Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

"He's a traitor."
-- House Speaker John Boehner on Edward Snowden

"Hero of the Year."
-- Michael Moore

"Treason...Bring back the death penalty."
-- Fox News analyst Ralph Peters

"The man for which I have waited. Earmarks of a real hero."
-- Glenn Beck

"An act of treason."
-- Sen. Dianne Feinstein

"When you have a dictatorship or an authoritarian government, truth becomes treasonous...For somebody to tell the American people the truth is a heroic effort."
-- Ron Paul

I really, REALLY, hate agreeing with Glenn Beck about something! At least it's over something worthwhile.

NY ACLU released one about a month earlier. The important thing about this app is that it directly streams the video to the ACLU's servers, so even if a cop takes your phone and removes the SIM, the video has already been captured.

There have been apps along this line available for a while, but this one doesn't look like your phone is recording something. So theoretically you might be able to record longer.

Going a little further than the NY press release,the NJ ACLU has said that if you record a police incident outside of NJ, they will forward the video to the appropriate ACLU chapter.

Gee, I wonder how many Occupiers are downloading this app right now? Oh, an iPhone version will be available soon, it's currently undergoing Apple's review.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/monitor-police-app/

This is especially useful because in March, the Department of Justice posted a very public-friendly opinion. "The department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division has affirmed the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights of citizens to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties. In an opinion letter issued on May 14, 2012 in regard to the ongoing litigation in Sharp v. Baltimore City Police Department, the DOJ stated that the individual right to record officers who are publicly executing their duties is a First Amendment right. Relying on Glik v. Cunniffe, the DOJ letter states “Recording governmental officers engaged in public duties is a form of speech through which private individuals may gather and disseminate information of public concern, including the conduct of law enforcement officers.” (DOJ letter, page 2.)"

http://www.avinalaw.com/2012/05/our-first-amendment-right-to-record.html

"The Obama administration has approved guidelines that allow counterterrorism officials to lengthen the period of time they retain information about U.S. residents, even if they have no known connection to terrorism. The changes allow the National Counterterrorism Center, the intelligence community's clearinghouse for terrorism data, to keep information for up to five years. Previously, the center was required to promptly destroy — generally within 180 days — any information about U.S. citizens or residents unless a connection to terrorism was evident."

I'm sure that before the five years are up that it will be extended, and ultimately the data (regardless of accuracy) will be retained indefinitely.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/03/23/1521215/us-govt-to-keep-data-on-non-terrorist-citizens-for-5-years


Meanwhile, the NSA is building an insanely huge data center in Utah. $2 billion, heavily fortified, 60,000 tons of air-conditioning required, power consumption will require a 65 megawatt substation. A man who worked for the NSA for 40 years before he retired due to their going far beyond their mandate and constitutional limits: ...(held his thumb and forefinger close together). “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1


And the Japanese have developed a camera that can perform facial recognition at the rate of 36 MILLION faces a second, which means any crowd scenes scanned by the panopticon will never be deleted since they can decide to backtrack someone's life.

"A new camera technology from Hitachi Hokusai Electric can scan days of camera footage instantly, and find any face which has EVER walked past it. Its makers boast that it can scan 36 million faces per second. The technology raises the spectre of governments – or other organisations – being able to 'find' anyone instantly simply using a passport photo or a Facebook profile. The 'trick' is that the camera 'processes' faces as it records, so that all faces which pass in front of it are recorded and stored instantly. Faces are stored as a searchable 'biometric' record, placing the unique mathematical 'faceprint' of anyone who has ever walked past the camera in a database."

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/03/24/1937238/japanese-cctv-camera-can-scan-36-million-facessecond


Saint Orwell thought too small apparently.

"In all, five justices said physically attaching the GPS device to the underside of a car amounted to a search requiring a warrant. Four justices, however, said the prolonged GPS surveillance in this case — a month — amounted to a search requiring a warrant, but was silent on whether GPS monitoring for shorter periods would require a warrant. All nine justices agreed to toss a District of Columbia drug dealer’s life sentence who was the subject of a warrantless, 28-day surveillance via GPS."

I'm curious if they threw out the drug dealer's case entirely or just the sentence, and whether or not it can be re-tried again without the GPS evidence.

Aside from the privacy implications, I think the thing that bothers me the most is technology replacing "good ol' fashioned police work." I was on the jury for one trial, and it was a drug bust. Guy was charged with three counts of selling marijuana to a minor, one count of selling. It was all to the same informant (whom the police had busted and turned to get at the defendant), but the informant turned 18 during the scope of the investigation. The prosecution had fingerprints, photographs, witness testimony, etc., and we convicted the defendant on three of the four counts. Of course, the whole case was screwy from the start: the lead detective's sister (caucasian) was dating the defendant (black) in Morman Mesa. We the jury wondered if the defendant would have been pursued quite so vigorously if he hadn't been involved with the detective's sister.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/scotus-gps-ruling/

The sheriff was investigating and was driven off by armed rustlers, he came back later getting a feed from the Predator and when they were miles away from their ranch, sent out the SWAT team and bagged 'em with no difficulty.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/12/221252/predator-drone-helps-nab-cattle-rustlers

He bought it from the brother of his girlfriend, said brother later fled to Mexico and may be involved in the drug trade. The guy lives with the parents of his girlfriend. He thinks the Feds may think that since they guy he bought the SUV from might be a drug dealer, that he might be. Classic guilt by association.

The story gets flat-out weird and a little scary when Wired shows up to photograph the devices and three marked police cars show up. Someone's phone apparently was also tapped.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/gps-tracker-times-two/all/1

They set up this tower to capture information on a suspect in a fake ID ring that was forging IRS tax returns, netting them $4 million in three years. The suspect is defending himself in court ("...has a fool for a client") and demands information on this device known as a Stingray. Part of the issue is that it captured everyone's voice/SMS/cell data traffic before passing it to an actual cell tower, so they were capturing far more than just the suspect's information.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/feds-fake-cell-phone-tower/

The document was obtained from the FBI via a FOIA request from the Federation of American Scientists. A couple of interesting things. Microsoft is implementing a new tech platform called Greenfield, "...The sensors include an accelerometer, a compass, and a barometric pressure sensor to measure altitude. Using data collected from these, Greenfield will evidently be able to track a user’s footsteps and even count the floors the user traveled by stairs or elevator. The app will store the data so the user can retrace his footsteps to find a misplaced auto in a car park or transmit it to someone else to help an injured wilderness hiker, for example, lead rescuers to his precise location.

The information could also, however, be subpoenaed by law enforcement agents to track the movements of a suspect. “This kind of data is terrific for convicting people and terrific at exonerating people,” according to a news story the FBI document quotes."

So it doesn't have to have a cellular/GPS connection to fairly precisely track your movements. I find the 'injured wilderness hiker' line to be kind of thin: if they're hiking in the wilderness, there's not much of a chance that there will be a cellular connection.

My favorite bit was: "In a show of irony, the document holds an uncharitable view of another cutting edge technology: an Apple patent for a “killswitch” that uses voice and facial recognition to shutdown an iPhone or its data if the device detects that the person using it is not the rightful owner. The FBI calls Apple’s concept “Big Brother-ish”."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/fbi-gadgets/

Without modifications. The number is up 13% to 1506 from last year when two applications were denied.

This does not include warrantless wiretaps of Americans communicating with potential persons of interest overseas, started under Bush.

National Security letters by the FBI are also up. "The Justice Department report, meanwhile, said the FBI issued 24,287 “national security letter” requests last year on 14,212 people, “a substantial increase from the 2009 level of 14,788 NSL requests concerning 6,114 U.S. persons,” Aftergood wrote in a blog post. In 2008, there were 24,744 requests regarding 7,225 people."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/domestic-surveillance

A VERY long article on how China is blending surveillance technologies, most of it from American countries, and is in the process of producing what could be the most heavily watched populace ever, far more pervasive than anything that Alan Moore and George Orwell could have come up with when they wrote V for Vendetta and 1984 respectively.

I don't see much of a way around it, between the lust for capitalism and the levels of paranoia.

Brave new world, indeed.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye/print

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/01/2316219


I do have to put one small positive spin on pervasive surveillance. A Manchester rock band, The Get Out Clause, performed in front of 80 different CCTV cameras throughout Manchester, then requested the footage through FOIA requests and edited them together to make their own videos on the cheap.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/1938076/The-Get-Out-Clause%2C-Manchester's-stars-of-CCTV-cameras.html

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/02/002248