Author: Joe from MassPrivateI

Oklahoma Watch – by SHAUN HITTLE

In July 2010, a former Kingfisher County Sheriff’s Office deputy pleaded no contest to a charge of committing lewd acts with a child when he was an officer two years earlier.

Shawn Theo Thomsen, then 43, was given a five-year suspended sentence, court records show. Now living in Texas, he’s required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.   Continue reading “Despite Convictions and Guilty Pleas, Law Officers Keep Certifications for Years”

MassPrivateI

Security researcher Hristo Bojinov placed his Galaxy Nexus phone face up on the table in a cramped Palo Alto conference room. Then he flipped it over and waited another beat.

And that was it. In a matter of seconds, the device had given up its “fingerprints.”

Code running on the website in the device’s mobile browser measured the tiniest defects in the device’s accelerometer — the sensor that detects movement — producing a unique set of numbers that advertisers could exploit to identify and track most smartphones.   Continue reading “Stanford researchers demonstrate how smartphone fingerprint sensors can be used to spy on you”

MassPrivateI

A major new report detailing the global crackdown on peaceful protests, both through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report is called “Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World.” It was put out by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations. 

The name of the report, “Take Back the Streets,” comes from a police report filed in June 2010, when hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Toronto to nonviolently protest the G-20 summit. A senior Toronto police commander responded to the protests by issuing an order to, quote, “take back the streets.” Within a span of 36 hours, over a thousand people—peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights monitors and downtown residents—were arrested and placed in detention.    Continue reading ““Repression and criminalization of protests around the world” report details a global crackdown on peaceful protests”

Tech Dirt- by Mike Masnick

At a recent event held by the Cato Institute concerning the NSA’s surveillance overreach, Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, who broke the PRISM story and (of course) has been one of the three key reporters on all of the Snowden docs, noted that the feds begged him not to reveal the nine companies listed as participants in the PRISM program. Gellman and the Post refused, noting that the government’s reasons for wanting to keep the names out didn’t raise any legitimate security concerns, but rather had to do with making life easier for the NSA:   Continue reading “Feds Begged Washington Post Reporter Not To Name Companies In PRISM, Because It Worried They’d Stop Cooperating”

Tech Dirt – by Mike Masnick

Way back in 2005, we wrote a story about a ridiculous situation in which a group of students were suspended after filming an angry teacher go on a bit of a tirade, screaming at students and yanking the chair out from under one of them. Rather than discipline the teacher, the school suspended the students. This was way back before it was that common for everyone to have phones with cameras in them (back when people still called them “cameraphones” and mocked them) and before social media made it so easy to widely distribute such images and videos. You’d think, given nearly a decade of time to get used to the concept that we wouldn’t see a similar story pop up… but that’s not the case apparently.   Continue reading “School Suspends 10 Students For Commenting On Image That Appears To Show Principal Choking Student”

MassPrivateI

MA – The National Park Service has threatened to arrest visitors to monuments and national parks during the partial government shutdown that began October 1. On the last day before the shutdown took effect, the US Court of Appeals clarified that rangers can also arrest motorists outside of any national park or monument, even though they lack statutory authorization to do so.   Continue reading “Court allows park rangers to arrest Americans outside of national parks”

MassPrivateI

The Brennan Center for Justice report: What The Government Does With Americans’ Data

Federal and state agencies must maintain databases to carry out legitimate governmental purposes, including the provision of services, the management of law enforcement investigations, and intelligence and counterterrorism functions. In addition, where law enforcement agencies have reasonable suspicion of possible criminal activity or intelligence components are acquiring information on foreign targets and activity, they must retain information to track investigations, carry out lawful intelligence functions, and ensure that innocent people are not repeatedly targeted.   Continue reading “What the U.S. gov’t. does with Americans’ data”

MassPrivateI

Top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and provided to The Daily Caller.

Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.   Continue reading “The White House & IRS exchanged confidential taxpayer information”

MassPrivateI

Washington – Instead of sending suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay or secret CIA “black” sites for interrogation, the Obama administration is questioning terrorists for as long as it takes aboard U.S. naval vessels.

And it’s doing it in a way that preserves the government’s ability to ultimately prosecute the suspects in civilian courts.   Continue reading “Suspected terrorists are being detained indefinitely aboard U.S. ships”

Activist Post

DBA Press releases an additional 1,784 pages of Phoenix Police Department Homeland Defense Bureau (PPDHDB) records pertaining to Occupy Phoenix and other Phoenix area activist groups.

Access records here (filed under “records relating to PPD/ACTIC and other fusion center monitoring of activists, Part 4”).

These records complete a public records request filed by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy in June of 2012 as part of a joint project, “Dissent or Terror: how the nation’s counter-terrorism apparatus, in partnership with corporate America, turned on Occupy Wall Street.”   Continue reading “New Records Detail FBI, Fusion Center Monitoring of Activists, Anarchists”

MassPrivateI

EPIC’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has produced new documents about “Next Generation Identification” and the FBI’s plans for facial recognition.

According to the document obtained by EPIC, “NGI shall return an incorrect candidate a maximum of 20% of the time.” That number is much greater than expected.    Continue reading “The FBI says a 20% error rate for facial recognition is fine”

Digital Journal -by Justin King

A student in Bryant School District in Arkansas brought home a worksheet that presented her with a scenario that referred to the Bill of Rights as “outdated” and that as part of a special committee she would need to throw out two of the Amendments.

The worksheet was handed out to Sixth grade students in a History class. According to the girl’s mother, Lela Spears, she has not received any government or civics classes and this was the first assignment dealing with the Constitution or Bill of Rights. The school district is participating in the embattled Common Core curriculum.   Continue reading “Worksheet asks children to remove parts of the Bill of Rights”

New York Times – by CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and SOMINI SENGUPTA

SAN FRANCISCO — Once, only hairdressers and bartenders knew people’s secrets.

MassPrivateI

SAN FRANCISCO — MasterCard is joining the FIDO Alliance, signaling that the payment network is getting interested in using fingerprints and other biometric data to identify people for online payments.

MasterCard will be the first major payment network to join FIDO. The Alliance is developing an open industry standard for biometric data such as fingerprints to be used for identification online. The goal is to replace clunky passwords and take friction out of logging on and purchasing using mobile devices.   Continue reading “MasterCard joining push for fingerprint ID standard”

MassPrivateI

A teenager who claimed “sarcasm” after talking on Facebook about shooting up a kindergarten spent months in jail this year for making a “terroristic threat.” Over the summer, Instagram photos of guns and money led to New York City’s largest gun bust ever. A mom’s Facebook photo of her baby with a bong led to her 2010 arrest. 

While criminals — or those guilty of ill-placed sarcasm — aren’t wising up about social media oversharing, tools for monitoring Americans online are increasingly accessible and affordable to authorities, no NSA-level clearance required. Those in charge are monitoring more and more and social networks are happy to comply, especially where extra revenue is involved.   Continue reading “Police & schools are spying on your Tweets & social media activity”