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America Is The 4th Worst Abuser Of Biometric Privacy Rights In The World
America Is The 4th Worst Abuser Of Biometric Privacy Rights In The World
Does anyone really believe America is still the land of the free?
Since 9/11, DHS, the FBI, the CIA, and countless other alphabet soup agencies have turned the United States into a public surveillance monstrosity.
In 19 years, one terrorist attack has done what no one else could have dreamed of: turn America’s freedoms into a distant memory.
Abusing citizen’s rights and privacy used to be the hallmark of dictatorships and police states like the CCCP or North Korea.
A recent study conducted by Comparitech, rated 50 countries from best to worst at protecting citizen’s biometric data.
The study found that America is one of the world’s worst abusers of citizen’s biometric privacy.
“While China topping the list perhaps doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, residents of (and travelers to) other countries may be surprised and concerned at the extent of biometric information that is being collected on them and what is happening to it afterward.”
This really should not come as a surprise, because last year Comparitech revealed that American and Chinese cities lead the world in spying on their citizens. Last week, I wrote an article explaining how 2019 would go down as the year that facial recognition and corporate surveillance became commonplace in America.
Comparitech’s recent study on biometric privacy compared how 50 countries collect and use data to identify innocent people:
- Many countries collect travelers’ biometric data, often through visas or biometric checks at airports
- Every country we studied is using biometrics for bank accounts, e.g. fingerprints to access online app data and/or to confirm identities within the banks themselves
- Despite many countries recognizing biometric data as sensitive, increased biometric use is widely accepted
- Facial recognition CCTV is being implemented in a large number of countries, or at least being tested
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Surveillance and Propaganda Work in ‘the Free World’
How Surveillance and Propaganda Work in ‘the Free World’
A Bloomberg report of October 22 was concise and uncompromising in declaring Russia to be a surveillance state. Harking back to the good old days of the Cold War, as is increasingly the practice in much of the Western media, Bloomberg recounted that “The fourth of 10 basic rules Western spies followed when trying to infiltrate Russia’s capital during the Cold War — don’t look back because you’re never alone — is more apt than ever. Only these days it’s not just foreigners who are being tracked, but all 12.6 million Muscovites, too. Officials in Moscow have spent the last few years methodically assembling one of the most comprehensive video-surveillance operations in the world. The public-private network of as many as 200,000 cameras records 1.5 billion hours of footage a year that can be accessed by 16,000 government employees, intelligence officers and law-enforcement personnel.”
Terrifying, one might think. Straight out of Orwell’s 1984, that dystopian prediction of what the world could become, as noted in one description of how the face of the state’s symbolic leader, Big Brother, “gazes at you silently out of posters and billboards. His imposing presence establishes the sense of an all-seeing eye. The idea that he is always watching from the shadows imposes a kind of social order. You know not to speak out against The Party — because big brother is watching… The face always appears with the phrase Big Brother is watching you. As if you could forget.” Such is the terrifying Bloomberg picture of Moscow where there are supposedly 200,000 video cameras. You can’t blow your nose without it being seen. And wait for the next phase, in which Big Brother will hear you laugh.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
London Is Only The 6th Most-Surveilled City In The World
London Is Only The 6th Most-Surveilled City In The World
According to a study by research website Comparitech, eight out of the ten most surveilled cities in the world are in China, and as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the country that has been making headlines for its generous use of surveillance technology is featured heavily throughout the whole ranking that features 120 cities globally.
Central Chinese city Chongqing tops the list with 168 public CCTV cameras per 1,000 inhabitants.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The highest-ranked non-Chinese city is London, also notorious for its strict surveillance of public spaces, but at 68 cameras per 1,000 Londoners, the city is featuring far less CCTV cameras than its Chinese counterparts.
Atlanta is the highest-ranked U.S. city and comes in tenth with 15.6 cameras per 1,000 people.
CCTV technology is controversial in many places around the world, with proponents touting its benefits for fighting crime and opponents cautious about surveillance’s potential to be used as a tool of public control and to violate privacy rights. The makers of the survey said that they found no connection between lower crime rates or a heightened feeling of security and surveillance in the cities surveyed.
The Surveillance State: An Inexorable March Toward Totalitarianism
The Surveillance State: An Inexorable March Toward Totalitarianism
Gizmodo released an article entitled “US Homeland Security Wants Facial Recognition to Identify People in Moving Cars,” on 11/2/17 by Matt Novak. The Surveillance State has slowed down its rate of growth since the President took office, however, it has not halted that growth. Instead, it lies festering below the veneer of daily events, inexorably growing its tentacles and extending their reach. Akin to an infestation of weeds, the roots are deep within the fabric of our communications networks: telephones, CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) cameras, the Internet…all are thoroughly permeated.
Here is an excerpt from that article:
The proposed program would allow Homeland Security to maintain a database of everyone who leaves and enters the US that would now include photos taken by spying robot-cameras at every border crossing. Not only does DHS want this new facial recognition program to work without anyone having to exit their vehicle, the agency wants it to work even if the travelers are wearing things like sunglasses and hats. DHS also wants it to work without cars having to stop.
Seems they really want our information for their database. There is something more. One of the readers on the article’s website who uses the handle “Artiofab” posted this comment that is important, as he lives on the Texas border with Mexico:
“11/02/17 12:31pm Hi everybody I live near the US-MX border so I’m happy to give informed opinions on this topic, since I know that a lot of the audience at Gizmodo dot com apparently lives closer to the US-CA border.
Near the US-MX border along major US highways there are these interior checkpoints. If you’re traveling “into” the US (e.g., if you’re in New Mexico and you’re driving north) you stop your car, a USBP agent asks if you’re all US citizens, you say yes, they let you keep going.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Surveillance State Did Not Disappear With The Trump Victory: “It Is Still Lurking And Completely Intact”
The Surveillance State Did Not Disappear With The Trump Victory: “It Is Still Lurking And Completely Intact”
One of the things Donald Trump has really done correctly is to assess his future arena in the areas of intelligence-gathering and operational security. Trump wants to return to a “courier” method of transmitting sensitive information and classified documents for the purpose of reducing the amount of material that can be hacked or stolen. There is a subtlety about this for a caveat, in case the compliment has bloomed flowers in your thoughts: the NSA $50 billion facility for collection and storage of data in Utah won’t be shutting down anytime soon.
As Snowden’s exposes clearly pointed out, the government has clearly followed Petraeus’ glowing “internet of things” yellow brick road to form an integrated, interconnected surveillance state. All CCTV (closed circuit television) systems, all merchants with cameras, all law enforcement cameras…all of the camera surveillance systems everywhere are either tied into data collection immediately or can be accessed for use at a later time.
The latest “Jason Bourne” movie clearly illustrates how the government can utilize devices such as cellular telephones (especially the ones with cameras) to track movements, record conversations, and be a “piggyback” to relay information to a nearby computer or a camera. This isn’t the future: this is now.
There is an older piece written by Michael Snyder in June of 2013 entitled 27 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send a Chill Up Your Spine. The information in this article is directly from Edward Snowden that revealed exactly what the government has been doing regarding their total surveillance program. The surveillance did not occur overnight, and in the manner of the “frog in the cold-water kettle” by stretching out the time for putting it all into place, the stultified public’s focus was either diverted or bypassed entirely.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
More Police Does Not Mean Less Crime
More Police Does Not Mean Less Crime
According to a interactive crime map, crime in the city of Hamilton was on the rise with 380 incidents in the month of December.
The map clearly shows that most of the criminal activity was in the downtown core. Which is interesting considering that this area of the city has the largest police presence and most of the cities CCTV camera’s.
The Hamilton police Action team, made up of officers on foot, bikes, horseback, and in cars patrol the area heavily. There are many times that even taking a ten minute walk through downtown you will see upwards of eight to ten officers in that short amount of time.
The Hamilton police service Action strategy has been recognized internationally for “lowering crime and restoring civility to downtown streets”.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
