Here’s crossing your fingers that Obama stands strong on his threat to veto if the bill make it through the U.S. Senate. Via CNET on Thursday: By a 288-127 vote today, the…
Spying
Just as governments spy on activists, so do corporations. In an interview, investigative reporter Eveline Lubbers is asked which corporations have the most extensive intelligence-gathering operations. The answer (maybe) via Parapolitical.com: Royal…
The Atlanta-based national furniture chain Aaron’s offers computers on a rent-to-own basis. Many of the computers contained secretly activated spyware which tracked customers’ locations, took webcam photos inside their homes, and forwarded…
The Center for Land Use Interpretation on symbols strewn across the American landscape which make sense only to airborne machines: There are dozens of aerial photo calibration targets across the USA, curious…
Want to know something horrifying? The Air Force has a “drone birdhouse” filled with tiny, lethal, buzzing robotic creatures. In a few years, the doors will open and the drone bugs will be released upon the world. Via National Geographic, John Horgan reveals:
DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has challenged researchers to build drones that mimic the size and behavior of bugs and birds. Cobb’s answer is a robotic hawk moth, with wings made of carbon fiber and Mylar. Piezoelectric motors flap the wings 30 times a second, so rapidly they vanish in a blur.
The Air Force has nonetheless already constructed a “micro-aviary” for flight-testing small drones. In an animated demonstration video, the drones swarm through alleys, crawl across windowsills, and perch on power lines. One of them sneaks up on a scowling man holding a gun and shoots him in the head.
It won’t be long before the foreboding surreal visions of the short film “Seagulls” come to pass. Artist Mato Atom shows us a world where we are not only surveilled by the omnipresent drones, but followed from our very birth throughout our lives, for some creepy, sinister, unknown purpose.
via Gizmodo:
seagulls from Mato Atom on Vimeo.
Watch the entire video on Vimeo.
Are any Hollywood superstars of today this exciting? Via the Denver Post: Recently obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, the updated FBI files do show the extent…
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…
Acting as “a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America,” the FBI surveillance of Occupy Wall Street from the beginning, and shared its findings with private corporate interests. The…
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…
Play objects often mimic the realities of the adult world. The hot gift for for sale this holiday season is children’s SpyNet Glasses, which allow the child to steathily record video of…
The Mercury News on the frustrating lack of insidious plots by the city’s residents: In more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques, the New…
On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks about the Third Party Debates that aired live on RT, and talks to Georgetown Professor, Chris Chambers about the total media blackout that keeps alternative voices and third party candidates in the dark. Abby then looks at the NYPD’s continued surveillance of Muslim communities and foiled FBI sting operations, and Obama’s rebranding of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism policies with an interview with Media Roots Journalist, Robbie Martin.
Slate on software, already being sold to governments and corporations, making it possible to store and identify the unique sound of everyone’s speech. The obvious question is, can it be thwarted by…
Spy vs. spy strangeness, via Bloomberg: A section of an ingenious tunnel built by U.S. and British spies to intercept Russian phone conversations in Cold War Berlin has been found after 56…
This may be paranoid fantasies, but it’s bound to actually happen sooner or later. Via Russia Today: Journalist Joseph Farah says the aircraft he saw hover above his rural Northern Virginia home…
Reports Declan McCullagh on cNet News: The FBI has recently formed a secretive surveillance unit with an ambitious goal: to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and…
Fantastic spy novel stuff, but for real (apparently) per this report in the New York Times: The would-be suicide bomber dispatched by the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month to blow…
Jim Nash writes in Scientific American: Earlier this year Iran’s defenseminister put the world on notice: His nation had developed the ability to “easily” watch spacewalking astronauts from the ground. The announcement…
Via RT: With the House of Representatives’ approval of the controversial CISPA bill, Internet users are worried about possible consequences. RT spoke to Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who said CISPA could be…
Do we really need to add to CIA, NSA, DIA, et al? Greg Miller reports for the Washington Post: The Pentagon is planning to ramp up its spying operations against high-priority targets…
The Watchmen’s tools working against the Watchers? Jeff Stein writes on WIRED’s Danger Room: When Tom Cruise had to break into police headquarters in Minority Report, the futuristic crime thriller, he got…
“NROL” is the designation for a series of classified satellites operated by the United States National Reconnaissance Office. As Ryan Gallagher reports on Slate: Last week, a new U.S. spy satellite was…
An alarming (or is it alarmist?) report by Daniel Golden for Bloomberg News: Michigan State University President Lou Anna K. Simon contacted the Central Intelligence Agency in late 2009 with an urgent…