Tag Archives | Privacy

TSA To Cease Use Of Naked-Image Scanners In Airports

By on January 18, 2013 in News 4

The machines are being removed, but the disturbing grayscale images of travelers’ bloated bodies will continue to haunt our nightmares. Via Boomberg:

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will remove airport body scanners that privacy advocates likened to strip searches after OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS) couldn’t write software to make passenger images less revealing.

TSA will end a $5 million contract with OSI’s Rapiscan unit. The agency removed 76 of the machines from busier U.S. airports last year. It will now get rid of the remaining 174 Rapiscan machines, with the company absorbing the cost.

Airline passengers were offended by the revealing images, including those of children and the elderly. The Washington- based Electronic Privacy Information Center sued the agency in July 2010, claiming the scanners violated privacy laws and has called use of the machines equivalent to a “physically invasive strip search.”

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Stealth Wear: Drone Proof Counter-Surveillance Fashions

By on January 17, 2013 in News 0

Stock up for the future? Artist Adam Harvey, previously noted for his CV Dazzle project revealing how to style hair and makeup to avoid detection by facial recognition software, has developed a Stealth Wear clothing line, including a hoodie to evade drones’ infrared heat sensors:

Stealth Wear continues to explore the aesthetics of privacy and the potential for fashion to challenge authoritarian surveillance. Made in collaboration with NYC fashion designer Johanna Bloomfield, a suite of new designs tackle some of the most pressing and sophisticated forms of surveillance today. Including:

The anti-drone hoodie and anti-drone scarf. Garments designed to thwart thermal imaging, a technology used widely by UAVs.

The XX-shirt. A x-ray shielding print in the shape of a heart, that protects your heart from x-ray radiation

And the Off Pocket. An anti-phone accessory that allows you to instantly zero out your phone’s signal.

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Iraq Torture Payoff, Indigenous Fight Back, Truth Seekers Prosecuted, Free Cuban 5

By on January 12, 2013 in News 2

On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks about the threat against indigenous sovereignty and the growth of the Idle No More movement beyond Canada; calls out the corporate media for their obsession with supermodels and instead highlights a successful lawsuit against defense contractor L-3 Services for torture at Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib Prison; talks to whistleblower and lawyer, Jesselyn Radack, about recent developments in the cases of ex CIA official John Kiriakou, and PFC Bradley Manning; BTS wraps up the show with a look at the Cuban Five, a group of Cuban intelligence agents who have been incarcerated in the US since 1998 as the forgotten political prisoners of the Cold War.

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A DIY Hat To Prevent Your Visibility On Cameras And Video

By on January 11, 2013 in News 8

Via Quora, how, with a couple dollars and a few spare minutes, to make yourself invisible to Big Brother:

Most cameras (especially black and white security cameras) will see low levels of infrared light. This helps them video at dusk/dawn and in lower levels of light. To test this theory turn on your video camera and point your TV remote control at it. Change a few channels and you will see a pulse of light flash that the naked eye obviously can’t see.

With that said you can easily make an infrared hat with cheap $1 infrared LEDs stitched into the front of the hat, the more the better… Attach a 9 volt battery to the LEDS and bam you are now a giant LED flash light. People will see nothing out of the ordinary, but CCTV cameras will only see a large flash of infrared light coming from your head, hiding your face.

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Netflix Pushes For Privacy Law Change To Make Your Viewing History Available To Advertisers And Government

By on December 30, 2012 in News 18

Coming soon–an algorithm to root out criminals and agitators in advance based on Netflix viewing history. Truthout writes:

You might want to think twice about streaming that “subversive” documentary about the Weather Underground on Netflix. If Republicans have their way, you just might end up on a watch list somewhere. This week, the House of Representatives passed an amendment to the 1988 Video Protection Privacy Act, which forbids movie rental companies from sharing or selling their customers’ viewing history. The Senate is expected to take up the amendment soon.

If this passes, what you watch on Netflix may soon become public information that your friends, employers, and even the government will have access to. Netflix favors the law change because it will help them branch into social media…[with] enormous profit-potential in selling your viewing history to advertisers who can target specific demographics based on your preference in movies. Also unmentioned by Netflix is just who else might get this information once it’s taken out of the privacy lockbox.

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Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History

By on December 30, 2012 in News 6

 Washington’s Blog on life in an era of firsts:

The US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans. The American government is collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American. Some also claim that the government is also using facial recognition software and surveillance cameras to track where everyone is going.

Moreover, cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. And – given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google – it would be child’s play for the government to track your location that way.

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Senate Allows NSA To Keep Spying On You Without A Warrant Until 2017

By on December 30, 2012 in News 5

Seal of the President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate - goldThe surveillance state continues. Report from The Verge:

The US Senate has voted to approve the FAA Sunsets Extension Act of 2012, which will authorize warrantless surveillance of Americans for counter-terrorism purposes for another five years. The bill extends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008, which granted retroactive immunity for wiretaps and email monitoring under the Bush Administration and created a framework for future warrant-free surveillance as long as one party is located outside the US and terrorism is suspected.

Whistleblowers like former NSA codebreaker William Binney have long since revealed that surveillance programs catch hundreds of thousands of American citizens in their dragnet. But attempts to criticize the law have been blocked by the fact that no one — including the Senate’s intelligence committee — is allowed to know much of anything about how it actually works. That means this vote represented the last chance for Congress to enact meaningful review of surveillance activities for the next five years.

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China To Mandate All Internet Users To Register With Their Real Names

By on December 29, 2012 in News 20

The days of secretly being a dog on the internet may not last much longer. Via the The Next Web:

The Chinese legislature has approved a proposal that includes stipulations for real-name registration requirements for Internet users, state media reported on Friday.

The new rules [are] meant to “enhance protection of personal info online and safeguard public interests.” It’s worth pointing out that the exact timing and the implementation of these regulations have yet to be sketched out.

The most likely solution will be the requirement of showing government-issued identification at the point of sale for Internet service providers, both fixed-line and wireless. Internet cafes will likely feel the squeeze if restrictions force them to keep close track of their clientele, and dissidents will be hurt by the new restrictions, as it will become more difficult for them to operate anonymously online.

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Yes, The TSA is Laughing at Your Naked Body

By on December 27, 2012 in News 5

I know you’re going to be shocked when you hear this, but it seems that the TSA screeners at your local airport are, in all likelihood, laughing at your naked body when you go through the scanner. A former TSA agent turned blogger confirms the sordid (and entirely expected) details.

Via The Daily Mail:

‘I witnessed light sexual play among officers, a lot of e-cigarette vaping, and a whole lot of officers laughing and clowning in regard to some of your nude images, dear passengers,’ the former agent wrote.

‘Bad’ behavior: The whistleblower said that poorly trained TSA screeners fresh out of high school have been tasked with looking at nude pictures in sealed image operator rooms

The blogger partially attributed this childish behavior to lack of education and training, saying that this is what happens when people ‘fresh out of high school or a GED program’ are put in charge of analyzing nude images of people in a hermetically sealed room.

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Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have Nothing to Hide

By on December 19, 2012 in News 7

Via the Chronicle of Higher Education, law professor Daniel J. Solove reveals all:

The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

But the problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. By accepting this assumption, we concede far too much ground and invite an unproductive discussion about information that people would very likely want to hide. As the computer-security specialist Schneier aptly notes, the nothing-to-hide argument stems from a faulty “premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong.” Surveillance, for example, can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.

One such harm, for example, which I call aggregation, emerges from the fusion of small bits of seemingly innocuous data.

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