Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts

Law Enforcement Now Snoops Private DNA Databases

by Jessica Chia.    A filmmaker in New Orleans became a suspect in the 1996 murder of an Idaho Falls teenager after his father donated his own DNA to a nonprofit organization conducting a hereditary study backed by the Mormon church. Idaho Falls Police Department had a warrant to seize the genetic information later sold to Ancestry.com in an attempt  ... MORE

Oliver Steinberg: We're One Nation, Under Surveillance

Another slip down the slippery slope. “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human liberty; it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” The Star Tribune’s March 22 editorial endorses tax expenditures for “A needed boost for courthouse security.” Consider what it means: To enter a public building, we lowly taxpayers, at the   ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: Fascism, American Style

They’re all fascists. “If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.” ― Henry A. Wallace, 33rd Vice President of the United States   This is an indictment of every politician who has ever sold us out for the sake of money  ... MORE

Betsy Woodruff: Ted Cruz And Donald Trump Want To Make America A Police State After Brussels

Fear-mongering for votes.   We didn’t even have a body count in Brussels before Ted Cruz and Donald Trump started calling for a police-state trial run in America. Within hours of the bombs there that left dozens dead and more wounded, the top two Republican presidential candidates here were duking it out to see who could pitch the most    ... MORE

Dominic Frisby: Why We Should Fear A Cashless World

Government monitoring can be complete.  The health food chain Tossed has just opened the UK’s first cashless cafe. It’s another step towards the death of cash. This is nothing new. Money is tech. The casting of coins made shells, whales’ teeth and other such primitive forms of money redundant. The printing press did the same for precious   ... MORE

The Real Tragedy Is That The Presidency Matters

by Jeffrey Tucker.     Freedom lovers everywhere are biting their nails this election season, wondering how the damage can be limited. Depending on who gains control, we could have trade wars, nationalized health care, the pillaging of Wall Street, more war in the Middle East, a VAT tax, direct surveillance of your smartphone, internment     ... MORE

Apple Says U.S Founders Would Be Appalled By DOJ Order

by Kevin Johnson and Elizabeth Weise.    Apple Inc. charged Tuesday that a court order forcing the tech giant to assist the federal government in unlocking the iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook was based on non-existent authority asserted by the Justice Department. "According to the government, short of kidnapping ... MORE

Surprise! NSA Data Will Soon Routinely Be Used For Domestic Policing That Has Nothing To Do With Terrorism

by Radley Balko. Everyone is presumed guilty. A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will  ... MORE

FBI Demands High Schools Rat Out “Anti-Gov't” Students

by Kurt Nimmo. Constitutionalists figure prominently on the target list. A new FBI initiative based on Britain’s “anti-terror” mass surveillance program instructs high schools across America to inform on students who express “anti-government” and “anarchist” political beliefs. “High school students are ideal targets for recruitment by violent extremists   ... MORE

VIDEO: Edward Snowden - Encryption and Liberty

Samuel Gibbs: If FBI Wins Case Against Apple, Feds Could Force Apple To Turn iPhones Into Surveillance Devices

Turning our property against us.  If the FBI wins in its case against Apple to help it unlock the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone 5C, it won’t be long before the government forces Apple to turn on users’ iPhone cameras and microphones to spy on them, according to the company’s head of services Eddy Cue. The FBI has demanded that Apple creates   ... MORE

Obama To Trash Reagan’s Restrictions On Domestic Spying

by Chriss W. Street.     A tyrant's sneaky misdirection play. With the pubic distracted by the FBI battling Apple for an iPhone backdoor, President Obama is secretly working to trash President Ronald Reagan’s restrictions on the number of federal agencies that can spy on Americans and others. At a secret meeting of the United States National   ... MORE

US Bill Aims To Stop State Bans Of Encrypted Phones

by Lance Whitney.      Imagine not being able to buy an iPhone in your state because the device's data is protected by encryption. A couple of Congressmen are trying to make sure that can't happen. The Encrypt Act of 2016, short for Ensuring National Constitutional Rights of Your Private Telecommunications Act, would deny states the power to block  ... MORE

U.S. Intel Chief James Clapper: We Could Use Your Fridge To Spy On You - Do Digital Searches Require A Warrant?

Our ubiquitous government.  United States Intelligence Chief James Clapper has come out and said the government can now use your refrigerator to spy on you, according to a report presented to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “In the future, intelligence services might use the [Internet of Things] for identification, surveillance, ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: Television, Football & Politics: Gaming Spectacles Designed To Keep The Police State In Power

Freedom is an action word.    When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk;    ... MORE

U.S. Will Track Secret Buyers Of Luxury Real Estate

by Louise Story.  Mission creep at Homeland Security. Concerned about illicit money flowing into luxury real estate, the Treasury Department said Wednesday that it would begin identifying and tracking secret buyers of high-end properties. The initiative will start in two of the nation’s major destinations for global wealth: Manhattan and Miami-Dade     ... MORE