Tag Archives | Surveillance

How Stores Are Spying On You

By on April 11, 2013 in News 0

Wear a mask, pay cash, and break out your old brick cell phone. Consumer Reports tells all:

High-resolution video cameras monitor all areas in and outside the  store. With facial-recognition software, your mug shot can be captured and digitally filed. Ditto for your car’s license plate. Stores don’t provide sufficient disclosure, so you can’t opt out to protect your privacy.

Gaze trackers are hidden in tiny holes in the shelving and detect which brands you’re looking at and how long for each. There are even mannequins whose eyes are cameras that detect age, sex, ethnicity, and facial expression.

Your mobile phone is an excellent device for tracking your shopping route. Retailer tracking systems can identify individual shoppers by monitoring your phone’s International Mobile Subscriber Identity number (constantly transmitted from all cell phones to their service providers) or Media Access Control address (transmitted when the device’s Wi-Fi is enabled, which is the default setting on most devices).

… Read the rest

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Mayor Mike Bloomberg Says Surveillance Drones Will Soon Be Everywhere In New York City

By on March 26, 2013 in News 0

The mayor’s tone suggests that mere mortals are helpless against a coming onslaught of drones, The Verge reports:

Governmental use of unmanned surveillance drones has inspired a lot of concern about privacy, but New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks the battle’s already over. In a radio interview this week, Bloomberg said essentially that drones are an inevitable part of our future (and maybe our present), comparing them to the thousands of cameras already located around Manhattan.

Striking a tone more of resignation than endorsement, Bloomberg said that our future includes more visibility and less privacy: “It’s not a question of whether it’s good or bad. I just don’t see how you can stop them.”

… Read the rest

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The Black Hornet Is Here To Help.

By on March 15, 2013 in News 25

After Rand Paul’s filibuster this last week, many people are paying a bit more attention to the idea that our government may not always be using their cool toys for our own good. RT’s Abby Martin reported on mini drones and the possible ways in which they could be used against the public.

One has to wonder if these little dandies might slip through the cracks of public awareness due to their size. Will Rand Paul get up again and passionately rail against the use of these cute lil’ fellas? Presently in military use abroad, it seems like only a matter of time before these mini-drones hit the ghettos and suburbs of America to quietly keep an eye on the malcontents. If you can imagine it, it’s probably going to be done at some point. Easy as ‘playing an Xbox’; mini drones offer a new way for those in power to keep an eye on you…through your second floor bedroom window. Nice undies!

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Cypherpunk Pioneers Warn of a “Coming Surveillance Dystopia”

By on March 13, 2013 in News 5

Twenty years of cypherpunk* get mixed reviews in this article by the former editor of Mondo 2000 (the pre-web technology magazine which William Gibson remembers as “a focus of something that was happening”). The editor describes the 1992 conversation in which Jude Milhon first coined the term cypherpunk, and how Julian Assange posted his first words on the Cypherpunk mailing list in 1995 — “I am annoyed…”

But nearly 20 years later, contemporary cypherpunk now finds itself on the verge of what Assange calls “a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible.” On the one hand, EFF co-founder John Gilmore argues today that cypherpunk “did reshape the world” by freeing encryption from government control, while threat analyst Adrian Lamo warns that “The biggest threat to our privacy is our own limited understanding of how little privacy we truly have.”

Last September the ACLU even warned that “federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.” And this article even notes that for $10 million, one South African company “will sell you a turnkey system that can intercept all communications in a middle-sized country!”

*Wikipedia article on cypherpunk.… Read the rest

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Anomalies, Prisons, and Geophysics: How Governments Use Data and How to Stop Them

By on March 5, 2013 in News 4

via chycho

A common definition of an anomaly is “a deviation from the common rule, type, arrangement, or form.” This definition, however, can be simplified by stating that an anomaly is a deviation from specific parameters. The defining characteristic of an anomaly is that it can only exist in a comparative setting, implying that it can only be detected within a certain data set. Once a data set is obtained then parameters can be specified to filter out so called anomalies for evaluation. Depending on the type of data collected, these parameters can be specified to be anything occurring in any combination. If there is no data set, then there are no anomalies.

A prison can be defined as “a place of seeming confinement.” It is a place to incarcerate people who have lawfully or unlawfully stepped outside the parameters set in their society. This implies that inmates are anomalies within a community.… Read the rest

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Furniture Chain’s Rental Computers Sent 185,000 Spyware Emails Containing Customers’ Passwords, Explicit Photos, Financial Information Back to Headquarters

By on March 4, 2013 in News 6

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 intimate photos and information back to corporate servers, reports NBC News:

Spyware installed on computers leased from furniture renter Aaron’s Inc. secretly sent 185,000 emails containing sensitive information — including pictures of nude children and people having sex — back to the company’s corporate computers, according to court documents filed Wednesday in a class-action lawsuit.

According to the filings, some of the spyware emails contained pictures secretly taken by the rental computers’ webcams or other sensitive information including Social Security numbers, social media and email passwords, and customer keystrokes, the Federal Trade Commission determined last year.

Aaron’s officials have previously said the company never installed the spyware on computers rented out of 1,140 company-operated stores and blamed individual franchisees for installing it.

… Read the rest

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The Manufacture of “Surveillance by Consent”

By on March 4, 2013 in News 0

“the CCTV proposals in the Protection of Freedoms Bill are really about manufacturing consent”
No CCTV article ‘The Freedom Committee, CCTV / ANPR and the Manufacture of Consent’ (2nd May 2011) [1]

One nation under CCTV
Image by T.J.Blackwell

It’s not often that you get to witness the birth of a new philosophy but that is what we are told is at the heart of the new Surveillance Camera Code of Practice published by the UK’s Home Office this month [2]. Drum roll please, here it is, the new philosophy – “Surveillance by Consent”.

Now as new philosophies go it’s not the best and it’s not really new, nor is it a philosophy. In fact it’s more of a slogan, or more precisely a propaganda slogan. And what it contains a ready-made judgement to save you the trouble of thinking about the issue at hand, in this case surveillance. Surveillance you are told is by consent.… Read the rest

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Big Brother And His Drones: What YOU Can Get Out of Surveillance and the Machine Future

By on February 27, 2013 in News 6

From Mr. VI over at Modern Mythology:

It’s time to face facts– technology advances by harnessing human drives, and the most primal are sex and death.

Drones and cybersex. So, what can YOU get out of it? Pornography and the military-industrial complex are often the prime funders of technological research. Without DARPA, we wouldn’t have the internet, and without the urge to stream porn, we wouldn’t be constantly trying to improve data compression techniques.

Without lust, there’d be no YouTube – and without the urge to achieve maximum effect with minimum effort, we wouldn’t develop labour saving devices. We wouldn’t develop technology to extend our reach, and refine our apparent control over the situation. Without apparent scarcity and rarity, we wouldn’t consider certain things precious, and we certainly wouldn’t care about loss. We wouldn’t care about extending our sphere of influence, or expanding our territory.

Here in the UK, we’re seemingly constantly under the eye of CCTV. According to the BBC, one London Borough, Wandsworth, has more cameras than Dublin, San Francisco, Johannesburg and Boston COMBINED.

… Read the rest

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Game Of Surveillance Camera Destruction Hits The United States

By on February 20, 2013 in News 9

The previously discussed trend of making a game out of breaking as many public surveillance cameras as possible, known as Camover, appears to have crossed the Atlantic, with a team calling themselves the Barefoot Bandit Brigade claiming a score of 17 in Washington state:

17 Security Cameras Disabled and Destroyed in Puget Sound Region — In the opening weeks of February, 2013, we have removed and destroyed 17 security cameras throughout the Puget Sound region. This act is concrete sabotage against the system of surveillance and control. It is also a message of solidarity and a wish of strength to the Seattle Grand Jury Resisters, those currently incarcerated and those not. Finally, this act announces our participation in the game of CAMOVER, called for by comrades in Germany.

… Read the rest

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Virginia City Is First To Pass Anti-Drone Legislation

By on February 17, 2013 in News 2

Three years from now, will we be trusting urban police forces to use drones equipped with “Tasers and tear gas”? The Los Angeles Times reports:

Charlottesville, Va., home to the University of Virginia, has taken action against the use of police spy drones, ordering a two-year moratorium on the citywide use of unmanned aircraft. It is the first city in the nation to do so, supporters say, and its move may prompt other municipalities to act. City officials said anti-drone measures are winning support in the Virginia state legislature.

Seeking tough regulation over the future use of civilian drones in U.S. airspace, the City Council passed a resolution that prohibits police agencies from utilizing drones outfitted with anti-personnel devices such as Tasers and tear gas. The measure comes in response to last year’s congressional mandate to integrate the nation’s airspace with robotic aircraft by September 2015.

 

… Read the rest

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