Government Employees Suddenly Worried About Surveillance As New Plans To Stop The Next Snowden Strip All PrivacyThe Associated Press has a story about how the US intelligence community is ramping up efforts to stop the next Ed Snowden by basically monitoring nearly everything that government employees and contractors with security clearance do: Stung by internal security lapses, U.S. intelligence officials plan to use a sweeping electronic system to continually monitor workers with secret c ... (more)
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Legislators Rush To Patch Hole In 'Secret Photography' Law; 'Succeed' In Making It Make It Much, Much WorseThe law is an ass. This has been true since well before Charles Dickens cranked out Oliver Twist in order to fulfill his four-book contract with Penguin Classics. We also hear quite frequently how the law's ass-ish gears (sorry, some metaphors are going be forcibly combined here) grind slowly, eventually birthing justice itself or, far more frequently, suffering a miscarriage.
Sometimes, however... (more)
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CBS Journalist Resigns After Being Pressured Over 'Anti-Obama' ReportingCBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson resigned today after facing pressure over reports she filed that were deemed to be overly critical of President Obama, but don’t expect the mainstream media to create a circus around Attkisson’s resignation like they did that of RT host Liz Wahl.
“Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsized influence by the network’s corporate p... (more)
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You Know Who Else Collected Metadata? The Stasi
The East German secret police, known as the Stasi, were an infamously intrusive secret police force. They amassed dossiers on about one quarter of the population of the country during the Communist regime.
But their spycraft — while incredibly invasive — was also technologically primitive by today's standards. While researching my book Dragnet Nation, I obt... (more)
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Commercial Drones Declared Legal; Release The TacocoptersAlmost exactly two years ago, we wrote about the tacocopter, a sort of proof of concept idea for using drones to deliver products to people's homes. Yes, Amazon got some attention last year for claiming to be working on something similar, but the Tacocopter (and Lobstercopter on the east coast) idea was the first I'd heard of anyone seriously thinking ab... (more)
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US Schools Go Full-Bore Soviet"¨"Give me the children until they are seven, and anyone may have them afterwards." – attrib. St. Francis Xavier.
Obama is cementing his redefinition of America by federalizing the minds of its future: children. The federal Common Core program seeks to “align” the curriculum and standards of public school systems that have been under state jurisdiction. The program is said to be voluntary but then, so are taxes.
The incentives to adopt Common C... (more)
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Police Dept. Covers Up Its NSA-Style, Warrantless Cell Phone TrackingFlorida police used a cell phone tracking device at least 200 times without a warrant because they conspired with the device manufacturer to keep its use a secret, according to the ACLU.
Through a recent motion for public access, the ACLU determined that at least one Florida police department never told judges about its use of the cell phone tracking d... (more)
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Michigan Township To Put Cameras 'In Every Neighborhood'Officials in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan are working with police to put surveillance cameras in every single neighborhood.
After placing multiple cameras throughout the city’s West Willow neighborhood several years ago, township officials claim the program’s vast success, which is reportedly centered around one single case, warrants an expansive rollout to every last neighborhood.
When attempting to find public support for the program, WDIV used quick e... (more)
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Yes, There Are Paid Government Trolls On Social Media, Blogs, Forums And WebsitesDo you want solid proof that paid government shills are targeting websites, blogs, forums and social media accounts? For years, many have suspected that government trolls have been systematically causing havoc all over the Internet, but proving it has been difficult. But now thanks to documents leaked by Edward Snowden and revealed by Glenn Greenwald, we finally have hard evidence that western governments have been doing this. As you will see below, a UK intelligence outfit kno... (more)
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Chicago PD Believes It Can See The Future, Starts Warning Citizens About Crimes They Might CommitWe've talked a lot over the years about the attempts to get out "ahead of crime" by using computer programs and algorithms to try and predict who might commit a crime. Predictive computing can then either target specific areas or specific people that might be in need of some extra law enforcement attention. Ex... (more)
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Zero Tolerance Nets Two 11-Year Old Boys Juvenile Criminal Charges For Bringing A Toy Gun To SchoolZero tolerance weapons policies at schools continue to be ridiculous. Between Pop Tarts bitten into gun-like shapes and drawings of guns being treated as severely as the real thing, schools enforcing these policies (f... (more)
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Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With That Location Data
Law enforcement is taking advantage of outdated privacy laws to track Americans like never before. New technologies can record your every movement, revealing detailed information about how you choose to live your life. Without the right protections in place, the government can gain access to this information -- and to your private life -- with disturbing ease. As ... (more)
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Homeland Security to Activate 'National License Plate Recognition Database'The Department of Homeland Security is set to activate a national license plate tracking system that will be shared with law enforcement, allowing DHS officers to take photos of any license plate using their smartphone and upload it to a database which will include a “hot list” of “target vehicles”.
The details are included in a PDF attachment uploaded yesterday to the Federal Business Opportunities website under a solicitation entitled &ldquo... (more)
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Putting Big Brother in the Driver's Seat: V2V Transmitters, Black Boxes & Drones “It’s a future where you don’t forget anything…In this new future you’re never lost…We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time…Your car will drive itself, it’s a bug that cars were invented before computers…you’re never lonely…you’re never bored…you’re never out of ideas… We can suggest where you go next, who to meet, what to read...What’s interestin ... (more)
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Why Teaching How to Beat Polygraphs Can Land You in Jail
Last September, Chad Dixon was sentenced to 8 months in a federal prison for teaching clients counter-measures for polygraph tests. Federal prosecutors charged Dixon with obstructing justice--they view his business as undermining an important tool used to check the credibility of government employees and prosecute criminals.
The information Dixon was ... (more)
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US Customs Broke Broke My Phone For Filming ThemYesterday upon returning to the United States from Canada, the United States Customs and Border Protections ruined my HTC One by breaking off the charger inside the phone. This was after I refused to delete recordings I had of them from the device.
As you may know if you read this blog and my personal stuff regularly, in the past I have had issues at the US border.
My girlfriend and I were detained for hours and interrogated by a couple of guys starting wit... (more)
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