Tag: surveillance

Single US Water Utility Receives 6 Million China-Based Connection Attempts In 1 Week: Security Report

A single water utility in California has received more than 6 million hits from China-based addresses within a week, pointing to the Chinese communist regime’s ongoing efforts to scan for U.S. critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, according to security experts.

The South Coast Water District (SCWD) blocked these connection attempts between July 15 and July 23.

It revealed the figure in a July 23 industry webinar hosted by the Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center, showing a firewall dashboard by security company ThreatSTOP.

SCWD provides potable water, recycled water, and wastewater services to about 40,000 residents, 1,000 businesses, and 2 million visitors annually in Orange County, California.

During the webinar, ThreatSTOP CEO Tom Byrnes and chief scientist Paul Mockapetris, who invented the Domain Name System, advised water industry professionals to tailor who is allowed access to their servers and said that there are some obvious limits one can set.

“If you’re a water district in southern California, you probably don’t have any customers in China,” Mockapetris said.

A ThreatSTOP case study on its website shows that as far back as 2011, even a school district’s network printers in West Memphis, Arkansas, were receiving regular access attempts from China.

Byrnes stated that the 6 million figure had increased overnight from 5 million, demonstrating that critical infrastructure, such as water systems, is constantly being scanned for vulnerabilities.

SCWD’s ThreatSTOP firewall dashboard also showed more than 34,000 blocked connection attempts originating from Bulgaria and more than 21,000 from Iran.

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Amazon Acquires Bee, the AI Wearable That Hears Everything You Say

Amazon is moving to acquire Bee, a startup focused on voice-driven wearable technology, signaling a broader push into AI-powered personal devices.

Bee manufactures a lightweight bracelet and an Apple Watch app designed to capture and process audio from the surrounding environment. The device listens continuously unless the user manually mutes it. Its primary function is to help users manage tasks by turning spoken cues into reminders and lists.

The company promotes its vision by stating, “We believe everyone should have access to a personal, ambient intelligence that feels less like a tool and more like a trusted companion. One that helps you reflect, remember, and move through the world more freely.”

According to Amazon, Bee employees have been offered positions within the company, suggesting that the acquisition includes not just technology but the team behind it. This move is part of Amazon’s intent to extend its AI ambitions beyond home assistants like the Echo. Other major tech companies are following similar paths. OpenAI is developing its own hardware, Meta has begun embedding AI into smart glasses, and Apple is rumored to be working on its own version of AI-integrated eyewear.

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Trump Admin Will Encourage All Americans To Use Wearables, Says RFK Jr.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will soon start a massive advertising blitz to encourage uptake of wearables such as fitness trackers among Americans, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on June 24.

“We’re about to launch one of the biggest advertising campaigns in HHS history to encourage Americans to use wearables,” Kennedy said on Capitol Hill in Washington during a congressional hearing.

Rep. Troy Balderson (R-Ohio) spoke positively about what he described as innovative wellness tools and asked Kennedy to describe how the government is promoting access to such tools. Balderson noted that research suggests that increased patient engagement can result in improved health.

“It’s a way people can take control over their own health, they can take responsibility, they can see what food is doing to their glucose levels, their heart rates, and a number of other metrics as they eat it, and they can begin to make good judgements about their diet, about their physical activity, about the way they live their lives,” Kennedy said.

“We think that wearables are a key to the MAHA agenda, Making America Healthy Again. My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years.”

Balderson also asked about concerns over keeping data from wearables private. Kennedy declined to address that aspect of the matter.

In addition to his role as health secretary, Kennedy is chairman of the MAHA Commission, established by President Donald Trump to study ways to improve the health of Americans.

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U.S. SCHOOLS use ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE TOOLS to monitor students’ digital behavior without consent or knowledge

A newly published peer-reviewed study reveals that a growing number of U.S. schools are using government-funded online surveillance tools to monitor students’ digital behavior—often without their knowledge or consent—and warns that such practices may have serious consequences for children’s development and well-being.

  • 24/7 Student Surveillance Raises Privacy and Health Concerns: A peer-reviewed study found that 12 out of 14 school surveillance companies monitored students’ social media, emails, and online activity around the clock, often without clear consent from parents or students, potentially harming children’s learning, mental health, and social development.
  • Heavy Reliance on AI and Lack of Human Oversight: Most companies used AI to flag student behavior, but fewer than half had human reviewers. Researchers warned this could lead to false positives and discriminatory outcomes, particularly for marginalized students, due to algorithmic bias and lack of transparency.
  • Federal Funds Fuel Poorly Regulated Surveillance Tools: Many schools use federal education grants to fund these surveillance tools, despite limited evidence that they improve student safety. Researchers called for better oversight and questioned whether this is an appropriate use of government resources.
  • Parents Left in the Dark and Policymakers Urged to Act: The study highlighted that parents often don’t know their children are being monitored and may not have opt-out options. Authors recommended federal legislation to improve transparency, address AI bias, and require parental consent for off-campus monitoring.

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How Israel’s Spy-built Apps Silently Fund Genocide While Infiltrating Your Device

The digital tools millions trust daily—photo editors, casual games, taxi hailers—hide a dark secret: They were crafted by Israeli spies turned tech moguls, funneling profits into apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. As Israel wages war under the banner of Zionism, its militarized economy thrives on apps that mine your data, normalize surveillance, and bankroll atrocities. This bombshell investigation exposes the covert Israeli app empire, revealing how even the most innocent downloads fuel a regime built on occupation and bloodshed.

Key points:

    • Hidden owners: Major apps like Facetune, Moovit, and Waze were developed by ex-Israeli military intelligence operatives, laundering their spycraft into Silicon Valley fortunes.
    • Data harvesting risks: These apps often demand intrusive permissions, feeding personal images, locations, and identifiers into Israel’s surveillance-industrial complex.
    • Funding genocide: Companies like Playtika and Crazy Labs openly funnel billions in taxes to Israel’s war economy, with staff actively enlisted in Gaza massacres.
    • Global spyware threat: Behind the apps lies Israel’s Pegasus spyware, sold to dictatorships to crush dissent, murder journalists, and silence Palestinians.
    • Boycott urgency: The BDS movement urges users to purge these apps, breaking Israel’s stranglehold on tech and its economy of occupation.

From military intelligence to your smartphone

Israel’s Unit 8200—a surveillance unit comparable to the NSA—acts as a feeder program for the country’s tech elite. Graduates infiltrate app development, weaponizing civilian software to extract data and revenue. ZipoApps, founded entirely by Unit 8200 veterans, controls photo-editing tools like Collage Maker Photo Editor and Instasquare, boasting over 100 million downloads. Users on Reddit accuse Zipo of bait-and-switch privacy violations, turning open-source apps into paid spyware traps.

Similarly, Facetune, an AI photo editor with 50 million installs, was co-developed by Yaron Inger, who spent five years in Unit 8200. Apple Store reviews warn it’s a “scam,” demanding location tracking and device identifiers. Even ride-hailing apps like Gett and Waze were built by ex-spies, embedding Israel’s military ethos into everyday tech.

“These developers are digital conscripts,” explains a Tel Aviv-based tech whistleblower who requested anonymity. They don’t leave the battlefield—they just monetize it.

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Chinese Lab Creates Mosquito-Sized Spy Drones

Chinese state media reported on Friday that the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in Hunan has created a surveillance “microdrone” the size of a mosquito.

“Here in my hand is a mosquito-like type of robot. Miniature bionic robots like this one are especially suited to information reconnaissance and special missions on the battlefield,” NUDT student Liang Hexiang told the state-run China Central Television (CCTV).

The device Liang showed off had a stick-thin body, three hairlike “legs,” and tiny leaf-shaped wings. The report did not go into details about its range, endurance, control systems, or surveillance capabilities.

Drones that could be mistaken for insects are a holy grail for the fast-growing surveillance robot industry. The Wyss Institute at Harvard University unveiled its “RoboBee,” a microdrone with superficial similarities to China’s mosquito drone, in 2019.

RoboBee is allegedly about half the size of a paper clip, weighs a tenth of a gram, and flies by contracting tiny artificial “muscles “ with jolts of electricity. At present, the microdrone can only operate within the carefully controlled confines of its laboratory, but its developers hope it will someday be capable of navigating in the outside world with senses comparable to a real bee.

The designers of RoboBee hope the fully independent version of their creation could assist with environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and even pollination of crops, much as real bees do. Of course, it requires little imagination to see how microdrones could be weaponized for surveillance or assassination.

According to Chinese state media, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) already has some drones that weigh less than a kilogram, fly in AI-controlled swarms, and can carry small explosives.

Under current definitions, a “microdrone” is any unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that weighs less than 250 grams (a little under 9 ounces).

Most existing microdrone designs are fairly slow because their tiny frames cannot carry engines that generate much thrust, but in May a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen set a world speed record with a palm-sized drone that flew at over 211 miles per hour.

The smallest drone currently employed by Western armed forces is the Black Hornet 4, a Norwegian design that looks like a palm-sized toy helicopter. The Black Hornet 4 boasts thermal imaging and low-light optics. It comes in a travel case that is small enough for soldiers to carry on their belts.

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Radio trick secretly turns laptop into a spy speaker that talks through walls

Security researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Electro-Communications in Japan have revealed that modern digital microphones used in laptops and speakers can leak audio as electromagnetic signals.

This could lead to the creation of a new network of wireless eavesdropping without needing any malware, hacking, or even physical access to your device.

In the aftermath, this vulnerability could affect billions of devices worldwide, exposing private conversations to corporate spies and government surveillance.

How does this attack work?

All devices, such as speakers and laptops, have MEMS microphones, which are a tiny part of the system tasked with converting audio into digital pulses that contain remnants of the original speech. These pulses create weak radio emissions that can be captured by invisible broadcasts.

“With an FM radio receiver and a copper antenna, you can eavesdrop on these microphones. That’s how easy this can be,” said Sara Rampazzi, a professor of computer and information science and engineering at the University of Florida who co-authored the new study. “It costs maybe a hundred dollars, or even less.”

The experiment that proved it all

The team of researchers proved their theory using eerie sounds. A woman’s distorted voice emerged from the radio equipment as she spoke test sentences like “The birch canoe slid on the smooth planks.” and “Glue the sheet to the dark blue background.” Each transmission penetrated through concrete walls up to 10 inches thick.

Laptops proved to be the weakest link as their microphones are connected through long internal wires that act as antennas, amplifying the leaked signals.

Now comes the dangerous part. For the leak to happen, your microphone does not necessarily need to be in an active state. Simply having applications like Spotify, Amazon Music, or Google Drive – can enable the microphone to leak radio signals.

AI in the scenario

The researchers didn’t just stop at this stage. They went beyond and processed the intercepted signals with AI speech-to-text tools from OpenAI and Microsoft. These LLMs then cleaned the audio and converted the recordings into clear, searchable text.

Surprisingly, in tests, the attack had recognized spoken digits with 94.2% accuracy from up to 2 meters away, even through a concrete war. It kept a 14% transcription error rate, making majority of the conversations understandable.

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Department Of Homeland Security Q-9 Reaper Drones Are Orbiting Over Los Angeles

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been flying its Predator B drones, also known by their military designation as MQ-9 Reapers, over Los Angeles as part of the U.S. government’s response to the unrest there, the agency confirmed to us on Wednesday. The flights are in response to protests that escalated to violence on multiple occasions, following a massive operation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last Friday.

Persistent aerial surveillance like this has long been controversial, with civil rights advocates saying it violates the right to privacy and undermines the Constitution. At the same time, the fact that a drone is doing it largely evokes a uniquely upsetting response. While using the Reapers over urban locales is rare, it’s not unprecedented, and manned platforms do this kind of work every day across the country.

CBP’s Air and Marine Operations (AMO) “MQ-9 Predators are supporting our federal law enforcement partners in the Greater Los Angeles area, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with aerial support of their operations,” spokesman John Mennell told us Wednesday afternoon in response to our query earlier this week. “Additionally, they are providing officer safety surveillance when requested by officers. AMO is not engaged in the surveillance of First Amendment activities.”

CBP had been mum about the issue for days, even though open-source reporting on social media had already presented compelling evidence of the drones’ orbits. On June 9, user @Aeroscout on X posted air traffic control (ATC) audio stating that two “Q-9s” – call signs TROY 703 and TROY 701, had passed each other in airspace over Yuma, Arizona, as one was replacing the other over Los Angeles. @Aeroscout had previously posted ATC audio of TROY 701 checking in on Los Angeles Center Sector 09. A short time later, Alaska Flight 1020 was given a traffic advisory for “drone traffic.”

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Notorious ‘LAScanner,’ Who Doxxed ICE Officers and Released Live Information of ICE Operations, Is a Felon and Stalker Who Was Ordered by a Court This Year to NOT USE Surveillance Equipment and Radio Scanners

LA Scanner on X made headlines this week after the account started publishing the location of ICE raids in Los Angeles and doxxed ICE agents in the area.

It was then revealed that far-left activist Jack Quillin was the man behind the “LA Scanner” on X account.

According to Amuse on X, Quillin who runs the LA Scanner account “doxxed federal agents and directed protesters to federal buildings before and during the riots. As a result, both the agents and the buildings were repeatedly attacked. Last night he began to realize that he was putting lives in danger stating, “I genuinely hope this doesn’t end in anyone losing their life” after posting the address of a federal agent. When he provided a list of federal offices in the LA area to protesters he made sure to remind them to remain peaceful. Quillin’s operation, NightSunTV, LLC, collected the names, addresses, photos of federal officials going as far as to build an interactive map that provided a real-time view of their locations throughout the LA area.”

Quillin was reportedly running his operation from Texas.

It now appears that Quillin was illegally operating his online operation and likely broke his court-ordered stipulations defined in his docket earlier this year, just five months ago.

Earlier this year, in January, Jack Quillin was ordered by a court not to use or have access to surveillance equipment or radio scanners.

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Catholics fight government surveillance in confession after wins against abortion mandate, tax

Catholic physicians and social service workers won over the Trump administration and Supreme Court, respectively, last week against their compelled participation in emergency room abortions and a state unemployment compensation program that costs more than their own church’s.

Bishops hope to make it a trifecta against a Washington state law that violates the seal of confession, threatening priests with imprisonment and fines if they don’t report suspected child abuse or neglect when “penitents” confess, but not lawyers who learn the same from clients.

Diocesan leaders filed a motion for preliminary injunction Thursday against Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nicholas Brown and county prosecutors in federal court in Tacoma to block SB 5375 at least 10 days before it takes effect July 27.

The Justice Department also quickly opened a civil rights investigation into the law as a prima facie First Amendment violation after Ferguson signed it, expanding the category of mandatory reporter to “member of the clergy,” defined as any regularly licensed, accredited or ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or similarly positioned religious or spiritual leader.

Denial of an injunction would likely fast-track the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and, if also rejected by the historically most liberal appeals court, to SCOTUS, which has rarely struggled to reach lopsided rulings upholding religious liberty.

The high court Thursday unanimously overturned the Wisconsin Supreme Court‘s ruling that found that a local Catholic Charities bureau’s work is primarily secular and hence it can’t get a religious exemption from paying into the state unemployment compensation system.

Justices unanimously ruled for Gerald Groff two years ago after the U.S. Postal Service threatened to fire the evangelical Christian for refusing to work Sundays under an Amazon delivery agreement, junking the “de minimis cost” standard that let employers easily deny religious exemptions but only appeared in a footnote in a 1977 ruling.

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