A Rare Victory Over the Surveillance State — Court Curbs Laptop Searches at U.S. Border

A federal appeals court on Friday said Customs and Border Protection officers cannot confiscate or download every laptop or electronic device brought into the U.S., ruling that people have an expectation their data are private and that the government must have “reasonable suspicion” before it starts to do any intensive snooping. In a broad ruling, the court also said merely putting password protection on information is not enough to trigger the government’s “reasonable suspicion” to conduct a more intrusive search — but can be taken into account along with other factors. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/8/court-limits-feds-ability-search-laptops-border/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

Your Own Smart Phone, Turned Against You

As The Guardian reported just recently, the defense industry is already working with Raytheon to build its own application that would map our physical movements, as well as our activity on social networking sites, including Facebook, Google, Twitter and FourSquare, which taken together, can drill down on both the location and buying habits of millions of users a day. http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2013/02/18/your-own-smart-phone-turned-against-you/

Google Moves to Destroy Online Anonymity, Unintentionally Helping Authoritarian Governments

Do you have a right to anonymous political free speech? According to the Supreme Court, you do. According to the Department of Homeland Security, you don’t. They’ve hired General Dynamics to track U.S. citizens exercising this critical civil right. http://www.globalresearch.ca/google-moves-to-destroy-online-anonymity-unintentionally-helping-authoritarian-governments/5322542

Think Privacy is Threatened Today — Just Wait Until Tomorrow

Only a century ago, most people were known only by name and occupation. Records of your great-grandparents’ existence were likely limited to birth records, baptismal records, death records, census records, the purchase of a home, and perhaps the payment of property tax. Even this information was generally filed and forgotten, because of the considerable expense involved in paying clerks to organize it. Your great-grandparents could purchase primitive telephones, automobiles, and electric appliances, if they could afford them. However, no systematic recordkeeping existed of the phone calls they made or where they drove in their vehicle. Of course, no cell phones existed, no Internet, and no biometric tools to identify anyone other than basic fingerprinting. Fast-forward from 1912 to 2012, and we enter a very different era. Here are a few examples from my files. http://lewrockwell.com/nestmann/nestmann44.1.html

Why Pay Big $$$ to Get Frisked, Fondled and Insulted by TSA Thugs?

In my early adulthood going to a Bears game at Chicago’s Solider Field with girlfriends included a small bottle of brandy and a blanket. The blanket was used to keep warm while concealing certain enjoyable other mischief during the game. Back then going to a major sporting event was a lot of fun. However in recent decades sports teams and certain venues have begun an effort to frisk patrons. I hate this despicable effort; frankly we’ve fought wars so we’d never have to submit to this kind of crap. The majority of patrons are too young and just don’t understand the serious implications of what they are willingly accepting. http://www.crimefilenews.com/2012/08/why-pay-big-to-get-frisked-fondled-and.html

Destroying Internet Freedom Through Taxation

If there was ever a tool to liberate the minds and spirit of mankind, the internet revivals the printing press. The freedom to connect worldwide is awesome. However, the power of governments and corporatists to strip away your privacy and personality is frightening. Access to the web is desirable for those who choose to make the connection. Even so, they must bear the risk and responsibility of linking into the supercomputers of the snoops and spooks. http://www.batr.org/negotium/082912.html

Privacy as a Positive Good

We’ve all heard the insulting, tyrannical cliché: Why do you care, if you have nothing to hide? The comeback, if not that it would fall on deaf ears, should be this: Because I value myself. The real value of privacy is not because it allows us to hide things, it’s that privacy allows us to develop independently – according to our own natures. In other words, privacy is an essential tool for personal development. Privacy is a positive good, not merely a tool for hiding things. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/rosenberg-p6.1.1.html

NSA Wants ‘EZ Pass’ Control for Internet

Keith Alexander

General Keith Alexander, the NSA boss, wants the government to centralize the internet and force users to use a system analogous to EZ Pass. EZ Pass is an RFID transponder system used for toll collection on roads, bridges, and tunnels in the United States. http://www.infowars.com/nsa-wants-ez-pass-control-for-internet/

Look Up in the Sky and See a Drone

All Americans should be asking their elected officials about the limits of the use of drones — before it’s too late. One option is to eliminate federal grants that subsidize drones for police departments. Another is to mandate that police obtain a warrant in circumstances where drones can surveil a private residence or anywhere else citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Militarization at home, as the Founding Fathers argued centuries ago, is inconsistent with the values of a free society. Since 9/11, some in Washington seem to have forgotten that a free society depends on a citizenry whose natural rights are protected by a limited and accountable government — not by a government that uses high-tech, stealth video cameras to constantly surveil the public wherever and whenever it wants. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/sky-a-drone-article-1.1096621

Companies Most Compliant With Big Brother Include Verizon, AT&T, Apple, Microsoft, Foursquare

When you use the Internet, you entrust your online conversations, thoughts, experiences, locations, photos, and more to companies like Google, AT&T and Facebook. But what happens when the government demands that these companies to hand over your private information? Will the company stand with you? http://www.disinfo.com/2012/06/companies-most-compliant-with-big-brother-include-verizon-att-apple-microsoft-foursquare/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+disinfo%2FoMPh+%28Disinformation%29

Facebook and Google Turned Into Government Spies? The Dangerous New Law Before Congress (CISPA)

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass a reprehensible cyber-security bill this week that seeks to protect online companies—giant social media firms to data-sharing networks controlling utilities—from cyber attack. It is reprehensible because, as Democratic San Jose Rep. Zoe Lofgren said this week, it gives the federal government too much access to the private lives of every Internet user. Or as Libertarian Rep. Ron Paul also bluntly put it, it turns Facebook and Google into “government spies.” But that’s not the biggest problem with the Congress’s urge to address a real problem—protecting the Internet from cyber attacks. While House passage launches a process that continues in the Senate, the bigger problem with the best known of the cyber bills before the House, CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, is not what is in it — which is troubling enough — but what is not on Congress’s desk: a comprehensive approach to stop basic constitutional rights from eroding in the Internet Age. http://www.alternet.org/news/155156

Land of the Free Watch: Thirteen Ways Government Tracks Us

Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the U.S. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track people. http://www.blacklistednews.com/Thirteen_Ways_Government_Tracks_Us_/18880/0/0/0/Y/M.html

‘Officer Safety’ Uber Alles: The Coercion Cartel’s Prime Directive

When intruders seek to enter a home without permission, observed the Post-Bulletin, “those on the other side of the door don’t always know that it’s a police officer who is entering their residence. They might have been asleep, awakening only when they hear the sounds of a door being kicked in or footsteps on the stairs. Their judgment and awareness might be impaired by drugs, alcohol, mental illness or the belief that an abusive ex-boyfriend or rival gang members many have arrived with bad intentions.” A likelier scenario involves the even deadlier possibility that the door has been forced open by state-licensed marauders who can kill anyone within the dwelling with impunity. http://lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w248.html

What Will We Say?

What will we say when the government announces that “for security reasons” it will begin conducting random checks of our homes? That we will be required by law to open our doors and stand aside while government agents do a walk-through, just to “be sure” and (of course) “to keep us safe”? It is a serious question, not (as I will be accused of purveying) exaggerated or paranoiac. After all, we are already told specifically that we have no legal expectation of privacy when we’re out in public and it’s been implicit for years now that we have very little left in the way of Fourth Amendment rights anywhere – even in our own homes. http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-will-we-say.html

Facebook is Building Shadow Profiles of Non-Users

Even if you don’t use it, you may already have a profile on Facebook. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/18/1429223/Facebook-Is-Building-Shadow-Profiles-of-Non-Users?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=twitter

Land of the Free Watch: Government Now Tracking Cash Cards?

The U.S. government has found another way to invade privacy in the name of fighting terrorism by proposing legislation that would track prepaid debit cards. As usual, the real losers would be, not terrorists who won’t comply anyway, but innocent Americans, or travelers, and card issuers burdened with yet another layer of record keeping and compliance procedures. http://www.activistpost.com/2011/09/us-government-tracking-cash-cards.html

Governments Agree: You Will Have No Electronic Privacy

“Don’t change a winning strategy.” Nowhere is this truism more slavishly followed than in the global campaign to eliminate financial and electronic privacy. The strategy is simple. First, the governments that find privacy inconvenient create a purportedly independent commission, funded by a non-governmental entity, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The purpose of the commission is to find a solution to a “problem.” The problem could be the disturbing tendency of individuals to take measures so as not to have their wealth confiscated. Or, their equally disturbing desire not to have their communications monitored. http://lewrockwell.com/nestmann/nestmann33.1.html

Yahoo Condemned Over Plans to Snoop on E-Mails on Behalf of Advertisers

Internet giant Yahoo has been condemned over plans to snoop on emails in a ‘blatant intrusion of privacy’. The U.S. company provides an email service for thousands of Britons, including children, who will assume that the system is completely private. However, it has emerged that Yahoo has changed its small print terms and conditions to get permission to view and scan emails. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2012013/Yahoo-condemned-plans-snoop-emails-behalf-advertisers.html

Dictatorship Watch: TomTom Admits to Sending Your Routes and Speed Information to the Police

It appears every gadget in your possession is tracking your location. First it was the iPhone, then Android phones and now it’s your bleedin’ sat-nav. TomTom, perhaps in a pre-emptive strike against its own user-tracking scandal, has admitted its sat-navs can track users and inform third parties about how fast they’re going. The sat-navs in TomTom’s Live range all feature built-in 3G data cards, which feed location and route information back to a central server, which allows TomTom to create a map of congestion hotspots. It’s now emerged that this data, however, along with a user’s speed, is being made available to local governments and authorities. http://crave.cnet.co.uk/cartech/tomtom-admits-to-sending-your-routes-and-speed-information-to-the-police-50003618/

Dictatorship Watch: iPhone Keeps Record of Everywhere You Go

Security researchers have discovered that Apple’s iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner’s computer when the two are synchronised.The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone’s recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner’s movements using a simple program. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/20/iphone-tracking-prompts-privacy-fears

Snooping: It’s Not a Crime, It’s a Feature

Cellphone users say they want more privacy, and app makers are listening. No, they’re not listening to user requests. They’re literally listening to the sounds in your office, kitchen, living room and bedroom. A new class of smartphone app has emerged that uses the microphone built into your phone as a covert listening device — a “bug,” in common parlance. But according to app makers, it’s not a bug. It’s a feature! The apps use ambient sounds to figure out what you’re paying attention to. It’s the next best thing to reading your mind. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215853/Snooping_It_s_not_a_crime_it_s_a_feature?taxonomyName=Privacy&taxonomyId=84

Land of the Free Watch: U.S. Police Increasingly View Private E-mail, Instant Messages

Law enforcement organizations are making tens of thousands of requests for private electronic information from companies such as Sprint, Facebook and AOL, but few detailed statistics are available, according to a privacy researcher. Police and other agencies have “enthusiastically embraced” asking for e-mail, instant messages and mobile-phone location data, but there’s no U.S. federal law that requires the reporting of requests for stored communications data. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215730/U.S._police_increasingly_view_private_email_instant_messages?source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2011-04-12

Land of the Free Watch: Justice Department Opposes Digital Privacy Reforms

The U.S. Justice Department today offered what amounts to a frontal attack on proposals to amend federal law to better protect Americans’ privacy. http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20051461-281.html

Keep Your Assets Hidden in Plain Sight

Sorry David Copperfield. No matter how good a magician you are, there are some assets that you can’t make vanish, and it has nothing to do with genetics. I’m talking about assets that have your name written all over them in the public record. It is hard to put real estate, vehicles, and other attention grabbing assets into a private safe somewhere. Even if you did, jealous ex boyfriends, business competitors, and shysters can still look you up and see what you have stashed away. The reason why your assets can make you so vulnerable is because the law requires that certain records be made available to the public. That includes some records with very revealing information about you and your stuff. It’s a lot like forcing you to go out in public with your fly open. Many of the websites that publish personal information, like Intelius and Lexis-Nexis, get a lot of their information from these public records. To make it harder for the curious and nefarious to tap juicy assets for personal information, you have to know where you are vulnerable. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rounds/rounds31.1.html

Administration Readying Internet Identity Tracking System

Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration plans to announce today plans for an Internet identity system that will limit fraud and streamline online transactions, leading to a surge in Web commerce, officials said.

While the White House has spearheaded development of the framework for secure online identities, the system led by the U.S. Commerce Department will be voluntary and maintained by private companies, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

A group representing companies including Verizon Communications Inc., Google Inc., PayPal Inc., Symantec Corp. and AT&T Inc. has supported the program, called the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, or NSTIC.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-07/internet-identity-system-said-readied-by-obama-administration.html

Court Rules Mobile Phones Can Be Searched without a Warrant

The California Supreme Court ruled that police can search a suspect’s cell-phone text messages without a warrant, based on past cases where cigarette packs can be searched. A smartphone stores vast amounts of personal data, not even in the same realm as a pack of smokes. In this electronic age, the government moves America closer to a creepy police state.

More bad news on the privacy front pushes us closer to an police state in an electronic age. Monday, in a 5-2 split decision [PDF], the California Supreme Court ruled that police do not need a warrant before searching cell phone text messages of someone who has been arrested. In fact, the court determined that an arrested person has no privacy rights over any personal belongings they’re carrying on them when taken into custody. Police are allowed to seize and examine anything they find in the arrestee’s possession.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/ca-court-rules-smartphones-can-be-searched-wi?source=NWWNLE_nlt_daily_am_2011

Monitoring America: The Government’s Development Of A Vast Panopticon Spy Network

Over the years we have seen countless instances of unaccountable government and military programs that have been in operation for decades, all centered around covertly spying and gathering information on American citizens. We have extensively documented such programs from COINTELPRO through to Operation CHAOS, the Defense Department’s Counterintelligence Field Activity and the recent NSA warrantless wiretapping. Large corporations such as Google, AT&T, Facebook and Yahoo to name but a few are also intimately involved in the overarching program. Those corporations have specific government arms that are supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information. We are now witnessing the coordination and mass consolidation of scores of these operations into one all encompassing panopticon program. http://www.infowars.com/monitoring-america-the-governments-development-of-a-vast-panopticon-spy-network/

Federal Court Blocks Obama Administration Attempt to Spy on Cell Phones Without a Warrant

The Obama Administration’s effort to obtain your location from cell phone towers without a warrant was rebuffed Wednesday by a federal court. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the Justice Department cannot obtain information about which cell phone towers mobile phones communicate with without a warrant. The decision was first reported by Wired’s David Kravets, and has received almost no coverage in the press. The Obama Administration is seeking to reverse an earlier ruling giving judges the authority to require a warrant for the government to obtain cell phone tracking data. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/obama-attempt-spy-cell-phones-overturned-federal-court/

Land of the Free Watch: Homeland Security ‘Messages’ Coming to Walmart, Hotels, Malls

Shoppers at Walmart will soon have something other than glossy magazines and chewing gum to look at when in the checkout line: A “video message” from the Department of Homeland Security asking them to look out for “suspicious” activity and report it immediately.
It’s part of a new Department of Homeland Security program that could see Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s face on video screens in malls, retail outlets and hotels across the United States. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27026.htm

TSA-Style Pat Downs Hit The Streets

As we have repeatedly warned, everything unfolding in the airports, from naked radiation body scanners to pat downs, is now being implemented on mass transit as well as every major street corner in America. Constitutional protections of privacy and immunity from unreasonable search and seizure have been abolished, replaced with guilty until proven innocent. http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-style-pat-downs-hit-the-streets.html

The United States of Fear

It’s finally coming into focus, and it’s not even a difficult equation to grasp. It goes like this: take a country in the grips of an expanding national security state and sooner or later your “safety” will mean your humiliation, your degradation. And by the way, it will mean the degradation of your country, too. http://www.lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt411.html

The Generational Privacy Divide

Last week hundreds of privacy regulators, corporate officers and activists gathered in Jerusalem, Israel for the annual Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner Conference. The conference theme focused on the perception of a growing privacy divide between generations, with older and younger demographics seemingly adopting sharply different views on the importance of privacy.

Many acknowledged that longstanding privacy norms are being increasingly challenged by the massive popularity of social networks that encourage users to share information that in a previous generation would have never been made publicly available for all the world to see. Moreover, rapid technological change and the continuous evolution of online sites and services create enormous difficulty for regulators unaccustomed to moving at Internet speed.

http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2010/11/02/GenerationalPrivacyDivide/

Outrage at New Airport Security Check So Invasive It Will ‘Become a Moral Issue’

Airline passengers and civil liberties groups have expressed disgust and outrage at new security measures that are tantamount to ‘foreplay’. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration trialled a new pat-down technique at Logan International Airport and is now rolling out the measures to all 450 of its airports. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1324924/Airport-security-check-invasive-moral-issue.html

Michael Roberts: One Man Against the Surveillance State

Michael Roberts, a 35-year-old airline pilot from Memphis, Tennessee, is putting everything on the line for freedom. Concerned about the world his children will grow up in, this father of six young children ranging in age from 10 months to 8 years old has pitted himself against the American surveillance state as it encroaches upon personal privacy and our constitutional freedoms. http://mensnewsdaily.com/2010/10/25/michael-roberts-one-man-against-the-surveillance-state/

Preparing for a U.S. Border Crossing

If you’re planning to leave – and especially to enter – the United States, you need to take several precautions before you do so. That’s because Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents can seize and copy the contents of any electronic device you carry across a U.S. border. That includes your laptop, your cell phone, your USB flash drives, your digital camera, etc. Agents don’t need probable cause or even reasonable suspicion to conduct a search of your electronic data – just “gimme.” They can copy the data for investigative purposes and then use that information against you in a subsequent criminal case. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/nestmann6.1.1.html

The Obama Administration’s War on Privacy

The tyrannical mentality of the UAE, Saudi and Bush DHS authorities are far from aberrational. They are perfectly representative of how the current U.S. administration thinks as well: every communication and all other human transactions must be subject to government surveillance. Nothing may be beyond the reach of official spying agencies. There must be no such thing as true privacy from government authorities. Anyone who thinks that is hyperbole should simply read two articles today describing efforts of the Obama administration to obliterate remaining vestiges of privacy. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/27/privacy/index.html

Dictatorship Watch — Feds Declare Privacy Doesn’t Exist in ‘Public Places’

The Obama administration has urged a federal appeals court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move. The Justice Department is demanding a federal appeals court rehear a case in which it reversed the conviction and life sentence of a cocaine dealer whose vehicle was tracked via GPS for a month, without a court warrant. The authorities then obtained warrants to search and find drugs in the locations where defendant Antoine Jones had travelled. The administration, in urging the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse a three-judge panel’s August ruling from the same court, said Monday that Americans should expect no privacy while in public. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/public-privacy/#ixzz10GwocAiu

Project Vigilant and the Government/Corporate Destruction of Privacy

According to Uber, one of Project Vigilant’s manifold methods for gathering intelligence includes collecting information from a dozen regional U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs). Uber declined to name those ISPs, but said that because the companies included a provision allowing them to share users’ Internet activities with third parties in their end user license agreements (EULAs), Vigilant was able to legally gather data from those Internet carriers and use it to craft reports for federal agencies. A Vigilant press release says that the organization tracks more than 250 million IP addresses a day and can “develop portfolios on any name, screen name or IP address.” http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/02/privacy/index.html

Can You Disappear in Surveillance Britain

Back in January last year, David Bond packed a rucksack, kissed his pregnant wife Katie and toddler Ivy, climbed into his Toyota Prius and drove away from home. Nobody knew where he was going – he didn’t even know himself. One thing he was sure about was this: “I’m going to leave my life behind and disappear,” he said. http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl2/can-you-disappear-in-surveillance-britain.html

The National Biometric ID Card: The Mark of the Beast?

As technology grows more sophisticated and the government and its corporate allies further refine their methods of keeping tabs on the American people, those of us who treasure privacy increasingly find ourselves engaged in a struggle to maintain our freedoms in the midst of the modern surveillance state. Just consider the many ways we’re already being monitored and tracked: through our Social Security numbers, bank accounts, purchases and electronic transactions; by way of our correspondence and communications devices – email, phone calls and mobile phones; through chips implanted in our vehicles, identification documents, even our clothing. Data corporations are capturing vast caches of personal information on you so that airports, retailers, police and other government authorities can instantly identify and track you. Add to this the fact that businesses, schools and other facilities are relying more and more on fingerprints and facial recognition to identify us. All the while, banks and other financial institutions must verify the identities of new customers and make such records of customer transactions available to the police and government officials upon request. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/whitehead10.1.html