Surveillance

FBI Director Admits Use Of Spy Planes Over Ferguson, Baltimore

October 31, 2015 Tom Hall, www.WSWS.org - FBI Director James Comey admitted in testimony last week before the House Judiciary Committee that the agency conducted surveillance flights over mass protests against police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland over the past year, at the request of local police departments. Comey’s remarks confirmed an earlier Associated Press report revealing the FBI’s extensive use of secret flyovers throughout the country. Educate! FBI, Ferguson, Police Brutrality, Surveillance

By Tom Hall for WSWS - FBI Director James Comey admitted in testimony last week before the House Judiciary Committee that the agency conducted surveillance flights over mass protests against police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland over the past year, at the request of local police departments. Comey’s remarks confirmed an earlier Associated Press report revealing the FBI’s extensive use of secret flyovers throughout the country. The hearing itself, mislabeled as being dedicated to the “Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” was a further indication of the ability of government agencies like the FBI to carry out illegal mass surveillance against the American population with impunity.

Edward Snowden Weighs In On CISA: “It’s A Surveillance Bill.”

October 28, 2015 Staff, www.tumblr.fightforthefuture.org Educate! Edward Snowden, Rights, Surveillance, Whistleblowers

By Staff of Fight For The Future - WASHINGTON - Last night, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden joined Fight for the Future’s Q&A session on reddit to weigh in on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA,) the controversial “cybersecurity” bill that is expected to see a vote on the Senate floor this afternoon. “CISA isn't a cybersecurity bill,” Snowden wrote in the reddit “IAmA” thread, “It's not going to stop any attacks. It's not going to make us any safer. It's a surveillance bill. What it allows is for the companies you interact with every day -- visibly, like Facebook, or invisibly, like AT&T -- to indiscriminately share private records about your interactions and activities with the government.”

NYC Using Military X-Ray Vans To Spy On People

October 22, 2015 Conor Friedersdorf, www.theatlantic.com Educate! New York (NY), Radiation, Surveillance

By Conor Friederdorf for The Atlantic - Dystopian truth is stranger than dystopian fiction. In New York City, the police now maintain an unknown number of military-grade vans outfitted with X-ray radiation, enabling cops to look through the walls of buildings or the sides of trucks. The technology was used in Afghanistan before being loosed on U.S. streets. Each X-ray van costs an estimated $729,000 to $825,000. The NYPD will not reveal when, where, or how often they are used. “I will not talk about anything at all about this,” New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told a journalist for the New York Post who pressed for details on the vans.

Mass Surveillance, Incarceration & Deportation

October 17, 2015 Malkia Cyril, www.centerformediajustice.org Resist! Deportation, Mass Incarceration, Surveillance

By Malkia Cyril for The Center for Media Justice. Washington, DC - I’m talking about the 450,000 migrants in U.S. detention centers. The 2 million people incarcerated in the U.S. The 9 million under the control of the justice system. I am talking about the 883 people killed by police this year. I am here for people like my Uncle Kamou Sadiki, a former Black Panther who will spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. People like my mom, Janet Cyril, also a Black Panther, who faced the FBI head on when they burst into our house and demanded she testify against the San Francisco 8 in a secret court proceeding. She said no, and died two weeks later from sickle cell anemia.

Here’s How To Cop Watch

September 26, 2015 Muna Mire, www.thenation.com Create! Autonomy, Community, police brutality, Surveillance

By Muna Mire in The Nation - In academic circles, copwatching is considered a form of sousveillance, which translates from the French to “watching from below” and refers to recording or monitoring of authorities, like the police. (Surveillance, by comparison, translates to “watching from above” and refers to being monitored by authorities.) Through copwatching, communities are learning that, depending on which way the cameras are facing, they can become a powerful tool in court or in advocacy. While the state trains its gaze on communities to “keep them safe,” members of the public are increasingly aware that it is the watchers who need to be watched. Here, we break down what copwatching is, and how to do it.

Beware Of Companies Whose Names End In Yze

September 20, 2015 David F. Ruccio, www.anticap.wordpress.com Educate! Corporatism, Surveillance, Technology, Worker's Rights

By David F. Ruccio in Anticap.wordpress.com. Finance is adopting sophisticated analytics to ensure business performance from high-dollar employees. Cambridge neuroscientist and former Goldman Sachs trader John Coates works with companies to figure out how monitoring biological signals can lead to trading success; his research focuses on measuring hormones that increase confidence and other desirable states as well as those that produce negative, stressful states. In a report for Bloomberg, Coates explained that he is working with “three or four hedge funds” to apply an “early-warning system” that would alert supervisors when traders are getting into the hormonal danger zone. He calls this process “human optimization.” People who do the most basic, underpaid work in our society are increasingly subject to physical monitoring, too.

Burning Man Is Also Infested With Undercover FBI Agents

September 10, 2015 Gabrielle Bluestone, www.gawker.com Educate! Surveillance

By Gabrielle Bluestone in Gawker - Guess what, those swarming insects aren’t the only bugs on the Burning Man playa these days. See, until this week, the only thing attendees had to worry about were cops trying to make drug busts. But those days of wide-pupiled innocence are officially over—the FBI admits it’s been sending in undercover burners—for what purpose we may never know. The documents, obtained in connection with a FOIA request published by MuckRacker, show the FBI has quietly maintained a presence at the festival for at least five years. This, despite noting that “The greatest known threat in this event is crowd control issues and use of illegal drugs by participants.” Still, FBI officials say their presence has been necessary to prevent “terrorist activities” at the weeklong desert rave.

Finally! DOJ Reverses Course & Requires Warrants For Stingrays!

September 5, 2015 Nate Cardozo, www.eff.org Educate! Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

By Nate Cardozo in The Electronic Frontier Foundation - At long last, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced a slew of much-needed policy changes regarding the use of cell-site simulators. Most importantly, starting today all federal law enforcement agencies—and all state and local agencies working with the federal government—will be required to obtain a search warrant supported by probable cause before they are allowed to use cell-site simulators. EFF welcomes these policy changes as long overdue. Colloquially known as “Stingrays” after Harris Corporation’s brand name for a common model,cell-site simulators masquerade as legitimate cell phone towers, tricking phones nearby into connecting to them. This allows agents to learn the unique identifying number for each phone in the area of the device and to track a phone’s location in real time.

The Fugitive Slave Act Of 2015

September 4, 2015 Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Mass Incarceration, Surveillance

By Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo in Black Agenda Report - Under the ploy of fighting the surge of recent murders, Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced last week that she will ask the DC City Council to significantly expand surveillance and police powers to track ex-offenders. The provisions, outlined in a Washington Post article will give police the power to “search individuals on parole or probation and immediately detain anyone found in violation of the terms of release.” If these recommendations are enacted it will amount to a 21st Century version of the Fugitive Slave Act. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 (amended in 1850) guaranteed the rights of a terrorist (slaveholder) to “re-kidnap” escaped Africans. The U.S. Congress passed a legal mechanism for Africans to be under surveillance, tracked and forcibly returned to American concentration camps, commonly known as plantations.

B’more: Cellphone Tracking Used To Violate Rights Of 2K Defendants

September 1, 2015 Josie Duffy, www.dailykos.com Educate! Baltimore, Criminal Justice, Human Rights, Police, Surveillance

By Josie Duffy in Daily Kos - A recent investigation by USA Today showed that police in Baltimore have been tracking cellphones during investigations but have failed to disclose the tracking to defendants and their attorneys. As a result, public defenders in Baltimore are expected to request that "a large number" of criminal convictions be thrown out. Baltimore police have used cellphone trackers, commonly known as stingrays, to investigate crimes as minor as harassing phone calls, then concealed the surveillance from suspects and their lawyers. Maryland law generally requires that electronic surveillance be disclosed in court. […] Stingrays are suitcase-sized devices that allow the police to pinpoint a cellphone’s location to within a few yards by posing as a cell tower. In the process, they also can intercept information from the phones of nearly everyone else who happens to be nearby.

Report: German Spies Got Access To NSA Surveillance Tool

August 28, 2015 Dustin Volz in National Journal, www.nationaljournal.com Educate! Germany, Internet, NSA, Surveillance

By Dustin Volz in National Journal - Germany's national intelligence agency secretly traded information with the National Security Agency in return for gaining access to a powerful software surveillance program, according to a German newspaper report. Germany's domestic spying agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution or Bundesverfassungsschutz, agreed to share targeted surveillance data on its citizens with the NSA in April 2013, according to a report in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit. In exchange, the German intelligence agency was given access to use U.S. software known as XKeyscore, which the NSA once described in a training manual as its "widest-reaching" Internet surveillance system.

The Dystopian Danger Of Police Body Cameras

August 23, 2015 Rachel Levinson-Waldman, www.brennancenter.org Educate! Body Cameras, Police abuse, Surveillance

By Rachel Levinson-Waldman for the Brennan Center for Justice - This history suggests that for body cameras — and any other surveillance technology — the right question to ask is not, “are we comfortable with this particular technology, used for the particular governmental purpose currently asserted, with the particular controls currently in place?” Rather, the more accurate and far-reaching question is, “what do we think of the other uses that might be spawned once this technology is introduced?” For body cameras, it is already evident that they will be introduced in many more contexts than simply law enforcement. If they are being placed on principals, they will eventually be placed on teachers. If they are placed on teachers, they will eventually be placed on child care providers, and then on youth ministers, and so on and so on. The normalization of one kind of surveillance technology will also help hasten the normalization of other types.

NSA Spying Relies On ATT’s Generous Cooperation

August 17, 2015 Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson, www.propublica.org Educate! AT&T, NSA, Surveillance, Telecommunications

By Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson in ProPublica - THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY’S ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed NSA documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.” AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the NSA access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks.

Snowden On Thomas Drake: Meet Thomas Drake

August 15, 2015 AJ Plus+, www.static.ajplus.net Educate! Government, NSA, Snowden, Surveillance

By AJ Plus+ - National Security Agency whistleblower and former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake talks about how the U.S. government violates our privacy by accessing our data without our consent. National Security Agency whistleblower and former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake talks about how the U.S. government violates our privacy by accessing our data without our consent. After blowing the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse within the NSA, Thomas Drake was charged under the Espionage Act by the Obama Administration. This interactive short documentary tells his story. The project was created for AJ+ by Anna Flagg and Emily Bodenberg. Art direction by Moiz Syed. Senior producer Jeff Seelbach. Editing by Kristina Motwani. Additional editing byEuna Lee. Animation by Kai Tang. Sound mix by Mark Behm. Camera Marty Martin, Dave Aronson. Many thanks to Jigar Mehta and David Cohn for their help along the way.

Germany’s Press Freedom Challenges As A Surveillance State

August 9, 2015 Ashley Curtin, www.bullhorn.nationofchange.org/activists_set_sail_for_the_gaza_strip_to_break_blockade" t Resist! Freedom of the Press, Germany, Surveillance

By Jennifer Collins for Occupy.com - Two German journalists are demanding that authorities drop a treason probe against them in the wake of officials sacking the country's top prosecutor for his role in what has become a national scandal about privacy, government secrets and press freedom. "There's no information about when this crappy proceeding is going to be scrapped — there is no talk of that," said Markus Beckedahl, editor-in-chief of the Netzpolitik blog, speaking this week before a packed crowd in Berlin's cyperpunk-esque hacker space, c-base. Chief federal prosecutor Harald Range was investigating whether Beckedahl and fellow Netzpolitik journalist Andre Meister revealed state secrets when they published stories about a plan to expand Germany's online surveillance.

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