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U.S. Customs Continues To “Modernize” Its System To Include Biometrics For All Passengers
U.S. Customs Continues To “Modernize” Its System To Include Biometrics For All Passengers
One aspect often lost in the immigration debate is the rollout of government solutions that are set to restrict the freedom of the perfectly innocent. A key component of this is the increased collection of passenger biometrics.
As I’ve discussed before, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has a mandate that’s been 15 years in the making to integrate government databases for ID verification. Private companies have been enlisted to ensure that there is a “quick and easy roll out across U.S. airports,” according to Jim Peters, chief technology officer for SITA, one of the information technology companies working with airlines.
This is predictably moving from isolated and elective collection into mandatory compliance for all inbound and outbound international travelers. This, too, has always been part of the program as shown in this 2017 document from DHS:
As Nextgov reports, this increased data collection will begin before passenger arrival, and is now coupled with transferring everything to centralized cloud storage:
In addition to expanding its biometric capabilities, the agency is also working to migrate all of its traveler processing tech to the cloud, create more self-service tools for the public and let officers use mobile devices to verify people entering the country, officials said in a solicitation published Thursday.
[…]
“The paradigm will evolve from biographic data focused to biometric data centric,” officials said in the solicitation. “A biometric-based approach allows threats to be pushed-out further beyond our borders before travelers arrive to the U.S.”
“Integration of facial recognition technologies is intended throughout all passenger applications,” they added.
[…]
Officials aim to have all of the agency’s traveler processing and vetting applications housed in the cloud by 2024, the solicitation said, and they also want to allow “officers to admit or refer travelers using mobile technology.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Police Used Streetlamps To Spy On The Public More Than 140 Times
Police Used Streetlamps To Spy On The Public More Than 140 Times
Gone are the days when cities used streetlamps to simply illuminate sidewalks and streets. Today’s streetlamps are being used to form an inter-connected web of surveillance devices.
A recent San Diego Union-Tribunearticle revealed how San Diego police officers have used streetlamp video surveillance in at least 140 cases and sometimes as frequently as 20 times a month.
Let that sink in for a moment; spying streetlamps are real and police have already requested video footage from more than 140 streetlamps.
Lt. Jeffery Jordon called spying streetlamps “game changing” and that is exactly how they should be viewed. Streetlamps that are designed to spy on the public, really is a game changer.
San Diego’s streetlamps are equipped with ShotSpotter microphones that police claim are not being used to listen to public conversations.
Should we believe them?
Could police use ShotSpotter to listen to public conversations? Nearly a decade ago, the East Bay Timesrevealed how the Oakland Police used ShotSpotter to record public conversations.
It was only three years ago when the NJ Transit secretly used DriveCam’s LTYX cameras equipped with microphones to listen to public conversations.
So just what is law enforcement using these streetlamps for?
No one knows for sure; but a spokesperson for San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said that a citywide policy to regulate the use of the microphones and cameras in streetlamps is “under development.”
The San Diego Union-Tribune claims that 100 police officers have direct access to streetlamp surveillance and said that nearly every one of the department’s 1,800 police officers can request access.
Just how concerned is the City Council that law enforcement is using streetlamps as surveillance devices?
Apparently not very much, as City Councilwoman Monica Montgomery admitted, by saying that she’s “open to exploring” oversight of the program.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
FBI, ICE Using Facial Recognition To Bulk-Scan DMV Photos In “Unprecedented Surveillance Infrastructure”
FBI, ICE Using Facial Recognition To Bulk-Scan DMV Photos In “Unprecedented Surveillance Infrastructure”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been using state driver’s license databases to run photos of millions of Americans through facial-recognition systems without their knowledge or consent, according to the Washington Post.
Thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents and emails over the past five years, obtained through public-records requests by Georgetown Law researchers and provided to The Washington Post, reveal that federal investigators have turned state departments of motor vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.
Police have long had access to fingerprints, DNA and other “biometric data” taken from criminal suspects. But the DMV records contain the photos of a vast majority of a state’s residents, most of whom have never been charged with a crime. –Washington Post
Disturbingly, neither Congress nor state legislatures have authorized this type of system, and none of us agreed to it when we obtained licenses.
China No Match for Japan in Southeast Asia Infrastructure Race
“They’ve just given access to that to the FBI,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking GOP member of the House Oversight Committee. “No individual signed off on that when they renewed their driver’s license, got their driver’s licenses. They didn’t sign any waiver saying, ‘Oh, it’s okay to turn my information, my photo, over to the FBI.’ No elected officials voted for that to happen.”
“Law enforcement’s access of state databases,” and in particular those of the DMV, is “often done in the shadows with no consent,” added House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD).
And as has been reported for some time, law enforcement has been relying on facial recognition technology as a routine investigative tool for years – and it’s going to get worse.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NSA Caught Illegally Collecting Americans’ Phone Data…Again
NSA CAUGHT ILLEGALLY COLLECTING AMERICANS’ PHONE DATA…AGAIN
Once again, the National Security Agency has been caught illegally collecting the phone data of Americans. This news comes just months after a similar incident forced them to (supposedly) purge hundreds of millions of records captured without FISA authorization.
According to RT, the government spy agency unlawfully gathered a “larger than expected” volume of call and text records from one United States telecom provider under the metadata-collection program known as Section 215. According to a document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as part of its ongoing lawsuit against the agency, the heavily redacted file does not reveal which company was affected, or how many of its “call detail records” were illegally collected between October 3 and 12, 2018.
“These documents further confirm that this surveillance program is beyond redemption and a privacy and civil liberties disaster,” ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Patrick Toomey told the Associated Press as reported by RT.“There is no justification for leaving this surveillance power in the NSA’s hands.” The NSA, unsurprisingly, in its own internal documents assessed the blunder’s “impact on national security or international relations” to be “none.” Critics of the program, formerly known as StellarWind, have pointed to its acknowledged failure to stop a single terror event. Terrorism was the agency’s official rationale for eavesdropping on 3 billion phone calls every day. That’s just one of many reasons the entire agency, not just its programs, should be scrapped.
The agency “will assess the scope of the civil liberties and privacy impact of this incident upon completion of the investigation,” the report promises, though an “initial assessment is that the impact was limited given the quick identification, purge processes, and lack of reporting.” Journalist Ben Swann is not letting the NSA off the hook. “If there is no accountability for those who continue to break the law – because that’s what they’re doing – then why would they ever stop doing that?” Swann pondered.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
George Orwell’s Dystopian Nightmare in China
George Orwell’s Dystopian Nightmare in China
Beijing’s tyranny over its people is fast becoming more terrifying than anything in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Michael Hogue
It has become fairly cliché to call China’s surveillance state—its artificial intelligence-driven facial recognition, the new “social credit system,” its cultural policing and re-education camps for Uyghur minorities—“something right out of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Orwell’s dystopian vision, first published 70 years ago this June, was informed by the fascist and communist movements that triggered worldwide military conflict and the deaths of millions of people during the mid-20th century. But Orwell’s warning went well beyond the wars we knew. It cautioned, noted Erich Fromm in an afterword in the 1961 edition, against the loss of humanity and free thought, and the new, increasingly centralized “managerial industrialism, in which man builds machines which act like men and develops men who act like machines.” It showed how that could be used as a tool of totalitarian ambitions.
China convulsed in revolution during the 1940s; Mao Zedong established the one-party state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. But Orwell, according to Fromm, had his gaze on Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union when he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is set in fictional Oceania, one of three of the world’s superstates. Oceania is run by one party, Ingsoc (English Socialism), headquartered in what is left of post-war London. “Big Brother” is the god-like, mustachioed visage serving as the party’s fearsome symbol of absolute authority.
As rooted as Nineteen Eighty-Four is in Orwell’s own uncertain world, he could not have imagined how his predictions for humankind would morph and metastasize beyond the terrors of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and into the cyber-authoritarianism we are seeing in Xi Jinping’s China today (still run by the Chinese Communist Party).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NSA Again Exposed For Unauthorized Collection Of Americans’ Phone Records
NSA Again Exposed For Unauthorized Collection Of Americans’ Phone Records
Yet again, the National Security Agency has been exposed for “accidentally overcollecting” call-record metadata of millions of Americans. According to a WSJ report that relied on documents obtained by the ACLU, the NSA received metadata records from an unnamed phone company that the agency hadn’t been authorized to collect.
According to the report, it’s unclear how the overcollection occurred, but the incident took place after the NSA said it had purged hundreds of millions of metadata records it had amassed since 2015 in a separate overcollection episode.
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, “Metadata” include the numbers called or texted and the associated time stamps, but not the contents of the conversation.
The documents didn’t make clear how many records had been collected by the NSA since October. The NSA’s media relations chief, Greg Julian, refused to comment on this specific episode, but referred to the prior overcollection episode – which resulted in the NSA deleting an entire database of collected metadata – where the NSA had collected information it hadn’t been authorized to collect.
Essentially, the agency blamed the incident on service providers who incorrectly interpreted the NSA’s request.
“While NSA lawfully sought data pertaining to a foreign power engaged in international terrorism, the provider produced inaccurate data and data beyond which NSA sought,” Julian said.
The company began delivering those records to the NSA on Oct. 3, 2018 through Oct. 12, when the agency asked it investigate the “anomaly.”
Exposure of the incident has predictably provoked outrage from lawmakers, who have been railing against the NSA’s surveillance programs since they were first exposed by former contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. Former lawmaker Pat Toomey, now an ACLU staff attorney, said the incident is just the latest reason why the NSA metadata-collection program, launched in the aftermath of 9/11 as part of the Patriot Act, should be discontinued.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Just When You Thought Surveillance Tech Couldn’t Get Any More Orwellian…
Just When You Thought Surveillance Tech Couldn’t Get Any More Orwellian…
One of my favorite TV shows was Person of Interest. In that show, a genius programmer was hired by the government to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) computer to tap into and analyze communication feeds and predict activities that may pose a threat. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, things spun out of control; the system that was designed to benefit society was not always beneficial to citizens.
As amusing as it is to watch escapist fiction such as this, it’s not so enjoyable when you realize it’s no longer fiction. China has already developed the infrastructure to envelop their citizens in this protective surveillance net and has begun that slippery slope of using AI to not only catch activities deemed undesired by the government – it’s starting to take action against those observed.
In the city of Shenzhen (and most likely others), when an offender is observed jaywalking via video surveillance, they will publicly humiliate you by showing your face on screens located around the city. Now that’s bad enough but they’re going a step further. Those identified will have their cell phone ‘pinged’ and be sent an immediate fine.
By the way, Intellifusion, the company behind the AI system involved is in talks with WeChat and Seina Weibo (China’s equivalents of Facebook and Twitter).
The surveillance state is expanding, and even children are not exempt.
You may think there must be some kind of check-and-balance system built in to ensure that children would be protected so that they wouldn’t suffer the same consequences as an adult. You’d be wrong.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Orwellian Future: Facial Recognition & Mass Surveillance is Coming to U.S. Schools
ORWELLIAN FUTURE: FACIAL RECOGNITION & MASS SURVEILLANCE IS COMING TO U.S. SCHOOLS
We are staring our Orwellian future right in the face. Beginning in New York, facial recognition is coming to schools in the United States and it’ll be switched on for testing next week.
The dystopian future George Orwell warned about in his accidental historical predictions book, 1984, has arrived. According to an article by Engadget, the Lockport City School District in New York will start testing a facial and object recognitionsystem called “Aegis” on June 3rd. According to BuzzFeed News, that will make it the first in the U.S. to pilot a facial recognition mass surveillance system on its students and faculty.
The district installed cameras and the software suite back in September, using $1.4 million of the $4.2 million funding it received through the New York Smart Schools Bond Act. Funding provided through the Bond Act is supposed to go towards instructional tech devices, such as iPads and laptops, but the district clearly had other plans. –Engadget
BuzzFeed News got its hands on a copy of a letter distributed to the students’ parents, and it describes Aegis as “an early warning system” that can notify officials of threats. But that’s the propagandized version of what the system is in reality: it’s a mass surveillance tool being sold to the public as “safety” as with any human rights infringement. The system, created by Canadian company SN Technologies, can apparently keep track of certain individuals in school grounds.
Schools have long been indoctrination centers and it doesn’t look like that trend will be reversed anytime soon, in fact, it’s being amplified. The system can identify students and staff who’ve been suspended, but it’s unclear if Lockport will use it to monitor those who’ve been suspended over non-violent offenses.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
UK Cops Fine Pedestrian $115 For Avoiding Facial Recognition Camera
UK Cops Fine Pedestrian $115 For Avoiding Facial Recognition Camera
A UK pedestrian was arrested and fined £90 ($115 US) after attempting to cover his face while passing a controversial facial recognition camera van on a East London street. The notorious London police vans scan the faces of passers-by and compare them to a database of wanted criminals.
One man wasn’t having any of it, and was seen covering his face with his hat and jacket before London police stopped him and took his picture anyway according to the Daily Mail.
“If I want to cover me face, I’ll cover me face. Don’t push me over when I’m walking down the street,” said the man after his stop.
“How would you like it if you walked down the street and someone grabbed your shoulder? You wouldn’t like it, would you?” the man asked an officer, who replied “Calm yourself down or you’re going in handcuffs. It’s up to you. Wind your neck in.”
“You wind your neck in,” the man replied.
After being fined, the man told a reporter: ‘The chap told me down the road – he said they’ve got facial recognition. So I walked past like that (covering my face).
‘It’s a cold day as well. As soon as I’ve done that, the police officer’s asked me to come to him. So I’ve got me back up. I said to him ‘f*** off’, basically.
‘I said ‘I don’t want me face shown on anything. If I want to cover me face, I’ll cover me face, it’s not for them to tell me not to cover me face.
‘I’ve got a now £90 fine, here you go, look at that. Thanks lads, £90. Well done.’ –Daily Mail
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Google Tracks Your Location and Shares It With Police, Even When Your Phone is Off
Google Tracks Your Location and Shares It With Police, Even When Your Phone is Off
Even if you disable GPS, deactivate phone location tracking, and turn off your phone, it’s still possible for Google and the NSA to monitor your every move.
Over the last two decades, cell phone use has become an everyday part of life for the vast majority of people around the planet. Nearly without question, consumers have chosen to carry these increasingly smart devices with them everywhere they go. Despite surveillance revelations from whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, the average smart phone user continues to carry the devices with little to no security or protection from privacy invasions.
Americans make up one of the largest smartphone markets in the world today, yet they rarely question how intelligence agencies or private corporations might be using their smartphone data. A recent report from the New York Times adds to the growing list of reasons why Americans should be asking these questions. According to the Times, law enforcement have been using a secret technique to figure out the location of Android users. The technique involves gathering detailed location data collected by Google from Android phones, iPhones, and iPads that have Google Maps and other Google apps installed.
The location data is stored inside a Google database known as Sensorvault, which contains detailed location records of hundreds of millions of devices from around the world. The records reportedly contain location data going back to 2009. The data is collected whether or not users are making calls or using apps.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says police are using a single warrant—sometimes known as a “geo-fence” warrant—to access location data from devices that are linked to individuals who have no connection to criminal activity and have not provided any reasonable suspicion of a crime. Jennifer Lynch, EFF’s Surveillance Litigation Director, says these searches are problematic for several reasons.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
China’s Big Brother Social Control Goes to Australia
(Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images)
China’s Big Brother Social Control Goes to Australia
Australia is preparing to launch its own version of the Chinese regime’s high-tech system for monitoring and controlling its citizens. The launch will be in Darwin, and will include systems to monitor people and their activity on their cell phones.
The new system is based on monitoring programs in Shenzhen, China, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is testing its Social Credit System. Officials on the Darwin council traveled to Shenzhen, according to NT News to “have a chance to see exactly how their Smart Technology works prior to being fully rolled out.”
In Darwin, they’ve already constructed “poles, fitted with speakers, cameras and Wi-Fi,” according to NT News, which will monitor people, their movements around the city, the websites they visit, and what apps they use. The monitoring will be done mainly by artificial intelligence, but will alert authorities on set triggers.
Just like in China, the surveillance system is being branded as a “smart city” program, and while Australian officials claim it’s operations are benign, they’ve announced it functions to monitor cell phone activity and “virtual fences” that will trigger alerts if people cross them.
“We’ll be getting sent an alarm saying ‘there’s a person in this area that you’ve put a virtual fence around’ … boom an alert goes out to whatever authority, whether it’s us or police to say ‘look at camera five’,” said Josh Sattler—the Darwin council’s general manager for innovation, growth, and development services—according to NT News.
The nature of the “virtual fences” and what type of activity will sound an alarm is still not being made clear.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Orwell Goes Retail: Stores Now Track Where You Shop… And Sleep
Orwell Goes Retail: Stores Now Track Where You Shop… And Sleep
In news that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, retailers are now tracking not only where are you shop, but also where you sleep, according to a new Bloomberg article.
For instance, Hill Country Galleria in Bee Cave, Texas used information and location data from customers’ phones to determine that a lot of shoppers own pets. Using this data, it went on to install water fountains, babysitting stations and photo op stations for customers and their pets. As a result, the time customers spent in the mall grew by 40%.
One shopping Center in Chicago found it was drawing customers from Asian neighborhoods, so it filled one of its vacancies with a high-end Asian specialty grocery. And even Dunkin’ Donuts is getting in on the trend. It employed phone data to make sure that the 278 new stores it was opening wouldn’t steal customers from existing locations.
These few clues that retail owners are getting from customers’ phones are one of the last chances brick-and-mortar shops have at trying to salvage their industry. They’re buying this mobile phone data hand over fist in order to help determine where people shop, eat and see movies. They’re also looking to see where customers go before and after going to the mall. It helps them look at personal details and paint a picture of the demographic that shops with them. It also helps them advertise.
But aside from transforming the industry, this is raising privacy concerns. The idea of being tracked – surprise – makes some people uneasy (how that is not “all” is beyond comprehension). All the companies interviewed for the article said that they don’t use any information that can identify individuals, but due to lax regulation, they’re really on the honor system to keep their word. So, we’re absolutely positive they’re doing the right thing…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Global Government and Mass Surveillance May Be Needed to Save Humanity, Expert Says
Global Government and Mass Surveillance May Be Needed to Save Humanity, Expert Says
A prominent Oxford philosopher who is known for making terrifying predictions about humanity has a new theory about our future, and it isn’t pretty.
Over 15 years ago, Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, made the case that we are all living in a Matrix-like computer simulation run by another civilization.
Here’s a summary of that theory, explained by Vox:
In an influential paper that laid out the theory, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom showed that at least one of three possibilities is true: 1) All human-like civilizations in the universe go extinct before they develop the technological capacity to create simulated realities; 2) if any civilizations do reach this phase of technological maturity, none of them will bother to run simulations; or 3) advanced civilizations would have the ability to create many, many simulations, and that means there are far more simulated worlds than non-simulated ones. (source)
Will humanity eventually be destroyed by one of its own creations?
If you find the idea of living in a computer simulation that is run by unknown beings troubling, wait until you hear Bostrom’s latest theory.
Last Wednesday, Bostrom took the stage at a TED conference in Vancouver, Canada, to share some of the insights from his latest work, “The Vulnerable World Hypothesis.”
While speaking to head of the conference, Chris Anderson, Bostrom argued that mass surveillance could be one of the only ways to save humanity – from a technology of our own creation.
His theory starts with a metaphor of humans standing in front of a giant urn filled with balls that represent ideas. There are white balls (beneficial ideas), grey balls (moderately harmful ideas), and black balls (ideas that destroy civilization). The creation of the atomic bomb, for instance, was akin to a grey ball — a dangerous idea that didn’t result in our demise.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Thousands Of Amazon Alexa Eavesdroppers Can Also Access Users’ Home Addresses
Thousands Of Amazon Alexa Eavesdroppers Can Also Access Users’ Home Addresses
Bloomberg has it in for Amazon these days.
Two weeks after we finally got confirmation what everyone had known for so long, namely that an internal Amazon team numbering in the thousands was secretly listening in to Alexa users’ commands without their prior knowledge, Bloomberg reported that the same team also has access to location data and can easily find a customer’s home address.
Citing five (supposedly former) employees familiar with the program, Bloomberg writes that the covert “Alexa team”, which is spread across three continents, and transcribes, annotates and analyzes a portion of the voice recordings picked up by Alexa, “to help Amazon’s digital voice assistant get better at understanding and responding to commands”, also has access to Alexa users’ geographic coordinates and can easily type them into third-party mapping software and find home residences, according to the employees (who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program, which apparently did not prevent them from speaking off the record with Bloomberg).
And while there has yet to be any evidence that Amazon employees have attempted to track down individual users, two members of the Alexa team who seem to have grown a coscience, expressed concern that Amazon which is fast becoming the world’s biggest monopoly across virtually every industry, was granting unnecessarily broad access to customer data that would make it easy to identify a device’s owner.
“Anytime someone is collecting where you are, that means it could go to someone else who could find you when you don’t want to be found,” said Lindsey Barrett, a staff attorney and teaching fellow at Georgetown Law’s Communications and Technology Clinic, who noted that location data is more sensitive than many other categories of user information. Widespread access to location data associated with Alexa user recordings “would set up a big red flag for me.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
She Wrote The Patriot Act. Her Next Job Is With Facebook
She Wrote The Patriot Act. Her Next Job Is With Facebook
Facebook announced Monday that Jennifer Newstead, a Trump appointee who served in the Department of Justice (DoJ) under President Bush, will join the social media company as General Counsel, supervising its global legal functions.
Newstead replaces Colin Stretch, who announced in 3Q18 that he will exit. Stretch will remain with Facebook through the transition phase, expected to be completed in the coming months.
“Jennifer is a seasoned leader whose global perspective and experience will help us fulfill our mission,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer. “We are also truly grateful to Colin for his dedicated leadership and wise counsel over the past nine years. He has played a crucial role in some of our most important projects and has created a strong foundation for Jennifer to build upon.”
Newstead brings a terrifying history of lobbying and legislating for an Orwellian style of mass electronic surveillance of Americans.
The Hill explains she was credited with writing the controversial 2001 Patriot Act, a piece of legislation that stripped Americans of their First and Fourth Amendments in the name of fighting the War on Terror.
In a 2002 statement, Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh described Newstead’s role in drafting the Patriot Act: “Her enhanced leadership duties and her excellent service on a range of issues — including helping craft the new U.S.A. Patriot Act to protect the United States against terror — have earned her this important distinction. She is first among equals.”
Congress enacted the Patriot Act in the wake of September 11, 2001 attacks, the Act expanded the scope of the government’s surveillance powers to investigate terrorism, organized crime, and drug trafficking. It allowed government investigators to use roving wiretaps and the ability to collect telephone records from US carriers.
