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surveillance
An article by Nicky Hager at Cryptome.org from Covert Action Quarterly (1998) about Echelon. Hager’s book on the subject, “Secret Power: New Zealand’s Role In the International Spy Network,” is dated 1996, so I’m a little confused by the dating of the article. Echelon is/was a global espionage and interception system coordinated by the [...]
Chuckle. I see that Lew Rockwell has a podcast today with Russ Baker, the founder of the site, WhoWhatWhy.com, from which this piece is published.
Interesting background here on UBS, the Swiss bank (and leading kleptocrat) involved in the biggest off-shore scandal in recent history (hat-tip to The Daily Bell commenter who posted it):
“It is worth [...]
From Eric Sommer at Pravda.ru via Market Oracle, January 14, 2010:
“The western media is currently full of articles on Google’s ‘threat to quit China’ over internet censorship issues, and the company’s ’suspicion’ that the Chinese government was behind attempts to ‘break-in’ to several Google email accounts used by ‘Chinese dissidents’.
However, the media has almost completely [...]
After all the (deserved) outcry against Google, Ben Grub at ZDNet.com, June 11, 2010, tells us why trusting the government to keep an eye on privacy offenders only makes things worse:
“Companies who provide customers with a connection to the internet may soon have to retain subscriber’s private web browsing history for law enforcement [...]
From Wired.com:
“Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.
SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, [...]
As a translator, I’m a member of ProZ.com, one of the biggest if not the biggest online community for translators, interpreters and other language specialists. When there’s work available that matches my profile criteria, I get an email.
I’ve never gotten one as awful as this, though:
—–Original Message—–
From: ProZ.com [mailto:bounce-handler@proz.com]
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2010 9:22 PM
To: ProZ.com Member
Subject: [ProZ.com jobs] Wire Tap Monitors Needed in St. Paul (eng>eng, vie>eng, fra>eng, deu>eng)
New job posting on ProZ.com:
URL: http://www.proz.com/job/425410
————
English
Title: Wire Tap Monitors Needed in St. Paul
Delivery deadline: 2010-07-01 21:00:00
Quoting deadline: 2010-06-08 21:00:00
Subject field: General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters
Location:
United States Native language: Must be native in target language
The job description:
We recently won a project to provide live, wire tap monitors in the St. Paul, Minnesota area. To be chosen for this project, linguists must have experience with live wire taps and audio transcription. This is an English to English transcripton project. Previous experience with Voice Box or Red Wolf software is a plus. Timeline for project is the next 30 days, but could go up to 60 days. Two (2), 8-hour shifts daily, with up to 5 linguists per shift will be scheduled. Linguists will be paid on an hourly basis. Please send your resumes to [redacted] if interested.
So, if you’re planning a telephone conversation in English with someone in St. Paul in the next month or so, think twice about who might be listening.
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The Telegraph (June 4, 2010) reports that Google, which had been caught earlier recording private wifi messages has just ‘fessed up to the seriousness of what it did:
“In an interview with the Financial Times, the search engine’s boss admitted the company could have gained access to [...]
The British have had it with the national ID card, says this AFP report:
“The new coalition government is to scrap a national identity card scheme introduced by former prime minister Gordon Brown’s administration, it announced Thursday.
The scheme will be abolished within 100 days under legislation presented by Home Secretary Theresa [...]
In Britain today we are a nation of the observed, there is one cctv camera for every 14 people, making a total of 4.2 million cameras watching you go about your business, more than any other country in the world. It is not unusual for an individual to be captured on more than 300 cameras on one day. There are now plans to to expand the capacity to read vehicle number plates from an amazing 35 million per day to 50 million by 2008.
You are also being recorded in other forms, the national database holds more than 3.5 million profiles of individuals. Since 2002 there have been more than 8 million criminal records checks on those applying for jobs. By the end of 2002 law enforcement bodies had made more than 400,000 requests for data from mobile network operators. Last year to April, 631 adults and 5,751 juveniles had been electronically tagged.
We have kids being fingerprinted at school on the pretext that it makes it easier for them to use the library, (how did you use the libraries in the past?) and some schools using palm prints for ID.
Is your personal data safe, the simple answer is NO. As more and more private companies enter the security field the sharing of data becomes more widespread, the more it is shared the more it leaks into other hands, plus data is valuable on a commercial basis and companies will pay good money for information about you and what you get up to.
At present there are 216 catalogue companies in the UK that are part of the Abacus data-sharing consortium with information on more than 26 million people. All this available to those how have the money to pay. You can also rest assured that there are lots of other organisations collecting your details to sell to the big companies, if there’s a profit in it, somebody will do it. .
It is all about control, control of you and me, that’s why the state backs every one of these activities. To know where you are, should you be there, have you permission to move to another point, are you doing what you should be doing at that given time, and all verifiable and therefore can be enforced. Such activity is repugnant to any society that professes to be free, this society is obviously not free. Until we dismantle the state and all its attendant apparatus and replace it with a system of free association, voluntary co-operation and mutual aid, the growth of this type of activity is inevitable. Use your imagination, think where can it further expand to in you personal life, perhaps your living room? Big brother would like that!!
NHS Data Revelations Bode Badly For NPflT
Dylan Sharpe, bigbrotherwatch.org, April 29, 1010
“When Big Brother Watch released our report into the security of confidential medical data - Broken Records - one of our arguments against the number of non-medical personnel having access to patient records was the huge incidence of data loss within [...]