Tag: mass surveillance

Journalist Can’t Sue Rod Rosenstein for Alleged Illegal Spying on Her Family During Obama Admin Because of Qualified Immunity

Television journalist Sharyl Attkisson and her family sued former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein for illegally spying on them in violation of the Fourth Amendment and federal law during the Obama administration. A federal court dismissed the lawsuit earlier this week by finding that Rosenstein is entitled to qualified immunity.

The controversy has taken numerous paths through the legal system since the Attkissons claimed they discovered that the government had hacked into their computers and cellphones in 2014—first filing a lawsuit against former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, former U.S. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, and numerous “John Doe” agents with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) based on alleged violations of the First and Fourth Amendments.

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Spy firm can monitor YOUR car in real-time and is offering to sell the data it gets to other companies and the US military

A South Carolina-based surveillance firm that has sold services to the U.S. military is promoting its ability to provide real-time location information about 15 billion cars every month.

The company, called The Ulysses Group, says it can monitor vehicles in every country in the world, except North Korea and Cuba. 

The claims come from a document obtained by the office of U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) in which the company has detailed its capabilities. Wyden is investigating companies that sell the data of consumers.

The company says it can track cars through sensors in vehicle parts – either installed by the car company, or by the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) – the company that provided the components.

The sensors collect information such as airbag and seatbelt status, engine temperature, and location, and then transmit that information either back to the car maker or to third parties. 

Aggregator companies also purchase or obtain this data, repackage it, and then sell that data or products based on it to their own clients, Vice News reported on Wednesday.

Clients could include insurance companies, anti-terrorism agencies and the military 

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Diary reveals birth of secret UK-US spy pact that grew into Five Eyes

New documents have been released about the birth of a secret intelligence pact between the US and UK 75 years ago.

The documents, including diary entries, detail the war time meetings that began at Bletchley Park and led to the UKUSA deal being signed in March 1946.

The alliance involved working together to intercept communications and break codes, sharing almost everything.

It grew into what is today called the “Five Eyes” pact of the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

“Together, we are greater than the sum of our parts,” said Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ, and director of the US National Security Agency, Gen Paul Nakasone, in a joint statement to mark the anniversary, amid talk of expanding the group even further.

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POLICE DEPARTMENTS USE “CITIGRAF” TO SURVEIL EVERYONE, EVEN SCHOOL KIDS

Five years ago, law enforcement asked Genetec, a company closely associated with Homeland Security, to help them develop a public surveillance program which can monitor anyone at the touch of a button.

As Wired.com warned Genetec’s “Citigraf” allows police departments to use a combination of surveillance devices to monitor the public 24/7.

“To get a clear picture of an emergency in progress, officers often had to bushwhack through dozens of byzantine databases and feeds from far-flung sensors, including gunshot detectors, license plate readers, and public and private security cameras.”

At the click of the “INVESTIGATE” button, Citigraf gives law enforcement the ability to go through a city’s historical police records and live sensor feeds, looking for patterns and connections of person.

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This extension lets you know when a website is secretly phoning home to Big Tech

Want to see Big Tech’s monopoly over the internet? There is a browser extension that blocks any website that sends requests to IP addresses owned by the four Big Tech companies, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. If you use the extension just for a few hours, you will realize the modern internet is almost impossible to use without these companies.

To prove Big Tech’s monopoly, the Economic Security Project developed a browser extension called the Big Tech Detective.

Available on Chromium browsers and Mozilla’s Firefox, the extension tracks requests sent by websites and what companies the requests are sent to. You can configure the extension to block websites that send requests to the four Big Tech companies. A red pop-up will appear with information on the requests so you can get an idea of what is being requested.

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So Long as You Carry a Cellphone, the Government Can Track You

Cell phones are convenient devices, handily connecting us with loved ones, paying bills, accessing information—and treacherously reporting on our every move. Worse, even after the Supreme Court weighed in, many government agencies still insist that they have the right to pull up that tracking data to see our whereabouts. It’s increasingly apparent that, if you have your phone in your pocket, you may as well have a GPS beacon strapped to your ankle. If you want anonymity from the government, leave the gadget at home.

That point was illustrated in the wake of the Capitol riot, when the authorities pulled cell phone records to see who was present.

“In the hours and days after the Capitol riot, the FBI relied in some cases on emergency orders that do not require court authorization in order to quickly secure actual communications from people who were identified at the crime scene,” The Intercept reported this week. “Investigators have also relied on data ‘dumps’ from cellphone towers in the area to provide a map of who was there, allowing them to trace call records — but not content — from the phones.”

The data collected by people’s phones and the apps they use, often compiled by marketing firms, is amazingly detailed. An individual “outraged by the events of Jan. 6” supplied data on participants in the day’s events to The New York Times, whose writers were thoroughly creeped out by the information.

“While there were no names or phone numbers in the data, we were once again able to connect dozens of devices to their owners, tying anonymous locations back to names, home addresses, social networks and phone numbers of people in attendance,” Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson wrote.

Marketing databases have become a favorite resource for government agencies, which purchase the information as an attempted end-run around Fourth Amendment protections. The theory has been that, since the data is “voluntarily” provided to a third party there’s no privacy from the government required.

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