NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system. The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks. [Read More]
Britain makes camera that “sees” under clothes
From Scientific American:
A British company has developed a camera that can detect weapons, drugs or explosives hidden under people’s clothes from up to 25 meters away in what could be a breakthrough for the security industry. The T5000 camera, created by a company called ThruVision, uses what it calls “passive imaging technology” to identify objects by the natural electromagnetic rays — known as Terahertz or T-rays — that they emit. The high-powered camera can detect hidden objects from up to 80 feet away and is effective even when people are moving. It does not reveal physical body details and the screening is harmless, the company says. The technology, which has military and civilian applications and could be used in crowded airports, shopping malls or sporting events, will be unveiled at a scientific development exhibition sponsored by Britain’s Home Office on March 12-13. [Read More]
Google Caves To Pentagon Wishes
From Information Week:
The Pentagon said that Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Street Views is a threat to national security and made Google pull images taken on streets near U.S. military bases. Google complied with the governmental order, even though the images were taken from public streets. Freedom of information and security butt heads once again. [Read More]
Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier
From Wired:
A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier’s systems, exposing customers’ voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003. [Read More]
The NSA and Your Inbox
From Yahoo News:
As the Democrats prepare to fold on FISA, this week’s comments from Assistant AG for National Security Kenneth Wainstein suggest that what the White House is really after isn’t interception of foreign-to-foreign phone calls, but your email. From the Washington Post: Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, for example, has repeatedly said FISA should be changed so no warrant is needed to tap a communication that took place entirely outside the United States but happened to pass through the United States. [Read More]
Bush Vetos Waterboarding Bill
From the BBC:
US President George Bush says he has vetoed legislation that would stop the CIA using interrogation methods such as simulated drowning or “water-boarding”. [Read More]
Airport workers first UK citizens to get ID cards
From Reuters:
Up to 200,000 airport workers will be fingerprinted and issued with identity cards from the middle of 2009, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said Thursday. They will be the first British citizens to be required to have the cards, because of the high level of security needed for their jobs, she said.From 2010, students will be encouraged to apply voluntarily for the cards, which will store the holder’s fingerprint on a chip. “It will make it easier to enrol on a course, apply for a student loan, open a bank account or prove your age,” Smith told a London think-tank.”It is inconceivable that in today’s world people should not have a single, safe way of securing and verifying their identity,” she added. A widespread roll-out of the cards to all British citizens will follow from 2011 alongside the introduction of passports containing electronically stored fingerprints. [Read More]
More F.B.I. Privacy Breaches Reported
From the New York Times:
The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday. Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the privacy breach by FBI agents and lawyers occurred a year before the bureau enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses. Details on the abuses will be outlined in the coming days in a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general. [Read More]
FCC official wants probe of “60 Minutes” black-out
From Reuters:
A U.S. Federal Communications Commission official is seeking an inquiry into the blacking out of a politically charged segment of the CBS News magazine “60 Minutes” by a local television station in Alabama. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said he had asked the chairman of the FCC to open an inquiry into the February 24 incident at WHNT, a CBS affiliate in Huntsville, Alabama, in which civil rights footage from the 1960s was blacked out. [Read More]
Magna Carta
From the ACLU Blog:
Some call the Magna Carta democracy’s birth certificate. On June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, English barons forced King John to agree to terms that came to make up the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta sounded a clarion call for a new age: There will be legal and political accountability for government action….
Yesterday, David Rubenstein, a Washington lawyer and businessman, presented a 711-year-old hand-written copy of the Magna Carta to the National Archives, for a long-term loan.
The Magna Carta made civil liberties for the masses possible. Principles like the right to challenge one’s imprisonment, known as habeas corpus; Freedom of Speech; the rule of law; freedom of worship; the ban on cruel and unusual punishment all came out of this 13th Century artifact forged in a rebellion. [Read More]
Google Street View a Slice of Dystopian Future?
From Slashdot:
According to a recent CNET article, Google Street View ‘is just wrong’. The short piece which makes up part of a larger feature about ‘technology that’s just wrong’ goes on to explain that Google Street View is like a scene from George Orwell’s terrifying dystopian vision of 1984 and that it could ultimately change our behaviour because we’ll never know when we’re being watched. ‘Google? Aren’t they the friendly folk who help me find Web sites, cheat at pub quizzes, and look at porn? Yes, but since 2006 they’re also photographing the streets of selected world cities and posting the results online for all to see. It was Jeremy Bentham who developed the idea of the Panopticon, a system of prison design whereby everybody could be seen from one central point, with the upshot being that prisoners learnt to modulate their behaviour — because they never knew if they were being watched. And that doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? [Read More]
GAO Oversight Office at NSA Lies Dormant
From FAS:
The Government Accountability Office maintains an office at the National Security Agency but it remains unused since no one in Congress has asked GAO to perform any oversight of the Agency, the head of GAO disclosed last week. Despite multi-billion dollar acquisition failures at NSA and the Agency’s controversial, possibly illegal surveillance practices, Congress has declined to summon all of its oversight resources such as GAO to address such issues. [Read More]
UN – “British island used by US for rendition”
From The Observer:
Britain’s denials that its territories have been used for ‘extraordinary rendition’ were dramatically undermined last night after the United Nations claimed that Diego Garcia has been used as a detention centre to hold US suspects. Manfred Novak, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, who is charged with investigating human rights abuses, said he had received credible evidence from well-placed sources familiar with the situation on the island that detainees were held on Diego Garcia between 2002 and 2003. [Read More]
Court gags ex-SAS man who made torture claims
From the Guardian:
A former SAS soldier was served with a high court order yesterday preventing him from making fresh disclosures about how hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture. Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. Griffin, 29, left the British army in 2005 after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the “illegal” tactics of US troops. [Read More]
How do car-share cameras count humans?
From the BBC:
A new road camera that counts car occupants by detecting blood and water content on skin is being tested. How does it work? … Using police officers is very costly and accuracy is only 55-60%, due to visibility issues partly from tinted windows or differing skin tones, he says. And CCTV cameras can mistake a dog for an individual or miss a small person entirely. “We wanted to be able to spot humans, as opposed to inflatable dolls and mannequins. We thought ‘What is humanness?’ “We couldn’t go on skin pigment, but infra-red rays see all skin in the same colour.” Blood and water is one of the things that determines we are human, he says, so he developed a system that detects human skin. [Read More]
