[ad_1] The change is mirrored in smaller towns. Wired noted that Brookline, Massachussetts recently passed a ban that exempted personal devices, while the Bay Area town of Alameda is considering similar legislation. These loosened rules recognize a common problem: it’s difficult to completely avoid facial recognition technology in the modern era. While you don’t always […]
Category: surveillance
Court says data swept up by the NSA is protected by the Fourth Amendment
[ad_1] Government attorneys had argued that the Constitution didn’t address the use of private email and phone call data. The US had charged Hasbajrami in 2011 with providing material support to a terrorist group in Pakistan, and the suspect initially pleaded guilty to one of the charges after his counsel told him that there were […]
FCC proposal would ban some US telecoms from using Huawei, ZTE gear
[ad_1] The rationale for the proposal won’t surprise you. Pai argued in an opinion piece that Chinese companies are beholden to demands from the country’s intelligence agencies, and that companies like Huawei could theoretically be forced to install backdoors or otherwise cooperate with surveillance on “sensitive” American communications. The Chairman claimed that vulnerabilities in Huawei […]
UK set to allow Huawei in ‘non-contentious’ parts of 5G networks
[ad_1] Earlier leaks suggested that all four of the UK’s largest carriers (EE, O2, Three and Vodafone) were using Huawei gear in their 5G networks. While they’re aware of concerns that China might task Huawei with using equipment to spy on UK targets, they may also have strong business incentives to adopt Huawei gear. It […]
FBI use of NSA’s electronic surveillance data was illegal
[ad_1] The NSA database included both “upstream” and “downstream” (better known as PRISM) surveillance of electronic communications collected without a warrant under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In some cases, the database swept up info about American citizens. The FISA court, under U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, found tens of thousands […]
Russian hackers modify Chrome and Firefox to track secure web traffic
[ad_1] Just why the intruders would need to do that isn’t entirely clear. If you’ve infected a system with a remote control trojan, you don’t need to patch the browser to spy on traffic. ZDNet suggested it might be a failsafe that let intruders spy on traffic for people who remove the trojan, but aren’t […]
Recommended Reading: The ICE surveillance playbook
[ad_1] How ICE picks its targets in the surveillance ageMcKenzie Funk,The New York Times Through the lens of officers operating in the Pacific Northwest, The New York Times explains how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) collects information on possible targets. That includes monitoring social media accounts and tapping into “the world’s largest privately run database […]
Treaty would force Facebook to share encrypted chats with UK police
[ad_1] The pact would bar each country from investigating the other’s citizens, and the US couldn’t use data from UK companies in any case where the death penalty is an option. Like other politicians, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has claimed that end-to-end chat encryption helps terrorists, and that intelligence agencies should have backdoors to […]
Billions of license plate scans are part of a private surveillance database
[ad_1] It costs just $20 to look up a license plate in the data base, and $70 to receive a “live alert” that flags when a plate shows up. As you might have already suspected, this automatic data gathering creates many issues. For one, most of the vehicles in the database are of completely innocent […]
Russia reportedly breached encrypted FBI comms in 2010
[ad_1] The Russians could reportedly only crack “moderately encrypted” radio systems like those the FBI used, and not the strongest protections, but that was still worrying — and it wasn’t certain just how Russia compromised the systems. Some officials worried Russia might have a mole, but that wasn’t clear. An anonymous CIA officer speaking to […]