Tag: mass surveillance

U.S. Government Contractor Embedded Software in more than 500 Apps to Track Phones of hundreds of millions of users!!!

A damning new WSJ report says a small U.S. government contractor embedded software in over 500 apps, tracking millions of people worldwide.

According to the report:

A small U.S. company with ties to the U.S. defense and intelligence communities has embedded its software in numerous mobile apps, allowing it to track the movements of hundreds of millions of mobile phones world-wide, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Anomaly Six LLC is the company in question, apparently boasting in marketing material that it was “able to draw location data from more than 500 mobile applications” from its own software development kit, embedded directly in some apps:

Anomaly Six says it embeds its own SDK in some apps, and in other cases gets location data from other partners.

The report says Anomaly Six is a federal contractor that provides global location data “to branches of the U.S. government and private-sector clients”. It told WSJ that it restricts the sale of U.S. mobile phone movement data only to the private sector, however.

Keep reading

DHS Sued Over Its Social Media Surveillance Tactics

On paper at least, when a federal agency receives a FOIA request, it’s required to respond with either a denial or a so-called “grant of access” within the span of 20 business days. As the CDT points out in its suit, even if every requested document can’t be released in this time frame, at the very least the agency should notify which documents are on the table, which are being withheld, and give the party asking for these docs the right to appeal these decisions.

By that rationale, when the CDT filed its initial FOIA request in mid-August 2019, it should have heard a response sometime in mid-September. Instead, it alleges that it hasn’t gotten a substantial request to date. Even USCIS—the only agency to offer any sort of timeline for wrangling these requested documents—initially estimated it would take until the end of December. In the 13 months since its self-set deadline, the CDT alleges the agency hasn’t returned any of the records requested.

“The public deserves to know how the government scrutinizes social media data when deciding who can enter or stay in the country,” said CDT General Counsel Avery Gardiner in a statement. “Government surveillance has necessary limits, particularly constitutional ones.”

Keep reading

Big Brother Is Spying On You In Thousands Of Ways, And All Of That Info Now Goes Into Centralized “Fusion Systems”

Big Brother is watching you.  Sadly, most people don’t realize how extensive the surveillance grid has now become.  As you drive to work or to school, license plate readers are systematically tracking where you travel.  In major cities, thousands of highly advanced security cameras (many equipped with facial recognition technology) are monitoring your every move.  If authorities detect that you are doing something suspicious, they can quickly pull up your criminal, financial and medical records.  Of course if they want to dig deeper, your phone and your computer are constantly producing a treasure trove of surveillance data.  Nothing that you do on either one of them is ever private.

In the past, compiling all of that information would take a great deal of time.  But now tech giants such as Microsoft, Motorola, Cisco and Palantir are selling “fusion systems” to governments all over the planet.  These “fusion systems” can instantly integrate surveillance data from thousands of different sources, and this has totally transformed how law enforcement is conducted in many of our largest cities.

Keep reading

There Are Spying Eyes Everywhere—and Now They Share a Brain

Citigraf was conceived in 2016, when the Chicago Police Department hired Genetec to solve a surveillance conundrum. Like other large law enforcement organizations around the country, the department had built up such an impressive arsenal of technologies for keeping tabs on citizens that it had reached the point of surveillance overload. 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. This process of braiding together strands of information—“multi-intelligence fusion” is the technical term—was becoming too difficult. As one Chicago official put it, echoing a well-worn aphorism in surveillance circles, the city was “data-rich but information-poor.” What investigators needed was a tool that could cut a clean line through the labyrinth. What they needed was automated fusion.

Keep reading

Biden Takes Trump’s Wall to Next Level, New “Smart” Wall Will Spy on Americans Hundreds of Miles Inland

On January 20, in the minds of the establishment left, a new dawn was on the horizon with nothing but unicorns, a$15 minimum wage, and free health care and college for all. However, many on the left are already learning that their new messiah, Joseph R. Biden, is not that different from the right’s former messiah when it comes to wars, the police state, and immigration.

Though the right claims Biden is “going to open up the borders” so all the immigrants can rush in and “take our jobs and rape our children” that is not what will happen. For people outraged by Trump putting “kids in cages” as part of his crackdown on illegal immigration over the last four years, Joe Biden is not different, in fact when you read below to see what is unfolding, you will see that he is worse.

Remember, Biden was vice president during the Obama administration which aggressively deported more immigrants than Trump and who also put “kids in cages.” In fact, the photos used to first bring attention to kids in cages under Trump, were actually taken during Biden’s tenure as VP and the detention facilities were an Obama-era creation.

Sure, Biden used executive action to stop the construction of Trump’s silly wall that was easily scalable and could easily be circumvented. He also stopped new enrollments in the Migrant Protection Protocols program, which forced asylum seekers to wait in often-dangerous circumstances in Mexico for their US immigration hearings. However, this is little more than virtue signaling for which the media can have something to praise him. Behind the scenes, Biden and his advisers have something in the works that dwarfs Trump’s wall — a “virtual” or “smart” wall.

Biden’s new “Smart” wall will use advanced surveillance technology to patrol the border, presenting a danger to immigrants and citizens alike. According to a report in The Nation, while the full text of the immigration legislative proposal Biden sent to Congress has not been made public, a fact sheet distributed to reporters contains a section titled “Supplement existing border resources with technology and Infrastructure,” which calls for additional funding to, among other things, “enhance the ability to process asylum seekers” and “manage and secure the southern border between ports of entry that focuses on flexible solutions and technologies that expand the ability to detect illicit activity.”

The smart wall will not be as obvious and physically offensive as an actual wall, but aerial drones, infrared cameras, motion sensors, radar, facial recognition, and artificial intelligence is far more ominous than steel and bricks.

Keep reading

Rights Advocates Alarmed by US Spy Agency’s Purchase of Warrantless Phone Location Data

Digital rights advocates reacted with alarm to a report published Friday detailing how Defense Intelligence Agency analysts in recent years bought databases of U.S. smartphone location data without first obtaining warrants.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is part of the Department of Defense and is tasked with informing military and civilian policymakers about the activities and intentions of foreign governments and nonstate actors.

The new revelation, first reported by the New York Times, initially came in the form of DIA responses to questions from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) regarding the agency’s warrantless purchase of commercial location data generated by phones both inside and outside of the United States.

Wyden asked the DIA to clarify its interpretation of Carpenter v. United States, a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision barring law enforcement agencies from requesting personal location information from a cellphone company without first obtaining a search warrant from a judge.

“DIA does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially-available data for intelligence purposes,” the agency replied, implicitly acknowledging its exploitation of an apparent loophole in the case that DIA believes permits its warrantless acquisition of location data from third-party brokers.

Keep reading

Our Post-9/11 Response Deprived Us of Liberty and Didn’t Stop Terrorism. Let’s Not Venerate or Expand It.

Writing at The Daily Beast, Jeff Stein asks whether America needs a new federal spy agency focused on domestic threats in the wake of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Americans who refuse to accept that outgoing President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

But we already have such an organization. It’s called the FBI. Stein argues that the FBI is so focused on solving and clearing crimes that it’s not able to effectively engage in domestic intelligence gathering. He asks whether a new federal agency should be created for that purpose.

In reality, the FBI is set up just fine for intelligence gathering. In fact, under Trump, the FBI’s authority to secretly snoop on American citizens was actually expanded. The intelligence failures that preceded the attack on the Capitol involved a lack of communication between law enforcement agencies about the intelligence that had been gathered. It’s not entirely clear how yet another federal surveillance agency would fix that problem.

Keep reading

How “Smart” Bulbs Track Your Behavior (Even When Lights Are Turned Off) and Why Manufacturers Want Your Data

Privacy and security experts have warned for many years about privacy and cybersecurity risks associated with ALL “Smart” and wireless technology – cell phones (see 1, 2, 3), medical devices and implants (see 1, 2), personal and “Smart” home devices and wearables (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), utility “Smart” meters (electric, gas, and water), and everything that uses Internet of Things (IoT) technology (see 1, 2). Last month, researchers from Carnegie Melon University proposed product warning labels that would make it easier for consumers to understand this.

Of course, manufacturers may not be in a hurry to use them because their “Smart” products allow them to collect data on consumers to analyze and sell to 3rd parties.  This is referred to as “Surveillance Capitalism.” “Smart” light bulbs can be used for this as well.

Keep reading

DHS’s Facial/Iris Recognition Can ID Airline Passengers Wearing Masks

It is official, unless airline passengers are willing to wear motorcycle helmets or Daft Punk style masks, the Feds can use facial and iris recognition to identify nearly everyone.

According to an S&T press release, a pilot program run by DHS proves they can use facial/iris recognition to identify airline passengers.

The in-person rally, held at the Maryland Test Facility (MdTF), included 10 days of human testing during which six face and/or iris acquisition systems and 13 matching algorithms were tested with help from 582 diverse test volunteers representing 60 countries.

What is DHS’s so-called motivation to ID everyone?

Keep reading