Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts

TSA Makes It Harder For Passengers To Avoid 'Virtual Strip Search' Scanners Just In Time For The Christmas Rush

by Wills Robinson.     Air travelers will find it harder to avoid body scanners after airport security protocols were quietly ramped up. The six million Americans who are expected to take to the skies over Christmas could face delays after the Transport Security Administration (TSA) tweaked guidelines so passengers will have to go through the    ... MORE

The Government Wants Access To Your Smartphone

by Christie Smythe.   What you should know. “We’re not at war – we care about the same things,” FBI Director James Comey says of the struggle between the U.S. and the tech sector over how private your smartphone should be. The government wants to work with companies such as Apple Inc. and Google to stop criminals and terrorists     ... MORE

NSA Phone-Snooping Program Didn’t Prevent Any Attacks

By David Sherfinski.   Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said Monday that the NSA’s phone-snooping program didn’t catch any terrorists or prevented any attacks, breaking from several of his 2016 GOP presidential rivals, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who have described the program as an effective tool in the fight against terrorism. “There will   ... MORE

Robert Hackett: No, NSA Phone Spying Has Not Ended

Only the framework changed.     Plenty of surveillance going on. At 11:59 P.M. on Saturday night, the U.S. National Security Agency supposedly yanked the cord on its bulk telephone records collection, thereby ending an expansive surveillance program that the nation’s intelligence community put in place in the wake of the September 11,     ... MORE

TSA Screens Holiday Travelers Once Again, With Feeling

by James Bovard.    Flyers must surrender privacy along with boarding passes. If you use hand sanitizer when traveling, the Transportation Security Administration can badger you as if you were a terrorist suspect. TSA is one of the biggest hassles many Americans will encounter this holiday season. I learned that firsthand while flying home from   ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Paris And Freedom

Our liberties are NOT the problem.  The tragedy in Paris last Friday has regrettably been employed as a catalyst for renewed calls by governments in western Europe and even in the United States for more curtailment of personal liberties. Those who accept the trade of liberty for safety have argued in favor of less liberty. They want       ... MORE

Watch The Amazing 'Love Gov' Series

See all five episodes.    Love Gov portrays the federal government as an overbearing boyfriend — Scott “Gov” Govinsky — who foists his “good intentions” on a hapless, idealistic college student, Alexis. Each episode follows Alexis's relationship with Gov as his intrusions wreak (comic) havoc on her life, professionally, financially, and socially. Alexis's loyal  ... MORE

IRS Possessed Stingray Cellphone Surveillance Gear - Why?

by Nicky Woolf and William Green.     13th federal agency to use secretive dragnet!  The Internal Revenue Service is the latest in a growing list of US federal agencies known to have possessed the sophisticated cellphone dragnet equipment known as Stingray, according to documents obtained by the Guardian. Invoices obtained following a request  ... MORE

Evan Schuman: Turn That Old Phone Into A Privacy Device

New way to safeguard calls.   Most forms of communication used by enterprises these days are highly prone to being intercepted, whether by law enforcement, cyberthieves, corporate spies, or wayward employees and contractors. That leaves enterprise IT open to new approaches to safeguard communications. I just saw one creative idea on the   ... MORE

Charles P. Pierce: The Senate's New 'Give The NSA All Your Private Information' Bill Would Make George Orwell Blush

Scare tactics push big government agenda forward.     While nobody was watching, the Senate a couple of days ago passed something called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), which passed at least partly because if you say "Cyber warfare, boogedy-boogedy!" around nervous legislators these days, they'll pass a bill agreeing to  ... MORE

VIDEO: How One Group Of Tyrants Banned Gun Sales

How Jeb Bush Would Destroy The Internet & Your Privacy

by Trevor Timm.          Do you want to live in a country where Internet Service Providers can slow down and censor your internet traffic at will, where the NSA has vastly more power than it does today and where end-to-end encryption may be illegal?   Then Jeb Bush is the Republican presidential contender for you: he has positioned himself       ... MORE

North Carolina Teen Prosecuted For Taking Naked Selfie

by Tara Culp-Ressler.  Gov't figures a little prison time should fix him. A 17-year-old in North Carolina struck a plea deal last week to avoid serving jail time on felony sex offender charges. His crime? Taking a nude photo of himself. The photo in question was discovered when the teenager’s cell phone was searched during a wider investigation   ... MORE

California: Protect Your Driver's License Privacy

by Jeremy Gillula and Dave Maass.     The California Legislature wants the DMV to start issuing “Enhanced Driver Licenses” (EDL), similar to a REAL ID, that contain an RFID tag that could expose information about you from up to 30 feet away.  We need your help to bring S.B. 249 to a screeching halt by calling or emailing your state legislator today.  ... MORE

Big Government Update:The California Gas Restriction Act Of 2015 Spells The End Of Privacy For California Drivers

Big Brother is watching.     The California Gas Restriction Act of 2015, Senate Bill 350, not only is a reckless political agenda but one that will raise costs drastically in California, burden the State with yet more regulations, and eliminate citizens’ privacy. Regulators now have a plan to monitor personal driving data that can be used to enforce gas   ... MORE

Orwellian Justice Upholds NSA Spying on Americans: Court of Appeals Upholds Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance

by Stephen Lendman. Virtually unrestricted NSA data mining tramples on Fourth Amendment rights brazenly. In December 2013, Federal District Court of the District of Columbia Judge Richard Leon ruled NSA spying unconstitutional, saying: The threshold issue is whether plaintiffs have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the     ... MORE

Steve Weis: When Curtains Block Justice

A parody of “When Phone Encryption Blocks Justice”.    In June, a laptop was stolen from a bedroom on a Monday afternoon in Palo Alto, CA, a suburb 15 miles south of San Francisco. There were no witnesses to the larceny, and no surveillance footage either. With a laptop thief on the loose and few leads at their disposal, investigators  ... MORE

AT&T Has “Partnership” With NSA To Spy On US Internet

by Clayton Browne.     Your world delivered. The most recent release of secret documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden makes it clear that telecom giant AT&T has been actively cooperating with the NSA in its large scale program to spy on the internet traffic of Americans. Based on the documents, it appears that AT&T has been        ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Chris Christie vs. Rand Paul

Or, King George vs. Thomas Jefferson.  The dust-up between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over presidential fidelity to the Constitution – particularly the Fourth Amendment – was the most illuminating two minutes of the Republican debate last week. It is a well-regarded historical truism that the Fourth Amendment was   ... MORE