Author: Joe from MassPrivateI

Yahoo News – by MICHELLE RINDELS

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Six states were named Monday by federal officials to develop test sites for drones — a critical next step for the burgeoning industry that could one day produce thousands of unmanned aircraft for use by businesses, farmers and researchers.

Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia will host the research sites, providing diverse climates, geography and air traffic environments as the Federal Aviation Administration seeks to safely introduce commercial drones into U.S. airspace.   Continue reading “Feds announce test sites for drone aircraft”

MassPrivateI

NY – The department’s prototype “smart car,” outfitted with the latest gadgets in public safety. It has two infrared monitors mounted on the trunk that record any numbers it sees—such as license plates and addresses. It has surveillance cameras and air sensors capable of sending real-time information to police headquarters. The NYPD says it is the cruiser of the very near future.    Continue reading “Police “smart cars” to be equipped with fingerprint scanners and facial recognition sensors”

Salon – by LINA KHAN

Imagine cows fed and milked entirely by robots. Or tomatoes that send an e-mail when they need more water. Or a farm where all the decisions about where to plant seeds, spray fertilizer and steer tractors are made by software on servers on the other side of the sea.

This is what more and more of our agriculture may come to look like in the years ahead, as farming meets Big Data. There’s no shortage of farmers and industry gurus who think this kind of “smart” farming could bring many benefits. Pushing these tools onto fields, the idea goes, will boost our ability to control this fiendishly unpredictable activity and help farmers increase yields even while using fewer resources.   Continue reading “Monsanto’s scary new scheme: Why does it really want all this data?”

Opposing Views – by Sarah Fruchtnicht

A Texas district judge was arrested on Saturday for allegedly dragging his girlfriend by her hair, choking her, leaning her over a balcony, and threatening to kill her.

The attorney for State District Judge Carlos Raul Cortez says he’s not guilty.

“The allegations made by the complainant are false,” said attorney Andy Korn. “If necessary, it will be shown in the proper forum that Judge Cortez actually saved her life.”   Continue reading “Texas Judge Accused Of Choking, Dangling Girlfriend Off Balcony Claims He ‘Actually Saved Her Life’”

Star Tribune – by KEVIN DIAZ

In the supersecret world of the nation’s spy agencies, an unassuming librarian like Kirsten Clark at the University of Minnesota might seem like an unlikely mark.

But recent revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance of phone and Internet traffic have raised concerns among librarians and put them in the front ranks of efforts to curb government bulk data collection operations.   Continue reading “Minnesota librarians push to curb NSA snooping”

MassPrivateI

North Carolina – Rental cops hired by the Lake Toxaway Community Association  (homeowners association) can conduct traffic stops that would be unconstitutional if performed by an actual police officer, according to a ruling handed down last week by the North Carolina Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel took up the case of Frederick Lloyd Weaver Jr, who was stopped on April 20, 2012 by an armed security guard employed by Metro Special Police and Security Services. The HOA for the Carleton Place townhomes near the University of North Carolina at Wilmington contracted with Metro for security services.   Continue reading “Security guards can arrest citizens for DUI”

MassPrivateI

A Senate committee report goes to great lengths to determine all of the things that data brokers, the companies that trade in consumer data, don’t want to talk about. The 35-page report describes some of the companies’ strategies for collecting and organizing data, but significant portions of the report discuss what the companies are unwilling to talk about: namely, where they get a lot of their data and where that data is going.

Companies covered in the report include well-known firms, like Datalogix and Acxiom, as well as credit reporting companies that also trade in consumer data, like Experian and TransUnion. In the report, the committee sets out to answer four questions: what data is collected, how specific it is, how it’s collected, and how it’s used. While the first two questions turned out to be reasonably easy to answer, the companies all but stonewalled the committee on substantial answers to the latter two.   Continue reading “Data brokers & private companies are spying on citizens who’re “frequent ‘text posters’””

Yahoo News – by RAPHAEL SATTER

LONDON (AP) — A German magazine lifted the lid on the operations of the National Security Agency’s hacking unit Sunday, reporting that American spies intercept computer deliveries, exploit hardware vulnerabilities, and even hijack Microsoft’s internal reporting system to spy on their targets.

Der Spiegel’s revelations relate to a division of the NSA known as Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, which is painted as an elite team of hackers specializing in stealing data from the toughest of targets.   Continue reading “Report: NSA intercepts computer deliveries”

Mother Jones – by Nick Baumann

Springer

Organizations looking to hire new staff should rethink their clandestine use of social networking websites, such as Facebook, to screen new recruits. William Stoughton of North Carolina State University, lead author of a study published in Springer’s Journal of Business and Psychology, found that this practice could be seen as a breach of privacy and create a negative impression of the company for potential employees. This spying could even lead to law suits.   Continue reading “Social network spying could lead to low returns”

The Daily Sheeple – by Chris Carrington

The government is not content with  interfering in our children’s education. It is not content with dictating to us with what they are and are not allowed to eat and drink. They are not even content with allowing us to chose appropriate medical care for our kids.

A plethora of government agencies have decided to open up their websites to kids in a blatant attempt at brainwashing them.   Continue reading “Government Agencies Add Children’s Pages To their Websites”

Sacramento Bee – by Kim Minugh

Once referred to by a local attorney as the “Million Dollar Man,” a former sheriff’s deputy cost the county of Sacramento more than $2 million in awards and settlements during his 23 years on the force.

By the time Donald Black retired Oct. 1 following his arrest on suspicion of child molestation and steroid possession, his actions had resulted in at least 10 payouts by the county, most of them involving excessive force allegations, according to a spreadsheet provided to The Sacramento Bee in response to a Public Records Act request. The largest payout – $1.5 million – went to a woman who had a 3-inch chunk of flesh taken out of her calf by Black’s then-K-9 partner. In another case, according to a court complaint, Black and another deputy allegedly terrified a man during a traffic stop by pointing an unloaded pellet gun at his head and pulling the trigger.   Continue reading “Legal payouts involving former Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy now accused in molestation case totaled more than $2 million”

MassPrivateI

Google revealed a sharp rise in requests from U.S. government officials (police) asking for political content to be removed from the web in its latest transparency report.

“Over the past four years, one worrying trend has remained consistent: governments continue to ask us to remove political content. Judges have asked us to remove information that’s critical of them, police departments want us to take down videos or blogs that shine a light on their conduct, and local institutions like town councils don’t want people to be able to find information about their decision-making processes,” Susan Infantino, legal director, said in a blogpost.   Continue reading “Google’s transparency report reveals disturbing trend to squelch free speech in U.S.”

MassPrivateI

Federal agencies (read DHS/NSA) have been leveraging the Kinect 3-D motion-sensing, facial and voice recognition technologies that power the Xbox One for security purposes.

The use of Xbox Kinect in the homeland security arena may come as a surprise to many, but not to Barrow. “We integrate many of our consumer products today with our more enterprise technologies,” he said. “And everything is on the same Windows 8 platform. If you think about how Xbox works, there’s just a lot of ways to use that technology that are not just fun and games.”   Continue reading “Why is DHS/NSA interested in Xbox Kinect?”

Fox News – by Judson Berger

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers paid $5.4 million for shoddy trash incinerators that were delivered years behind schedule and never used, leaving soldiers at an Afghanistan base with no other option than to keep burning waste in open-air pits, according to an internal probe.

The report from Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko was released Monday. It found the failure to complete the trash incinerators left soldiers exposed to potential health hazards from the burn pits, and taxpayers, once again, with nothing to show for a multimillion-dollar investment.   Continue reading “‘Complete waste’: Army Corps flushed $5.4M on ‘unusable’ trash incinerators, probe finds”

Washington’s Blog

32-year NSA Veteran Who Created Mass Surveillance System Says Government Use of Data Gathered Through Spying “Is a Totalitarian Process”

Bill Binney is the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information.  A 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, Binney was the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees.   Continue reading “Former Top NSA Official: “We Are Now In A Police State””