Tag: mass surveillance

DHS has a program gathering domestic intelligence — and virtually no one knows about it

For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence, one of many revelations in a wide-ranging tranche of internal documents reviewed by POLITICO.

Those documents also reveal that a significant number of employees in DHS’s intelligence office have raised concerns that the work they are doing could be illegal.

Under the domestic-intelligence program, officials are allowed to seek interviews with just about anyone in the United States. That includes people held in immigrant detention centers, local jails, and federal prison. DHS’s intelligence professionals have to say they’re conducting intelligence interviews, and they have to tell the people they seek to interview that their participation is voluntary. But the fact that they’re allowed to go directly to incarcerated people — circumventing their lawyers — raises important civil liberties concerns, according to legal experts.

That specific element of the program, which has been in place for years, was paused last year because of internal concerns. DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which runs the program, uses it to gather information about threats to the U.S., including transnational drug trafficking and organized crime. But the fact that this low-profile office is collecting intelligence by questioning people in the U.S. is virtually unknown.

The inner workings of the program — called the “Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program” — are described in the large tranche of internal documents POLITICO reviewed from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Those documents and additional interviews revealed widespread internal concerns about legally questionable tactics and political pressure. The documents also show that people working there fear punishment if they speak out about mismanagement and abuses.

One unnamed employee — quoted in an April 2021 document — said leadership of I&A’s Office of Regional Intelligence “is ‘shady’ and ‘runs like a corrupt government.’” Another document said some employees worried so much about the legality of their activities that they wanted their employer to cover legal liability insurance.

Keep reading

The Department of Homeland Security Turns 20. Its Legacy Is Disastrous.

To those who don’t remember the events of September 11, 2001, it can be difficult to convey the sense of dread and uncertainty that followed. As horrible as the attacks were, many of us wondered: What’s next?

It was in this context that Congress quickly passed, and President George W. Bush signed, such legislation as the USA PATRIOT Act, less than two months after 9/11. While that law was drafted with the best of intentions—strengthening the nation’s defenses against potential future attacks—in practice, authorities overwhelmingly use it to circumvent Americans’ basic freedoms like privacy and due process.

Similarly, less than a month after the attacks, Bush signed an executive order establishing the Office of Homeland Security. The office would “coordinate the executive branch’s efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States.”

But that was apparently not enough: In June 2002, Bush proposed an entirely new Cabinet department dedicated to “transforming and realigning the current confusing patchwork of government activities into a single department whose primary mission is to protect our homeland.” Bush’s proposal promised that by consolidating multiple agencies under a single director, the new department would “improve efficiency without growing government.”

In November of that year, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which established the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and brought nearly two dozen disparate agencies, including the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), the U.S. Secret Service, and the Coast Guard, under its purview. The newly incorporated department officially opened 20 years ago today, on March 1, 2003.

The department’s stated intent was to prevent terrorist attacks and protect the homeland. Twenty years later, what is there to show for it?

Keep reading

Dystopia Down Under: Facial Mood-Tracking CCTV Cameras Deployed at Mardi Gras Pride Parade

Surveillance cameras with the ability to measure a crowd’s “mood” and track the number of people by counting cell phone frequencies were deployed at the Lesbian and Gay Mardi Gras Parade on Saturday in Sydney, Australia.

The CCTV technology from the Dynamic Crowd Measurement firm was used to monitor Oxford Street in Sydney as the city’s LGBTQ-themed Mardi Gras parade was held for the first time since 2019, having been cancelled for the past three years due to the Chinese coronavirus.

According to a report from the Sydney Morning Herald, the cutting-edge cameras came equipped with the ability to track the mood of the crowd, with software being able to track facial expressions and determine whether they are displaying signs of happiness, anger, or neutrality.

The cameras also come with the ability to measure crowd density by counting the number of cell phone frequencies emitted in a given area. It was estimated that around 12,000 people attended on Saturday.

Keep reading

WHO Calls for Global Surveillance to Ensure No One Escapes Vaccination

The World Health Organization (WHO) is planning to use the wealth of Bill Gates to expand the global surveillance apparatus to a degree that anyone with any ailment will be quickly identified and prevented from spreading any disease he is suspected of having.

That unbelievable goal is a substantial part of the scheme known as the WHO Zero Draft of the International Instrument on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response, which The New American reported on Wednesday.

In a presentation delivered on February 5 explaining the globalists’ purpose in putting the whole world under the watchful eye of Bill Gates and his globalist water carriers, Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO’s  COVID-19 Technical Lead, declared:

We want to end this emergency in every country, so we need to strengthen the systems in countries around surveillance. So that any individual, if they are infected with whatever they have — flu, respiratory syncytial virus [RSV], COVID-19 — will receive that antiviral as quickly as possible.

That’s right. The WHO is calling on member states to deploy more robust surveillance systems in order to identify people with any disease whatsoever so that the “infected” person can be identified and vaccinated “as quickly as possible.”

While I would encourage everyone reading this article to watch Van Kerkhove’s presentation, I would likewise encourage you to read the Zero Draft and acquaint yourself with the WHO’s plans and the language they use to explain and justify the execution of those plans by the governments of WHO member states. Here are a couple examples from the text of the WHO’s pandemic plan:

Each Party shall, in accordance with national law, adopt policies and strategies, supported by implementation plans, across the public and private sectors and relevant agencies, consistent with relevant tools, including, but not limited to, the International Health Regulations, and strengthen and reinforce public health functions for … surveillance (including using a One Health approach), outbreak investigation and control, through interoperable early warning and alert systems…. (Chapter IV, Article 11, Section 4(c))

The Parties commit to strengthen multisectoral, coordinated, interoperable and integrated One Health surveillance systems and strengthen laboratory capacity to identify and assess the risks and emergence of pathogens and variants with pandemic potential, in order to minimize spill-over events, mutations and the risks associated with zoonotic neglected tropical and vector-borne diseases, with a view to preventing small-scale outbreaks in wildlife or domesticated animals from becoming a pandemic. (Chapter V, Article 18, Section 7)

Pay close attention to the language. This Zero Draft, should it be adopted by WHO, will be forced upon countries who are signatories to WHO and the citizens of those countries. Those citizens will be placed under surveillance — surveillance developed, deployed, and driven by a cabal of nameless, faceless, unelected, and unaccountable global bureaucrats who will use these expanded surveillance systems to identify every man, woman, and child in every country who has not been vaccinated and isolate and vaccinate that person so that they cannot “infect” others.

This is the world we live in.

Keep reading

Supreme Court refuses to hear challenge to NSA mass surveillance

The entity behind Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundations partnered with the ACLU and the Knight Institute to try to get the US Supreme Court to force Congress to curtail the current NSA internet surveillance.

The decision leaves the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit with a divided opinion, which threw out Wikimedia’s challenge accepting the government’s “state secrets privilege” argument.

The notorious agency’s legal basis for such surveillance are based on FISA (Foreign Surveillance Act) which grew into quite a “monster” since it was first passed in 1978, and in particular after 9/11 – and, specifically with Section 702, introduced in 2008.

Section 702 is up for renewal later this year and this is what the petition sought to prevent. The contested legislation proved to be the foundation of much of the mass surveillance wrongdoings revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013.

Wikimedia and others unsuccessfully attempted to ensure that the NSA “upstream” surveillance program (the harmful nature of which is said to be backed up by a number of disclosures coming from government sources) would be “reviewed” rather than simply renewed this time. It allows the spy agency to search internet traffic to and from the US, and that means emails, messages and other communication belonging to Americans.

This means that both those on US soil and targeted individuals abroad are spied on.

Keep reading

NSA on massive hiring spree, snatching up laid-off Big Tech workers from Meta, Zoom, and Twitter

The National Security Agency (NSA) is scooping up laid-off Big Tech employees in the biggest hiring spree by the intelligence organization in 30 years, poaching talent from Silicon Valley companies such as Meta, Zoom, and Twitter, among others, to add to its spying ranks.

The NSA is scouring LinkedIn for 3,000 tech workers in what it is describing as an “unprecedented hiring effort in 2023.”

It’s been a bloodbath as the Big Tech sector has seen more than 200,000 laid off since last year with analysts and software engineers finding employment within roughly eight weeks of being let go. They are being paid handsome severance packages on the way out the door.

Zoom cut ties with 1,300 workers last week. That was 13 percent of its workforce. The CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, has said he would slash his own $1.1 million salary by 98 percent, according to the Daily Mail. Other executives can expect to see their salaries cut by roughly 20 percent and there will reportedly be no annual bonuses in 2023. Those laid off will be given 16 weeks’ salary and healthcare coverage, as well as their 2023 annual bonuses. They will also get stock options vesting for six months, along with one-on-one coaching, workshops, and networking sessions.

“We have made the tough but necessary decision to reduce our team by approximately 15 percent and say goodbye to around 1,300 hardworking, talented colleagues,” Yuan wrote in a message on Zoom Blog 30 minutes prior to sending out emails terminating employees. “I know this is a difficult message to hear, and certainly not one I ever wanted to deliver.”

Keep reading

The New York City Department of Health created “Misinformation Response Unit” to monitor social media

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene set up a “Misinformation Response Unit” to monitor what it would determine to be “dangerous misinformation” posted on social media, non-US sites, and non-English media in the US.

This “misinformation” mostly had to do with Covid vaccination – the Department was determined to drive vaccination rates up by spreading its word, and in this gathered over 100 partners whose job was to craft positive messaging around the controversial subject.

Among those the dedicated new unit is working with is Public Good Projects, otherwise known for receiving funding from a lobbying group representing two major Covid vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna.

Their “good” work here also included sending Twitter, on a weekly basis, lists of posts slated for censorship.

In an article published by the NEJM Catalyst journal, those behind the effort are now assessing the Unit’s work as successful, what with it being able to “rapidly identify messages” deemed as containing inaccurate information about the virus, vaccines, treatment, etc.

And although admitting that “vaccine hesitancy” remains high around the world even two years after the vaccines were first introduced – and this is something attributed to “disinformation and misinformation” and continues to worry the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Surgeon General, as well as “medical experts” – the New York City Health Department thinks that it did well in getting its own narrative out, particularly in traditional media.

Keep reading

The FBI’s Most Controversial Surveillance Tool Is Under Threat

AN EXISTENTIAL FIGHT over the US government’s ability to spy on its own citizens is brewing in Congress. And as this fight unfolds, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s biggest foes on Capitol Hill are no longer reformers merely interested in reining in its authority. Many lawmakers, elevated to new heights of power by the recent election, are working to dramatically curtail the methods by which the FBI investigates crime.

New details about the FBI’s failures to comply with restrictions on the use of foreign intelligence for domestic crimes have emerged at a perilous time for the US intelligence community. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the so-called crown jewel of US intelligence, grants the government the ability to intercept the electronic communications of overseas targets who are unprotected by the Fourth Amendment.

That authority is set to expire at the end of the year. But errors in the FBI’s secondary use of the data—the investigation of crimes on US soil—are likely to inflame an already fierce debate over whether law enforcement agents can be trusted with such an invasive tool. 

Central to this tension has been a routine audit by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) national security division and the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI)—America’s “top spy”—which unearthed new examples of the FBI failing to comply with rules limiting access to intelligence ostensibly gathered to protect US national security. Such “errors,” they said, have occurred on a “large number” of occasions.

A report on the audit, only recently declassified, found that in the first half of 2020, FBI personnel unlawfully searched raw FISA data on numerous occasions. In one incident, agents reportedly sought evidence of foreign influence linked to a US lawmaker. In another, an inappropriate search pertained to a local political party. In both cases, these “errors” attributed to a “misunderstanding” of the law, the report says.

At some point between December 2019 and May 2020, FBI personnel conducted searches of FISA data using “only the name of a US congressman,” the report says, a query that investigators later found was “noncompliant” with legal procedures. While some searches were “reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information,” investigators said, they were also “overly broad as constructed.”

In another incident, the FBI ran searches using the “names of a local political party,” even though a connection to foreign intelligence was “not reasonably likely.” The DOJ explained the errors away by saying FBI personnel “misunderstood” the search procedures, adding they were “subsequently reminded of how to correctly apply the query rules.” These are the mistakes that will ultimately serve as ammunition in the coming fight to diminish the FBI’s power.

Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s national security program at New York University School of Law, says that while troubling, the misuse was entirely predictable. “When the government is allowed to access Americans’ private communications without a warrant, that opens the door to surveillance based on race, religion, politics, or other impermissible factors,” she says.

Keep reading

When the CIA Spied on American Citizens—Using Pigeons

FLYING ABOVE THE WASHINGTON NAVY Yard, a spy was taking a series of pictures that revealed more than even the most advanced satellites, while the workers below went about their day-to-day lives, not knowing they were the subject of an espionage mission. Looking to gain an edge in the Cold War, in 1977 the Central Intelligence Agency had recruited a new, nearly invisible agent: a pigeon.

It may sound unusual, but the idea of using pigeons for espionage wasn’t without merit. The place of pigeons in an army was first recorded by the Roman historian Pliny, who described their role in communication, and the German army in World War I were the first to explore the use of pigeons for reconnaissance. The United States military had itself been using pigeons since the late 1800s for communication, but “I could not document any instance of them being used for reconnaissance,” says Elizabeth Macalaster, author of War Pigeons: Winged Couriers in the U.S. Military, 1878-1957.

Keep reading

Mississippi Bill Would Mandate Surveillance Cameras in Schools and Colleges

A bill introduced last week in the Mississippi Legislature would require public schools and postsecondary institutions to install video surveillance cameras all over their campuses. The bill would require that the cameras also record audio and that they be installed in classrooms, auditoriums, cafeterias, gyms, hallways, recreational areas, and along each facility’s perimeter. Further, it would permit students’ parents to view live feeds of classroom instruction, according to the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes (R–Picayune). 

“We have so much critical race theory being taught in our schools and different issues,” Wilkes said before introducing the bill. “It holds teachers accountable. It also helps them with discipline. Parents can’t come in there and say, ‘my child didn’t do that.'” The bill lists “monitoring classroom instruction” as an authorized use of surveillance footage. 

Wilkes did not respond to a request from Reason for further comment.

The bill would also authorize parents to request access to footage of an “incident” in which their child was involved. Schools must notify parents before classes begin each semester that cameras will be in use at their child’s school. Campus signage will notify students, teachers, and visitors of where cameras are in use.

Although the bill provides that cameras “shall only be installed in areas where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy,” the areas in which cameras would be statutorily required—specifically, the school cafeteria, recreational areas, and “interior corridors”—are precisely the types of places where students often carry on conversations they perceive to be relatively private. 

Schools would be required to back up footage to a cloud-based system and scrub it after 90 days of storage, unless it becomes relevant to a qualifying school or legal investigation. However, school data troves are notoriously leaky and susceptible to hacking attacks. According to the K12 Security Information Exchange’s 2022 annual report, there have been “a total of 1,331 publicly disclosed school cyber incidents affecting U.S. school districts (and other public educational organizations)” since 2016. 

The bill does not raise any obvious constitutional questions, assuming, of course, that cameras in college classrooms are not used to abridge the academic freedom of professors or students. But its cultural implications are massive. Primary school is mandatory. Many schools are already staffed by “resource officers.” Add numerous cameras or metal detectors, and schools might start to feel more like holding centers than places of learning.

Keep reading