Cell phone technology allows carriers to imprecisely triangulate the locations of its users assuming they have their cell phones with them. Police have come to appreciate this new tool in finding missing persons.
While this information certainly helps find missing people, the police do not need a warrant to access it and that’s a little troubling:
In [...]
‘I wonder why they call it Miner when it tells jokes?’
We wrote an evil data mining application called Miner, which, if we wanted, could masquerade as a game, a test, or a joke of the day. It took us less than three hours.
But whatever it looks like, in the background, it is collecting personal details, [...]
UK PM Gordon Brown now has a Twitter account.
If you don’t know what Twitter is, I’m sorry to be the one to inform you. It’s a micro-blogging service, essentially an aggregator of away messages and statuses, known as ‘tweets’ to users. For example, ‘at work.’ That’s it. There’s nothing else, just updates on what you’re [...]
Washington Post reports today on documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that depict a FBI communications dragnet consisting of open circuits from telecom companies:
The circuits — little-known electronic connections between telecom firms and FBI monitoring personnel around the country — are used to tell the government who is calling whom, along with the time [...]
Washington Post obtained a document describing state-run, federally funded intelligence installations known as ‘fusion centers.’ The document itemizes open-source tools these centers use to collect and analyze the data of millions of Americans. We don’t know the full extent of their capabilities since those are still classified.
The list of information resources was part of [...]
Joe Giuliano, Deputy Chief of the Border Patrol in Washington State, was sent to San Juan to calm privacy fears of local residents who were concerned with ‘citizenship checks’ on ferries to the island. In an ironic twist, he ended up exacerbating the problem after describing the Border Patrol’s creepy use of radiation detectors:
“Vehicle goes [...]
A cartoon character on the NSA’s web site for kids — Cryptokids — describes his ‘favorite computer project’ as setting up a LAN for his family and then monitoring its use. [Sarcasm] ‘Listen kids, internet spying is fun, but it’s also necessary to win the War on Terror…’ [/Sarcasm].
(Click for screencap.)
Here’s the next wave of cell phone technology. Sprint and Boost already offer this service.
NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data
By SIOBHAN GORMAN
March 10, 2008; Page A1
According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from [...]
In an obvious development, it turns out the telecom industry has been quite generous to members of Congress these past few years. One could make the case that this compromises Congress’ objectivity in regards to FISA extensions — the so-called ‘Protect America Act — with telecom immunity.
The 68 senators who voted “yes” on the legislation [...]
It is now official: the fight over FISA extensions is not about phone conversations — it’s about internet data.
At a Monday breakfast sponsored by the American Bar Association, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth Wainstein remarked that the fight over the eavesdropping bill actually centers on US interception of email.
“In response to a [...]
Another whistle-blower has come forward claiming that he has witnessed the NSA’s back door access to a telecom’s cellular data stream. The witness refuses to identify the telecom involved. It is known that he works for a network security firm which provided consultant work for this telecom starting in 2003. Here are the talking points [...]
The following is a timely passage from the book Are We Rome? by Cullen Murphy.
In 68 B.C. a pirate attack on Rome’s port of Ostia prompted the terrified Romans to cede far-reaching powers to one man, Pompey. There would be no turning back. The need to act boldly and react quickly; to ferret out enemy [...]
[This is a repost and it is long, but it is important, thank you for understanding.]
The Senate will vote this afternoon on S.2248, an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has become anything but foreign. It has morphed into a decree on domestic spying, particularly giving telecom companies immunity for taking part in [...]
While the Web site offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely. Indeed, many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network.
I’m one of those many former users of Facebook. [...]
DCI Mike McConnell’s comments to the New Yorker is stirring controversy:
McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.
“Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or [...]
The media conglomerates are mulling ways to curb some types of internet traffic. The goal being to cut the transfer of copyrighted data, which for lack of ingenuity, is plaguing the networks, studios, and record labels.
The NYT is reporting that AT&T, Microsoft, and NBC openly discussed this topic at the Consumer Electronics Show:
At a small [...]
From the NYT today:
The record industry got a surprise when it subpoenaed the University of Oregon in September, asking it to identify 17 students who had made available songs from Journey, the Cars, Dire Straits, Sting and Madonna on a file-sharing network.The surprise was not that 20-year-olds listen to Sting. It was that the university [...]
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“We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.”
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