Tag: mass surveillance

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.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

No Warrant, No Problem; How Government Buys Its Way Around the 4th Amendment

When the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that law enforcement agencies need warrants before they can request geolocation data from cell phone companies, civil liberties advocates touted the judgment as a major win for privacy.

But since then, government agencies have devised a new surveillance method: instead of getting warrants to force companies to provide data, they simply purchase the information from brokers. Call it entrepreneurial innovation in the market for tyranny.

The scope of this activity has been slowly revealed over the last year, beginning with a February 2020 Wall Street Journal article, which reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has “bought access to a commercial database that maps the movements of millions of cellphones in American and is using it for immigration and border enforcement.” Later reports revealed that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) purchase similar data.

Had the world not essentially collapsed about a month later, this might have been big news. Alas, government’s data purchases have gone largely unpublicized in the midst of pandemics, riots, elections, and so on.

Keep reading

Absurdity: Automated Police Surveillance Will Reduce Racial Bias And Allow People To “Maintain A Safe Lifestyle”

As the pandemic enters its second year, two recent stories used to justify increasing public surveillance seem almost too incredible to believe.

Two years ago, I reported on an absurd claim about how the Riverhead Police Departments’ surveillance drones could be used to create a “community connection.”

Splitting Riverhead’s current police foot patrol sector into two sectors would “create more of a community connection in the area that the officers are patrolling,” Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith said. “There’s more eyes and ears in the area, and hopefully that will lead to more people coming to shop and recreate in downtown more.”

In my story I noted how the Department Of Justice’s guidebook the “Community Policing & Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Guidelines to Enhance Community Trust” was designed to help law enforcement convince the American public to accept surveillance drones.

The Police Foundation, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, has developed this guidebook to help public safety agencies successfully assess the appropriateness of acquiring a sUAS in their jurisdiction, all the while ensuring public support, avoiding public-relations pitfalls, and enhancing community trust along the way.

A recent Fox 5 DC story about traffic cameras could rise to the top of my absurd reasons to convince the public to accept more police surveillance.

Keep reading

New “See Something, Say Something Online Act” Turns Social Media Users Into Spies

Senator Joe Manchin wants to bring DHS’s spy on your neighbors, “If You See, Something Say Something”  program to social media, blogs, websites, and much more. Manchin’s bill, the “See Something, Say Something Online Act” would essentially turn social media users into Federal spies by forcing them to report suspicious people to law enforcement.

Just how bad is this bill?

This bill would essentially force anyone on social media to report suspicious “transmissions” to law enforcement.

“Known Suspicious Transmission.—The term ‘‘known suspicious transmission’’ is any suspicious transmission that an interactive computer service should have reasonably known to have occurred or have been notified of by a director, officer, employ, agent, interactive computer service user, or State or Federal law enforcement agency.”

Major Crime —The term ‘‘major crime’’ means a Federal criminal offense that is a crime of violence (as defined 13 in section 16 of title 18, United States Code); relating to domestic or international terrorism (as those terms are defined in section 16 2331 of title 18, United States Code)

What exactly is a known suspicious transmission or major crime?

The term “suspicious transmission” means any public or private post, message, comment, tag, transaction, or any other user-generated content or transmission that commits, facilitates, incites, promotes, or otherwise assists the commission of a major crime.

How could social media users, bloggers, web forum moderators, web conferencing users, etc. know that a comment left or uttered by someone would later lead to them committing a major crime?

The See Something, Say Something Online Act would force social media users into red-flagging every person’s comments just in case someone commits a major crime in the future.

This bill would effectively destroy the First Amendment as we know it, dispelling any vestiges of America still being a free country.

Social media users would be forced to submit a Suspicious Transmission Activity Report (STAR) on suspicious individuals within 30 days.

“In General.—If a provider of an interactive computer service detects a suspicious transmission, the interactive computer service, including any director, officer, employee, agent, or representative of such provider, shall submit to the Department a STAR describing the suspicious transmission in accordance with this section.”

As Reason warned, the See Something, Say Something Online Act would put reporting on your fellow American on steroids. It would create a glut of frivolous reports, including many that are politically motivated, or otherwise disingenuous.

Keep reading

Woman Gets Late-Night Police Visit For Anti-Mask Facebook Posts

Florida hair and makeup artist and mother of three Angelique Contreras received an intimidating late-night knock on the door from a law enforcement officer in Palm Beach County after she published anti-mask posts on Facebook. NATIONAL FILE has obtained video footage of this disturbing 10:30 PM encounter. Contreras verbally confirmed with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office that it was a sheriff’s officer who made the house call.

According to Contreras, Palm Beach County is trying to send citizens who can’t wear masks due to medical exemptions into a parking garage basement while County Commission meetings take place. Local press reporting confirms that mask-exempt citizens who want to speak at meetings will be sent to a separate building beneath a parking garage, instead of being able to address their leaders directly. When a man on Facebook joked about dumping garbage onto a County Administrator’s lawn, Contreras replied with the retort, “thousands of Mask(s).” This was enough to get the sheriff’s office to show up to her house, with the officer making clear that such Facebook posts are monitored in this day and age. Contreras’ children are aged 11, 3, and 1.

Keep reading