old guy in a tiny town in central Wisconsin. Old, like, seventy-five, let's say, and the tiny town is farm country where you have a twenty-acre plot of good old American heartland. Now, let's say that the municipality hasn't appreciated the fact that you've kept your tractors out on the land you own and even went so far as to get a judge to level thousands of dollars of fines on you for not putting your toys away, because that's apparently a thing that can happen. No... (more)
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FBI Holds Secret Meeting To Scare Congress Into Backdooring Phone EncryptionIn September, both Apple and Google announced plans to encrypt information on iOS and Android devices by default. Almost immediately, there was a collective freakout by law enforcement types. But, try as they might, these law enforcement folks couldn't paint any realistic scenario of where this would be a serious problem. Sure, th... (more)
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Vermont's Automatic License Plate Readers: 7.9 Million Plates Captured, Five Crimes SolvedThe sales pitch for automatic license plate readers is how great they are at helping cops solve crimes. From hunting down stolen cars to tracking pedophiles across jurisdictions, ALPRs supposedly make policing a breeze by gathering millions of time/date/location records every single day and making it all available to any law enforceme... (more)
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White House Aims to Replace Website Passwords With Federal Authentication SchemeThe White House has announced today that a long-standing plan to roll out a federal “Internet ID” authentication scheme that would be used to log in to all websites across the Internet will move forward, and the service will launch in six to twelve months.
“We simply have to kill off the password,” insisted White House Cybersecurity Coo... (more)
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Odds Are, You Are SuspiciousWhen you get off a train, do you get off ahead of passengers? Or do you get off behind passengers? When you're going on a trip, do you come off as nervous? Or are you an unusually calm traveler? How about if you make a phone call at a station, do you look around? Or do you stare straight ahead?
If you don't know the answers to these questions, you'd better figure them out now. Because unless you get off in stride with other train passengers, live at the elusive intersection betwee... (more) Here's some things that are not suspicious:
Arming actual terrorists, as the US has done repeatedly historically including now with ISIS.
Carrying out actual terrorist attacks, as the US does in the countries it invades every year, for example the US's terrorism campaign in Europe under Operation Gladio.
I could go on endlessly, the point is actual terrorism committed by the government is not terrorism, yet every action taken by the servile population is suspect. - Chris, InfoLib |
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Connecticut's Homeschooling CrackdownNever to let a good crisis go to waste, the state is using this as a chance to crack down on a practice it has long disapproved of: homeschooling.
Reportedly as a response to the high profile shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a commission of experts (one of the most terrifying phrases in the English language) under the supervision of the governor is recommending greater government oversig... (more)
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Mission Creeps: Homeland Security Agents Confiscate Women's Panties For 'Copyright Infringement'Homeland security's mission has transformed from fighting terrorists to stealing women's underwear for supposed intellectual property violations.
From the Kansas City Star:
Peregrine Honig says she just wanted to help celebrate the hometown team when she designed Lucky Royals boyshorts.
The panties, with “Take the Crown” and &ldqu ... (more)
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NY Police Commissioner Bill Bratton Latest To Complain About Phone EncryptionThe latest law enforcement official to enter into the "debate" over phone encryption is none other than NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, most famous around Techdirt for being "not Ray Kelly." Bratton sees eye-to-eye with pretty much every other critic of Google's and Apple's move to provide encryption by default: this is bad for us (meaning "law enforcement"), therefore new laws. Police Comm ... (more)
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British Spy Chief Calls For Crackdown On Internet FreedomThe outgoing head of the GCHQ, the NSA’s UK equivalent, has slammed proponents of a free internet as ‘dreamers’, and defended those who spy on the communications of everyday people, saying they do “an extraordinary job.”
In a farewell speech at the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall, Sir Iain Lobban dem... (more)
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Apple May Want To Protect Your Phone Data From Snooping, But It's Snarfing Up Your Local Desktop SearchesSo, Apple got plenty of kudos from security and privacy folks in deciding to encrypt mobile phone data, but over on the desktop side, apparently the message hasn't quite gotten through. Instead, it appears that the latest Mac operation system has the company automatically sending all of your desktop searches back to Apple. These aren't i... (more)
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