tagged w/ Invasion of Privacy
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CNN is reporting on findings from a Freedom of Information request initiated by the Electronic Privacy Information Center that has revealed that, contrary to public statements by the Transportation Security Agency, full-body scanners can store and transmit images.
"In the [FOIA] documents, obtained by the privacy group and provided to CNN, the TSA specifies that the body scanners it purchases must have the ability to store and send images when in 'test mode.' ... 'There is no way for someone in the airport environment to put the machine into the test mode,' [an anonymous] official said, adding that test mode can be enabled only in TSA test facilities. But the official declined to say whether activating test mode requires additional hardware, software or simply additional knowledge of how the machines operate.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/01/11/body.scanners/CNN is reporting on findings from a Freedom of Information request initiated by the... more
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Incremental erosion of freedom will ensure victory for terrorism
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A Pennsylvania Walmart Supercenter videotaped employees and customers in a unisex bathroom, several former and current Walmart employees alleged in a lawsuit filed this week.
Seven former and current employees from the Tire and Lube department at the Walmart in Easton, Pa., filed a lawsuit in county court against the Arkansas-based corporation and four local managers Dec. 21.
Several employees discovered an "off-the-shelf" video camera in a store bathroom March 31, 2008, according to the court filing. The unisex bathroom, which also served as a changing room, was used by employees and customers. Customers and employees were not notifed of the surveillance, according to the court filing.
"I am incredulous that anyone would think that it's appropriate conduct for any reason to photograph people in a changing room and bathroom," said Erv McLain, the plaintiffs' attorney.
Walmart said two workers were responsible for the camera.
"Two associates were terminated for placing a camera in an associate dressing room bathroom," Walmart spokesman Greg Rossiter said. "When store management learned of the camera, it was immediately removed."
The company declined further comment.
According to the court filing, the camera was installed by Walmart's loss-prevention unit.
The camera was used to monitor employees for possible theft and it is unclear how long the surveillance took place, McLain said. None of the plaintiffs, however, were accused of stealing from the store.
A store manager acknowledged the existence of the surveillance camera only after employees produced a photo of the camera, McLain said.
"The filming of anyone, including employees, is not something that is unheard of in the industry," McLain said. "But to do it in a changing room and bathroom is totally unprecedented and it could border on criminal activity."
The retailer's "Security and Privacy" policy states that at "some stores and clubs [Walmart] may record your presence on security monitors for safety and security purposes," according to court documents.
(more @ link)A Pennsylvania Walmart Supercenter videotaped employees and customers in a unisex... more
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Many of the security tools used by national governments lack scientific underpinning. This was posited by a team of thirteen international behavioural scientists, including Bruno Verschuere and Geert Crombez (Ghent University), in a recent publication in the Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology.
he team denounces the current situation regarding the use of tools and methods to protect national security.
In their article, they provide a range of examples of equipment, software and methods that are used at airports, by social services and investigative authorities (e.g., Screening Passengers by Observation Technique or SPOT), even though the effectiveness of these tools has not been shown. Moreover, many of these methods are unlikely to work, given that they, for example, attempt to detect deceit by measuring physiological stress signals. And this supposed relationship between stress and deception has been debated in science for years. In all, the use of these tools results in a false sense of security.Many of the security tools used by national governments lack scientific underpinning.... more
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Ever get the feeling you're being watched?
Check out the Los Angeles Police Department's creepy new public service announcement for its city-wide anti-terrorism iWatch program. The civilian program was launched earlier this month and is endorsed by 63 police chiefs around the country.
The ad features wide-eyed, blink-free residents reciting Orwellian mantras and looking as if they're about to crawl out of your television like that girl in "The Ring."
So what have we learned by this ad?
We've learned that terrorism is actually a crime. And that if we smell something suspicious, we should report it. Think about the power of that. I'm James Hibberd and I watch my America.Ever get the feeling you're being watched?
Check out the Los Angeles Police... more
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Look, it’s really no big surprise how far we’ve let slip our right to privacy. What comes as something of a shock is how happily we’ve volunteered its erosion, cookie by cookie, behavioral analysis by behavioral analysis. Well, maybe one guy wasn’t so startled: Josh Harris, founder in the ’90s of Pseudo, the first Internet TV network, and explorer from the turn of the century onward into people’s zeal for letting the world intercede on their lives, so long as the camera remained trained on them.
In the documentary WE LIVE IN PUBLIC, director Ondi Timoner focuses on two of Harris’ most prominent and controversial ventures: Quiet: We Live in Public, an experiment in which 100 people were shut into a Soho, NY basement with all the comforts of home, plus 24/7 surveillance, mandatory uniforms, communal sleeping quarters, fascistic interrogators, and a fully-stocked armory (danger, Will Robinson!); and weliveinpublic.com, essentially the same concept, but located in his loft and turned on himself and his then-girlfriend (who, not all that surprisingly, pretty quickly became his then-not-girlfriend). That FEMA raids and Harris’ shredding sanity eventually play into the drama probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone.
Timoner is best known for the incredible rock doc, DIG!, which also focused on a artist too sold on the purity of his genius: Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Like that film, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC shows what happens when one follows a dangerous idea to its logical conclusion. Added here though, is an acknowledgment that Harris, however mad his dreams, well foresaw how that nightmare would become our everyday reality — in that way, the film serves both as a disturbing and mesmerizing drama, and a sobering warning.
Click on the link above to hear my interview with Timoner.Look, it’s really no big surprise how far we’ve let slip our right to... more
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At this point, you would think that most users would be aware that they should keep embarrassing information off of Facebook. Everyone from potential employers to the press regularly check users' accounts on the service, looking for evidence of illicit or debauched behavior, and a number of jobs have been lost due to the information found there. Still, many fail to exercise discretion when using the service, people in positions of power are catching on, and there continue to be problems that result from the blurring of boundaries between public and private.
In what may be the latest example, a suit was filed in Mississippi that alleges a school official—more specifically a teacher acting in her capacity as a cheerleading coach—demanded that members of her squad hand over their Facebook login information. According to the suit, the teacher used it to access a student's account, which included a heated discussion of some of the cheerleading squad's internal politics. That information was then shared widely among school administrators, which resulted in the student receiving various sanctions.
As we noted when Bozeman, Montana attempted to obtain login credentials from anyone applying for a municipal job, it's easy for anyone to view pictures and text that a Facebook user has chosen to make public simply by signing up for an account with the service. By demanding login credentials, authorities gain access to materials that users have chosen to keep private. Whether this is done because people intend to get access to private data or because they are simply unfamiliar with how Facebook operates isn't always obvious, and probably varies from case to case.
According to this suit, the student's login details were requested during school hours, and the teacher accessed the account the same day. The account included the contents of a discussion between the student and a fellow member of the school's cheerleading squad about its internal politics, which was then allegedly shared with other squad supervisors and the school administration. The student was then "publicly reprimanded, punished, and humiliated" due to the contents of that discussion.
The student was allegedly forced to sit out of various school activities and had difficulties arranging her academic schedule to avoid taking classes from any of the individuals who were both coaches and teachers. Her parents claim that attempts to discuss the problem with school administrators brought them no relief.
The Student Press Law Center has more detailed account (via TechDirt) of the events, in which it reports that several other students asked for their logins simply deleted their accounts using their cell phones, preventing this sort of intrusion; the schools apparently have a filter that blocks access to its Web interface from school computers. It also suggests that the initial search of the Facebook accounts was done with the intent of finding pictures of the students smoking or drinking.
In any case, the suit alleges that the school's administration and staff, along with five John Does, violated the student's Constitutional rights to privacy, free speech and association, and subjected her to cruel and unusual punishment. There are also charges of causing emotional distress, defamation of character, and civil conspiracy. In general, courts have concluded that public school students have some constitutional rights, but only a subset of those afforded to the general populace. It may be that the student's lawyers are aiming broadly in order to find some area of constitutional law in which the student is clearly protected.
More @ linkAt this point, you would think that most users would be aware that they should keep... more
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Madonna's love letters and erotic answering machine messages to an ex-boyfriend are up for sale in New York City.
The Material Girl's material is among nearly 500 personal celebrity items including Jimi Hendrix's $1 performance contract and Muhammad Ali's training robe being offered in an online auction ending Aug. 5.
The Gotta Have It! auction house says the 1965 contract between Hendrix and PPX Enterprises is believed to be his first.
Ali trained in the terry cloth robe for his third fight against Ken Norton in 1976 at Yankee Stadium. Ali won.
Madonna faxed love letters to her then-boyfriend Jim Albright and left naughty messages on his answering machine in the early 1990s. The messages are on two micro-cassette tapes estimated to sell for up to $40,000.
The items belong to 150 consigners including collectors.Madonna's love letters and erotic answering machine messages to an ex-boyfriend... more
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xiola
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7 months ago
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A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns, as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible offensive operations against adversaries' computer networks.A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and... more
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Just watch and wait, by August, they will NOW require all kids to have flu shots to attend school.
Gee, looks like Merc needs a little financial "shot in the arm" so to speak, to keep profits from slumping.
Look to: http://www.informedchoice.info/cocktail.html for a little lesson in just what they get away with sticking into these vaccines.
It seems less of an instrument to keep you healthy, than an intentionally continual backward approach to killing the public.Just watch and wait, by August, they will NOW require all kids to have flu shots to... more
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Just another way to track every thing you do, everything you like and everything the gvt may feel threatened by.Just another way to track every thing you do, everything you like and everything the... more
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There has been CCTV, finger printing and eye recognition. Now comes body odour profiling. In its ongoing efforts to nail the bad guys, the US Department of Homeland Security is investing heavily in the sniff test: "odourprint".
Plans have quietly appeared on the American government website to announce some serious funding of a study looking at the potential of using people's individual smell to identify criminals and to uncover when they are lying.
There are scientists who claim our smell is just as unique as our DNA, and the work to be funded will look into the chemical nature of the human scent as utilised by crime fighters in the form of the bloodhound. Dogs have clued the scientists into the possibilities of smell technology although their accuracy has been shown to be as low as 85%, with an untrained dog doing no better pure chance.
The electronic nose is being developed widely and last year biological engineers found a way to mass-produce smell receptors in the laboratory, an advance that paves the way for "artificial noses".There has been CCTV, finger printing and eye recognition. Now comes body odour... more
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So sweet! Singer Gavin Rossdale and his son Kingston were out for a little one-on-one time over the weekend. The two hit Malibu beach for some sun and fun.So sweet! Singer Gavin Rossdale and his son Kingston were out for a little one-on-one... more
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Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said the committee has begun its own examination.
"We have requested all relevant information from the Bush Administration," Rockefeller said Thursday. "The Committee will take whatever action is necessary."
"These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA's Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.
Kinne described the contents of the calls as "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."
Another intercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk, 39, said he and his fellow intercept operators listened into hundreds of Americans picked up using phones in Baghdad's Green Zone from late 2003 to November 2007.
The accounts of the two former intercept operators, who have never met and did not know of the other's allegations, provide the first inside look at the day to day operations of the huge and controversial US terrorist surveillance program.
But the accounts of the two whistleblowers, which could not be independently corroborated, raise serious questions about how much respect is accorded those Americans whose conversations are intercepted in the name of fighting terrorism.
Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.
"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.
Faulk said he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall's "smoke pit," but ended up feeling badly about his actions.
"I feel that it was something that the people should not have done. Including me," he said.
In testimony before Congress, then-NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden, now director of the CIA, said private conversations of Americans are not intercepted.
Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the... more
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"Britain is absolutely covered in closed-circuit TV cameras, ensuring that anyone walking through London is easily tracked by a shadowy group of law enforcement officials in some dark room somewhere. How unsettling and Orwellian! Well, one enterprising Brit decided to see just how long it would take for the cops to show up after parading around in front of the cameras in an 8-foot-tall alien outfit.""Britain is absolutely covered in closed-circuit TV cameras, ensuring that anyone... more
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