Showing posts with label cell phones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cell phones. Show all posts

Gene Healy: The Very Real Threat Posed By NSA

"It can't happen here" just did. As a Senate candidate in 2003, Barack Obama called the PATRIOT Act "shoddy and dangerous." Once safely in power, Obama started demonstrating his remarkable capacity for "growing in office" -- expanding federal powers while piously moralizing about their potential abuse. As a senator, he voted to         ... MORE

4 Ways the Fourth Amendment's Already Being Pummeled

by Ed Krayewski.   Last week The Guardian and The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency collects information on the phone and Internet habits of millions of Americans. Since then we've seen President Barack Obama argue against the strawman of combining “100 percent privacy and 100 percent security.” We've seen the      ... MORE

Steve Chapman: Under NSA's Unblinking Eye

No secrets except for government.      Some years ago, when tax simplification was being discussed, a cartoonist came up with the most likely way the IRS would achieve it: a postcard-sized 1040 form consisting of two lines: 1) How much did you make? 2) Send it in. That's comparable to where Americans are headed when it comes to keeping    ... MORE

VIDEO: Fox News - The State Against Citizens

FBI: You Might Be A Terrorist If You Breathe

FBI sets a new standard of paranoia.      The FBI published 25 pamphlets and distributed them to people who work in the general public to give them information on how to spot a terrorist based on a number of “suspicious behavior” indicators. People at construction sites, electronic stores, beauty salons, airports and other places were advised on    ... MORE

FBI Warrantless Cellphone Tracking 'Very Common'

Can you hear me now?   FBI investigators for at least five years have routinely used a sophisticated cellphone tracking tool that can pinpoint callers’ locations and listen to their conversations — all without getting a warrant for it, a federal court was told this week. The use of the “Stingray,” as the tool is called, “is a very common practice” by ... MORE

Ronald Bailey: Your Cellphone Is Spying On You

Big Brother has been outsourced.   The police can find out where you are, where you’ve been, even where you’re going. All thanks to that handy little human tracking device in your pocket: your cellphone. There are 331 million cellphone subscriptions—about 20 million more than there are residents—in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of adult  ... MORE

Cops To Congress: We Need Logs Of Text Messages

Government's relentless war on privacy.   AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and other wireless providers would be required to record and store information about Americans' private text messages for at least two years, according to a proposal that police have submitted to the U.S. Congress. CNET has learned a constellation of law enforcement    ... MORE

Supreme Court Blocks Law Prohibiting Taping Of Police

Light allowed to shine on police activities.    The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked enforcement of an Illinois law that prohibited people from recording police officers on the job. The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that found that the state's anti-eavesdropping law violates free speech rights when used against people      ... MORE

New Technology Gives Police Power To Block Devices

No more shooting video of protests, cops?   Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, from any public gathering or venue they deem “sensitive”, and “protected from externalities.” In other words, these powers will have control over  ... MORE

NY Times: The End Of Privacy?

The reasonable expectation of privacy does not exist anymore. Cellphones, e-mail, and online social networking have come to rule daily life, but Congress has done nothing to update federal privacy laws to better protect digital communication. That inattention carries a heavy price. Striking new data from wireless carriers collected by  ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: GR8, Obama Is Texting Me

President Obama is mass-texting me although I never opted into his texts. I feel like he controls my phone remotely. So, I’m texting him back: HEY PREZ, WILL U PLS STOP TXTING ME?! AND WHILE UR AT IT, STOP SPYING ON ME W/ DRONES. I’D LIKE SOME PRIVACY. THX! Friday, July 6 was the day many Americans were on an extended 4th of July      ... MORE

AP: Surveillance Requests To Cellphone Carriers Surge

Needed: a Fourth Amendment for the 21st century.     Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made more than 1.3 million requests for consumers' cellphone records in 2011, an alarming surge over previous years that reflected the increasingly gray area between privacy and technology. Cellphone carriers, responding to inquiries from a    ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Is That A Spy In Your Pocket?

Warrantless cellphone tracking threatens your privacy.   In January the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that tracking a suspect's movements by attaching a GPS transmitter to his car counts as a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. But because the majority opinion emphasized the physical intrusion needed to surreptitiously install ... MORE

Nat Hentoff: Sweet Land Of Liberty

We can't hide from the National Security Agency.    How many Americans know that as of September 2013, all of us engaged in any form of communication will be subject -- with the approval of President Barack Obama and the silence of Congress -- to continuous tracking and databasing by the National Security Agency? As I reported here last week, the  ... MORE

Washington Times: Obama Wants To Track You

Justice Dept seeks cellphone location information.    Consumers love their iPhones, Androids and BlackBerrys. With built in GPS navigation, these handy little gadgets can point the way to the nearest gas station with a low price or the highest-rated restaurant within a few blocks. Results can be personalized based on the user’s location at any given moment     ... MORE