Surveillance

You Can’t Fight Fascism By Expanding The Police State

January 9, 2021 Evan Greer, Fast Company. Educate! Capitol, Fascism, Police State, Surveillance

Democracy is in crisis. Donald Trump and his enablers have intentionally emboldened violent white supremacists for the explicit purpose of attempting to overturn an election. The storming of the Capitol Building, organized publicly and advertised for weeks, is just the latest deadly result of politicians weaponizing a deep current of racism that has coursed through this country’s veins since its genocidal inception. This is part of who we are as a nation, whether we want to admit it or not. In the coming days and weeks we are likely to see pundits and lawmakers call for things like passing a new domestic terrorism law, expanding mass surveillance programs, increasing funding for the FBI and law enforcement...

Google Illegally Surveilled, Interrogated, And Fired Workers Who Tried To Organize

December 5, 2020 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. Educate! Google, Surveillance, Union Organizing, Worker Rights

Google repeatedly violated U.S. labor law when it spied on, probed, and terminated employees engaged in worker organizing in 2019, according to a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday. In its complaint (pdf), the NLRB alleges that Google was "interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed in Section 7" of the National Labor Relations Act. As The Guardian reported Wednesday: The complaint was filed on Wednesday following a year-long investigation launched by terminated employees who filed a petition with the board in 2019, after hundreds of Google employees carried out internal protests and public demonstrations against Google's work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

RCMP Must Respond To Spying Allegations

November 11, 2020 Jeremy Hainsworth, Vancouver Courier. Resist! Pipeline, Police abuse, Surveillance, Vancouver

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) is taking the RCMP in front of a judge for its alleged failure to respond to allegations of spying on groups and organizations and First Nations opposed to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project. The suit, filed in Federal Court in Ottawa against the force Nov. 9, names the federal attorney general and B.C.’s minister of public safety and solicitor general and further alleges information gathered was improperly shared with oil companies and the National Energy Board.

How To Identify Visible (And Invisible) Surveillance At Protests

November 10, 2020 Matthew Guariglia, EFF. Strategize! Police abuse, Rebellion2020, Surveillance

The full weight of U.S. policing has descended upon protesters across the country as people take to the streets to denounce the police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others who have been subjected to police violence. Along with riot shields, tear gas, and other crowd control measures also comes the digital arm of modern policing: prolific surveillance technology on the street and online. For decades, EFF has been tracking police departments’ massive accumulation of surveillance technology and equipment.

Free Speech Under Attack In Australia

October 21, 2020 Daniel Hurst, The Guardian. Educate! Australia, Press Freedom, Right to Protest, Surveillance

Journalists and advocacy groups could face compulsory questioning by Asio as part of a proposed expansion of the spy agency’s powers, according to external legal advice prepared by leading barristers. With senior officials of Asio due to give evidence to Senate estimates hearings on Tuesday, the new advice seen by Guardian Australia argues a bill before parliament to extend the reach of questioning powers could have a “chilling effect” on the willingness of people to speak to journalists. It also argues some of the work of civil society organisations – especially those involved in environmental and human rights advocacy – may be caught by the broad definition of “acts of foreign interference” because it includes clandestine acts that “are otherwise detrimental to the interests of Australia”.

Skills For Revolutionary Survival: Communications

October 14, 2020 The Javelina Network of the IAF-FAI. Organize! Communication, Internet Access, Networks, Surveillance

Face the facts. We are tied to our devices in ways that are incredibly useful for organizing, but that also expose us to isolation should the state and companies take away these technologies. Cell phones and the internet rely on corporate infrastructure and is subject to both government surveillance and service denial. What do we do when social media bans anti-capitalists and anti-colonialists? What do we do when our cell phones fully become monitoring devices we willingly keep by our side, all to the benefit of state intelligence services?

New Effort To Give People More Control Over Online Privacy

October 7, 2020 DuckDuckGo, Spread Privacy. Create! Internet, Privacy, Surveillance

We believe online privacy should be simple and accessible to everyone, period. With the introduction of privacy regulations worldwide, consumers are gaining more rights to limit the sale and sharing of their personal data. While this is a great idea in theory, it doesn't amount to much if it is hard for consumers to take advantage of their rights. At present, consumers must invoke most all online privacy rights manually, website by website. That's why we're proud to be a founding member of a new effort to create a simple browser-oriented setting for users to more easily express their preference for privacy, called Global Privacy Control (GPC).

Embassy Espionage, Contemplated Poisoning And Proposed Kidnapping

October 2, 2020 Binoy Kampmark, Counterpunch. Educate! CIA, Julian Assange, Surveillance, UC Global

Today will be remembered as a grand expose. It was a direct, pointed accusation at the intentions of the US imperium which long for the scalp of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. For WikiLeaks, it was a smouldering triumph, showing that the entire mission against Assange, from the start, has been a political one. The Australian publisher faces the incalculably dangerous prospect of 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Stripped to its elements, the indictment is merely violence kitted out in the vestment of sham legality. The rest is politics.

UC Global Employee Thwarted Plan To Spy On Assange

October 1, 2020 Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof. Resist! CIA, Julian Assange, Surveillance, UC Global

An IT expert who worked for UC Global, the Spanish security company which engaged in an espionage operation against Julian Assange while he was in the Ecuador embassy, refused to install numerous microphones and camera systems with “streaming capabilities” because they believed it was illegal. UC Global director David Morales was told Assange would discover the cameras were streaming in order to “restrain Morales.” “I did not want to collaborate in an illegal act of this magnitude,” the IT expert referred to as “Witness #2” told a British magistrates’ court during Assange’s extradition trial.

Mainstream US Reporters Silent About Being Spied On

September 19, 2020 Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone. Educate! CIA, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Surveillance

A Spanish security firm apparently contracted by US intelligence to carry out a campaign of black operations against Julian Assange and his associates spied on several US reporters including Ellen Nakashima, the top national security reporter of the Washington Post, and Lowell Bergman, a New York Times and PBS veteran. To date, Nakashima and her employers at the Washington Post have said nothing about the flagrant assault on their constitutional rights by UC Global, the security company in charge of Ecuadorian embassy in London, which seemingly operated under the watch of the CIA’s then-director, Mike Pompeo.

How A US Army Whistleblower Revealed ‘The Apparatus Of A Police State’

September 16, 2020 Sarah Cords, Progressive.org. Educate! Activism, Police State, Surveillance, Whistleblowers

On August 28, tens of thousands of people gathered in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the fifty-seventh anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. They protested racial inequality and listened to speakers that included Martin Luther King III and Jacob Blake Sr., the father of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man who was shot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 23, by a white police officer. Because this is 2020, the protesters in Washington were heavily surveilled: their faces and bodies are now catalogued forever on smartphone photos and videos, as well as on law enforcement body cam footage and the city’s surveillance cameras.

US Demands Hinder Spanish Probe Into Security Firm That Spied On Assange

September 13, 2020 Jose Maria Irujo, El Pais. Educate! CIA, Julian Assange, Surveillance, Wikileaks

There will be no judicial cooperation forthcoming from the United States unless a Spanish judge reveals his information sources in an investigation into alleged espionage against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Judge José de la Mata of Spain’s High Court (Audiencia Nacional) has sent a request for judicial cooperation to US authorities as part of his probe into a Spanish private security company named UC Global S.L. and its owner David Morales, on allegations that this firm secretly recorded Assange’s private meetings with lawyers, politicians, relatives and journalists at the embassy, where he took refuge in 2012 to avoid separate legal proceedings against him in Sweden.

Amazon Posted Job To Monitor Employee’s Efforts To Unionize

September 3, 2020 Aaron Holmes, Business Insider. Educate! Amazon, Labor Unions, Surveillance, Worker Rights

In a now-deleted job listing posted this week, Amazon advertised that it's looking to hire an "intelligence analyst" tasked with duties including snooping on workers' unionization efforts and reporting back to executives about their findings. It's a sign of Amazon's escalating fight to stop its workers from organizing. The company has previously turned to unorthodox methods to quash unionization — its subsidiary Whole Foods built a heat map tool specifically for tracking unionization threats, Business Insider reported in April.

Major New Study Calls For A Ban On Facial Recognition In Schools

August 10, 2020 Fight for the Future. Organize! Facial Recognition, Schools, Student Rights, Surveillance

A new study from the University of Michigan on the use of facial recognition in schools is recommending that lawmakers and school administrators ban the use of this technology in educational settings. The researchers behind the study write that facial recognition in schools “will likely have five types of implications: exacerbating racism, normalizing surveillance and eroding privacy, narrowing the definition of the ‘acceptable’ student, commodifying data, and institutionalizing inaccuracy. Because FR is automated, it will extend these effects to more students than any manual system could.” “Using facial recognition in schools amounts to unethical experimentation on children,” said Evan Greer (she/her), deputy director of digital rights group Fight for the Future who have been organizing to ban facial recognition for more than a year.

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