Tag: surveillance

DHL to suspend global shipments of over $1,000 to US consumers

DHL Express, a division of Germany’s Deutsche Post, said it would suspend global business-to-consumer shipments worth over US$800 (S$1,000) to individuals in the United States from April 21, as US customs regulatory changes have lengthened clearance.

The notice on the company website was not dated, but its metadata showed it was compiled on April 19.

DHL blamed the halt on new US customs rules that require formal entry processing on all shipments worth over US$800. The minimum had been US$2,500 until a change on April 5.

DHL said business-to-business shipments would not be suspended but could face delays.

Shipments under US$800 to either businesses or consumers were not affected by the changes.

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‘Cyborg 1.0’: World’s First Robocop Debuts With Facial Recognition And 360° Camera Vision

Thailand has debuted the world’s first ‘Robocop’ designed to detect and prevent crime with advanced AI.

Equipped with 360-degree cameras for eyes, the cutting-edge cyborg maintains constant surveillance with real-time monitoring. The robocop, named Police Colonel Nakhonpathom Plod Phai, meaning “Nakhonpathom is safe,” was unveiled during the Songkran festival in Nakhon Pathom province on Wednesday. The debut was announced via a Facebook post by the Royal Thai Police, according to a report by The Sun.

The robocop is also able to detect weapons, such as knives and wooden batons. In neighboring China, humanoid robots have started supporting police patrols.

Interesting Engineering reports:

In Shenzhen, PM01 model robots developed by EngineAI have been deployed alongside officers, wearing high-visibility police vests. These robots have been seen engaging with pedestrians—waving, shaking hands, and responding to voice commands—according to local media reports. A recent video shows a PM01 robot waving to a crowd, sparking curiosity about its purpose in law enforcement.

First launched in December 2024, the PM01 features agile mobility, an interactive touchscreen, and an open-source platform. This design allows developers worldwide to contribute to its evolution by adding new features and capabilities through secondary development.

Last year, Logon Technology, a Chinese robotics company, unveiled the RT-G autonomous spherical robot, described as a “technological breakthrough,” with an army of these spherical robocops spotted rolling through cities across China, The Sun said. The robocop’s debut underscores the growing importance of robot technology. During Tesla’s Q1 2025 All-Hands meeting, CEO Elon Musk revealed the the company is preparing aiming to begin the production of its own humanoid, Optimus, this year.

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A secretive billionaire manages a California city like a one-man HOA… dictating how people run their lives

Welcome to Irvine, CA., where the median price of a home is $1.56 million. The winding streets are spotless, there’s no telephone polls visible, and every house has the exact same terracotta roof.

In the meticulously planned city, which continuously tops hottest housing market lists, streets run in perfect circles, everyone’s house must have windows on all four sides, and lawns are spaced accordingly.

Each village inside Irvine gets its own landscape design where only certain types of imported greenery and brightly colored plants are approved.

The mastermind behind the design and upkeep of Irvine is 92-year-old Donald Bren, CEO of Irvine Co., and the wealthiest real estate developer in America, according to Bloomberg. He’s reportedly a peculiar personality, and keeps personal information about himself private. 

Under his leadership, Irvine has become a bubble away from the rest of the world. 

Every corner of the city has surveillance cameras operated by local law enforcement, who also drive Tesla trucks designed for their specific police department. 

In 2024, Irvine made the list of the top five cities to raise a family, according to WalletHub. 

‘The appeal of Irvine is top ranked education, incredible employment centers, renowned health facilities, and an incredible master planned community with loads of open space, family activities and parks,’ local realtor Cathy Haney, a broker from First Team Real Estate, told the Daily Mail.

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Bombshell evidence shows Biden White House directly aided Jack Smith’s J6 probe

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley and Senator Ron Johnson published new emails from FBI whistleblowers showing that President Joe Biden’s then-Deputy White House Counsel Jonathan Su personally assisted the FBI in securing President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence’s cell phones to assist the nascent “Arctic Frost” investigation over January 6.

The new whistleblower emails also show that a future member of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team and an anti-Trump FBI agent were closely involved in the origins of the FBI probe. Operation Arctic Frost formed the basis of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s false elector case under which former President Donald Trump was later charged with a conspiracy to defraud the United States for his campaign’s attempts to assemble alternate slates of electors under claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.

The new emails are contained in a letter the senators sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel urging cooperation with their requests for all information related to the FBI probe.

“Overall, these newly disclosed emails show the extensive collaboration between and among select FBI agents from the Washington Field Office and prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office – Washington D.C. to plan, approve and execute Arctic Frost,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “The emails also provide further support that ASAC Thibault played a central role in advancing its approval to a full field criminal investigation when other agents had concerns the supporting evidence only allowed for a preliminary investigation.”

“Lastly, the emails illustrate the Biden White House’s personal involvement in providing former President Trump and former Vice President Pence’s phones to the FBI at their request when neither of them was a subject of the investigation at that point in time,” they added.

The emails turned over to the committee by whistleblowers show that the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Chief John Crabb emailed Su at the White House on May 2, 2022 and copied Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault.

“Jonathan, Would you please coordinate with Tim Thibault (who’s copied on this email) about picking up the telephones,” Crabb wrote.

“Thanks John. Tim, it is good to meet you, and please let me know what works for you in terms of timing the next couple days,” Su replied.

By May 4, other committee records show, the FBI had successfully obtained both President Trump and Vice President Pence’s official phones from the Biden White House, even though then-former President Trump had not yet become a criminal subject of the Arctic Frost probe.

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Woke Employees’ Worst Nightmare: Google Plays Pivotal Role in CBP’s AI-Powered Border Surveillance Upgrade

Google Cloud is at the center of a Customs and Border Protection plan to modernize video surveillance towers that involves deploying machine learning along the southern border, despite previous assurances from the woke Silicon Valley giant to its leftist employees that it was not involved in such projects.

Federal contract documents reviewed by the Intercept reveal that Google Cloud is playing a critical role in upgrading the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) so-called “virtual wall” along the Mexican border. This comes five years after Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian assured employees that the company was not working on any projects related to immigration enforcement at the southern border.

The CBP’s plan involves modernizing older video surveillance towers in Arizona, which provide the agency with continuous monitoring of the border. A key aspect of this effort is the integration of machine learning capabilities into CBP cameras, enabling automatic detection of humans and vehicles approaching the border without the need for constant human monitoring.

According to the documents, CBP is purchasing computer vision technology from two vendors: IBM and Equitus. Google’s role is to stitch these services together by operating a central repository for video surveillance data through its ModulAr Google Cloud Platform Environment (MAGE).

The project focuses on upgrading 50 towers with up to 100 cameras across six sites in the Tucson Sector. IBM will provide its Maximo Visual Inspection software, typically marketed for industrial quality control inspections, while Equitus will offer its Video Sentinel, a video surveillance analytics program designed for border surveillance.

A technical diagram within the document shows that every camera in CBP’s Tucson Sector will feed data into Google’s servers. The resulting metadata and keyframes will be sent to CBP’s Google Cloud, with the document stating, “This project will focus initially on 100 simultaneous video streams from the data source for processing.”

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WHOA: Tucker Carlson Reveals He “Immediately” Sold His Truck After Spotting a ‘Disturbing’ Message on Vehicle’s Infotainment Screen

Tucker Carlson caused a stir in a recent interview that may cause some Americans to do a double take on the vehicles they are driving.

During an interview with automotive designer and internet personality Casey Putsch last week, Tucker mentioned that he is a lifelong fan of Chevrolet trucks but felt he had to “immediately” sell his latest one after spotting a disturbing message on the car’s dashboard.

“I bought a truck last year…A Chevy truck, which I’ve always had, and I was at a gas station, he said. “And all of a sudden at a gas station, it says, ‘Stop, we’re downloading information from the internet.’”

“While you were driving?” Putsch asked.

“No, I was stopped,” Tucker replied. “I sold the car immediately. I brought it back and sold it.”

“They want all your data to provide to insurance companies to wreck your life, I’m sure,” Putsch responded.

“Insurance companies will be the downfall of cars and driving. I can guarantee it.”

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Operation Midnight Climax: A CIA Sex, Drugs and Surveillance Program

Key Takeaways

  • Operation Midnight Climax was a CIA experiment in San Francisco from the 1950s to 1960s testing the effects of LSD and sex on men’s behavior.
  • The experiment was part of the larger MKULTRA program aimed at developing mind-control capabilities.
  • The CIA used prostitutes to lure men to a wired bordello for surveillance, but the unethical program was terminated in 1967.

From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, men in San Francisco who patronized prostitutes ran the risk of becoming unwitting participants in a clandestine CIA experiment. It was designed to test whether the combination of sex and the hallucinogenic drug LSD might influence the men to reveal information that the government wanted. What information, nobody is really sure.

The experiment, known as Operation Midnight Climax inside the CIA, was part of a larger research program code-named MKULTRA. The agency launched MKULTRA out of worries that the Soviet Union had developed a mind-control drug.

CIA officials had observed the vacant gaze and trance-like behavior of Hungarian cleric Cardinal József Mindszenty at a show trial in Budapest in 1949. They were convinced that his confession had been extracted with chemicals, according to a 1977 New York Times article and decided that the U.S. needed to have similar capabilities.

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Trump Treasury Expands Financial Surveillance

More than one million Americans are about to face a new level of financial surveillance. The Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that the threshold for currency transaction reports has been lowered from $10,000 to $200 for Americans living in 30 zip codes in California and Texas. Financial surveillance in the United States has long needed reform, but this move is in the wrong direction.

FinCEN officially announced the temporary policy change as an effort “to further combat the illicit activities and money laundering of Mexico-based cartels and other criminal actors along the southwest border of the United States.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “As part of a whole-of-government approach to combatting the threat, [the] Treasury remains focused on leveraging all our available tools and authorities to better identify and counter these criminal activities.”

While this announcement is disappointing, it is not surprising. Alex Nowrasteh, the Cato Institute’s vice president for economic and social policy studies, warned people in February that President Trump’s decision to designate cartels as terrorists could have repercussions for civil liberties and the economy at large. Specifically, Nowrasteh noted that the designation would allow the government to freeze assets, enact secondary sanctions, and take greater control of the financial system generally.

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FOIA Requests Target Biden Administration’s Financial Surveillance

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has proceeded with filing a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Treasury Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The goal is to receive relevant information regarding the Biden administration’s alleged weaponization of government and censorship.

This is yet another attempt to shed light on how third-party groups and organizations were used to circumvent a number of constitutional prohibitions.

ADF’s focus this time is on the previous administration’s policy of using the issue of domestic extremism to, in fact, negatively affect its political opponents – in the cases brought up in these FOIA requests, via access to financial records of US conservatives.

An iteration of the Big Government-Big Tech collusion, which has been investigated by Congress, this one is about Big Governments and Big Banks suspected of having worked together to achieve political goals. But not always by collaborating directly – and this is one of the aspects ADF wants to understand better.

Namely – the involvement of private organizations and businesses hired (“outsourced”) in one way or another, to help banks identify what were designated to be purveyors of misinformation, and domestic extremism.

The FOIAs also aim to reveal the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) role in flagging what are said to be “conservative-coded” transactions (the keywords here are reported to be, “Trump,” “MAGA”, etc.)

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France’s Encryption Crackdown Could Break Secure Messaging for Everyone

France is attempting to pass a new surveillance law requiring the inclusion of secret encryption backdoors by providers, to serve intelligence agencies and police.

Critics say this attack on secure communications is the worst of its kind in the European Union (EU) and are urging citizens to put pressure on lawmakers to prevent the adoption of the so-called Narcotrafic law, which has cleared the country’s Senate and is now in the National Assembly.

Among those raising the alarm over the law is the well-known end-to-end encrypted email service Tuta, which reiterates the fundamental argument against building any backdoors into any encrypted app – something that French legislators now need to hear: once broken for one, encryption is broken for all.

“A backdoor for the good guys only is not possible,” says a blog post on Tuta’s site.

It adds that the idea to give law enforcement the ability to remotely activate cameras and microphones, expand “black boxes” authorization, and further facilitate online censorship (allegedly only related to the use and sale of drugs) might be presented by those behind the proposed law as needed to fight organized crime – but that, at the same time, it goes against a number of existing laws.

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