Surveillance

VIPS: Data Collection Can Be Effective And Legal

July 6, 2025 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Consortium News. Create! Constitution, Data, Intelligence, Surveillance

It is not necessary to make an end-run around the U.S. Constitution to thwart terrorism and other crimes. Those claiming otherwise have been far from candid – especially since June 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed gross violations of the Fourth Amendment by NSA’s bulk electronic collection. U.S. citizens have been widely misled into believing that their Constitutional right to privacy had to yield to a superseding need to combat terrorism. The choice was presented as an Either-Or conundrum. In what follows, we will show that this is a false choice. Rather, the “choice” can be a Both-And.

The Leap Forward In Surveilling Americans

June 3, 2025 Consortium News. Educate! Mass Surveillance, NSA, Surveillance, Trump Administration

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.

Wiz Acquisition Puts Israeli Intelligence In Charge Of Google Data

April 19, 2025 Alan MacLeod, MintPress News. Educate! Google, Israel, Privacy, Surveillance

Google recently announced it would acquire Israeli-American cloud security firm Wiz for $32 billion. The price tag — 65 times Wiz’s annual revenue — has raised eyebrows and further solidified the close relationship between Google and the Israeli military. In its press release, the Silicon Valley giant claimed that the purchase will “vastly improve how security is designed, operated and automated—providing an end-to-end security platform for customers, of all types and sizes, in the AI era.” Yet it has also raised fears about the security of user data, particularly of those who oppose Israeli actions against its neighbors, given Unit 8200’s long history of using tech to spy on opponents, gather intelligence, and use that knowledge for extortion and blackmail.

Junk Science And Bad Policing: The Homicide Prediction Project

April 14, 2025 Binoy Kampmark, Counter Punch. Educate! Artificial Intelligence (AI), Homicide, Police, Surveillance

The law enforcement breed can be a pretty dark lot. To be paid to think suspiciously leaves its mark, fostering an incentive to identify crimes and misdemeanours with instinctive compulsion. Historically, this saw the emergence of quackery and bogus attempts to identify criminal tendencies. Craniometry and skull size was, for a time, an attractive pursuit for the aspiring crime hunter and lunatic sleuth. The crime fit the skull. With the onset of facial recognition technologies, we are seeing the same old habits appear, with their human creators struggling to identify the best means of eliminating compromising biases.

Elon Musk’s DOGE Reportedly Installed Artificial Intelligence At The EPA

April 10, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! Artificial Intelligence (AI), DOGE, Elon Musk, Surveillance

Two people familiar with the use of technology by Elon Musk’s DOGE team told Reuters that the team has setup artificial intelligence to spy on employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The objective, according to the two media sources, is to look for “language in communications considered hostile” to Musk or President Donald Trump. “Trump-appointed officials who had taken up EPA posts told managers that DOGE was using AI to monitor communication apps and software, including Microsoft Teams, which is widely used for virtual calls and chats,” the sources additionally claimed.

Surveillance, Cybersecurity, And Financial Tech For Mutual Aid

April 7, 2025 Shareable, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Organize! Israel, Mass Surveillance, Mutual Aid, Palestine, Repression, Surveillance

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.

Max Blumenthal: Why Did The Feds Question Me?

February 27, 2025 Max Blumenthal, Consortium News. Educate! Journalists, Max Blumenthal, National Security State, Surveillance

As I approached the customs line at Dulles International Airport early on the morning of Feb. 24, a man called out to me, “Mr. Blumenthal?” He identified himself as an officer with Customs and Border Protection, and led me into a cavernous secondary screening room, where he treated me to a strange and disconcerting questioning session. I had just returned from a leisurely trip to Nicaragua with my family during which I participated in no political activities. But the agent’s line of questioning suggested federal authorities had little interest in my visit to Nicaragua, a country that happens to be controlled by a socialist-oriented government on Washington’s hit list.

Campus Police Using Israeli Spy Tech To Crack Down On Students

February 25, 2025 Tara Goodarzi, Truthout. Educate! Campus Movement, Free Speech and Assembly, Israel, Palestine, Repression, Student Activism, Surveillance

In the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump announced he would be “fighting anti-Semitism” on college campuses by prosecuting and revoking visas for certain students deemed to be “Hamas sympathizers.” In a fact sheet accompanying an executive order with “measures to combat anti-Semitism,” Trump threatens students: “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.” The order itself states that the Department of Education will seek to familiarize institutions of higher education with these goals, so that universities may “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead … to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

Burying The CIA’s Assange Secrets

February 19, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! CIA, Julian Assange, Legal System, Surveillance

A United States judge dismissed a lawsuit pursued by four American attorneys and journalists, who alleged that the CIA and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo spied on them while they were visiting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuador’s London embassy. “The subject matter of this litigation,” Judge John Koeltl determined, “is subject to the state secrets privilege in its entirety.” Any answer to the allegations against the CIA would “reveal privileged information.” Few publications followed this case as closely as The Dissenter. It unfolded at the same time that the U.S. government pursued the extradition of Assange, making any outcome potentially significant.

Malcolm X, Black Nationalism And The Cold War

February 19, 2025 Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! Black America, Black Liberation, COINTELPRO, Malcolm X, Surveillance

During his stay in prison in the state of Massachusetts between 1946-1952, Malcolm X began to reflect seriously on his life’s mission. He would join the Nation of Islam (NOI) after being urged to do so by four siblings, a fact documented in a series of letters archived in his Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files which contained tens of thousands of pages. In extensive letters written to his brothers he strongly stated that his future career would be preaching the religious beliefs enunciated by Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam.

The Militia And The Mole

January 11, 2025 Joshua Kaplan, Pro Publica. Educate! Donald Trump, Militias, Right wing extremism, Surveillance

John Williams kept a backpack filled with everything he’d need to go on the run: three pairs of socks; a few hundred dollars cash; makeshift disguises and lock-picking gear; medical supplies, vitamins and high-calorie energy gels; and thumb drives that each held more than 100 gigabytes of encrypted documents, which he would quickly distribute if he were about to be arrested or killed. On April 1, 2023, Williams retrieved the bag from his closet and rushed to his car. He had no time to clean the dishes that had accumulated in his apartment.

Cellphone Seizures And The Courts

December 24, 2024 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Electronics, Privacy, Surveillance, TSA

After years of conflicting decisions by federal district courts across the country on whether Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents can search your cell phone and laptop at ports of entry, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that, “the routine inspection and search of a traveler’s electronics, or for that matter, any other type of property, at the border may be conducted without a warrant, probable cause, or even individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.” In reaching the decision, the court agreed with several other circuit courts, but put itself at odds with others and many (lower) federal district courts around the country.

How Chicago Organizers Managed To Rid The City Of ShotSpotter

December 9, 2024 Noah Berlatsky, Next City. Organize! Chicago, Gun violence, Illinois, Police, ShotSpotter, Surveillance

In September, the city of Chicago stopped using ShotSpotter, a sensor system designed to detect gunshots and alert police and first responders. During his 2023 campaign for Mayor, Brandon Johnson promised to end the use of the expensive technology, which he has referred to as “walkie-talkies on a stick.” Johnson’s decision to end ShotSpotter was not popular with the Chicago City Council. Alderman Silvana Tabares issued an inflammatory statement declaring that “every gunshot victim left bleeding in the streets of our city will be a worthy sacrifice in the eyes of the mayor for his radical agenda.”

Cleveland Police Commission Pushes Through Drone Policy

November 30, 2024 Catherine Henchek, Liberation News. Resist! Cleveland, Drones, Ohio, Police, State Repression, Surveillance

Community members packed Cleveland’s Community Police Commission meeting on Nov. 20 to oppose a new police drone policy. The policy, spearheaded by Commissioner Piet van Lier, included sections which provide Cleveland police arguments to use drones over protests under the guise of other police operations. After public outrage and a contentious meeting, two authorized drone uses in the policy which could target protesters were removed. However, the policy that was approved by the Commission still included concerning language, such as the following in the Operational Procedures...

Chris Hedges Report: Surveillance Education

November 24, 2024 Chris Hedges, Consortium News. Resistance Report Education, Military Industrial Complex, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

Surveillance tools have become ubiquitous in schools and universities. Technologies, promising greater safety and enhanced academic performance, have allowed Gaggle, Securly, Bark, and others to collect detailed data on students. These technologies, however, have not only failed to deliver on their promises, but have eviscerated student privacy. This is especially true in poor communities, where there is little check on wholesale surveillance. This data is often turned against students, especially the poor and students of color, accelerating the school-to-prison pipeline. When students and teachers know they are being watched and monitored it stifles intellectual debate, any challenging of the dominant narrative and inquiry into abuses of power.

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