Tag: surveillance

Judge Challenges Appeals Court Over Computer Monitoring Ban in January 6 Parole

A US federal judge – who imposed draconian surveillance measures against a man charged and later convicted and paroled in connection with the January 6 events – is clearly unimpressed by the ruling of a US Court of Appeals, that recently overturned his decision.

Senior District Judge Reggie Walton now wants the controversy officially revisited, so he scheduled a new hearing date for June 4 in a bid to make his original order for Daniel Goodwyn’s computer to be surveilled for “mis/disinformation” stick.

Early in April, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia announced that the order to monitor and “inspect” Goodwyn’s computer for “mis/disinformation” was the result of the district court having “plainly erred.”

Goodwyn (described in reports as a citizen journalist) was convicted on a single trespassing misdemeanor count based on him spending 36 seconds inside the Capitol on the day.

Goodwyn was subsequently arrested and sentenced by Judge Walton to two months in prison, but that was not all – his computer was to be “monitored and inspected” during his parole.

This last bit of the ruling was too much for the circuit court, which overturned it earlier in the month. The ruling said Walton “plainly erred in imposing the computer-monitoring condition without considering whether it was ‘reasonably related’ to the relevant sentencing factors and involved ‘no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary’ to achieve the purposes behind sentencing.”

But now Walton is trying to once again impose surveillance of Goodwyn’s computer, ordering him to “show cause” as to why that should not be happening.

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Biden announces largest expansion of gun background checks in decades

The Biden administration has finalized the largest expansion of gun-sales background checks since the advent of the federal check system in the 1990s, moving to close the “gun show loophole” and online sales that have avoided checks in the past.

The new rule being announced Thursday expands the definition of who is considered a firearms dealer and says every dealer must conduct a background check regardless of the sale venue. That means sales at gun shows or conducted over the internet must now be included.

It is not a universal background check, meaning some transactions such as gifts or occasional sales are still exempt. But administration officials said they expect the rule will cover tens of thousands of sales each year that currently escape background checks.

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Surveillance Footage Exposes Polling Place Manager Bringing Blank Ballots into Lorain County Bar on Eve of Election, Investigation Underway

The integrity of the election process in Lorain County, Ohio has come into question after a polling place manager was captured on surveillance footage transporting blank provisional ballots into a local bar.

The Lorain County Board of Elections, the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO), and the Ohio Secretary of State have launched a full investigation into the incident, Cleveland19 reported.

The video from the MAHD House Bar & Grille, which has since gone viral, clearly shows the poll manager entering with bags and placing them inside a booth, only to leave them unattended while he enjoyed a meal.

The owner of MAHD House, James Tucker, expressed his concern upon realizing what the bags contained.

“After he ordered his dinner, he went over and started stuffing these bags which we could see in them they said ballot on it and I’m like that don’t look right,” Tucker told 19 News.

“I’m telling you, when I seen it, I went, ‘this does not look right,’” Tucker said.

“I mean, we’re right across the street from the Lorain County Board of Elections. I’ve been here seven years, ain’t never seen nobody bring no ballot bags in. I don’t know what just happened, but I’m a little nervous,” he added.

Paul Adams, the Board of Elections director, assured the public that the matter is being taken seriously.

“That was a great concern for us and one of the reasons why that person is no longer in that role and has been replaced and been removed from his position,” Adams said.

“We generally direct our poll workers to take those home, keep those safe,” he added.

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Stop Your Car From Spying on You

Being proved right isn’t always fun. Just weeks after my warning in the March issue that our modern high-tech cars are tracking us and sharing data with manufacturers, cops, and parties unknown, came a report of soaring auto insurance premiums because of snitching vehicles. The consequences get worse from there. Fortunately, there are ways to keep your snoopy ride from contacting the mothership.

“Car companies are collecting information directly from internet-connected vehicles for use by the insurance industry,” Kashmir Hill reported this month for The New York Times. “Sometimes this is happening with a driver’s awareness and consent…. But in other instances, something much sneakier has happened.”

Hill profiled Seattle resident Kenn Dahl, who checked his LexisNexis consumer disclosure report after his car insurance premium jumped by 21 percent. LexisNexis turned over documents containing “the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations.” The data came from General Motors based on his enrollment in OnStar Smart Driver. The records were interpreted as grounds for putting him in a higher insurance risk category.

Dahl joined the program without realizing the potentially expensive and intrusive consequences. But other drivers are sometimes enrolled without their knowledge when they sign paperwork at the dealership. Worse, data may be collected through other means without explicit consent.

“Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely,” added Hill. “Some drivers may not realize that, if they turn on these features, the car companies then give information about how they drive to data brokers like LexisNexis.”

This isn’t the first warning about car data-collection. Modern vehicles are equipped with “microphones, cameras, and sensors sending signals through your car’s computers,” the Mozilla Foundation warned in a September 2023 report. Those features can be convenient, the authors noted, but “whenever you interact with your car you create a tiny record of what you just did. Like when you turn the steering wheel or unlock the doors. And usually all that information is collected and stored by the car company.”

Those sensors collect information about activity in the vehicle and surrounding environment. Nissan’s data policy even claims the right to track “your sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic information,” though it’s unclear how much they’re doing now, and what they’re giving themselves leeway to monitor in a more dystopian future.

But mysteriously rising insurance premiums aren’t the end of the potential consequences of data-hungry computers with wheels. Some uses of data are not just expensive, but dangerous.

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If SpaceX’s Secret Constellation Is What We Think It Is, It’s Game Changing

The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is reportedly acquiring a constellation of hundreds of intelligence-gathering satellites from SpaceX, with a specific focus on tracking targets down below in support of ground operations. Though details about this project are still very limited, there are clear parallels to what the U.S. Space Force has previously said about a highly classified space-based radar surveillance program, which it first publicly disclosed around the same time SpaceX is said to have gotten its NRO contract. If this program is the one we think it is, it could bring about a revolution in both tactical and strategic space-based sensing.

Starshield, SpaceX’s government-sales-focused business unit, has been working on the new low Earth orbit (LEO) spy satellites under a $1.8 billion contract it received in 2021 from NRO, according to a report from Reuters this past weekend, citing five anonymous sources familiar with the deal. The Wall Street Journal had previously published a story about the existence of the contract in February, but did not name NRO as being involved or provide specific details about the deal’s scope of work.

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Musk’s SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say

SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.

The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.

The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.

If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.

The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.

The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.

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How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You (and Opt Out of Sharing When You Can)

Cars collect a lot of our personal data, and car companies disclose a lot of that data to third parties. It’s often unclear what’s being collected, and what’s being shared and with whom. A recent New York Times article highlighted how data is shared by G.M. with insurance companies, sometimes without clear knowledge from the driver. If you’re curious about what your car knows about you, you might be able to find out. In some cases, you may even be able to opt out of some of that sharing of data.

Why Your Car Collects and Shares Data

A car (and its app, if you installed one on your phone) can collect all sorts of data in the background with and without you realizing it. This in turn may be shared for a wide variety of purposes, including advertising and risk-assessment for insurance companies. The list of data collected is long and dependent on the car’s make, model, and trim.  But if you look through any car maker’s privacy policy, you’ll see some trends:

  • Diagnostics data, sometimes referred to as “vehicle health data,” may be used internally for quality assurance, research, recall tracking, service issues, and similar unsurprising car-related purposes. This type of data may also be shared with dealers or repair companies for service.
  • Location information may be collected for emergency services, mapping, and to catalog other environmental information about where a car is operated. Some cars may give you access to the vehicle’s location in the app.
  • Some usage data may be shared or used internally for advertising. Your daily driving or car maintenance habits, alongside location data, is a valuable asset to the targeted advertising ecosystem. 
  • All of this data could be shared with law enforcement.
  • Information about your driving habits, sometimes referred to as “Driving data” or “Driver behavior information,” may be shared with insurance companies and used to alter your premiums.  This can range from odometer readings to braking and acceleration statistics and even data about what time of day you drive.. 

Surprise insurance sharing is the thrust of The New York Times article, and certainly not the only problem with car data. We’ve written previously about how insurance companies offer discounts for customers who opt into a usage-based insurance program. Every state except California currently allows the use of telematics data for insurance rating, but privacy protections for this data vary widely across states.

When you sign up directly through an insurer, these opt-in insurance programs have a pretty clear tradeoff and sign up processes, and they’ll likely send you a physical device that you plug into your car’s OBD port that then collects and transmits data back to the insurer.

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Your car is secretly spying on you and driving your insurance rates through the roof: report

Drivers of cars manufactured by General Motors, Honda and other popular brands say that their insurance rates went up after the companies sent data about their driving behavior to issuers without their knowledge.

Kenn Dahl, 65, is a Seattle-area businessman who told The New York Times that his car insurance costs soared by 21% in 2022 after GM’s OnStar Smart Driver computerized system installed in his Chevy Bolt collected information about the particulars of his driving habits.

Dahl said that his insurance agent told him the price increase was based on data collected by LexisNexis, which compiled a report tracking each and every time he and his wife drove their Chevy Bolt over a six-month period.

According to Dahl, the 258-page report contained information about the start and end times of his trips, distance driven and other data detailing possible instances of speeding, hard braking and sharp accelerations.

The report contained information about one particular trip in June which lasted 18 minutes and spanned 7.33 miles

During that same trip, the LexisNexis report recorded two instances of rapid acceleration and two incidents of hard braking.

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The Chinese company at the center of Biden’s crane concerns denies it’s a threat to U.S. national security

Chinese shipping cranes are fast becoming the latest item to get caught up in Washington and Beijing’s fractious relationship. U.S. officials have been talking about the security threat posed by Chinese-made cranes at U.S. ports for months. Then, last month, the U.S. announced an initiative to bolster cybersecurity at the country’s ports.

Now, the company at the heart of the controversy—China’s Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries, also known as ZPMC—is denying that it poses a security threat. ZPMC said it “strictly adheres to laws and regulations of relevant countries and regions,” in a statement released on Sunday.

ZPMC accounts for over 70% of the global market in shipping cranes. There are over 200 Chinese-made cranes at U.S. ports, accounting for “nearly 80%” of the total, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

These cranes help move goods through maritime ports. The cranes can often be controlled remotely, which U.S. officials fear could be an avenue for hackers to disrupt the economy. A recent congressional probe claimed to find over a dozen cellular modems on cranes that could be remotely accessed, the Wall Street Journal reports.

ZPMC, in Sunday’s statement, said that recent reports “can easily mislead the public without sufficient factual review.”

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Suspicious tech found in Chinese-made cargo cranes, fueling spying worries: Congress probe

An investigation by the US Congress into Chinese-built cargo cranes has found suspicious technology that could potentially be used to disrupt or spy on American commercial activities, according to a report.

The House Homeland Security Committee said that it has discovered cellular modems that were installed in cranes and which can be remotely accessed by hostile powers, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The committee’s discovery has fueled concerns in the Biden administration that cranes built by a Chinese firm, Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC), could potentially be used to spy on US ports.

More than 12 cellular modems were found in Chinese-made cranes that were relied upon in several US ports, according to the Journal.

While some of the modems were used for operational functions such as monitoring and tracking maintenance remotely, others were installed despite the fact that the ports in which they were being used hadn’t requested them.

China “is looking for every opportunity to collect valuable intelligence and position themselves to exploit vulnerabilities by systematically burrowing into America’s critical infrastructure, including in the maritime sector,” Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said.

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