U.S. Supreme Court Legalizes Strip Search For Any Offense
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Make sure you don’t jaywalk, ride a bike without a bell, protest anything, or otherwise upset a police officer, because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that you can be forced to strip naked for a visual search no matter how trivial your alleged offense. NPR reports:
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that jailers may subject people arrested for minor offenses to invasive strip searches, siding with security needs over privacy rights.
By a 5-4 vote, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who complained that strip searches in two county jails violated his civil rights.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion for the court’s conservative justices that when people are going to be put into the general jail population, “courts must defer to the judgment of correctional officials unless the record contains substantial evidence showing their policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of jail security.”
In a dissenting…
Collusion: Watch Yourself Being Tracked Online
Warning, the results of this may scare you — it might be better if you didn’t know. From Mozilla:
Collusion is an experimental add-on for Firefox and allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web. It will show, in real time, how that data creates a spider-web of interaction between companies and other trackers.
Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool
Reports Eric Lichtblau in the NY Times:
Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.
The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.
With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels …
Read…
Job Seekers Being Asked for Their Facebook Login Details During Interviews
Disturbing. Emma Barnett reports in the Telegraph:
Justin Bassett, a New York-based statistician, had just finished answering some standard character questions in a job interview, when he was asked to hand over his Facebook login information after his interviewer could not find his profile on the site, according to the Boston Globe.
Bassett refused and withdrew his job application, as he did not want to be employed by a business which would invade his privacy to such an extent.
And it’s not only job applicants, even people already on the job are being asked. More from the Telegraph:
While Lee Williams, an online retail worker from the Midlands, told The Telegraph that he was asked by his managing director for his Facebook login details, after his boss had looked him up on the social network and could not see any details about him as his privacy settings were locked down. The boss thought that Williams…
Senator Al Franken: ‘Privacy is a Casualty’ of Google and Facebook’s Success
Nilay Patel reports on Senator Franken’s emergence as the congressional voice of the people against corporations, for The Verge:
Senator Al Franken gave a rousing speech to the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Section last night, calling for greater antitrust oversight of large media and tech companies as a way to ensure greater privacy protections for Americans. That’s not surprising by itself — Franken is the chair of the new Senate subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, after all — but the senator took the opportunity to blast Google for its controversial new privacy policy and suggest that Facebook would soon have every incentive to share private data in the absence of meaningful competition.
Franken opened by talking about his opposition to both the NBC / Comcast merger and the failed AT&T / T-Mobile deal, but he was most blunt about the privacy threat facing internet users every day. Consumers are “out on a limb…
Coming Soon to US: Big Brother Barking Orders at You
Big Brother surveillance cameras that bark orders at you is already in full effect in London and could be coming soon to the US. Luke Rudkowski (www.youtube.com/wearechange), Abby Martin (www.youtube.com/AbbyMediaRoots) and Mark Dice (www.youtube.com/theresistance) made an entertaining video highlighting the issue so San Diego residents can be aware of the scary and very likely possibility of Big Brother barking “laws” at you in your neighborhood:
New Surveillance Camera Can Search 36 Million Faces For Matches Per Second
The story of your life is being filmed and photographed each day, and soon will be searchable. Via PhysOrg:
A new surveillance camera by Hitachi Kokusai Electric can look at footage that contains an image of someone, either still or video, and then search other video or still images on file for other instances of that same face. It can search, process and display up to thirty six million faces in just one second. Each hit is displayed immediately, in thumbnail form, which its makers say, allows the camera to display the actions of a person prior to, or after, being seen by the surveillance camera.
CIA Spies On You Via Connected Devices In Your Home
David H. Petraeus plays Wii golf.
Or if they’re not doing so yet, they soon will. Spencer Ackerman reports for Wired’s Danger Room blog:
More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them.
Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired devices — at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”
All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you’re a “person of interest” to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise…
Homeland Security Manual Lists Government Key Words For Monitoring Social Media
Andrea Stone writes in the Huffington Post:
Ever complain on Facebook that you were feeling “sick?” Told your friends to “watch” a certain TV show? Left a comment on a media website about government “pork?”
If you did any of those things, or tweeted about your recent vacation in “Mexico” or a shopping trip to “Target,” the Department of Homeland Security may have noticed.
In the latest revelation of how the federal government is monitoring social media and online news outlets, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has posted online a 2011 Department of Homeland Security manual that includes hundreds of key words (such as those above) and search terms used to detect possible terrorism, unfolding natural disasters and public health threats. The center, a privacy watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request and then sued to obtain the release of the documents.
The 39-page “Analyst’s Desktop Binder” used by the department’s National Operations…
YouPorn: Up To 1 Million Adult Chat Users’ Email Addresses And Passwords Exposed
Oh there is guaranteed to be some fun from this. Can you say “Caligula”?
I recommend a deep dive into the list of these names for top-level donors and operatives in the Santorum, and Romney camps, as well as that of embattled Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.
You’re invited to have a go at any Dems, too, but I’d be dubious about the payoff. Since they’re all professed perverts and homosexuals, I can’t imagine getting much mileage over that lot downloading some pics from a foot fetish site.
Nothing brings out the kink like a vigorous dose of self-righteous Puritan denial, however, so I expect quite a few high level Repubs showing up as a clients of “Trannytown.com”. From the Huffington Post’s Timothy Stenovec:
Unsecured login information for a chat feature on YouPorn, one of the most popular pornography sites on the Internet, has revealed the email addresses and passwords for some of its users, the Associated…
LAPD To Crack Down On Use Of Unmanned Drones By Real Estate Agents
In a nightmarish scenario from the future, technology ostensibly created to spy on our “enemies” is now being turned against us by the most nefarious of forces — real estate brokers. The Los Angeles Times reveals:
The Los Angeles Police Department is warning real estate agents not to use images of properties taken from unmanned aircraft, saying the flying drones pose a potential safety hazard and could violate federal aviation policy.
The warning was issued this week after officers saw a television news report showing a basketball-sized object with multiple rotors hovering over an expansive Westside residence.
Real estate agents have been posting aerial photos and video of homes for sale in the Los Angeles area, according to the LAPD. The pictures have been taken from several hundred feet off the ground in the city’s crowded airspace — an altitude at which police helicopters often fly.
The Future Of Personal Identification: Buttock Scanners?
Apparently everyone has a unique “buttprint”. In the future, the driver’s seat of your car or your spot on the train may be reserved for a butt that the scanner recognizes. Via Yahoo!:
Put your fingerprint scanners away. Stand aside iris measurers. Buttocks are the new way to prove who you are.
A team of Japanese scientists claim their pressure sensor sheet can accurately identify an individual’s backside and when placed on a driver’s seat could be used as a last line of defence to stop someone else driving away your motor.
“The sheet has 360 sensors, which collect data for 39 features to recognise a person, such as pressure patterns and the dimensions of the buttocks,” said Dr. Shigeomi Koshimizu, who led the research.
Koshimizu, an associate professor at Tokyo-based Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, said his device is 98 percent accurate and far less onerous than conventional biometrics as it requires nothing…
Homeland Security Hires Military Contractor To Monitor Social Media
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
A Freedom of Information Act request has revealed the Department of Homeland Security awarded a contract in 2010 to General Dynamics’ Advanced Information Systems in order to provide constant surveillance of social media, according to The Washington Post.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the request, and according to a training manual that was among the documents they received, DHS engaged in monitoring comments on Facebook, Twitter and blogs to obtain public sentiment on a proposed transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a town in Michigan. The $11 million contract awarded to General Dynamics is expected to produce “reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: positive and negative reports on FEMA, CIA, CBP, ICE, etc. as well as organizations outside the DHS,” according to Computer World.
An unnamed senior DHS official denied any such snooping or out of bounds monitoring and said the training manual is no…
Major Media Outlets Supporting SOPA, Have Not Reported On It
The major news networks apparently feel that the controversial proposed Stop Online Piracy Act is an important piece of legislation — the parent companies are all working to ensure its passage. Strange, then, that there has been no on air mention of the bill. Media Matters writes:
Most major television news outlets — MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC — have ignored the bill during their evening broadcasts. One network, CNN, devoted a single evening segment to it.
The parent companies of most of these networks, as well as two of the networks themselves, are listed as official “supporters” of this legislation on the U.S. House of Representatives’ website.
New York Times media columnist David Carr, who described the legislation as “alarming in its reach,” explained in a column earlier this week that “digitally oriented companies see SOPA as dangerous and potentially destructive to the open Web and a step toward the kind…
The Drones Are Coming Home
Will baby-sized drones soon be used routinely for tracking residential property lines and other domestic purposes? With our nation’s adventures in Iraq coming to an end, unmanned drones will need to be kept busy doing something…via BLDG BLOG:
A post on sUAS News—a blog tracking the “small unmanned aviation system industry”—we read about the possibility of drone aircraft being used to enforce residential property tax.
Citing a recent court ruling in Arkansas that “has approved the use of aerial imagery to collect data on property sizes,” and making reference to the already-controversial state deployment of aerial surveillance tools, sUAS suggests that drones could someday be used to manage a near-realtime catalog of local property expansions, transfers, and other tax-relevant land alterations.
Whether enforcing local building codes—keeping an eye, for instance, on illegally built structures such as the so-called Achill Henge in Ireland—or reconciling on-the-ground property lines with their administrative representations back in the city…
‘Anonymous’ Claims to Steal Security Think Tank Stratfor’s Client List
The Associated Press reports (via CommonDreams):
The loose-knit hacking movement Anonymous claims to have stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to clients of US-based security thinktank Stratfor. One hacker said the goal was to pilfer funds from individuals’ accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions linked to their credit cards.
Anonymous boasted of stealing Stratfor’s confidential client list – which includes entities including Apple, the US air force and the Miami police department – and mining it for more than 4,000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.
…
“Not so private and secret anymore?” Anonymous taunted in a message on Twitter, promising that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.
Anonymous said the client list it had already posted was a small slice of the 200 gigabytes worth of plunder it stole…
Life Would Suck If SOPA Passes
Comic creator David Rees, known for Get Your War On, has put forth Get Your Censor On, an attempt to convey what life may be like under the much-feared Stop Online Piracy Act. If we don’t band together to work to prevent SOPA from coming to fruition in Congress, you could find yourself having conversations such as these in the near future:
Ron Paul in Saturday’s Republican Debate (Video)
Ron Paul Highlights from Des Moines. He’s got my vote. Does he have yours? (How is this man not ranked number one in the polls yet?)
WikiLeaks Releases Spyware Firm Videos That Show How to Hack Email, Skype, WiFi
Kim Zetter writes on WIRED’s Threat Level:
What better way to sell your wares than to produce a marketing video showing exactly how your product works? Even if that product is spyware, marketed to oppressive regimes.
WikiLeaks, as part of its Spy Files trove of documents, released on Thursday a series of videos from Gamma International, a UK-based firm that markets the Finfisher spyware.
The video shows how the company’s product can be used to sniff WiFi networks from a hotel lobby, hack computers and cell phones, or intercept Skype communications and siphon encryption passwords.
