Tag: mass surveillance

Government Eyes In the Sky

In August 2016, Bloomberg Businessweek revealed the existence of a pilot program being operated by the Baltimore Police Department in which small manned aircraft circled over the city all day, using cameras to continuously photograph a 32-square-mile area and giving police the ability to retroactively track any vehicle or pedestrian within that area. It was the ultimate Big Brother “eye in the sky”—and yet the Baltimore police had not notified the public or even the mayor or city council about the program. Revelation of the secret program generated a storm of controversy, and eventually it was put on hold—though in December 2019, the city’s police commissioner announced that the program would be revived.

The technology behind the Baltimore program involves pointing multiple cameras toward the ground and stitching those images together into a single, larger photograph. It also uses computers to automatically correct for the changing camera angles of the circling planes as well as factors such as topographic variances and lens distortion.

The result is a surveillance system of enormous power, able to reconstruct the movements of all visible vehicles and pedestrians across a city—where they start and finish each journey and the paths they take in between. It can allow tracking of a great proportion of people’s movements throughout a city.

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Schools gave laptops to kids during pandemic — then they spied on the students for their own good

Schools across the United States reportedly handed out laptops to pupils for distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic — and then spied on them with the very same electronic device, according to a Monday report from The Guardian.

What are the details?

According to recently released research from the Center for Democracy and Technology, 86% of teachers polled said their schools provided electronic learning devices — such as tablets, laptops, and Chromebooks — for students to use at home at nearly double the rate when compared year over year.

Many of those devices, however, were reportedly being used to monitor students — even going as far as to “[comb] through private chats, emails, and documents” — in order to protect them from harassment and suicidal ideations.

The research noted that more than 80% of teachers surveyed admitted that their schools used such surveillance software on those student devices.

One anonymous administrator told the Center for Democracy and Technology that many teachers believe that spying on kids for the greater good will have only positive impacts on the students being surveilled.

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National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Tracks Everything

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency published the agency’s data strategy Oct. 6, outlining its plans to transform and improve the way data is created, managed and shared in order to maintain dominance in the delivery of geospatial intelligence.

“It is essential that we take all actions necessary to sustain our advantage in GEOINT — and that includes managing our data as a key strategic asset,’’ stated NGA Director Vice Adm. Robert Sharp in the data strategy. “With the holistic enterprise approach mapped out within this new data strategy, NGA sets forth a path for leading the way and staying ahead of our competitors.’’

The NGA Data Strategy 2021, a 28-page public document, includes both strategic goals and courses of action for the agency as it continues to chart a secure and innovative path forward while facing increasing amounts of data, risk and competition.

Aligned to the agency’s Moonshot effort to “deliver trusted GEOINT with the speed, accuracy and precision required,’’ the strategy calls for the accelerated, shared and trusted use of data to help NGA better deliver on its mandates and show the way.

The plan, created as a companion document to the NGA Technology Strategy published in 2020, already has played an integral role in the agency’s recent adoption of a new data governance structure to provide a coordinated framework for data policies and stewardship.

The data strategy, combined with the established collaborative data governance program, guides the agency’s push to close the gap between current and future capabilities by accelerating developments in four significant focus areas: making data easily accessible, improving data reusability, improving cross-domain efficiencies and enabling next-generation GEOINT.

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It Begins: Federal Investigators Are Issuing Warrants for Google to Turn Over Anyone Typing in Certain Search Terms

It begins.
The federal government is issuing warrants from compliant Google to turn over anyone typing in certain search terms.

But they assure the American public that they can be trusted. Just like the federal government assured Americans they would not abuse the secret FISA courts to spy on innocent Americans!

We now know that crooked feds were spying on Donald Trump, his family, his campaign and his presidency using the secret courts to obtain warrants.

This is your brave new world. Get used to it.

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London Slips Into Technocracy, Becomes Blueprint For The World

Last week we covered Telosa, a technocratic metropolis slated to be home to 5 million people by 2060. Previously we’ve investigated plans to turn Nevada into a hub of technocracy. These stories need telling but we by just looking into the future we can miss sight of the fact that the truth the technocratic city is already here.

For better or worse, London has long been considered one of the world’s great cities. It has produced many of the world’s great artists, writers, and thinkers. Many of the world’s most renowned museums are here, housing priceless historical artifacts and works of art. London’s palaces, parks, gardens, and squares make it an architect’s playground.

Conversely, London is also known as a place where freedom and privacy are nearly extinct. It is one of the world’s most surveilled cities, ranking second globally in CCTV cameras per square (1,138) and third in CCTV cameras per person (73 per 1,000). The city’s police have recently purchased facial recognition technology in order to process historic images from these CCTV cameras as well as social media platforms and other sources. This is in addition to the Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology already deployed in the city.

But this is just one small part of life in one of the world’s most technocratic and surveilled cities. In 2018 the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan launched Smarter London Together, his roadmap to make London “the smartest city in the world.” This initiative builds on an older so-called roadmap from 2013, the Smart London Plan which was rolled out by then mayor and current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. This perfectly illustrates how politicians may come, go, and move around while the technocratic agenda moves forward without resistance.

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Australian Authorities Show Up to Woman’s Home and Harass Her Over Social Media Posts: “We Have Instructions Because You Have Been Posting Things”

Things just continue getting worse and worse for Australian citizens under the rule of their tyrannical health regime.

Scenes coming out of the country have been absolutely shocking. In response to the massive protests that have been going on for weeks, the radical-left Australian government has turned to brutal violence against its unarmed citizens in an effort to stamp out the unrest. Gangs of police rove the streets, beating people who dare to disobey before hauling them away.

Authorities have even started ambushing unsuspecting protesters and opening fire with non-lethal bullets at their backs as they flee.

Despite the violent crackdown, the massive protests have persisted for weeks and more people keep showing up. The crowds are so large that the Australian authorities are pressuring the government to issue no-fly zones over the areas with the most people in order to blackout the media.

Now in an attempt to get fewer people to go to protests, Australian authorities are showing up at people’s homes and intimidating them because they’ve made unapproved posts on social media. Recently, two government officials were caught on video when they showed up at an unsuspecting woman’s home and attempted to bully her into not leaving her house.

After the two covid-Gestapo gave the woman a hard time for (rightfully) keeping a camera on them, they explained to her that they had “instructions” to come speak with her specifically because she had been “posting things on social media” about an upcoming protest on Tuesday. 

“I’m here to remind you to ensure that you need to stay at home in relation to Covid stay at home orders and if there is or is not a protest on Tuesday – regardless – you still can’t leave [your home] and go to a protest of any sort.“

When the woman recording the video pushes back on them, the pair of goons even admits that protesting is a constitutional right for Australians, but they don’t care at all – they are following orders…

…and you better too – Stay inside, or else.

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UK Military Wants to Spy on Social Media to Detect “Change in Population Sentiment”

The UK Ministry of Defence has inadvertently revealed its plan to spy on social media platforms in order to detect “change(s) in population sentiment.”

Despite ostensibly being about “better use of existing silos,” the MoD’s Data Strategy for Defence document explains how the military should move towards “Automated scanning of social media platforms” to detect “change in population sentiment.”

“Nowhere does the document explain why a strategy paper has gone so far off the beaten track that it promotes collecting data the MoD doesn’t have and using it for decidedly non-military purposes,” reports the Register.

Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the military has increasingly turned its attention inward towards its own citizens rather than doing what it should do, which is fighting foreign adversaries.

As author Laura Dodsworth revealed, GCHQ has embroiled itself in anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown messaging by targeting people who challenge the official COVID narrative online.

“She says some people believe they have been targeted by the 77th Brigade, part of the 6th Division of the Army,” reported the Telegraph.

According to the Ministry of Defence, the 77th Brigade uses “legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of the opposing forces and adversaries.”

The military’s main “adversaries” are now apparently British citizens who complain about lockdown while questioning the efficacy and safety of vaccines.

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Covert Postal Service unit probed Jan. 6 social media

In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, an obscure arm of the U.S. Postal Service did some serious internet sleuthing.

On Jan. 11, the United States Postal Inspection Service’s Internet Covert Operations Program — better known as iCOP — sent bulletins to law enforcement agencies around the country on how to view social media posts that had been deleted. It also described its scrutiny of posts on the fringe social media network Wimkin.

Few Americans are aware that the same organization that delivers their mail also runs a robust surveillance operation rooted in an agency that dates back to the 18th century. And iCOP’s involvement raises questions about how broad the mandate of the Postal Service’s policing arm has grown from its stated mission of keeping mail deliverers safe.

The documents also point to potential gaps in the Jan. 6 select committee’s investigation by revealing concerns about a company it is not known to be scrutinizing. And those documents point to a new challenge for law enforcement in the post-Jan. 6 era: how to track extremist organizing across a host of low-profile platforms.

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