The FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.
The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.
The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn't last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI's criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous -- and possibly illegal.
A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails.
SurveillanceSaver is an OS X screen saver that shows about 400 live security camera videos from public accessible Axis network cameras. It shows surprising scenes from underwater pool cameras, cows in milking machines, to shopping malls and street cameras.
[...] Years later, a part of this secret surveillance is revealed by the New York Times. After a year of criticism and revelations, the Administration agrees to let a super-secret and very compliant court oversee the program using some very super secret, and legally dubious program warrants. A few months later, a judge from this court finds portions of the program illegal. The administration refuses to make this decision public. Instead, it goes on offense and says it needs the power to wiretap anyone overseas including Americans.
[...] Once again: a secret court judge found that the Bush Administration's formerly warrantless wiretapping program was illegal.
And that was the program AFTER it was scaled down in March 2004 after Justice Department officials revolted. I wonder what judges would have made of the earlier program -- the one so bad that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was ready to resign.
MacLockPick: extract clear-text passwords from a sleeping Mac by plugging in a USB dongle.
The solution is based on a USB Flash drive that can be inserted into a suspect's Mac OS X computer that is running (or sleeping). Once the software is run it will extract data from the Apple Keychain and system settings in order to provide the examiner fast access to the suspect's critical information with as little interaction or trace as possible.
MacLockPick takes advantage of the fact that the default state of the Apple Keychain is open, even if the system has been put to sleep. It also makes use of the openly readable settings files used to keep track of your suspect's contacts, activities and history. Once awakened a Mac will return it's keychain access levels to the default state found when it was initially put to sleep. Suspects often (and usually) transport portable systems in this sleeping state.
MacLockPick is not for sale to the general public. Purchasers will be required to provide proof that they are a licensed law enforcement professional. Users are required to ensure that the use of this technology is legal on federal, state, and local level.
"Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.
Home Secretary John Reid told BBC News there would be some people, "in the minority who will be more concerned about what they claim are civil liberties intrusions".
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.
Orwell's view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights. The flat's rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.
Within a 200-yard radius of the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices.
There is another way to look at this shift. Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
So it may be time to consider the possibility that young people who behave as if privacy doesn't exist are actually the sane people, not the insane ones. For someone like me, who grew up sealing my diary with a literal lock, this may be tough to accept. But under current circumstances, a defiant belief in holding things close to your chest might not be high-minded. It might be an artifact -- quaint and naive, like a determined faith that virginity keeps ladies pure. Or at least that might be true for someone who has grown up "putting themselves out there" and found that the benefits of being transparent make the risks worth it. [...]
For anyone over 30, this may be pretty hard to take. Perhaps you smell brimstone in the air, the sense of a devil's bargain: Is this what happens when we are all, eternally, onstage? It's not as if those fifties squares griping about Elvis were wrong, after all. As Clay Shirky points out, "All that stuff the elders said about rock and roll? They pretty much nailed it. Miscegenation, teenagers running wild, the end of marriage!"
The Future Sound of London -- You're Creeping Me Out
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Some guy is trying to sell a salvaged Boston Mooninite on eBay, but eBay has pulled it for "Encouraging Illegal Activity". It seems like every time I ever click an eBay link, the auction has already been pulled for some similar reason.
Also, Aqua Teen Hunger Force is a terrible and unfunny show.
The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. [...]
The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone." An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."
Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. "They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time," he said. "You can do that without having physical access to the phone." [...]
Other mobile providers were reluctant to talk about this kind of surveillance. Verizon Wireless said only that it "works closely with law enforcement and public safety officials. When presented with legally authorized orders, we assist law enforcement in every way possible."
This is a good hack; I wonder what the mechanism is. Do these phones do automatic software updates? Or would it be necessary to trick the user into downloading a trojan?
Watch the Hacking Democracy democracy documentary playing on HBO this month. It's also available for download from Google video.
As documentaries go, it's not great -- they had about 40 minutes of material that they padded out to 80 minutes with long, lingering pans across rows of machines while the music swells -- but the content is important and infuriating.
Please watch this, because I'm constantly amazed at how many of my friends don't understand the problem with electronic voting machines, and don't know what I'm talking about when I bring this up in person. I've been posting links about this ongoing disaster for years, but I guess all of you are just here for the poop jokes.
"And [US Representative Tom Feeney] asked you to design a program to rig an election."
"Yes."
"While he was the speaker of the Florida House."
"Yes."
[...] "And [Mrs. Yang] said, 'you don't understand, we need you to hide the fraud in the source code, not reveal it. We need to control the vote in South Florida.'"
What started out as Senator Specter wanting to rein in the president's program has turned on its head and is now not just a legislative ratification of the program, but an expansion of warrantless wiretapping of Americans.
It would allow the NSA to turn its vacuum cleaners on even domestic phone calls and emails of citizens.
And -- they do all of this in Alice-in-Wonderland fashion by defining all kinds of categories of surveillance to be not surveillance.
The bill is basically saying that any time you are targeting a foreigner, even if you are collecting calls to us citizens, that's not surveillance.
And anytime you are targeting nobody, but scooping up vast quantities of calls, that's not surveillance.
[...]
"Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee acted as a rubber stamp for the administration's abuse of power," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress has a right and obligation to conduct meaningful oversight on the unlawful actions of the president. But instead of investigating lawbreaking, the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to make it legal. We urge the full Senate to reject any attempts to ratify this illegal program."
Why on earth someone would ever pack a claw hammer or a hacksaw in an airplane carry-on bag remains a mystery to Tom Zekos. All he knows is that he loves the chance to get top-quality tools for his workshop for $1 each, thanks to a unique bazaar, in the middle of a corn field, that sells contraband items seized at Logan International Airport and three other New England airports. [...]
The vast majority of non lighter items seized are knives. But TSA Logan officials see plenty of bizarre objects. Inside a guarded room at Logan recently were a citrus juicer, rotary saw, drywall knife, replica hand grenades, a belt buckle the shape of a derringer handgun, machetes, double-sided razor blades, food-processor blades, .50-caliber ammunition, golf clubs, and a cricket bat. In recent years two fully-fueled chainsaws have showed up in Logan travelers' carry-on bags.
Banksy has replaced Hilton's CD with his own remixes and given them titles such as Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For?
A spokeswoman for Banksy said he had doctored 500 copies of her debut album Paris in 48 record shops across the UK. She told the BBC News website: "He switched the CDs in store, so he took the old ones out and put his version in." But he left the original barcode so people could buy the CD without realising it had been interfered with.
No customers had complained or returned a doctored version.
When a monkey is being transported in a carrier, the monkey must be removed from the carrier by the handler prior to screening,
The monkey must be controlled by the handler throughout the screening process.
The monkey handler should carry the monkey through the WTMD while the monkey remains on a leash.
When the handler and monkey go through the WTMD and the WTMD alarms, both the handler and the monkey must undergo additional screening.
Since monkeys may likely draw attention, the handler will be escorted to the physical inspection area where a table is available for the monkey to sit on. Only the handler will touch or interact with the monkey.
TSOs have been trained to not touch the monkey during the screening process.
TSOs will conduct a visual inspection on the monkey and will coach the handler on how to hold the monkey during the visual inspection.
The inspection process may require that the handler take off the monkey's diaper as part of the visual inspection.
The alleged U.K. terror plot has been investigated for months by British intelligence, and the idea that the airliner attacks were planned for today seems to be nothing more than political fabrication and media hysteria.
Tony Blair and George W. Bush even planned the terror freakout in a series of phone calls that began last Friday and continued through the weekend. Blair and Bush put the finishing touches on their diabolical operation in a phone call early Wednesday, the Associated Press revealed today.
That's right: While millions of travelers are going through absolute hell today because of the sudden terror "news," it was last week when the U.S. president and U.K. prime minister began their cold calculations on how to get the maximum political benefit from the months-old investigation.
And now these guys. As the initial "OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY CAN BLOW US UP WITH SNAPPLE BOTTLES!!" hysteria subsides, we discover that these guys had been under surveillance, completely penetrated, by no less than three major intelligence agencies. That they were planning on cell phones, and some of them openly travelled to Pakistan (way to keep the cover, Reilly, Ace of Spies). Hell, Chertoff knew about this two weeks ago, and the only reason that some people can scream this headline:
"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"
-- was because MI-5, MI-6, and Scotland Yard let them get that close, so they could suck in the largest number of contacts (again, very spiffy police work). The fact that these wingnuts could have been rolled up, at will, at any time, seems to have competely escaped the media buzz.
Senate Democrats Cave - Agree To Give Bush More Power To Spy On Americans Than Ever Before
MacLockPick
'Talking' CCTV scolds offenders
Hacking Democracy![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
Items banned at airports find a home in the discount bin
Paris Hilton targeted in CD prank![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
