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Tag: surveillance
Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists
Job postings and interviews with senior security officials at Anthropic show that the frontier AI lab is building out an extensive monitoring system to keep tabs on activists who oppose the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
In addition to monitoring activists in the vicinity of Anthropic executives and keeping tabs on protests near physical Anthropic assets, the firm is also implementing a “pre-crime” approach, attempting to predict incidents before they happen. In some cases, that also means reporting suspects to police before a crime occurs. Anthropic did not respond to the Prospect’s request for comment.
Anthropic’s plans to surveil dissent are at odds with the firm’s efforts to cast itself as the responsible alternative to OpenAI. At the beginning of the year, the Department of Defense and Anthropic engaged in a high-profile dustup over Anthropic’s refusal to allow the military to use its tools for mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. That tension seems to have eased as Anthropic hires for “national security sales” positions, seeking to restart military contracts. The increase in threat monitoring of domestic opponents fits with a renewed focus on national security.
How Your Amazon Package Was Spying On You Before It Got Here
The crane lowers the container. The forklift moves it to the warehouse. And the whole time, the ship it came off of has been sucking up U.S. military signals from the harbor — and beaming them back to Beijing. For thirty years. In American ports.
COSCO has been conducting the secret signals intelligence collection for Beijing for decades, the two senior officials confirmed. This intelligence collection is designed to support the military communications technologies and encryption developments of countries such as the United States, Europe and others in Asia, the two officials said. Once this intelligence is collected by COSCO it is used by the Chinese government to support its position in territorial disputes, for maritime reconnaissance and to provide early warning of possible military action by foreign forces, the two officials explained.
According to the officials, COSCO is using sophisticated signals intelligence collection equipment to track the communications of other ships and aircraft on the high seas, often to monitor crucial trade routes as well as routes used by military vessels.
COSCO, the world’s fourth-largest ocean carrier, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations published by Reuters. China’s embassy in Washington, however, called the reports “baseless” in a statement published late on Tuesday. “We oppose vilifying China by peddling the so-called ‘intelligence collection’ narrative, which is totally baseless,” said Liu Chang, a spokesman for the embassy. He said that China would never ask a company or individual to “collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws.”
These revelations are highly significant to the upcoming meeting between U.S. President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a Washington summit set to take place later this month. Trade is expected to be high on the agenda as well as other security matters.
A January 2025 listing by the Pentagon of COSCO as one of several companies to be considered to be controlled by the People’s Liberation Army could have significant commercial and reputational consequences for COSCO. However, the listing is not a formal sanction and has not yet been implemented into law. In April 2025 a report by the U.S. Naval War College examined the use of intelligence collection by China’s fishing fleets as well as by its commercial shipping fleet.
COSCO Shipping Company is the world’s biggest ocean carrier, operating hundreds of ships across the globe, visiting major U.S. ports as well as the ports of Europe and other strategic locations around the world including the Strait of Hormuz, South China Sea and around Taiwan.
Taiwanese Man Jailed After Using Robot Vacuum to Record Wife’s Affair
A Taiwanese man was sentenced to five months in jail and ordered to pay more than $4,700 for using a robot vacuum to secretly record his wife’s affair.
While the court ruled that the husband had violated his cheating wife’s privacy, the Taiwanese man also won a civil lawsuit, resulting in his wife and her lover being ordered to pay him thousands in compensation, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.
The Taiwanese man, whose name has not been made public, married his wife in 2021. In September 2023, he found a used toothbrush at their holiday home, prompting him to review security footage from a parking garage, which reportedly revealed an man driving his wife home.
Three months later, the husband remotely activated the robot vacuum cleaner inside the home, and discovered his wife engaged in an intimate encounter with another man via the robot’s live feed.
From there, he began recording footage of his wife’s affair in order to collect evidence he had planned to use later for a legal claim.
Video footage reportedly showed his wife changing her clothing, embracing the other man, and moving about the house naked while her lover lay on the sofa.
DOJ Weaponization Working Group Drops Explosive Report Exposing FBI’s Outrageous Spy Campaign Against Traditional Catholics Under Biden Regime
The Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group released a bombshell report detailing how the Biden-era FBI expanded an investigation of one dangerous criminal suspect into a disturbing intelligence operation targeting Catholic priests, traditional Catholic churches and constitutionally protected religious beliefs.
The 231-page Richmond Domain Perspective Report concludes that personnel responsible for the disgraceful intelligence product have now been removed.
“The FBI personnel involved in the creation of the Richmond Catholic Memo have been terminated from their positions,” the report states.
The Justice Department did not publicly identify the terminated personnel.
The DOJ announced Thursday that investigators reviewed more than 1,800 pages of internal emails, intelligence assessments and investigative records concerning the FBI Richmond Field Office’s infamous January 2023 memorandum.
The report reveals that FBI personnel:
- Opened investigative “Guardian” assessments on two Catholic priests.
- Examined the priests’ travel and communications.
- Pulled airline and credit-card information.
- Searched one priest’s phone at Boston Logan International Airport.
- Followed that priest from the airport to a private residence.
- Conducted surveillance outside another residence associated with him.
- Proposed cultivating Catholic clergy and church leaders as “tripwires” and sources.
- Considered elevating the Richmond memo into a national intelligence product for senior FBI leadership.
- Continued revising the project even after FBI headquarters ordered the original memo removed from bureau systems.
The FBI eventually closed both assessments after finding no national-security threat or evidence linking the priests to violent extremism.
VoterGA: Declassified Intelligence Reveals Massive China Election Interference Cover-up
President Donald Trump delivered a primetime address from the White House on July 16, 2026, on the subject of US election security.
During the speech, Trump announced the declassification of intelligence documents and made a series of allegations involving China, the 2020 election, and a subsequent effort by intelligence officials to withhold information from him and from Congress.
As reported earlier by Patriot Perspective, one CIA report outlined China’s broader objective as leveraging domestic and foreign groups opposed to Trump to reduce his support, pressure him to resign, or stop him from winning another term.
Another report alleged that information collected from millions of TikTok users could be used to place authentic names, addresses, and identification numbers on the fraudulent licenses, making them more difficult to detect.
The release by the US government in July, via an earlier TGP report by Patriot Perspective, revealed China’s massive, multi-year US election interference campaigns.
The documents depict a foreign adversary determined to exploit America’s political divisions.
The most alarming material concerns the collection of Americans’ personal information.
Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology: The Largest US Biometric Database You’ve Never Heard Of
After being troubled by delays and budget concerns for nearly a decade, the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) program will become the US government’s largest biometric database when it launches in September. The program has also been plagued by privacy concerns raised by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has warned that HART has “gaps” in its privacy policies.
HART will be managed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and will store and process biometric data such as digital fingerprints, iris scans, and faceprints that have been gathered by DHS and its various sub-agencies. According to DHS, government agencies may seek to access this data for national security reasons, law enforcement, immigration and border management, intelligence gathering, background investigations for national security positions, and certain positions of public trust.
While HART is set to complete “initial operating capability” in September 2026, the system is not scheduled to be fully completed until 2027. The system was originally announced in 2015 as a replacement for the legacy Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT), which was originally developed in 1994 as a law enforcement system for collecting and processing biometric data from individuals apprehended by border security or immigration officials. In 2013, the DHS’ Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM) began plans to replace IDENT with HART. HART was set to become operational in December 2018 but was delayed numerous times due to budget concerns.
Since the initial announcement regarding the transition from IDENT to HART, the GAO and digital rights groups have raised concerns about the government upgrading and centralizing its repository of sensitive personal information of millions of Americas.
In February 2020, DHS published its original HART Privacy Impact Assessment to “assess and mitigate any potential privacy risks.” While the system wasn’t yet active, DHS said they “anticipated potential privacy risks associated with the privacy sensitive system” and “sought to proactively develop appropriate privacy safeguards to be implemented” throughout HART’s development.
In September 2023, the GAO released their own report detailing what it saw as “gaps” in privacy policies required by the Office of Management and Budget. The GAO said DHS implemented only five of twelve privacy requirements. GAO noted that the 2020 privacy impact assessment was “missing key information,” including on whose data will be stored in the system and the partners with whom the system will share the data.
The GAO report also said the HART program did not have “assurances that partners that provide information to the system will appropriately retain and dispose of personally identifiable information.” GAO concluded by stating that until DHS addressed these “privacy weaknesses,” there is no assurance that the personal data gathered on hundreds of millions of individuals will be “appropriately protected.”
In August 2024, DHS released an updated Privacy Impact Assessment for HART in an attempt to “clarify and address points raised by external oversight bodies.” The assessment provided answers to some of the questions posed by the 2023 GAO report, namely whose information will be stored and with whom it will be shared.
“HART will contain personally identifiable information, including biometric data and associated biographic information, on U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and foreign nationals,” the assessment stated.
The report says biometric data held in HART may be shared with every agency of the DHS, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Secret Service (USSS), and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), as well as other federal agencies such as the State Department, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Defense (DOD). It also states that biometric data may be shared with “elements of the Intelligence Community (IC).”
Armed Trump Golf Course Suspect Had Startling Details on Melania and the Secret Service
An armed man arrested at President Donald Trump’s California golf course earlier this month allegedly possessed hundreds of pages of notes containing information about First Lady Melania Trump’s schedule, U.S. Secret Service personnel and security arrangements, according to reports presented during a Los Angeles County court hearing, as reported by Fox News.
Jeanine John Taele, 38, was arrested Aug. 2 at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, days before President Trump was scheduled to visit the property.
According to The Associated Press, Taele had more than 200 pages of writings, including schedules for the first lady and members of the president’s Secret Service detail.
Prosecutors also said Taele possessed seven notebooks containing 208 pages of drawings and sketches of the golf course, lists of Secret Service schedules, information about individual security personnel and copies of Melania Trump’s schedule.
The writings reportedly also contained detailed lists concerning how to survive “off the grid.”
Los Angeles County Judge John Lonergan Jr. described the allegations as “alarming” during a hearing Wednesday.
“This case itself is alarming in this day and age with the violence that is creeping into our everyday lives, especially with our partisanship in the political environment” ahead of the midterms, Lonergan said, according to the AP.
Bluetooth Glitch Exposes Alibaba’s Secret Tracking Of Users, Developer Says
A San Francisco-based developer discovered that Alibaba Group’s AliExpress marketplace secretly hijacked his computer’s audio system through hidden browser scripts, allowing the website to run inaudible sound waves at zero volume to create “fingerprints” used to track devices without relying on cookies.
The privacy-focused Brave browser revealed in a series of X posts that the AliExpress marketplace was keeping the developer’s computer audio system active through hidden browser scripts, potentially allowing the website to generate a unique identifier for his device.
The issue emerged when the developer’s Bluetooth headphones refused to transfer their audio connection from his computer to his phone while AliExpress was open. A deeper dive of the website’s code showed background scripts maintaining access to the computer’s audio-processing system without producing audible sound.
The scripts allegedly used the browser’s Web Audio API to process signals at zero volume. Small differences in how individual computers handle those signals can be measured and combined into an “audio fingerprint,” allowing websites to recognize devices even when cookies are deleted or blocked.
The developer also found that the scripts collected other device characteristics, including available memory, screen dimensions, and network information.
Here’s what Brave found:
1. Alibaba’s AliExpress was caught using users’ audio systems to track them. AliExpress wasn’t recording users but instead playing a silent sound and measuring how users’ specific devices processed it in order to fingerprint them.
2. Fingerprinting is a way that websites can identify you without cookies. Sites will note details about your device like your screen size or installed fonts. These details are then combined into a unique, persistent “fingerprint” that can be used to track you across the Web.
3. There are slight variations in how each device plays the same audio file due to differences in CPU, sound card, browser, etc. When AliExpress played the silent sound, it measured these small variations to help build fingerprints of users’ devices.
4. This tracking was discovered due to an unexpected side effect. A user with Bluetooth headphones noticed they couldn’t play music on their phone because the headphones were instead playing AliExpress’s silent sound from their PC.
Brave turned what it found into a sales pitch for its browser:
1. For 6+ years, Brave has protected users against audio fingerprinting, and other fingerprinting types, by default. Brave injects random data into the browser’s output so you show a different fingerprint to different sites. This fingerprint also resets across sessions.
2. Trackers are constantly finding new ways to fingerprint your device, so Brave keeps adding new protections. We recently added defenses against GPU fingerprinting, which stops sites from identifying you with your graphics card or drivers.
The findings raise new questions about browser fingerprinting, a stealthy way that uses silent audio processing for covert tracking.
The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required
The Fourth Circuit issued a disappointing opinion in U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo, a case in which EFF filed an amicus brief, alongside the national ACLU, its Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia affiliates, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).
We argued that electronic device searches at the border should require a warrant based on probable cause, but at minimum, regardless of whether an officer searches by hand or with forensic software that plugs into a device and downloads its entire contents for search, the same Fourth Amendment standard should apply to all device searches at the border.
Unfortunately, the court rejected that argument and ruled that a lower standard applies to manual searches, allowing the government to conduct extraordinarily invasive electronic device searches without any suspicion of wrongdoing, simply because the border officer chooses to search by hand rather than with a forensic tool.
The Border Search Exception Meets Your Phone
The Fourth Amendment requires that government searches of persons or property be reasonable, which usually means obtaining a warrant based on probable cause from a judge.
But a warrantless search can still be reasonable if it falls within an exception to the warrant requirement, including the exception that allows officers to search your belongings at the border. The border search exception allows warrantless searches of persons or property crossing the U.S. border, including the functional equivalent of the border such as international airports, given the government’s interests in controlling who and what may enter the country.
Historically, courts have categorized border searches of luggage, vehicles, and personal effects as “routine” and thus reasonable even if conducted without any suspicion that the traveler has engaged in wrongdoing; courts have also held that more invasive “nonroutine” searches, such as certain body searches and searches that damage property, require reasonable suspicion.
But a person’s privacy interests in the personal data on a phone or laptop are extraordinarily different than their limited privacy interests in the contents of their suitcase.
The Supreme Court addressed cell phone privacy in Riley v. California (2014), holding that the search-incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement did not apply to cell phones, thereby generally requiring a warrant for phone searches, at least at the interior of the country. The court recognized the unprecedented privacy interests people have in their cell phones and how even brief manual searches can reveal the “sum of an individual’s private life,” including our political affiliations, religious beliefs, sexuality, and more. Accordingly, the Supreme Court held that because electronic device searches bear “little resemblance” to searches of bags or physical containers, they should be evaluated differently.
Following Riley, the Fourth Circuit considered two border device search cases involving forensic searches, in which border officers used external software to extract and analyze a device’s data.
In U.S. v. Kolsuz (2018), the Fourth Circuit held that a forensic search of a cell phone at the border “must be considered a nonroutine border search, requiring some measure of individualized suspicion” of a transnational offense, but the court declined to decide whether the standard is only reasonable suspicion or instead a probable cause warrant.
Then in U.S. v. Aigbekaen (2019), the Fourth Circuit held that a forensic device search at the border in support of a purely domestic law enforcement investigation requires a warrant. The court also reiterated the general Kolsuz rule for a forensic border-related device search: the “Government must have individualized suspicion of an offense that bears some nexus to the border search exception’s purposes of protecting national security, collecting duties, blocking the entry of unwanted persons, or disrupting efforts to export or import contraband.”
In Belmonte Cardozo, manual searches were finally before the court.
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