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Surveillance

Free Speech Under Attack In Australia

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

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

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

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

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

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’

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

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

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

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.

The State’s Use Of Technology: An Issue For The Movement

Data are everywhere. In 2020, technology is a ubiquitous part of everyday life for many workers in this country and around the world. We use social media and email to keep in touch with family and friends.  We watch live streams of events and activities that take place across the globe.  We text and stream music on our commutes to work.  The list goes on.  Technology has increased capital’s ability to put workers into direct competition with one another for jobs — and drive their wages downward and worsen their working conditions, irrespective of the country in which they reside.  It has given rise to higher levels of automation and led to many other developments.  On the other hand, technology has given the working class the ability to communicate and organize itself on a global basis; that was not possible even a short time ago.  Driving down wages and working conditions lays the objective basis for the further politicization of the multinational working class.

Spying On Americans: Infamous 1970s White House Plan For Protest Surveillance

Portions of a long-secret government blueprint for expansive surveillance of domestic protest movements during the Nixon presidency have just been released, more than 50 years after it was drafted.  The notorious “Huston Plan” prepared by representatives of the White House and the U.S. intelligence community envisioned a smorgasbord of covert operations that made even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover queasy. The proposed activities ranged from monitoring domestic dissident groups — notably the Black Panthers — to office break-ins. This is the first time the document has been released on its own and with this amount of text declassified, it features more than two dozen additional documents from the FBI, CIA and other sources — as well as audio recordings from the Nixon Tapes — most of them obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and posted for the first time.

Secretive Police Unit Gathers Information On Maine Citizens

A secretive unit of the Maine State Police does gather information about groups and organizations even when they are not suspected of crimes, including people who are participating in protests, a top law enforcement official told lawmakers Wednesday. Michael Sauschuck, the commissioner of the Maine Department of Public Safety, testified at a joint legislative hearing about the Maine Intelligence and Analysis Center, which is at the center of a federal whistleblower lawsuit filed by a state trooper. The trooper had been assigned to the center and says he was retaliated against after reporting that the intelligence unit illegally used surveillance tools to monitor innocent citizens. Those allegations raised concerns among lawmakers and civil liberties advocates and prompted groups that were allegedly targeted by the center’s surveillance to demand details about the activities.

Black Activists Expose The FBI Targeting Their Movements

In 2017, a leak from the FBI revealed they were targeting black activists organizing to end racist policies and practices calling them "Black Identity Extremists." This is consistent with the FBI's long history of investigating and harassing black and brown activists. Organizations like Media Justice and the ACLU have been working to get information from the FBI about what they are doing and who they are targeting but the FBI has been putting barriers in their way. We speak with Myaisha Hayes of Media Justice about what they have learned so far and its impact on activists. Hayes also discusses their efforts to urge Congress to stop federal funding for surveillance of people exercising their constitutional rights and to educate activists about ways to protect themselves.

Court Refuses To Block Information On Who Police Targeted In Social Media

Massachusetts’s highest court will not block the disclosure of police reports that could show the Boston police department has targeted Black and Latinx men for surveillance on social media.  Boston attorney Josh Raisler Cohn, who represents a man charged with several gun violations, began seeking the police reports in November 2018 to determine if the police have surreptitiously used the social media service, Snapchat, to target people of color. Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins appealed Ullmann’s order, but her office’s petition was denied. After an unsuccessful appeal to a single justice of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, the commonwealth appealed again to the full Supreme Judicial Court. The full court denied Rollins’s petition.
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