tagged w/ Electronic Privacy
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A few months ago, I first wrote about the TSA’s naked body scanners and how it could allow Big Brother to view and store pictures of your naked body (plus the naked bodies of your children, too). At that time, my story was met with a reaction of derision from a few people outside the usual NaturalNews readership who said my story was nothing but “paranoia” and that the government had promised it would never record or store full body scan images. The very equipment used to view the body scans was incapable of storing those images, we were told. (These loons apparently think governments never lie…)
Well, as much as I hate to say, “I told ya so,” it turns out I was right (and so was Alex Jones and others who spoke out against the TSA’s naked body scanners). As reported today by Declan McCullagh from CNET, “The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.” (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-2…)
That same story points to a recently released document (http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/b…) proving that the TSA actually requires its equipment to be able to record and store naked body images. This, despite the fact that the TSA publicly stated, “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.” It turns out they were flat-out lying.
So now we have an admission by the TSA that their equipment is, in fact, capable of storing these naked body images. On top of that, we have an admission that federal agents used that same technology to scan tens of thousands of people while secretly saving those images, too.
More naked body scanners coming to U.S. airports
Just two weeks ago, by the way, Big Sis Janet Napolitano announced that these full body scanners would be installed in nearly every major U.S. airport. So get ready have your private parts scanned and recorded by TSA agents, because that’s what could be coming soon to an airport near you.
Another fascinating twist in this story concerns the current location of the more than 35,000 naked body scan images stored on the machine used at a federal courthouse. The machine was apparently returned to the manufacturer. This means the company that makes the full body scanners now reportedly possesses 35,000+ pictures showing the nude bodies of American citizens whose images were scanned and recorded without their knowledge!
“TSA is not being straightforward with the public about the capabilities of these devices,” said Electronic Privacy Information Center executive director Marc Rotenberg (in the CNET story). “This is the Department of Homeland Security subjecting every U.S. traveler to an intrusive search that can be recorded without any suspicion — I think it’s outrageous.”
Balancing security with privacy
Now, certainly we probably need some level of security in our airports. I’m not disagreeing with that premise. There are some bad people in the world who will try to do ugly things in order to prove a point. But magnetometers (metal detector) work just fine, and even a pat-down is less intrusive than a naked image body scanner. Personally, I would much rather submit to a pat-down than a naked body scan.
The more important issue here is that our own government has been lying to us about all this. They said these machines could not record images, and now we find out they could record all along. This worsens the privacy violations by adding a level of deceit. Now how can we trust that other full body scanners aren’t also recording images?
The truth is, we can’t.
And besides, as I suggested before, there’s one really good way to make sure we’re safe in the air. I call it “Armed Airlines.” We should have the choice of an airline where everybody is armed. You have to pack a firearm and a concealed carry license (or a police badge or military ID) just to board the plane. No terrorist or troublemaker in his right mind would dare pull anything on that flight — not with 250 other passengers armed, too.
I would gladly join that flight, and I’d sleep like a baby. Why? Because it would be the safest airplane in the sky. I also know quite a few airline pilots who would gladly pilot those flights, and they’d have their own firearms on the flight control deck, too.
Because right now, what we really have is a nation of disarmed airlines where nobody can carry firearms except Federal Air Marshals. They’re good guys, but there just aren’t enough of them to go around. I’d like to see “Armed Airlines” flying. And besides, Armed Airlines would be the only flights guaranteed not to have screaming babies sitting right behind you.A few months ago, I first wrote about the TSA’s naked body scanners and how it... more
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After it was ruled that a hacker who obtained unauthorized emails from TorrentSpy on behalf of the MPAA did not technically intercept them under the WireTap Act, the EFF has filed a friend-of-the-court brief. EFF describes the recent decision as a “dangerous attempt to circumvent privacy laws,” and wants to see it overturned.
torrentspyThe case, Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America, was brought against the MPAA by Justin Bunnell, the owner of TorrentSpy, who found out that the MPAA had intercepted his email communication.
In 2005, an associate of TorrentSpy, Robert Anderson, ‘changed sides’ after an internal dispute and decided to work with the MPAA instead, gathering evidence against the BitTorrent site.
The man configured the TorrentSpy mail server to copy and forward all of the site’s email to his own Gmail account. He later sold the 34 pages of information to the MPAA for around $15,000 but later relented and went back to work with the torrent site, telling them what he knew. The same man also spied on The Pirate Bay.
The EFF had filed a brief with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that federal wiretap laws protect emails from interception while they are stored on the mail servers that work to transmit them. However, the federal district court ruled that because the emails were momentarily stored on the server during the delivery process, under the Wiretap Act they were not technically intercepted. The ruling itself only applies to the 9th District, but could have relevance at other courts in the US.
In its friend-of-the-court brief, the EFF states this ruling is incorrect and must be reviewed, since it could allow the government to spy on other people’s emails in the future, without the need for a court order.
“The district court’s decision, if upheld, would have dangerous repercussions far beyond this single case,” Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston at the EFF said. “That court opinion — holding that the secret and unauthorized copying and forwarding of emails while they pass through an email server is not an illegal interception of those emails — threatens to wholly eviscerate federal privacy protections against Internet wiretapping and to authorize the government to conduct similar email surveillance without getting a wiretapping order from a judge.”
It appears that, as long as emails aren’t actually intercepted en-route, it could be legal for the government to request that an ISP copies an individual’s emails after they arrive on the mail server. This would not be classed as a breach of wiretap laws, which is a worryingly easy circumvention of vital privacy laws according to the EFF.
The EFF asks the Court to vacate the district court decision, and and rule that the MPAA hacker did “intercept” email communication from TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnell. The full amicus brief can be viewed here.
After it was ruled that a hacker who obtained unauthorized emails from TorrentSpy... more
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