Mass Surveillance

With Federal Facial Recognition Regulation Stalled, Local Legislators Step In

June 15, 2019 Beryl Lipton, Muckrock. Create! Facial Recognition, Mass Surveillance, Privacy

Unwilling to wait for federal regulations to develop, municipal leaders from California to Massachusetts to are pushing their own rules on the acquisition and use of facial recognition technology, balancing constituent concerns around privacy and bias with what police increasingly say is a standard part of law enforcement. The first of these local ordinances is expected to go into effect at the beginning of July in San Francisco, where councilors last month enacted a local ordinance to restrict access to surveillance equipment and prohibit the use of facial recognition technology by the city’s departments. Among other things, the measure calls for departments using surveillance technology to submit an annual surveillance technology report and includes provisions by which the Sheriffs Department and District Attorney can obtain surveillance technologies.

NSA Wants To Drop Mass Surveillance Program Revealed By Snowden – Report

April 26, 2019 Staff, Rt.com Educate! Mass Surveillance, NSA, spying

The National Security Agency (NSA) has reportedly asked the White House to drop its phone surveillance program that gathers information on millions of Americans’ calls and texts, revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. According to a Wall Street Journal report published on Wednesday, agency insiders say the logistical and legal headaches of keeping the program operational outweigh its intelligence benefits. “The candle is not worth the flame,” one agency source told the Journal.

Before Ousting Assange, Moreno Government Spied On The Journalist For Over A Year

April 23, 2019 By Jimmysllama, Mintpressnews.com Resist! Ecuador, Julian Assange, Mass Surveillance, spying

LONDON — Like the proverbial “shot heard round the world,” the U.K.’s arrest and imprisonment of publisher and journalist Julian Assange officially signaled the Western world’s war on a free press. The Australian who founded WikiLeaks, but stepped down as editor-in-chief last year, was ousted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London last week after Ecuador President Lenin Moreno revoked his political asylum, and arrested by the U.K.’s Metropolitan Police. He was seen holding a copy of Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State while men dressed in suits — perhaps in a futile effort to make the arrest look a bit less repugnant — dragged the publisher out, handcuffed and resisting.

Neither Rain, Sleet, Nor Snow Will Stop The Post Office From Spying On You

March 2, 2019 By John Kiriakou, Consortium News Educate! Mass Surveillance, US Postal Service

You may remember that last year some nut was arrested for mailing bombs to prominent Democrats, media outlets, and opponents of Donald Trump. Less than a week after the bombs went out, a suspect was arrested. Almost immediately, the video turned up of him at a Trump rally, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hate and chanting for the camera. He was soon tried, convicted, and jailed. End of story. But it wasn’t the end of the story.

3 Ways Facebook Is Increasingly Becoming An Arm Of The US Government

September 27, 2018 By Tyler Durden, Zerohedge.com Educate! Facebook, Fascism, Mass Surveillance, Social Media, US Imperialism

Facebook has lately announced a series of major steps it would take to combat fake news and the global spread of misinformation that it says could influence elections, but the more we learn about just who it is Facebook is partnering with in this endeavor, the clearer it becomes that these initiatives are not at all designed to foster independent thought and discourse, but to ultimately ensure that public online discourse doesn't stray too far from official state narratives. Mark Weisbrot, a co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, recently slammed Facebook’s decision to work with US government-funded organizations as "Orwellian" — especially given the fact these organizations themselves "specialize in overseas propaganda."

State Sets Massive Precedent, Passes Law To Effectively Ban The NSA

May 21, 2018 By Rachel Blevins, Activistpost.com Create! Legislation, Mass Surveillance, Michigan, NSA

“It hangs up a sign on Michigan’s door saying, ‘No violation of the Fourth Amendment, look elsewhere,’” Howrylak said. “Democrats, as well as Republicans, would certainly stand very strong in our position on what this law means.” While Howrylak said he thinks the law makes “a strong court case saying this is what the state intends,” he hopes other states will join in by passing similar legislation, in an effort to cripple the NSA’s illegal activities. Next month marks 5 years since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released a trove of classified documents revealing that the United States government was routinely collecting metadata from innocent American citizens without warrants, and using “national security” to justify its actions.

Best Buy’s Geek Squad Working With FBI For Over A Decade

March 7, 2018 Aaron Mackey, EFF.org. Educate! FBI, Mass Surveillance

After the prosecution of a California doctor revealed the FBI’s ties to a Best Buy Geek Squadcomputer repair facility in Kentucky, new documents released to EFF show that the relationship goes back years. The records also confirm that the FBI has paid Geek Squad employees as informants. EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit last year to learn more about how the FBI uses Geek Squad employees to flag illegal material when people pay Best Buy to repair their computers. The relationship potentially circumvents computer owners’ Fourth Amendment rights.

Finding Your Voice

January 22, 2018 Ava Kofman, The Intercept. Educate! Cell Phones, FBI, Mass Surveillance, NSA

At the height of the Cold War, during the winter of 1980, FBI agents recorded a phone call in which a man arranged a secret meeting with the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. On the day of his appointment, however, agents were unable to catch sight of the man entering the embassy. At the time, they had no way to put a name to the caller from just the sound of his voice, so the spy remained anonymous. Over the next five years, he sold details about several secret U.S. programs to the USSR. It wasn’t until 1985 that the FBI, thanks to intelligence provided by a Russian defector, was able to establish the caller as Ronald Pelton, a former analyst at the National Security Agency.

NSA Deleted Data It Promised To Keep For Court Proceedings

January 22, 2018 Terri Webster, The Blaze. Educate! Mass Surveillance, NSA, Whistleblowers

The NSA told U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White Thursday that data and “backup tapes that might have mitigated the failure were erased in 2009, 2011 and 2016,” Politico reported. On Friday, President Donald Trump extended a law that includes provisions for the NSA to work with U.S. internet providers and tech companies for its surveillance efforts, according to reports. “The NSA sincerely regrets its failure to prevent the deletion of this data,” an NSA official identified publicly as Elizabeth B. wrote in a declaration. “NSA senior management is fully aware of this failure, and the Agency is committed to taking swift action to respond to the loss of this data.”

Lawmakers Demand Tech Corps Censor Journalists And Conduct Surveillance

November 4, 2017 Andre Damon, wsws.org Educate! Congress, Freedom of Speech, Internet, Journalism, Mass Surveillance

By Andre Damon for WSWS - Wednesday’s hearings by the House and Senate Intelligence committees on “extremist” political views served as the occasion for members of Congress to urge technology companies to flagrantly violate the US Constitution by censoring political speech, carrying out mass surveillance, and muzzling journalists in pursuit of the government’s geopolitical aims. The hearings revolved around allegations, promoted ceaselessly in recent months by the intelligence agencies, leading figures within the Democratic Party, and newspapers such as the New York Times, that social opposition to the political establishment results from “fake news” promoted by Russia. As Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff put it, “Russia” promoted “discord in the US by inflaming passions on a range of divisive issues” and sought to “mobilize real Americans to sign online petitions and join rallies and protests.” The basic problem, however, as Schiff put it, is “not just foreign.” The algorithms used by Facebook and Twitter have the “consequence of widening divisions among our society.” Schiff complained: “What ends up percolating to the top of our feeds tends to be things we were looking for,” as opposed to US government propaganda disseminated by the establishment media, which he referred to as “true information.”

DOJ Seeks 1.3M IP Addresses Associated With J20 Protests

August 15, 2017 Staff, www.dreamhost.com Resist! DOJ, Inauguration, Mass Surveillance, Trump Administration

By Staff of Dream Host - You would be shocked to see just how many of these challenges we’re obligatedto mount every year! Chris Ghazarian, our General Counsel, has taken issue with this particular search warrant for being a highly untargeted demand that chills free association and the right of free speech afforded by the Constitution. Demand for Information. The request from the DOJ demands that DreamHost hand over 1.3 millionvisitor IP addresses — in addition to contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people — in an effort to determine who simply visitedthe website. (Our customer has also been notified of the pending warrant on the account.) That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment. That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone’s mind.

Newsletter: When Empires Fall

July 23, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter BDS, Climate Change, Empire, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Korea, Mass Surveillance, NAFTA, Net Neutrality, Propaganda, Trade, Wars and Militarism

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. The Pentagon recently released a report, "At Our Own Peril: DoD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World," which details its concerns about losing access to resources and "resistance to authority" both at home and around the world as governments lose legitimacy. Faced with these changes, the United States could embrace them, become a cooperative member of the world, transition to a lower-waste lower-energy sustainable existence and draw back the military to use those resources to meet domestic needs. Sadly, that is not what the Pentagon has in mind. There is a saying, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The US is the biggest empire in the world; therefore, the Pentagon's solutions are "more surveillance, more propaganda ('strategic manipulation of perceptions') and more military expansionism." The United States' reign as an Empire is coming to an end. It is up to those of us living in the US to take action to prevent more aggression and demand that the US dismantle its empire in a way that causes the least harm at home and abroad.

FBI Used Patriot Act To Obtain ‘Large Collections’ Of Americans’ Data, DoJ Finds

May 13, 2017 Spencer Ackerman, www.theguardian.com Educate! DOJ, FBI, Mass Surveillance, Patriot Act

By Spencer Ackerman for The Guardian - As lawmakers and security agencies braced for a potential loss of the heart of the Patriot Act, a long-delayed Justice Department report showed that the FBI uses the surveillance authorities it provides for “large collections” of Americans’ internet records. Section 215 of the Patriot Act permits the FBI to collect business records, such as medical, educational and tax information or other “tangible things” relevant to an ongoing counter–terrorism or espionage investigation. Since 2006, the NSA had also secretly used it to collect US phone data in bulk. After Edward Snowden’s leaks allowed the Guardian to reveal the phone-records bulk collection in June 2013, deep political opposition coalesced around the bulk program – eclipsing the FBI’s acquisition of other data, which has long been an issue only for civil libertarians. But a Justice Department inspector general’s report finally released on Thursday covering the FBI’s use of Section 215 from 2007 to 2009 found that the bureau is using the business-records authority “to obtain large collections of metadata”, such as “electronic communication transactional information”.

The Antidote To Authoritarianism

May 10, 2017 Malkia A. Cyril, www.theatlantic.com Resist! Authoritanism, Mass Surveillance

By Malkia A. Cyril for The Atlantic - My first known ancestor in the Americas was an Ashanti woman called “the African.” We don’t know her name, but through records kept by slaveholders, we know she existed. We know she was transported to Jamaica, where my known lineage began. These records of property bought and sold were a form of surveillance at the time. Early technologies, and the policies and practices that undergird them, were forged to separate the citizen from the slave. The slave passes, branding, and lantern laws of then have become the cellphone trackers, facial recognition software, and body-worn police cameras of now. Their mission, however, hasn’t changed much—to catch and control black dissidence—only now they’re doing so in a digital age. These technologies have been incorporated into the law enforcement process at every level, from predictive algorithms for assessing pre-trial risk and criminal activity to widely adopted police technologies that face little to no oversight. These technologies—including cell-site simulators and surveillance cameras—are trained on communities of color, especially blacks, immigrants, Arabs, and Muslims.

FBI Has Already Gathered Millions Of ‘Faceprints’ for Facial Recognition

March 26, 2017 Derrick Broze, www.activistpost.com Educate! Courts, Criminal Justice, Facial Recognition, FBI, Mass Surveillance

By Derrick Broze for Activist Post. A House Committee questioned Kimberly Del Greco, Deputy Assistant Director at the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, about why the bureau broke the law by failing to file a privacy impact statement acknowledging the collection of millions of Americans’ faces for the agency’s new biometric identification system. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is made up of fingerprints, iris scans, faceprints, and other facial recognition data. The NGI organizes Americans’ biometric data into a single file that includes personal and biographic data like name, home address, ID number, immigration status, age, race, etc. The Committee reports that nearly half of all adult Americans’ photographs are in the database. The 2013 U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there are over 242 million adults living in the U.S. If the Committee’s numbers are correct, over 121 million adults are in the FBI’s database. Other revelations include that 18 states have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the FBI to share photos with the federal government, including from state departments of motor vehicles (DMV).

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