Author: Joe from MassPrivateI

MassPrivateI

Your phone knows everything about you — how much you walk, talk and what level of Candy Crush you’re stuck on — but soon it could be spilling secrets to your doctor. 

NBC 11 Alive News – by Rebecca Lindstrom

DECATUR, Ga. — A new online juror questionnaire offered by the DeKalb County Court listed “slave” as an occupational option.

Court Administrator Cathy McCumber told 11Alive, the questionnaire went online a month ago, but is based off an internal list that’s been used for 13 years.

She says the list is 62 pages long, so she’s not sure if the word slave has always been on it, or if it was added before the questionnaire went online.     Continue reading “DeKalb County, GA juror form lists “slave” as occupation”

MassPrivateI

Texas – The Fort Worth Police Dept. found itself on the receiving end of lots of criticism for its participation in a “voluntary” collection of blood and saliva samples for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) survey.

For one thing, having a squad of police officers flag you down and route you into a nearby parking space never feels “voluntary,” no matter how easy it is to opt out once you’re pulled over. For another, the paperwork signed by “volunteers” contained fine print that indicated consent had been assumed for the PD to “collect” information on the driver’s state of intoxication with passive alcohol sensors.    Continue reading “Police offer B/S apology for their assistance in DNA roadblock ‘survey’”

MassPrivateI

A February 2012 document called ‘SIGINT Strategy 2012-2016’ outlines exactly what the NSA plans to “dominate” the world’s Internet and telecom networks.

1. Strong commercial encryption works — and the NSA is trying to destroy it. A major goal outlined in the blueprint is to “Counter the challenge of ubiquitous, strong, commercial network encryption.” One of the ways it plans to do so is by using human spies to influence and weaken encryption standards at tech companies. Or in NSA speak, it plans to “counter indigenous cryptographic programs by targeting their industrial bases with all available SIGINT and HUMINT capabilities.” (HUMINT means ‘human intelligence’, or spies.) Continue reading “The NSA’s plans to “dominate” the world’s Internet and telecom networks”

MassPrivateI

The presentation lists license plate readers, facial recognition and field fingerprint scanning as potential uses of the Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications System Authority (BayRICS) network.

The East Bay Regional Communications System Authority (EBRCSA) was officially created on September 11, 2007 with the formation of a Joint Powers Authority (JPA).  In California State Statute, a JPA is viewed as an independent governmental agency with the same powers that accrue to one of the member agencies. Currently there are 43 member agencies consisting of both counties, 30 cities, 6 special districts, 3 Colleges, Dublin-San Ramon Services District and the California Department of Transportation serving a population of over 2.5 million people.  The Board of Directors is made up of 23 representatives consisting of Elected Officials, Police Chiefs, Fire Chiefs, and City Managers who will be responsible for the overall development, operations and funding of the system.   Continue reading “The San Francisco Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications Systems Authority (BayRICS) Facial Recognition Presentation”

MassPrivateI

Privacy International has released a collection of 1,203 documents on the private surveillance sector, detailing mass surveillance technologies capable of covertly collecting millions of emails, text messages, and phone calls on citizens around the world. The documents mention two companies known for selling Internet monitoring technology and unpublished software vulnerabilities to the U.S. National Security Agency.   Continue reading “Revealed: 338 surveillance companies who build the technology used to spy on us”

New York Post- by Philip Messing

J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI secretly monitored David Frost’s US program to keep tabs on his left-wing guests – and once even planted an undercover agent in his New York studio audience, according to the famed Brit talk show host’s FBI file, obtained by The Post.

Guests that got the feds’ attention included Johnson-era Attorney General Ramsey Clark, economist John Kenneth Galbraith and black nationalist Stokely Carmichael among others, according to the 45-page dossier obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.   Continue reading “FBI secretly spied on ‘David Frost Show’”

MassPrivateI

Private companies employed former CIA, NSA, FBI, military and police officers to monitor and in some cases infiltrate nonprofit groups that have been critical of them, according to the report by Essential Information.

The corporate capacity for espionage has skyrocketed in recent years. Most major companies now  have a chief corporate security officer tasked with assessing and mitigating “threats” of all sorts –including  from nonprofit organizations. And there is now a surfeit of private investigations firms willing and able to conduct sophisticated spying operations against nonprofits.    Continue reading “Corporations hire former NSA, FBI, military & police officers to spy on nonprofits & activists”

MassPrivateI

Sobriety checkpoints and mandatory drug testing of student athletes and railroad workers are among the legal precedents justifying the U.S. government’s now-defunct and court-approved secret email metadata dragnet surveillance program, according to documents the authorities released late Monday.

38 states and the District of Columbia permit sobriety checkpoints.   Continue reading “Sobriety checkpoints paved the way for NSA email spying”

Continue reading “Coming soon to a police dept. near you: Drones, tanks & grenade launchers”

MassPrivateI

A blogger who calls himself DoctorBeet wrote in a blog post earlier this week that he’d run a traffic analysis on his home router and found that whenever he switched the channel, his LG Smart TV would ping LG’s servers with the name of the channel, along with his TV’s individual identification number.

So whenever he switched from say, the BBC to Scuzz, his TV would report back to the mothership. Err, LG. Even when he went to his TV settings and switched the “Collection of watching info” that was set to “on” by default to “off,” it still sent that information to LG’s servers.   Continue reading “LG Smart TVs are spying on you while you change channels”

MassPrivateI

The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) will provide information from experts on security issues as a think-tank; as well as global cyber threats. A hand-picked host of professionals have been employed to contribute to the DCU:

• Analysts • Developers
• Physicists
• Financial planners
• Engineers
• Government attorneys
• Law enforcement officers    Continue reading “Microsoft’s Cybercrime Center is working with DHS & the FBI”

MassPrivateI

Declassified documents dictate how the NSA has been given the green light by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to monitor Americans – dating back to the Bush administration.

Much of the information has been redacted, yet there is still a clear path of how the Bush administration created surveillance programs without judicial oversight which conducted operations outside of legal authority. Suspects of terrorism had their entire lives under surveillance.    Continue reading “Anyone who believes in the 1st. Amend. speaks or writes in opposition to our gov’t. is a threat”

Prison Path

According to Buzzfeed Politics, there are 10 ways that America is Number One in the world. We have the most gold reserves, the most powerful military, the largest Gross Domestic Product at $15.56 trillion, the most Olympic medals and the United States has more inmates, more prisons and the most inmates in solitary confinement in the entire world.   Continue reading “United States: #1 in Inmates, Prisons, and Solitary Confinement”

Voice of Russia

MassPrivateI

When President Obama signed highway bill—MAP-21 (Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act) —into law. it allowed our gov’t. to spy on every trucker in the U.S.

More than 3 million truckers in the United States, are facing a regulatory upheaval which will cost his industry an estimated $2 billion and fundamentally change the way they do their jobs. Over the next few years, it will become mandatory, for all American truckers to carry a tracking device, an electronic on-board recorder (EOBR), in their vehicle.   Continue reading “Big Brother to spy on 3 million truck drivers using electronic on-board recorders (EOBR)”

MassPrivateI

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is urging theater operators to crack down on in-theater camcording with the deployment of night-vision goggles, low-light binoculars and security cameras.

The latest version of the MPAA’s “Best Practices to Prevent Film Theft” (.pdf) also suggests old-school surveillance, like “random bag and jacket checks for prohibited items” and to “observe patrons” when entering the theater.   Continue reading “Movie theaters join the police state conducting “random bag & jacket checks””