Tag Archives | Privacy

California Law Enforcement Battles Controvery Over Move To Use Drones

By on December 13, 2012 in News 4

Oakland, a hotbed of political activism, may serve as the model city for the deployment of police spy drones, Ars Technica reports:

Since Congress passed legislation in February ordering the FAA to fast-track the approval of unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e. drones) for use by law enforcement agencies, police and sheriff departments across the country have been scrambling to purchase the smaller, unarmed cousins of the Predator and Reaper drones which carry out daily sorties over Afghanistan.

California’s Alameda County (which encompasses Berkeley and Oakland) has become one of the central battlegrounds over the introduction of drones to domestic police work. Earlier this year, County Sheriff Gregory Ahern raised the hackles of local civil libertarians by declaring his intention to purchase a drone to assist with “emergency response.”

Were Alameda County to purchase a drone, it would set a precedent in California, which has long been an innovator in law enforcement tactics: from SWAT teams (pioneered in Delano and Los Angeles) to anti-gang tactics such as civil injunctions.

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Verizon Files Patent For Cable Box That Watches You As You Watch Television

By on December 11, 2012 in News 22

Another reason not to own a TV, via Yahoo! News:

A Verizon patent idea envisions spying on TV viewers for the sake of serving up related ads. For instance, a couple snuggling in front of the TV could end up getting bombarded by commercials for romantic vacations, flowers or even birth control. The system could also detect a person’s mood or identify objects such as pets, soft drink cans or a bag of chips in a person’s hand, and room decorations or furniture.

Such a patent idea would turn TV set-top boxes into spy boxes with sensors for both seeing and hearing the activity in front of the TV. Many TV viewers already own such set-top boxes to access pay-per-view services, digital video recordings and Internet streaming.

The patent filing even suggests the tracking system communicating with whatever smartphone or tablet a TV viewer might happen to have in his or her hands.

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All Americans’ Emails Are Collected By The FBI, Says NSA Whistleblower

By on December 6, 2012 in News 8

William Binney, a former award-winning mathematician and code-breaker at the National Security Agency, talks to Russia Today regarding the virtual surveillance of the entire public:

The FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of virtually everybody in the country. All the congressional members are on the surveillance too, no one is excluded. If they become a target for whatever reason – the government can go in, the FBI, or other agencies, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all. So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least.

That’s why they’re building Bluffdale [database facility], because they have to have more storage, because they can’t figure out what’s important, so they are just storing everything there. So, emails are going to be stored there in the future, but right now stored in different places around the country.

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Police Hunt Down WiFi Moochers

By on November 26, 2012 in News 3

Just in case you think you can hide your identity by using someone else’s WiFi to access the Internet, take note of this report in the Wall Street Journal:

Internet-service subscribers can’t hide from police behind their IP addresses, the numbers assigned to devices connecting online.

Now a federal court in Pittsburgh has ruled that people who piggyback on their neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks forfeit privacy too.

The ruling, issued this month, was the first to address the Fourth Amendment rights of such people and the latest to shed light on technologies used by police to locate criminal suspects.

The amendment protects against unreasonable searches by the government, requiring that police get search warrants when suspects have reasonable expectations of privacy. The case also raises questions about people who connect to the Internet through public wireless-access points.

In a 2011 poll conducted by Wakefield Research and the trade association Wi-Fi Alliance, 32% of respondents said they had tried to get on a wireless network that wasn’t theirs.

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Saudi Arabia Introduces Electronic Tracking Of Women

By on November 24, 2012 in News 11

In Saudi Arabia, Siri tells you everything your wife is doing. Males will automatically receive text message notifications whenever their spouses, relatives, or daughters pass through travel checkpoints, the International Business Times reports:

Saudi Arabia has introduced an electronic tracking system to monitor its female citizens and alert Saudi females’ male guardians to their movement.

Since last week, some Saudi women’s male guardians have been receiving text messages from immigration authorities, alerting them when women under their [control], which include wives and daughters, leave the country. To leave the kingdom, Saudi women are required to seek permission from their male guardians, who give consent by signing what is known as the “yellow sheet” at the airport or border.

The recent controversy caused by the escape of a Saudi woman to Sweden was believed to have prompted the authorities to implement the system, Al Arabiya reported, citing local media.

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ProPublica Reveals Depth of Government Snooping Powers

By on November 20, 2012 in News 4

While much of the Petraeus story focuses on the government’s email snooping powers, non-profit news organization ProPublica reminds cellphone users that Big Brother has their numbers, too. So to speak:

“The guest lists from hotels, IP [computer] login records, as well as the creative request to email providers for ‘information about other accounts that have logged in from this IP address’ are all forms of data that the government can obtain with a subpoena. There is no independent review, no check against abuse, and further, the target of the subpoena will often never learn that the government obtained data.”

It’s not just email. In July, Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, cajoled major cellphone carriers into disclosing the number of requests for data that they receive from federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies: In 2011, there were more than 1.3 million requests. As ProPublica reported at the time, “Police obtain court orders for basic subscriber information so frequently that some mobile phone companies have established websites — here’s one — with forms that police can fill out in minutes.

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An Urban Surveillance Map Of Vancouver

By on November 14, 2012 in News 3

The Vancouver Public Space Network mapped CCTV locations in the metropolitan core, revealing the geography of surveillance:

The preliminary map that we created indicates the places where surveillance cameras could be found prior to the installation of extra cameras for the Olympics.  We are particularly concerned about the surveillance legacy that the Olympics may leave behind, and will be monitoring the city government to make sure that this network is removed once the party is over. In all, the map represents the locations of 1500 of the 2000 cameras we found.

Public spaces are inherently places in which we can be observed by other people, and where we can observe others. However, the VPSN is concerned about the way that intense video surveillance, particularly networked, centrally monitored systems, might negatively affect the way that people enjoy public spaces. In the United Kingdom, which has intensive public video surveillance, security cameras have been used by security officers to harass people and to profile individuals based on race and socio-economic status.

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Why We Should Take Fewer Pictures Of Our Children

By on November 7, 2012 in News 10

Via the New York Times, David Zweig has a harrowing observation on the first generation of children raised under constant digital surveillance:

“I want to look at pictures on daddy’s phone!” I can’t recall when this entreaty started. I only know it has been repeated like a mantra nearly every day by my 3-year-old daughter for as long as I remember her being able to speak in sentences.

On the surface a child’s preoccupation with personal photos seems quite benign, or even beneficial. And yet I fear her photo obsession may hasten her self-consciousness to a degree that’s no longer constructive.

Our children’s lives are being documented to a degree never done before. I often have over 100 new pictures per month added to iPhoto on my computer. Like adults, kids often act differently when they know the camera is on. There’s a reason posed shots almost always seem so awkward and artificial compared with candid ones.

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‘Surveillance Camera Man’ Trolls Seattle

By on November 6, 2012 in News 10

Pure obnoxiousness or consciousness-raising performance art? In a series of videos dubbed ‘Surveillance Camera Man,’ an unseen and anonymous individual strolls the streets of Seattle filming people with a camera for no apparent reason, eliciting furious responses. Is the goal to force us to acknowledge that we are constantly being surveilled in this very manner, although both the recording mechanisms and the persons on their opposite ends are typically concealed?

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