U.S. Department Of Justice Secretly Granted Immunity For Internet Providers Engaging In Cybersurveillance Program
If it’s in the name of “security,” telecommunications corporations can now monitor users’ personal…
Cyberterror Fearmongering Eroding Privacy Online
The threat of cyberterrorism is being ramped up daily from political officials who say that it will soon be the number one threat facing the U.S. But is this government fearmongering being used to severely impede privacy and capitalize off the elimination of Net Neutrality? Abby Martin explores for RT:
POSTED FROM DISINFO.COM
FBI’s New Secretive Surveillance Unit Can Spy on Skype and Wireless Communications
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 wireless communications.
The establishment of the Quantico, VA-based unit, which is also staffed by agents from the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency, is a response to technological developments that FBI officials believe outpace law enforcement’s ability to listen in on private communications.
While the FBI has been tight-lipped about the creation of its Domestic Communications Assistance Center, or DCAC — it declined to respond to requests made two days ago about who’s running it, for instance — CNET has pieced together information about its operations through interviews and a review of internal government documents.
DCAC’s mandate is broad, covering everything from trying to intercept and decode Skype conversations to building custom wiretap hardware or analyzing the gigabytes of data that a wireless provider or social network might turn over in response to a court order…
- Read More: cNet News.
- POSTED FROM DISINFO.COM
Remains of the Day: There’s a New FBI Unit Watching the Net
The FBI creates a secret surveillance unit aimed at inventing technology that would make eavesdropping easier than ever, Google warns 500,000 users that they are infected with malware, and the FCC is reconsidering the very definition of what it means to be a “channel.”
- FBI Quietly Forms Secretive Net-Surveillance Unit:Apparently, the FBI recently create a secretive surveillance unit called the Domestic Communications Assistance Center (DCAC) with one goal in mind: to create technology that will allow law enforcement to eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications easier than ever. Staffed by agents from the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency, the unit is being very secretive about any details regarding the unit (such as who is running the unit), but according to CNET, one thing remains clear: they have a broad plans that covers everything from trying to intercept and decode Skype conversations to analyzing gigabytes of data given to them via an ISP as a result of a court order. [CNET]
Police Set To Use Armed Drones Against Americans
First we were bombarded with the news that 30,000 drones would be spying on us domestically and within weeks the agenda has already moved on to arming the drones with non-lethal weapons.
CBS DC reports that the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Texas “is considering using rubber bullets and tear gas on its drone.”
“It’s simply not appropriate to use any of force, lethal or non-lethal, on a drone,” responded Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the ACLU.
As we reported last year, although the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office initially claimed the drone would be used for surveillance only, the ShadowHawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle had previously been used against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and East Africa, and has the ability to tase suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchers.
This is a frightening new advance in the government’s war on the American people and a shocking indication of how the apparatus of the war on terror has been focused internally.
Watch a clip about the ShadowHawk drone below.
Anti Wi-Fi Wallpaper Unrolled
You’re not truly alone in the privacy of your home until you’ve plastered the walls with silver snowflake-patterned anti wi-fi wallpaper from Finland. ITProPortal reports:
A new type of wallpaper, which has been developed by scientists from the “institut polytechnique Grenoble INP” and the “Centre Technique du Papier”, will go on sale in 2013 after a Finnish firm, Ahlstrom acquired the license.
What looks like a bog standard wallpaper roll actually contains silver particles that allows it to filter out up to three different frequencies simultaneously.
Other than preventing hackers from penetrating your network, the Anti Wi-Fi wallpaper could be useful in hospitals and anywhere where Wi-Fi signals could be considered as harmful.
Oops! Air Force Drones Can Now (Accidentally) Spy on You
As long as the Air Force pinky-swears it didn’t mean to, its drone fleet can keep tabs on the movements of Americans, far from the battlefields of Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen. And it can hold data on them for 90 days — studying it to see if the people it accidentally spied upon are actually legitimate targets of domestic surveillance.
The Air Force, like the rest of the military and the CIA, isn’t supposed to conduct “nonconsensual surveillance” on Americans domestically, according to an Apr. 23 instruction from the flying service. But should the drones taking off over American soil accidentally keep their cameras rolling and their sensors engaged, well … that’s a different story.
“Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent,” reads the instruction (.pdf), unearthed by the secrecy scholar Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. That kind of “incidental” spying won’t be immediately purged, however. The Air Force has “a period not to exceed 90 days” to get rid of it — while it determines “whether that information may be collected under the provisions” of a Pentagon directive that authorizes limited domestic spying.
CISPA, the Senate, and what should be done
The Internet has been in an uproar since the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was rushed through the US House of Representatives on Thursday. Why the bill was rushed, the tally of its final count, and what happens next have all been hot in the news. My goal today is to bring you a simple, easily digestible picture of where we are in regards to CISPA, what might happen next, and what should be done.
Now, as always, this post is not political in the normal sense. We’re not advocating a party, or a politician, and certainly not an ideology. Instead, our subject is narrow: CISPA, and what it might mean for the technology world. That makes it cogent, nay, critical for our continued discussion.
So, if our prose runs a touch sharper, and our analysis a bit more overt and pointed than what you might normally find on TNW, that’s why. Obviously, some elements of this post are perspective. We’ll treat you like an adult and assume that you can sift simple fact from commentary. If you can’t, head here.
And of course, if you don’t know much about CISPA, but want a bit of a primer, this is for you.
How to hide from face-detection technology
By John D. Sutter, CNN
(CNN) - If you take Adam Harvey’s advice, here’s what you might wanna wear to a party this weekend: A funny hat, asymmetrical glasses, a tuft of hair that dangles off your nose bridge and, most likely, a black-and-white triangle taped to your cheekbone. Optional: Cubic makeup patterns all around your eyes.
All of these otherworldly fashion accessories – which could leave a person looking kind of like an opulent villain from “The Hunger Games” - have a singular goal: to stop your face from being detected by cameras and computers. Called CV Dazzle (short for “computer vision dazzle;” more on the name later), Harvey’s project is a provocative and largely theoretical response to the rise of surveillance cameras on street corners and face-detecting technology that’s been incorporated into social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr.
If you employ these techniques, Harvey, 30, hopes computers won’t even know you have a face:
I don’t want to be unrealistic about it. It’s a pretty conceptual project but it seems to touch on a subject that people are still trying to figure out, which is how to adapt to living in surveillance societies, where not only are you being watched by government surveillance but by citizen surveillance and social-media-type surveillance.
‘CISPA: Patriot Act for the web’ – Internet activist
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 used to spy on people.
RT: Can you explain the difference between this legislation and the previous controversial bills aimed at combating piracy?
Aaron Swartz: The previous bills were about giving the government the power to censor the Internet. And this is more like a Patriot Act for the Internet. It sort of lets the government run roughshod over privacy protections and share personal data about you, take it from Facebook and Internet providers and use it without the normal privacy protections that are in the law.
RT: So as far as individuals are concerned, is it worse than the previous ones?
AS: Yes, it’s worse because it does allow the government to shut down websites for ‘national security’ reasons. It does have all the censorship problems the previous bill did. But it also goes much further and allows them to spy on people using the Internet, to get their personal data and e-mails. It’s an incredibly broad and dangerous bill.
