Tag: privacy

Corporate Investors Pour Billions Into ‘Digital Snoops’ to Spy on Workers’ Every Move

For generations, workers have been punished by corporate bosses for watching the clock. But now, the corporate clock is watching workers! They count this as progress.

Called “digital productivity monitoring,” it’s an integrated computer system including a real-time clock, camera, keyboard tracker and algorithms to provide a second-by-second record of what each employee is doing.

Jeff Bezos, boss of Amazon, pioneered the use of this ticking electronic eye in his monstrous warehouses, forcing hapless, low-paid “pickers” to sprint down cavernous stacks of consumer stuff to fill online orders, pronto — beat the clock or be fired.

“Terrific policy!” exclaimed taskmasters at hospital chains, banks, tech giants, newspapers, colleges and other outfits employing millions of midlevel professionals.

So, they’ve been installing these unblinking digital snoops to watch their employees, even timing bathroom breaks and constantly eyeing each worker’s job performance.

New software with such Orwellian names as “WorkSmart” and “Time Doctor” has been plugged in to count workers’ keystrokes and — every 10 minutes — to snap pictures of workers’ faces and screens, recording all on individual scoreboards.

You are paid only for the minutes the computers “see” you in action. Bosses hail the electronic minders as “Fitbits” of productivity, spurring workers to keep noses to the grindstone and instilling workplace honesty.

Only … the whole scheme is dishonest. No employee’s worthiness can be measured in keystrokes and 10-minute snapshots!

What about thinking, conferring with colleagues, listening to customers, etc.? Nope — zero “productivity points” are awarded for that work.

For example, The New York Times reports that the multibillion-dollar United Health Group marks its drug-addiction therapists “idle” if they are conversing offline with patients, leaving their keyboards inactive.

Employees mostly call this digital management “demoralizing,” “toxic” and “just wrong.” But corporate investors are pouring billions into it. Which group do you trust to shape America’s workplace?

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Facebook spied on private messages of Americans who questioned 2020 election

Facebook has been spying on the private messages and data of American users and reporting them to the FBI if they express anti-government or anti-authority sentiments — or question the 2020 election — according to sources within the Department of Justice.

Under the FBI collaboration operation, somebody at Facebook red-flagged these supposedly subversive private messages over the past 19 months and transmitted them in redacted form to the domestic terrorism operational unit at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, without a subpoena.

“It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause,” alleged one of the sources, who spoke on condition of ­anonymity.

“Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.”

These private messages then have been farmed out as “leads” to FBI field offices around the country, which subsequently requested subpoenas from the partner US Attorney’s Office in their district to officially obtain the private conversations that Facebook already had shown them.

But when the targeted Facebook users were investigated by agents in a local FBI field office, sometimes using covert surveillance techniques, nothing criminal or violent turned up.

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An Opaque Web of Credit Reports Is Tracking Everything You Do

Liam Downey remembers the first time he heard about ChexSystems. It was December 2021, not long after he moved to Mancos, Colorado, a tiny mountain hamlet with a population under 1,500.

The only bank in town had just barred the 52-year-old flight paramedic from opening an account because his so-called ChexSystems score was too low. The teller gave him the contact information of the agency but not much else. He walked out of the bank perplexed.

ChexSystems, as Downey would soon find out, is a national consumer reporting agency — abbreviated CRA — that specializes in gathering data on how Americans use checks and bank accounts. It distills this information into a score similar to a credit score. Some 80% of banks rely on such information to screen people who want to open new accounts.

On a scale of 100 to 899, Downey’s ChexSystems score was 553. As far as the sole bank in Mancos was concerned, those three digits — regardless of his 15-year-long relationship with his current out-of-state bank — meant he was too risky to take on as a customer.

“I think this is complete nonsense,” Downey says of the reporting system. “People don’t even recognize it exists. It’s not easy to interpret, it’s not easy to change, and it’s completely arbitrary.”

Critics of ChexSystems note the agency generally tracks only negative information like account closures and overdrafts, essentially making it a bank-account rap sheet. The company is just one of a large — and largely unknown — sum of CRAs that actively monitors the financial and nonfinancial behavior of more than 200 million Americans, including many children.

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Working From Home Now Means Letting Corporate Surveillance Into Your Daily Life

The covid pandemic event has inspired a generation of workers with false notions about labor, production and work ethics, to the point that it may be a decade or more before people finally return to reality and stop living in fantasy.  

One prominent issue, of course, is the anti-work movement, which essentially believes that no-skill work should be paid a living wage or that such workers should be supplemented by government welfare.  This is the beginning of Universal Basic Income (UBI), which means millions of people dependent on government fiat and maintaining this relationship would become a matter of survival.  You can’t rebel against a corrupt government when you depend on them to feed you and your family.  

The covid stimulus checks acclimated the public to the taste of UBI (not to mention the rent moratoriums) and many of them now have an addiction to living for free.  Large numbers of Americans and Europeans think that this is the way it should be forever, but nothing is for free, kids.  There’s always a cost and a consequence.  

Another issue is the rise of the “work from home movement.” Certainly, there are many technology jobs, media jobs and data analysis jobs that can be accomplished from home and are perhaps better done outside of an office than inside of one.  The advantages are substantial, with reduced traffic in major population centers, psychological relief from the often stifling office environment and potentially improved work output.  Businesses pay for less office space and less supplies also.  It seems like a win-win.

However, there is an agenda afoot which seeks to exploit the work-from-home dynamic and pervert it into something ugly.  And, it is rooted in a growing trend of corporate surveillance of employees in their own houses. 

Eight out of ten the largest employers in the US already track productivity metrics at the workplace.  This means monitoring software on work computers, surveillance cameras, facial recognition, mood recognition, keystroke records, and even cell phone tracking apps with GPS records.  The argument in favor of this kind of Orwellian all-seeing eye is: “You don’t have to work here if you don’t want to – you can always quit.”  

This is a cop-out response that is designed to circumvent any discussion on the unethical nature of employee monitoring to such an extreme level.  People are being paid, but at the same time they are being treated like property – they are being treated like slaves with no privacy.   And what if every single employer uses employee surveillance?  What if there are no options?  You can quit, but will you be able to find a work environment that doesn’t treat you like this?

This kind of pervasive intrusion is exactly what the work-from-home movement is inviting into their daily lives, as more and more companies are now demanding that employees allow technological surveillance onto the home computers, cell phones and even allow corporations to insert video surveillance into worker houses.

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New Research Reveals Tiktok, Instagram And Meta Can Monitor Keystrokes, Seize Passwords And Credit Card Information

Recent research has revealed that social media platforms Tiktok, Instagram, and Meta, can pry on users’ personal information when it is entered into the in-app browser.

Felix Krause, a software engineer, and security researcher looked into the coding built into Tiktok, the Chinese-produced app’s infrastructure, which led to his shocking revelation.

Users who click on links on Tiktok are led to a native in-app browser produced by Tiktok, and not default browsers like Safari or Google Chrome.

The JavaScript code in Tiktok’s in-app browser can allow the company to monitor every keystroke. This means the social media company could access every action taken on the screen, even passwords or credit card information.

Krause explained that while Tiktok allegedly does not have the feature enabled at this moment, the infrastructure is in place. “Installing a keylogger is obviously a huge thing… according to TikTok it’s disabled at the moment. The problem is they do have the infrastructure and the systems in place to be able to track all these keystrokes… that on its own is a huge problem.”

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Meta can track users’ credit card, internet history on other websites, researcher claims

An ex-Google employee claims his research shows Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is “rewriting” other websites so that it can better track users’ data.

The researcher, Felix Krause, claims Meta can “inject” tracking code into other websites whenever those websites are opened by Facebook or Instagram’s in-app web browser, as opposed to standalone web browsers like Google Chrome and Safari.

The Instagram app injects their tracking code into every website shown, including when clicking on ads, enabling them [to] monitor all user interactions, like every button and link tapped, text selections, screenshots, as well as any form inputs, like passwords, addresses and credit card numbers,” Krause warns in a tweet.

Krause also claims Meta injects this tracking code “without the user’s consent, nor the website operator’s permission.”

Why is this a big deal? Instagram & Facebook actively work around the new App Tracking Transparency System which was designed to prevent exactly this kind of abuse, to keep tracking users outside their ecosystem,” Krause claims in a follow-up tweet.

The ex-Google engineer apparently discovered the code injection while developing a tool to detect extra commands added to websites by web browsers. For most browsers and apps, the tool doesn’t detect any lines of code injection, but for Facebook and Instagram, Krause claims the tool found up to 18 added lines of code.

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US Department Of Commerce Asks Gun Holster Companies For Sales Records

A startling new report via AmmoLand News outlines how the US Department of Commerce Census Bureau asked major holster manufacturers/providers for order numbers, product descriptions, and locations where the items were shipped. 

Some holster companies rejected the Department of Commerce’s request for “commodity flow surveys” related to their sold products.

“We will never turn over any information on our customers to the government no matter the cost us,” Chad Myers, President of JM4 Tactical, said. “To do so would violate our core beliefs. We need to stand up to an overbearing government. Our customers can rest assured that their information is safe with us!”

AmmoLand said, “the Census Bureau sends out the Commodity Flow Survey to random companies every year … but this seems an abnormal amount of holster companies have received the notice leading some of the holster companies to wonder if the federal government has targeted them.” 

This is alarming because the overreaching government could be attempting to create a registry of gun owners, types, and numbers of firearms owned via the information collected in the survey.  

Holster companies have reached out to Arbiter Weston Martinez of Texas, a former Texas Real Estate Commissioner under former Governor Rick Perry, to push back on the government collection of data. 

“Clearly, the Biden administration is saber rattling for the left in the wake of all the recent losses they have incurred by Supreme Court rulings,” Martinez said. “My clients and I will never back down from anyone that is trying to impugn our Constitutional and God-give rights like the Second Amendment.”

Holster companies do not have a choice and are bound by law to turn over all requested information or face fines. 

Washington Gun Law President William Kirk provides more color on the Biden administration’s use of government agencies to collect data on law-abiding citizens. He said this administration is the least trustworthy of any administration in the country’s history regarding the lawful rights of gun owners. 

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What Is the FBI Trying To Hide About Its Raid on Innocent Americans’ Safe Deposit Boxes?

First, the FBI raided a private business to seize safe deposit boxes and assets belonging to hundreds of people who were not suspected of having committed any crimes.

Now, prosecutors are trying to keep the public in the dark about why the brazen forfeiture effort was undertaken in the first place—and are offering little justification for why such secrecy is necessary.

Four depositions that could be crucial to understanding the motivations and intentions behind the FBI’s March 2021 raid of U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills–based safe deposit box storage business, are being kept confidential at the request of federal prosecutors. Attorneys representing some victims of the raid say the depositions could contain important information about how and why the FBI decided to seize and catalog the private belongings of U.S. Private Vault’s customers. They have asked the federal judge handling the case to allow the transcripts of those depositions—including one interview with Lynn Zellhart, the FBI’s lead agent in the case—to be filed in their entirety.

Unless Judge R. Gary Klausner allows the depositions to be made public, attorneys for the plaintiffs will have to continue heavily redacting their filings in the case. That might be sufficient to address the acute legal issues in the lawsuit, but it obviously harms the general public’s right to be informed about the bigger issues at stake.

(Reason, which has been covering this case since the beginning, plans to file a brief requesting that the depositions be unsealed.)

“If the government is successful, it means that the public will have only an incomplete window on what happened here,” Robert Johnson, an attorney at the Institute for Justice who is representing some of U.S. Private Vault’s customers, tells Reason. “That flips the public’s right of access on its head.”

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Digital Authoritarianism: AI Surveillance Signals the Death of Privacy

“There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.” ― Philip K. Dick

Nothing is private.

We teeter on the cusp of a cultural, technological and societal revolution the likes of which have never been seen before.

While the political Left and Right continue to make abortion the face of the debate over the right to privacy in America, the government and its corporate partners, aided by rapidly advancing technology, are reshaping the world into one in which there is no privacy at all.

Nothing that was once private is protected.

We have not even begun to register the fallout from the tsunami bearing down upon us in the form of AI (artificial intelligence) surveillance, and yet it is already re-orienting our world into one in which freedom is almost unrecognizable.

AI surveillance harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and widespread surveillance technology to do what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude.

Everything that was once private is now up for grabs to the right buyer.

Governments and corporations alike have heedlessly adopted AI surveillance technologies without any care or concern for their long-term impact on the rights of the citizenry.

As a special report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warns, “A growing number of states are deploying advanced AI surveillance tools to monitor, track, and surveil citizens to accomplish a range of policy objectives—some lawful, others that violate human rights, and many of which fall into a murky middle ground.”

Indeed, with every new AI surveillance technology that is adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry are being marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.

Cue the rise of digital authoritarianism.

Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”

The seeds of digital authoritarianism were planted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, with the passage of the USA Patriot Act. A massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA, the Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens.

It sounded the death knell for the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, especially the Fourth Amendment, and normalized the government’s mass surveillance powers.

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Police Are Using Newborn Genetic Screening to Search for Suspects, Threatening Privacy and Public Health

Nearly every baby born in the U.S. has blood drawn in the immediate hours after their birth, allowing the baby to be tested for a panel of potentially life-threatening inherited disorders. This is a vital public health program, enabling early treatment of newborns with genetic disorders; for them, it can be the difference between a healthy life and an early death. But recent news suggests that police are seeking access to these newborn blood samples in criminal investigations. Such use of this trove of genetic material — to hunt for evidence that could implicate a child’s relative in a crime — endangers public trust in this vital health program and threatens all Americans’ right to genetic privacy.

A public records lawsuit filed in New Jersey this month details how police subpoenaed a newborn blood sample to investigate a 1996 cold case. While law enforcement’s desire to use these blood samples in criminal investigations was always a possibility — and one the ACLU has opposed — the increasing use of Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) has only increased the government’s interest in easy access to people’s DNA. While few have heard of IGG, many have heard of its application to cold cases: One high-profile example is the 2018 identification of the Golden State Killer as former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. In IGG, DNA is isolated from a sample left at a crime scene and a rich genetic profile is created and uploaded to a genealogy website in order to map out family trees. In just four years since IGG first became public, its documented use by police has rapidly grown to nearly 200 investigations.

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