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Mass Surveillance

ICE’s Plan To Monitor Social Media 24/7 Threatens Privacy And Participation

When most people think about immigration enforcement, they picture border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new front line may be your social media feed. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published a request for information for private-sector contractors to launch a round-the-clock social media monitoring program. The request states that private contractors will be paid to comb through “Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Myspace, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc.,” turning public posts into enforcement leads that feed directly into ICE’s databases.

Trump’s Embrace Of Dystopian Palantir Spying Tool Sends Stock Soaring

During an end-of-year investor call this February, Palantir co-founder and militant Zionist Alex Karp bragged that his company was making a financial killing by enabling mass murder. “Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies,” he stated, adding: “And on occasion, kill them.” On this front, Karp claimed Palantir was “crushing it,” and he professed to be “super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.” Karp went on to predict social “disruption” ahead that would be “very good for Palantir.” “There’s a revolution.

The Leap Forward In Surveilling Americans

Collecting and connecting information on people enables an understanding of who a person is and in what activities they engage. Typically, such efforts have been focused on criminals and those persons seen as real or possible enemies of the government. Over recent years, however, we have seen the U.S. Government weaponize intelligence agencies to focus on American citizens for political reasons, as you are well aware from personal experience. Many such activities are unconstitutional and violations of other law. Congressional and judicial oversight has been ineffective. Indeed, no one in government has been prosecuted for engaging in the exploitation of information illegally collected on American citizens. No one.

Surveillance, Cybersecurity, And Financial Tech For Mutual Aid

Long before October 7, 2023, Israel has weaponized surveillance and advanced targeting technology against Palestinians. This includes snuffing out dissent and preemptively arresting Palestinians before holding them for years without formal charges, access to legal representation, or sentencing. Similar technologies are now being used in the United States to criminalize dissent, target marginalized communities, and suppress mutual aid efforts. This brings us to the theme of this week’s episode. Today, we’re sharing excerpts from Shareable’s Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series‘ third session.

ICE Is Swiftly Expanding Its Sprawling Surveillance Apparatus

The U.S. federal agency in charge of detaining and deporting immigrants is poised to expand to unprecedented levels the sprawling surveillance apparatus left by the Biden administration. Within days of President Donald Trump’s victory in November, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) posted several notices on the federal procurement website seeking contractors to provide technological tools to enlarge, transform, and modernize the agency’s capabilities to track, monitor, and surveil noncitizens.

Biden’s Legacy: Enhancing The ‘State Secrets Privilege’ To Protect The National Security State

Abu Zubaydah, a high-profile detainee at Guantanamo Bay, was tortured by the CIA. He attempted to subpoena James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both architects of the agency’s torture program who interrogated him at a black site in Poland. However, the CIA invoked the “state secrets privilege” to block Zubaydah from seeking testimony that could be used in a Polish criminal investigation. The case involving the state secrets privilege was eventually heard by the United States Supreme Court, and the court not only ruled in favor of the CIA but also expanded the privilege.

Predictive Policing And The Paris 2024 Olympic Games

As Paris prepares to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games from July 26 to August 11, 2024, the French government is implementing unprecedented surveillance measures to ensure safety. However, these measures have sparked fierce debate over the potential erosion of civil liberties, with opposition groups claiming that these systems automate social injustice. Sporting mega-events, including the Olympic Games, have long been testing grounds for new surveillance technologies. Their exceptional size and security demands constitute an emergency situation which is used as a pretext to justify the accelerated implementation of extraordinary regulations and policies that temporarily suspend law, along with the adoption of legislation that would be otherwise very hard to pass during “normal” periods.

Biden Terrifyingly Grows Ranks Of Government Spies

On April 20, Edward Snowden declared, “America lost something important today, and hardly anyone heard. The headlines of state-aligned media screech and crow about the nefarious designs of your fellow citizens and the necessity of foreign wars without end, but find few words for a crime against the Constitution.” The NSA whistleblower was referring to the United States Senate reauthorizing and expanding surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. President Joe Biden circulated a memo that cast the Fourth Amendment right to privacy as a "threat to national security."

The White House Is Wrong: Section 702 Needs Drastic Change

With Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act set to expire later this month, the White House recently released a memo objecting to the SAFE Act—legislation introduced by Senators Dick Durbin and Mike Lee that would reauthorize Section 702 with some reforms. The White House is wrong. SAFE is a bipartisan bill that may be our most realistic chance of reforming a dangerous NSA mass surveillance program that even the federal government’s privacy watchdog and the White House itself have acknowledged needs reform.

Tales From The Pages Of COINTELPRO

“Circulate, to educate, to liberate!” This was the constant intonation of Sam Napier, circulation manager of The Black Panther newspaper. As one Panther leader noted, Sam was “the main reason” why shortly after it began, the paper had “a 200,000 plus copies per week distribution.”2 Napier was a beloved member of the party, which is why many were taken by surprise when his body was found in March of 1971, tied to a chair, showing bullet wounds and signs of torture. After they left, perhaps while he was still alive, his killers set the building on fire. Sam Napier was one of the victims of a concentrated effort to destroy the Black Panthers by the U.S. government, as part and parcel of an effort to destroy the entire Black liberation movement and any other radicals who dared raise their voices against the U.S. ruling class and their imperial policies.

How San Diego Built A Surveillance Apparatus

San Diego. California - It sounded smart on paper. In 2016, the San Diego City Council created a new infrastructure project related to its environmental initiatives: Thousands of streetlights would be retrofitted with energy-efficient LEDs. Plus, remote-controlled sensors would produce publicly accessible data on weather, traffic and parking. Considering the energy savings, the $30 million partnership with General Electric would pay for itself. Win-win. But today, the project is an example of how not to create ​“smart” city utilities. Those sensors included integrated cameras, and no councilmember formally opposed the potential surveillance issues. Most San Diego residents only learned they were filmed indiscriminately thanks to media reports — in 2019.

The TSA Has Assaulted Us For 20 Years With Nothing To Show For It

In the U.S. where we are fighting invasions of privacy and the destruction of our First Amendment rights in about 900 different ways every day, most of us have stopped talking about how insane and offensive airport security still is. To begin with, allow me to disabuse you of the notion that airport security stops terror attacks. As Darryl Campbell reports in The Verge, “the reality is that TSA has played next to no role in the biggest counterterrorism stories of the past two decades. According to the think tank RAND, intelligence and security services manage to foil nearly two-thirds of terrorist plots in the planning stages.” Of course, U.S. law enforcement also helps create almost all of the “terror attacks” they thwart.

Whistleblower Objects To Pentagon Purchases Of Browsing Data

A United States military whistleblower filed a series of complaints alleging the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) is engaged in the warrantless purchase and use of Americans’ internet browsing data, which it obtained from a broker. “According to the whistleblower, NCIS is purchasing access to data, which includes netflow records and some communications content from Team Cymru,” Senator Ron Wyden shared in a letter to the offices of the inspector general for the Pentagon, Justice Department, and Homeland Security Department. The warrantless purchase of Americans’ data is not limited to the NCIS. Wyden’s office examined public contracting records and found Team Cymru was awarded data brokering contracts with US Cyber Command, the US Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the US Secret Service.

After Years Of Tribal Resistance, DHS Finishes Its ‘Virtual Wall’

When I come across surveillance towers in the borderlands, I first look to see if there are any communities, towns, or houses in its view. I did this on Monday, on the Tohono O’odham Nation in the southern Arizona borderlands, when I found an “integrated fixed tower,” built by the Israeli company Elbit Systems. It took me, two other journalists, and O’odham member Raymond Daukei all day to find it. I could see that homes in Topawa—a community of 380 people backed by the verdant western side of the muscular Baboquivari mountain range—were easily in range of the tower’s sophisticated camera system, which can see up to seven and a half miles.

New Records Detail DHS Purchase And Use Of Cell Phone Location Data

Today, the ACLU published thousands of pages of previously unreleased records about how Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other parts of the Department of Homeland Security are sidestepping our Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable government searches and seizures by buying access to, and using, huge volumes of people’s cell phone location information quietly extracted from smartphone apps. The records, which the ACLU obtained over the course of the last year through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, shed new light on the government’s ability to obtain our most private information by simply opening the federal wallet. These documents are further proof that Congress needs to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which would end law enforcement agencies’ practice of buying their way around the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.
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