InformationLiberationBig Brother/Orwellian

Oct 23

Since the launch of our 2012 Drone Census three months ago, EFF and MuckRock News have filed over 200 public records requests asking federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies about their plans to use surveillance drones.

Drone use by police agencies ... (more)

Six-Strikes "Independent Expert" Is RIAA's Former Lobbying Firm

Oct 23

Next month the file-sharing habits of millions of BitTorrent users in the United States will be monitored as part of an agreement between the MPAA, RIAA, and all the major ISPs. To guarantee the accuracy of the evidence that will be used for the accusations the parties agreed to hire an impartial and independent technology expert. However, their commitment to this promise is now in doubt as the hired experts have turned out to be a former RIAA lobbying group.

In an effort to cur... (more)

Pirate Bay Founder Held In Solitary Confinement

Italian Scientists Convicted Of Manslaughter, Sentenced To 6 Years In Jail, Over Earthquake They Failed To Predict Properly

Oct 23

Dutch Propose Powers For Police To Break Into Computers, Install Spyware And Destroy Data -- Anywhere In The World

Oct 23

State Dept. admits passport form was illegal, but still wants it approved

Oct 22

Techdirt readers with long memories may recall a fantasy proposal from Orrin Hatch that would have seen technological means deployed to destroy the computers of those who downloaded unauthorized copies of files. Of course, the idea was so ridiculous it went nowhere. Now, nine years later, a similar idea has turned up, but with a rather better chance of being implemented, since it comes from a national government:
... (more)

Papers, Please!

Oct 22

Mother: Highland students face expulsion after viewing topless photo of teacher

The Herald Bulletin

Oct 22

Free Online Education Is Now Illegal in Minnesota

Slate.com

Oct 22

Federal Gov't Funding Police Cell Phone Spotters on Overpasses in Two States

CNSNews.com

Oct 18

Thanks to a cash infusion from the Obama administration, motorists in Connecticut and Massachusetts may see police spotters on overpasses, looking for people who are texting while driving.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that those two states are each getting $275,000 grants "to help them plan and conduct high-visibility anti-texting enforcement programs."

The goal is to train police officers on better methods for spotting drivers who are texting.
... (more)

FBI Exempts Massive Database from Privacy Act Protections

EPIC

Oct 18

"Laws only apply to little people."

Textbook Publisher Pearson Takes Down 1.5 Million Teacher And Student Blogs With A Single DMCA Notice

Oct 17

Canada-EU Trade Agreement Replicates ACTA's Notorious Copyright Provisions

AT&T Starts Six-Strikes Anti-Piracy Plan Next Month, Will Block Websites

Oct 16

The shadow of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is back in Europe. It is disguised as CETA, the Canada-European Union and Trade Agreement. As reported by EDRI, a rather strange and surprising e-mail was sent this summer from the General Secretariat of the Council of... (more)

Government Schools: Cultivating Collectivist Conformity

Will Grigg

Oct 15

The central purpose of the government school system is socialization – that is, programming students to think of themselves as part of a government-defined collective. This requires suspending critical thinking and suppressing moral objections in the service of what students are told is the good of the “community.”

A related purpose involves the use of student populations to test new methods of social control. Those purposes intersect in Texas’s NorthsideIn... (more)

New Mexico Supreme Court: Search Justified Because Passenger Dressed Like Prostitute

Oct 15

TheNewspaper

Oct 15

Dying To Fly

Becky Akers

Oct 12

In addition to death and taxes, we can add several more certainties to Benjamin Franklin’s list. First, the TSA will savage passengers, particularly those who are sick, elderly or otherwise vulnerable, in ways that would have done the Nazis proud. And second, the agency will defend such savagery as "proper procedure" no matter how horrifying or barbaric.

Meet Michelle Dunaj, a 34-year-old woman with leukemia who will repair to a hospice on October 17 for her... (more)

"Online Thug" DMCAs Critic's Site Off The Internet Over 16-Word Quote

Oct 12

TSA Sinks To New Low: Humiliates Woman Dying Of Cancer

Prison Planet

Oct 11

Just one day following our report on the numerous and frequent cases of TSA screeners harassing and humiliating breast cancer survivors by forcing them t... (more)

German Gov't Inadvertently Reveals Police Monitor Gmail, Skype, Facebook & Use Snooping Malware

US supreme court finalizes gift of immunity to the telecom giants

Oct 11

Transparency is worth having for itself, since governments often tend to behave a little better when they know that someone is watching. But occasionally, requests for data turn up something big and totally unexpected because someone failed to notice quite what the information provided implies.

Here's a great example spotted by the annalist blog, which reports on a parliamentary enquiry about expenditures by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, responsible for interna... (more)

Glenn Greenwald

Oct 11

Stopped-and-Frisked: 'For Being a F**king Mutt' [VIDEO]

The Nation

Oct 10

Exclusive audio obtained by The Nation of a stop-and-frisk carried out by the New York Police Department freshly reveals the discriminatory and unprofessional way in which this controversial policy is being implemented on the city’s streets.

On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin and ... (more)

Anti-war Facebook comment nets man 240 hours of involuntary servitude, £300 fine

InformationLiberation

Oct 10

See the backstory to this case here.

BBC reports:

A man who posted an offensive Facebook message following the deaths of six British soldiers has been given a community order.

Azhar Ahmed, 20, of Fir Avenue, Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire, was found guilty in September of sending a grossly offensive communication.
... (more)

Texas schools punish students who refuse to be tracked with microchips

Oct 10

A school district in Texas came under fire earlier this year when it announced that it would require students to wear microchip-embedded ID cards at all times. Now students who refuse to be monitored say they are feeling the repercussions.

Since October 1, students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonia, Texas have been asked to attend class clasping onto photo ID cards equipped with radio-frequency identification chips to keep track of each and e... (more)

New Senate Report: Counterterrorism "Fusion Centers" Invade Innocent Americans' Privacy and Don't Stop Terrorism

Oct 10

The Department of Homeland Security's 70 counterterrrorism "fusion centers" produce "predominantly useless information," "a bunch of crap," while "running afoul of departmental guidelines meant to guard against civil liberties" and are "possibly in violation of the Privacy Act."

These may sound like the words of EFF, but in fact, these conclusions come from a new report issued by a US Senate committee. At t... (more)

Kim Dotcom: U.S. Government Used Echelon to Spy on Me

Australia: State Caught Exploiting Short Yellow Signal Times

Oct 10

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom believes that he was spied on by New Zealand’s GCSB because this allowed the U.S. Government to have real-time access to all of his communications. New Zealand and the United States have an agreement to share all intelligence gathered by the secretive Echelon, and Dotcom says this is the primary reason GCSB was utilized for the secret surveillance.

Two weeks ago New Zealand's Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security found that the governm... (more)

TheNewspaper

Oct 09

A Tale of Two Countries: New Zealand Apologizes for Illegal Domestic Spying, While US Still Refuses to Acknowledge NSA's Warrantless Wiretapping