On the deployment of automated scanners. Chances are, your local or state police departments have photographs of your car in their files, noting where you were driving on a particular day, even if you never did anything wrong. Using automated scanners, law enforcement agencies across the country have amassed millions of digital ... MORE
Surf in a "Cocoon." Powerful privacy tools you can use to curtail how big tech companies — and sometimes the federal government — track your every step on the Internet have been available for years. Thanks to whistle-blower Edward Snowden these privacy tools have emerged from the fringes of the Internet into the limelight. "It's not just the ... MORE
Just like the NSA's PRISM spying. Federal officials have been tracking all mail sent through the United States Postal Service for well over a decade, but have been monitoring select pieces of mail for over a century. Using a pair of systems that snap images of envelopes and catalogue them into batches, the federal government tracks all ... MORE
by Michael Snyder. Were you under the impression that your credit card transactions are private? If so, I am sorry to burst your bubble. As you will see below, there are actually multiple government agencies that are gathering and storing records of your credit card transactions. And in turn, those government agencies share that information with ... MORE
from the New York Times. NOW that we sense the magnitude of our government’s effort to track Americans’ telephone and Internet transactions, the issue finally and fully before us is not how we balance personal privacy with police efficiency. We have long since surrendered a record of our curiosities and fantasies to Google. We have ... MORE
The extent of government lawlessness is massive. The Associated Press dropped a bombshell report yesterday that claims the NSA's secret Internet spy program Prism is just a small part of a much more "expansive and intrusive" digital spying effort. According to the AP, the NSA copies ALL INTERNET traffic in and out of the United ... MORE
by Nidhi Subbaraman. First news of the government's Web tracking program PRISM broke late
last Thursday, and by Friday, traffic at the indie search engine
DuckDuckGo was on the upswing. The tagline on its homepage: "Search anonymously." "You could notice the difference almost immediately," Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo's founder ... MORE
Massive loss in freedom vs. minimal gain in security. Before we even got the whole picture detailing exactly how widespread the government's phone tracking efforts were, we were hit with news of the NSA PRISM program. The details are still being uncovered and debates and questions concerning both programs abound, but the most ... MORE
by Michael Winter. The revelations about government surveillance have introduced a new generation of readers to Nineteen Eighty-Four, as sales of George Orwell's dystopian classic soar. Sales of the "centennial edition" on Amazon.com had skyrocketed more than 5,800% as of Tuesday night. The novel that introduced the world to the all-seeing, ... MORE
"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
Think twice about what you tell the doctor. As we are being swamped with evidence of Administration wrongdoing, we should not forget to prioritize the vast amount of information we are getting. It is beyond peradventure of doubt at this time that the IRS, ordered to scrutinize the tea party closely by Democratic leaders, including ... MORE
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
Their utilization is evolving as the minutes tick. Drones are a tool of the modern age. They have benefits. They have faults. They have become the equivalents of the secret agents of the past whose role was to observe and thwart as needed. They are a modern technology with which no governmental leader has a real, life-long experience. ... MORE
Watch Maxine Waters discuss it on video. Here’s Maxine Waters. This was last Sunday on TV One’s Washington Watch with Roland Martin. Maxine Waters, Democrat from California. Her district is basically the Watts area of Los Angeles, and Roland Martin said, “The reality is like anything else, you’d better get what you can while Obama’s there ... MORE
The "do not track" option please. If one were to read the Federal Trade Commission’s recent staff report discussing ways to protect consumer privacy in mobile apps, one might conclude the federal government genuinely was concerned about consumer privacy. Among other recommendations, the report supports safeguards such as ... MORE
Big Brother is watching you. “Maybe we should just brand all the babies.” With this joke, Ronald Reagan swatted down a national identification card — or an enhanced Social Security card — proposed by his attorney general in 1981. For more than three decades since, attempts to implement the proposal have all met with failure, but now ... MORE
Parties join forces to curtail surveillance society. Drones are wildly popular on the battlefield. Now they can claim victory elsewhere. The use of drones within U.S. borders—in car chases, to monitor wildfires, or for simple surveillance—is uniting political parties and people more often at odds. Their concern: the widespread use of drones ... MORE