"See Something Know Nothing" should be our clueless public's slogan about govt. spying
'See Something Know Nothing' should be our clueless public's slogan about how little we know about police/govt. spying. We see them spying but our govt. doesn't want you to know anything about it. (I should copyright the slogan, lol)
New spying device called 'Conversnitch' Tweets your conversations
A tiny new spy device aims to automatically transcribe and Tweet overheard conversations. It's called Conversnitch.
Two artists have revealed Conversnitch, a device they built for less than $100 that resembles a lightbulb or lamp and surreptitiously listens in on nearby conversations and posts snippets of transcribed audio to Twitter. Kyle McDonald and Brian House say they hope to raise questions about the nature of public and private spaces in an era when anything can be broadcast by ubiquitous, Internet-connected listening devices.
“What does it mean to deploy one of these in a library, a public square, someone’s bedroom? What kind of power relationship does it set up?” asks House, a 34-year-old adjunct professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. “And what does this stream of tweets mean if it’s not set up by an artist but by the U.S. government?”
They say it bridges the gap between (presumed) private physical space and public space online.
They released a video of the device being connected to a table lamp at a bank, in a hanging lamp at a McDonald's, in a library light, and even a street lamp in a New York City park.
The device needs to have continuous access to an Internet-connected wireless network to work. It continually records 10 second samples, analyzes for interesting audio and uploads a transcribed version of it.
Their Twitter feed shows conversations they say have been captured by their device.
They say, "Information moves between spaces that might be physical or virtual, free or proprietary, illegal or playful, spoken or transcribed" is all game for their device.
The creators have released the documentation on how to build the device on the software development site GitHub and say the plans are completely free to use for any purpose.
“You can’t make this stuff up anymore,” says McDonald. “Here were Brian and I trying to make something kind of scary, something that makes you wonder if someone’s watching you all the time. And then Snowden says, ‘They are.’”
http://www.myfoxny.com/story/25320323/s-device-live-tweets-private-conversations
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/coversnitch-eavesdropping-lightbulb/
Louisiana is building a database of all it’s “citizens”
Authorities in Louisiana are compiling a database of information on every citizen in order to identify people who are “a risk to the state,” as well as pinpointing future criminals in an effort to allow the state to “intervene in that person’s life”.
Click here to watch the video.
Details of the program were recently divulged by Chris Broadwater, Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from District 86, in a YouTube video which can be viewed above. The Comprehensive Person Profile, developed by software company SAS, uses information from every agency of state government to compile personal data entries on Louisiana residents which are centralized on one database. Originally set up to combat fraudulent workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance claims, the program was expanded to create a “centralized data warehouse” that allows “every agency within state government” to both submit and access data on every person within the state. The purposes of the database, in the words of Broadwater, are to “detect fraud” and to identify people who are “a risk to the state down the road based upon the information we know about the individual,” enabling authorities to quickly identify “an individual who is going to be at risk of incarceration down the road,” a process that sounds an awful lot like ‘pre-crime’. Broadwater remarks that the state having such a treasure trove of information about each individual will allow authorities to “intervene in that person’s life”. The program is also being introduced under the guise of making the lives of Louisiana residents “better” by way of things like speeding up the process of renewing a drivers license. Broadwater notes that during this process, state workers would be able to access information about the applicant’s children and make recommendations about health insurance. Very little information about how the state of Louisiana is actually using the program is in the public domain besides what Broadwater reveals in the video. Activist outfit The People, LLC is calling on citizens of Louisiana to support Rep. Schroder’s HB 1076 (data privacy) bill, which would go some way to nullifying that information that could be shared with the state database.http://www.infowars.com/louisiana-creates-database-of-citizens-who-represent-a-risk-to-the-state/
California Sheriff ran illegal air surveillance (spied) on every resident:
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department acknowledged this week that Compton residents were not notified of an airborne video-surveillance program that was tested in 2012. "No notification to the residents was made because this system was being tested in a city where cameras were already deployed and the system was only being evaluated," the department said in a statement released Tuesday.
Officials said the department decided the program was not useful and dropped it after the test period.
Under the nine-day trial program in January 2012, a video camera was mounted on a small plane that was deployed for six-hour periods during the day, the department said.
The Sheriff's dept. dropped it because they were exposed, police around the country are spying on EVERYONE.
The plane, which flew out of Long Beach Airport, was operated by a private company that provides airborne surveillance technology. They claim the resolution of the video footage was not sufficient to allow authorities to identify people (anyone) who might have been suspected of breaking the law (whatever happened to probable cause?)
The Center for Investigative Reporting and the KQED public radio station reported on airborne surveillance systems being used by law enforcement to spy on every citizen.http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sheriff-air-surveillance-compton-without-telling-residents-20140423,0,5902950.story#axzz2zjjpi86K
87% of online spying comes from govts.
The latest annual Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon Communications reveals that there has been a three-fold increase in cyber espionage since the last report was published in April 2013.
Oddly, there's no mention of the most prolific spying agency in the world the NSA!
Of the 511 spying incidents recorded, 87 per cent were conducted by "state-affiliated actors" (governments), as opposed to 11 per cent by organized criminal groups.
China and other East Asian nations were identified as the origin of 49 percent of espionage attacks while Eastern European countries were suspected to be the origin of 21 percent of the attacks. Some 25 percent of spying incidents could not be attributed to attackers from any country, according to Verizon.
The DOJ has issued gag orders against Twitter and Yahoo concerning grand jury subpoenas that have been sent to both companies.
The federal govt. has a disturbing array of tools and technologies in its investigative arsenal, and it goes to great lengths to shield its tactics from public scrutiny. Not only does this secrecy prevent the public from challenging indiscriminate surveillance used against them, but it also means the public can't discuss their government's actions.
Click here to read more.
The most prolific method of gaining access to a victim’s environment is spear phishing, whereby a well-crafted and personally-relevant email is sent to a targeted user, prompting them to open an attachment or click a link within the message.
"Spying is nothing new and we shouldn’t be surprised that the political entities around the world are expanding their intelligence arsenals with modern capabilities," said Tim Erlin, director of security and risk at Tripwire, commenting on the report.
"It’s likely that the data from the Verizon report is a trailing indicator of the increasing cyber-espionage capabilities around the world.”
Cyber espionage is one of nine basic attack patterns that almost all security incidents fall into. These also include: miscellaneous errors such as sending an email to the wrong person, crimeware (various malware aimed at gaining control of systems), insider/privilege misuse, physical theft/loss, Web app attacks, denial of service attacks, point-of-sale intrusions, and payment card skimmers. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/10782541/Governments-responsible-for-87pc-of-online-spying.html
Our gov't just got a lot more secret: James Clapper bars unauthorized contacts with reporters on any intel-related matters
Employees of U.S. intelligence agencies have been barred from discussing any intelligence-related matter _even if it isn’t classified _ with journalists without authorization, according to a new directive by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Intelligence agency employees who violate the policy could suffer career-ending losses of their security clearances or outright termination, and those who disclose classified information might face criminal prosecution, according to the directive, which Clapper signed March 20 but was made public only Monday by Steven Aftergood, who runs the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.
Under the order, only the director or deputy head of an intelligence agency, public affairs officials and those authorized by public affairs officials may have contact with journalists on intelligence-related matters.
The order doesn’t distinguish between classified and unclassified matters. It covers a range of intelligence-related information, including, it says, “intelligence sources, methods, activities and judgments.”
It includes a sweeping definition of who’s a journalist, which it asserts is “any person . . . engaged in the collection, production or dissemination to the public of information in any form related to topics of national security.”
The order represents the latest move by the Obama administration to stifle leaks. It bolsters another administration initiative called the Insider Threat Program, which requires federal employees to report co-workers who show any of a broad variety of “high risk” behaviors that might indicate they could be sources of unauthorized releases of classified or unclassified material. Clapper’s new directive “is a response to the same basic anxiety: that intelligence employees might be talking out of school,” said Aftergood. “It’s what I think is a rather heavy-handed attempt to crack down on unauthorized communications. It doesn’t specify that it’s limited to classified information and indeed, disclosures of classified information are already prohibited if unauthorized.”
“IC employees . . . must obtain authorization for contacts with the media” when it comes to intelligence-related matters, and they “must also report . . . unplanned or unintentional contact with the media on covered matters,” the directive says.
Our government has become so secretive that confronting authority could make you a domestic terrorist.
Click here to watch the video.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/21/225055/us-intelligence-chief-bars-unauthorized.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/21/225055/us-intelligence-chief-bars-unauthorized.html#storylink=cpyhttp://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/21/225055/us-intelligence-chief-bars-unauthorized.html