Privacy SOS

Today I’m testifying in support of the Drone Privacy Act in the Massachusetts state legislature. Here‘s my testimony.

My colleagues will be testifying in support of the License Plate Privacy Act, another critical privacy bill heard today before the Joint Committee on Transportation.    Continue reading “Report: license plate tracking companies purposefully target low-income people”

Barrett BrownThe Guardian – by Ed Pilkington

The US government has moved to drop key charges against the activist-journalist Barrett Brown, including the most controversial count that he transferred stolen property by posting a hyperlink to a website containing hacked material.

Federal prosecutors had come under widespread criticism for seeking to prosecute Brown for the republishing of a hyperlink. Lawyers, publishers and internet freedom campaigners had warned it could set a precedent that would have put a chill on the culture of linking across the web.   Continue reading “US government moves to drop key charges against Barrett Brown”

MassPrivateI

President Obama proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending toward consolidation of the Department of Homeland Security on the west campus of St. Elizabeths hospital and creation of a new civilian cyber campus in his budget proposal. (Creating a new spying cyber center? Isn’t there one called the NSA, where does it stop?)   Continue reading “Obama wants a DHS spying campus at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital”

Electronic Frontier Foundation – by NADIA KAYYALI

UPDATE- March 5, 2014:

After a grueling meeting where dozens of speakers expressed concerns about privacy, racial profiling, and political repression, the Oakland City Council voted to move forward with a reduced Domain Awareness Center. The motion that was approved will remove city cameras and ShotSpotter from the DAC components, but does not address many of the questions EFF and others have raised. The final vote was a 4-4 tie, with Council members Rebecca Kaplan, Libby Schaaf, Noel Gallo, and Lynette Gibson McElhaney voting no and Council members Dan Kalb, Pat Kernighan, Desley Brooks, and Larry Reid voting yes. Mayor Jean Quan cast the tie-breaking yes vote, and has indicated that she will seek to add more systems to the DAC “one at a time” in the future. EFF will now be scrutinizing the development of the privacy policy and the DAC system itself very closely.   Continue reading “EFF Fights Back Against Oakland’s Disturbing Domain Awareness Center”

Activist Post – by Amanda Warren

When all hope is lost, leave it to others on the Web to reach out and help. One such example is a garbled letter left behind by a late grandmother, now decoded by other Internet users.

Here is another: a man is assaulted by an officer, trumped up charges are laid, he is jailed for 10 days and his phone is taken. When he gets it back, the footage has clearly been tampered with, leaving nothing but his word against an officer, a pending one-year jail term, a claim that there was no police call and deleted, corrupted files.    Continue reading “Reddit User Recovers Altered Video of Cop, Keeps Man Out of Jail”

US NEWS ATTACKS-BUSH 3 KRTMcClatchy DC – by JONATHAN S. LANDAY, ALI WATKINS AND MARISA TAYLOR

WASHINGTON — The CIA Inspector General’s Office has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of malfeasance at the spy agency in connection with a yet-to-be released Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, McClatchy has learned.   Continue reading “Probe sought of CIA conduct in Senate study of secret detention program”

Papers, Please!

At first blush, a lawsuit filed last week by the ACLU on behalf of a sociology professor at Indiana University wrongly detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection seems to be about whether CBP is exceeding the limitations on its police powers, and detaining US citizens for purposes unrelated to customs and borders.

That’s bad, but unsurprising in light of the history of abuse of limited administrative search powers as a pretext for unrelated police purposes by CBP and other DHS components, notably the TSA.   Continue reading “DHS uses email intercepts to question US citizen about her sex life”

Mother Jones – by Asawin Suebsaeng

Here’s one way the US government is trying to combat terrorism without the use of controversial explosions. A tiny portion of your tax dollars—just a few million dollars annually—is funding the State Department’s trolling of jihadists on Twitter.

One of the State Department’s official (and verified) Twitter accounts, called “Think AgainTurn Away” and going by the handle “@ThinkAgain_DOS,” is devoted to speaking “some truths about terrorism” online. If you follow the account, you’ll notice that this truth often manifests itself in the form of the State Department directly tweeting at Islamists and their supporters in English, and countering their beliefs.   Continue reading “The State Department Is Actively Trolling Terrorists on Twitter”

Computer World – by Robert L. Mitchell

Privacy is under attack from all quarters, but even today, there are things you can do to protect your personal data. Here are some tips.

Who says privacy is dead? While it’s true that marketers, the government, data aggregators and others are gathering and analyzing more data than ever about every individual, you can still exert some control over what’s out there, who’s tracking you and what they do with that information.   Continue reading “The paranoid’s survival guide, part 1: How to protect your personal data”

Washington’s Blog

New Ooga Booga No Longer Effective … So Government Switches Back to Tried-And-True Old-Timey Ooga-Booga

Preface: I’m not siding with Putin on the Ukrainian dispute. I don’t like Communism.  I was born in the U.S. and have lived here all of my life.  I hate Stalin with a passion – a man who killed countless protesters, and sent numerous others away to insane asylums – and have railed against the “useful idiots” who naively supported the Soviets. I also think that Putin is a corrupt kleptocrat.  I’m just pointing out that the U.S. Government is completely overreacting and fear-mongering. This is taking place on the other side of the world, and doesn’t effect America’s national security (although we may have heavily invested in the outcome).   Continue reading “The Americans’ Fear of Islamic Terrorists Has Worn Off, So the Government Pulls Out the EVIL RUSSIAN Card Again”

Freedom Outpost – by Richard Anthony

If you’re like me you are paying attention to what is transpiring within our government. Many senior General officers are being fired (or “retired early”). Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and several other federal agencies are soliciting for hollow point ammunition on the pretext it will be used for “target practice.” Why does the Social Security Administration need hollow point ammo for target practice, you may ask? They don’t, but since the information about DHS soliciting for millions of rounds has some people alarmed, the government has decided to spread-out the purchases amongst other agencies as not to alarm the civilian population. This also coincides with foreign troops (Russian) practicing crowd control maneuvers on American soil. There has been an American “practice town” built for just this purpose. I could site more instances regarding FEMA camps and even the American 3rd Infantry Division’s new mission, but you get the idea, right?   Continue reading “A Storm is Brewing on the Horizon – Will Obama Declare Martial Law Before 2016?”

MassPrivateI

Commercial drivers who use drugs will have a tough time keeping a job or finding a new one, once a new federal drug database goes live Oct. 1. The Commercial Driver’s License Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse  is under development by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) , which is accepting public comments until April 21.

The American Trucking Associations supports the bill and has been pushing for its passage for some time. ATA president Bill Graves in July 2012 said “The long overdue national clearinghouse will be a far more effective way to address the ongoing problem of some commercial drivers evading testing program rules.”   Continue reading “Massive new national drug testing database for commercial truck & bus drivers”

Lew Rockwell – by Jack D. Douglas

As you have probably noted, the Ukrainian situation is developing very fast.

The U.S. news reporting is totally biased. There is no real government at the national level in Kiev now, only a bunch of coup leaders. The Constitution is in abeyance since they overthrew the elected government by force.

The local areas are going their own way. Ukrainian troops seem to be going with the local people and governments.   Continue reading “Ignore the Lying US Media”

StoryLeak – by Mikael Thalen

Police in Modesto, California unveiled a newly acquired surveillance vehicle this week which will video and audio record local residents throughout the city.

The Armadillo, a refurbished armored truck, is equipped with four high definition cameras, four wide-angle lens cameras and advanced audio recording capabilities.   Continue reading “California Police Unveil Armored Surveillance Vehicle”

news1-1.jpgLA Weekly – by Darwin Bond-Graham And Ali Winston

Edward Snowden ripped the blinds off the surveillance state last summer with his leak of top-secret National Security Agency documents, forcing a national conversation about spying in the post-9/11 era. However, there’s still no concrete proof that America’s elite intelligence units are analyzing most Americans’ computer and telephone activity — even though they can.

Los Angeles and Southern California police, by contrast, are expanding their use of surveillance technology such as intelligent video analytics, digital biometric identification and military-pedigree software for analyzing and predicting crime. Information on the identity and movements of millions of Southern California residents is being collected and tracked.   Continue reading “Forget the NSA, the LAPD Spies on Millions of Innocent Folks”

Tech Dirt – by Mike Masnick

We’ve covered for a while now how Uber — the mobile phone-enabled car/taxi ordering service — has run up against a bunch of obsolete laws in various cities, often leading to bizarre rebuttals from municipal officials. Uber quickly realized that each ridiculous response from a city government was something of a marketing opportunity to introduce itself to new cities. You would think, by now, city officials would learn that the proper thing to do is figure out how to work with Uber to provide better transportation for their citizenry, rather than immediately bowing to demands from taxi/limo companies who fear potential competition.    Continue reading “Houston Issues ‘Cease-And-Desist’ To Uber To Stop Houston Residents From Communicating With Their Government”