surveillance

President Eisenhower, in his 1961 farewell address, warned that the military-industrial complex could "endanger our liberties or democratic processes." Today WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange is warning that the surveillance-industrial complex is even more dangerous.

A set of nearly 300 documents that the document-leaking Web site published today reveals how extensive and privacy-invasive the secretive multi-billion dollar industry devoted to surveillance technology has become.

"We are in a world now where not only is it theoretically possible to record nearly all telecommunications traffic out of a country, all telephone calls, but where there is an international industry selling … Read more

Surveillance has come a long way in the past decade.

Spurred in part by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, surveillance has become a more important method of trying to protect people from terrorist activity, or to root out dissident activity. And there's no shortage of companies looking to supply the gear that can do those jobs.

Some of the tech employed includes tools that allow governments to hack into individuals' cell phones and computers, as well as "massive intercept" equipment that can record all Internet communications in a country, according to documents obtained and cataloged … Read more

Britain's largest police force is using covert surveillance technology that can shut off mobile phones and intercept communications, according to a report in The Guardian.

The article says that the London Metropolitan Police Service bought the technology, which acts like a fake cell tower, from a U.K.-based company called Datong plc. The suitcase-sized receiver reportedly tricks cell phones into thinking they are communicating on a regular cellular network, and this allows authorities to intercept text messages, data, and phone calls. Authorities can also track users within range of the fake cell phone network, the report says. It … Read more

Research In Motion is providing the Indian government with some information on BlackBerry users, as long as the company deems it appropriate, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

Citing anonymous sources, the Journal says that RIM has a "small" facility in Mumbai that was set up earlier this year to field surveillance requests from the Indian government. The Journal's sources say that the government must provide RIM with enough legal justification for the company to hand over an individual's "decoded messages," including BlackBerry Messenger chats.

But Indian government apparently wants more. For example, the … Read more

A new report from Google shows a rise in government requests for user account data and content removal, including a request by one unnamed law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality--which the company refused.

The latest Google Transparency Report, released today, also shows historic traffic patterns on Google services via graphs with spikes and drops indicating outages that, in some cases, indicate attempts by governments to block access to Google or the Internet. For instance, all Google servers were inaccessible in Libya during the first six months of this year, as was YouTube in China.

But the … Read more

It was not that long ago that U.S. congressman Spencer Bachus, a conservative Republican from Alabama, was defending Americans' right to privacy against overreaching government surveillance.

"Technology has outrun the law," Bachus said during a July 2000 hearing. He wondered: "What level of monitoring do we, as a country, want to have on private conversations?"

Soon afterward, that House of Representatives committee took the unprecedented step of voting, by a 20-1 margin, to require police to obtain a warrant from a judge before e-mail could be read or mobile phones could be tracked. The legislation … Read more

A widespread cyber-espionage campaign stole government secrets, sensitive corporate documents, and other intellectual property for five years from more than 70 public and private organizations in 14 countries, according to a McAfee researcher who uncovered the effort.

The campaign, dubbed "Operation Shady RAT" (RAT stands for "remote access tool"), was discovered by Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at the cyber-security firm McAfee. The targets cut across industries, including government, defense, energy, electronics, media, real estate, agriculture, and construction. The governments hit include the U.S., Canada, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and India.

Meanwhile, a … Read more

Sometimes, when it comes to hidden cameras, good people can be watching.

That must surely be the view of a woman who was walking down a San Francisco street and had her cell phone snatched from her by a miscreant.

In shock, she paused for a few seconds before wondering what she should do. Before she had time to decide, a cab pulled up beside her. The driver explained that he'd not only seen the incident but also recorded it.

More precisely, his cab's 180-degree dashboard video camera had recorded it.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the … Read more

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' … Read more