Posts

Secret Service Allowed to Use Warrantless Cellphone Tracking

/0 Comments/in , /by

A new policy allows the Secret Service to use intrusive cellphone-tracking technology without a warrant if there’s believed to be a nonspecific threat to the president or another protected person.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Seth M. Stodder described to a House subcommittee Wednesday the department’s policy on the use of cell-site simulators.

Civil libertarians and privacy advocates have long expressed concern about the suitcase-size devices, known as Stingrays, which mimic cell-towers to scoop up electronic data that can be used to locate nearby phones and identify their owners. The devices don’t listen in to phone calls or capture text messages, Stodder said.

The policy the department unveiled this week is similar to the one announced in September by the Justice Department, which includes the FBI.

Federal law enforcement officers are required to get a warrant signed by a judge before using Stingrays, except under emergency “exigent circumstances” meeting the constitutional standard for probable cause under the Fourth Amendment, but when there is no time to get a warrant. (Read more from “Secret Service Allowed to Use Warrantless Cellphone Tracking” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Cops Are Asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for Their Customers’ DNA

/0 Comments/in , /by

When companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe first invited people to send in their DNA for genealogy tracing and medical diagnostic tests, privacy advocates warned about the creation of giant genetic databases that might one day be used against participants by law enforcement. DNA, after all, can be a key to solving crimes. It “has serious information about you and your family,” genetic privacy advocate Jeremy Gruber told me back in 2010 when such services were just getting popular.

Now, five years later, when 23andMe and Ancestry both have over a million customers, those warnings are looking prescient. “Your relative’s DNA could turn you into a suspect,” warns Wired, writing about a case from earlier this year, in which New Orleans filmmaker Michael Usry became a suspect in an unsolved murder case after cops did a familial genetic search using semen collected in 1996. The cops searched an Ancestry.com database and got a familial match to a saliva sample Usry’s father had given years earlier. Usry was ultimately determined to be innocent and the Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a “wild goose chase” that demonstrated “the very real threats to privacy and civil liberties posed by law enforcement access to private genetic databases.”

The FBI maintains a national genetic database with samples from convicts and arrestees, but this was the most public example of cops turning to private genetic databases to find a suspect. But it’s not the only time it’s happened, and it means that people who submitted genetic samples for reasons of health, curiosity, or to advance science could now end up in a genetic line-up of criminal suspects. (Read more from “Cops Are Asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for Their Customers’ DNA” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

No Surprise: Facebook Is Stalking You

/1 Comment/in , /by

Facebook is following you around the Web. You knew that, right?

How else would Facebook know to serve that panda video straight into your news feed, and leave your college friend’s ill-informed rant about Pacific trade deals in the dark bowels of its servers? How else would it know to serve you with 7,000 ads for wedding dress vendors the very day you announce your engagement?

Facebook knows what you like. It knows what you don’t like. It probably knows whether you have been naughty or nice, and will be selling that data to Santa this Christmas season.

This bothers many people, especially since Facebook keeps expanding the list of things it knows about you, and the ways it is willing to use that data to make money.

The recent announcement that Facebook would soon target ads using your “likes” and “shares” has triggered some Olympic-level teeth- gnashing from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, because Facebook will get information from you not just when you actually like, “like” something, but when you load a page that has a “like” button on it. (Read more from “No Surprise: Facebook Is Stalking You” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Private Database Lets Police Skirt License Plate Data Limits

/0 Comments/in , /by

For years, police nationwide have used patrol car-mounted scanners to automatically photograph and log the whereabouts of peoples’ cars, uploading the images into databases they’ve used to identify suspects in crimes from theft to murder.

Nowadays, they are also increasingly buying access to expansive databases run by private companies whose repo men and tow-truck drivers photograph license plates of vehicles every day.

Civil libertarians and lawmakers are raising concerns about the latest practice, arguing that there are few, if any, protections against abuse and that the private databases go back years at a time when agencies are limiting how long such information is stored. (Read more from “Private Database Lets Police Skirt License Plate Data Limits” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

DARPA Is Implanting Chips in Soldiers’ Brains, According to This New Book

/0 Comments/in , /by

For decades, DARPA, the secretive research arm of the Department of Defense, has dreamed of turning soldiers into cyborgs. And now it’s finally happening. The agency has funded projects that involve implanting chips into soldiers’ brains that they hope will enhance performance on the battlefield and repair traumatized brains once the fog of war has lifted.

“Of the 2.5 million Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, 300,000 of them came home with traumatic brain injury,” journalist Annie Jacobsen told NPR. “DARPA initiated a series of programs to help cognitive functioning, to repair some of this damage. And those programs center around putting brain chips inside the tissue of the brain.”

In her new book about the history of DARPA, “The Pentagon’s Brain,” Jacobsen writes that scientists are already testing “neuroprosthetics” brain implants, but that despite her multiple appeals to the Defense Department, she was not allowed to interview any of the “brain-wounded warriors.”

However, Defense One, an online magazine that covers the military, reported last year on DARPA’s work on brain chips to treat PTSD, and said that DARPA was not yet in the testing phase. “The military hopes to have a prototype within 5 years and then plans to seek FDA approval,” according to Defense One. When DARPA launched its RAM (Restoring Active Memory) program last year, it projected it would be about four years until researchers were implanting chips in human.

Creating super soldiers isn’t the only thing that DARPA is trying to do. According to Jacobsen’s new book, published by Little, Brown, government scientists hope that implanting chips in soldiers will unlock the secrets of artificial intelligence, and allow us to give machines the kind of higher-level reasoning that humans can do. (Read more from “DARPA Is Implanting Chips in Soldiers’ Brains, According to This New Book” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

How the American Government Is Trying to Control What You Think

/2 Comments/in , /by

NASA tweeting that Congress should give it more money so our astronauts won’t have to ride on Russian rockets. Recovery.gov reporting overly optimistic statistics on jobs saved and created by stimulus funds. The Department of Health and Human Service Web site encouraging the public to “state your support for health care reform” during the congressional debate over Obamacare.

These are just some recent examples of the executive branch using our tax dollars to shape our opinions. Unlike the National Security Agency’s personal data collection or the overuse of “secret” stamps to withhold information, this government-produced propaganda receives almost no attention. But that doesn’t mean this “third dimension” of government information is not a problem. America becomes less democratic when the $3 trillion executive branch uses its resources to tilt the debate in its favor.

Of course, a democratic government has an obligation to inform and be transparent. Citizens need to know the government’s policies and plans. We have a right to know which companies receive government contracts, how to collect insurance benefits and social security payments and what public school educational reform will look like. But too often, the government uses its information machinery to do more than simply inform us about a policy. Sometimes, it tries to persuade us to adopt a particular position, regardless of its efficacy.

Consider, for example, the Department of Labor’s campaign to raise the minimum wage, a topic on which there is considerable debate. Raising the minimum wage, the Congressional Budget Office points out, will eliminate some jobs. Still, the government devotes a Web page to the topic that proclaims, “See how raising the national minimum wage will benefit America’s workers.” Americans are invited to tell the Labor Department why they “support raising the federal minimum wage.” Twitter users can see a video of a squiggle of mustard spelling out “#RaiseTheWage” on a hot dog, a reference to the recent interest group advocacy to pay fast-food employers more money. The Labor Department’s Web page treats raising the minimum wage as an unalloyed good and labels possible job losses a “myth.”

Such aggressive communications are neither novel nor exceptional. Government agencies historically have made a habit of crossing the blurry line between informing the public and propagandizing. (Read more from “How the American Government Is Trying to Control What You Think” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Feds Spend Nearly $10M to Develop App That Predicts ‘Psychological Status’ of Americans

/2 Comments/in , /by

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a system that can predict the “psychological status” of users with smartphones and hope to private companies to bring the invention to the market.

The technology appeared on a list of NIH inventions published in the Federal Register that are now available to be licensed by private companies. The government allows companies to license inventions resulting from federal research in order to expedite their arrival on the marketplace.

The system uses smartphones to ask people how they are doing mentally during the day and based on the results can “deliver an automated intervention” if necessary.

“The NIH inventors have developed a mobile health technology to monitor and predict a user’s psychological status and to deliver an automated intervention when needed,” according to the notice published Wednesday. “The technology uses smartphones to monitor the user’s location and ask questions about psychological status throughout the day.”

“Continuously collected ambulatory psychological data are fused with data on location and responses to questions,” the NIH said. “The mobile data are combined with geospatial risk maps to quantify exposure to risk and predict a future psychological state. The future predictions are used to warn the user when he or she is at especially high risk of experiencing a negative event that might lead to an unwanted outcome (e.g., lapse to drug use in a recovering addict).” (Read more from “Feds Spend Nearly $10M to Develop App That Predicts ‘Psychological Status’ of Americans” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes

/1 Comment/in , /by

51644a6b4a568ea1dacdaafc639dc28a.1000x563x1At the request of his probation officer, Tyrone C. Brown came to a community auditorium here in June and sat alongside about 30 other mostly young black men with criminal records — men who were being watched closely by the police, just as he was.

He expected to hear an admonition from law enforcement officials to help end violence in the community. But Mr. Brown, 29, got more than he had bargained for. A police captain presented a slide show featuring mug shots of people they were cracking down on. Up popped a picture of Mr. Brown linking him to a criminal group that had been implicated in a homicide . . .

Mr. Brown, whose criminal record includes drug and assault charges, is at the center of an experiment taking place in dozens of police departments across the country, one in which the authorities have turned to complex computer algorithms to try to pinpoint the people most likely to be involved in future violent crimes — as either predator or prey. The goal is to do all they can to prevent the crime from happening.

The strategy, known as predictive policing, combines elements of traditional policing, like increased attention to crime “hot spots” and close monitoring of recent parolees. But it often also uses other data, including information about friendships, social media activity and drug use, to identify “hot people” and aid the authorities in forecasting crime.

The program here has been named the Kansas City No Violence Alliance, or KC NoVA. And the message on that June night to Mr. Brown and the others was simple: The next time they, or anyone in their crews, commit a violent act, the police will come after everyone in the group for whatever offense they can make stick, no matter how petty. (Read more from “Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Twitter Users: FBI Says Everything You Retweet Can Be Used as Evidence in Criminal Investigations [+video]

/0 Comments/in , /by

EIpgSD2KWith social media becoming so ubiquitous so quickly, it can be difficult to figure out what online silliness is fleeting and what can have real-world consequences. When it comes to Twitter, it seems it’s not just what you write that you have to worry about.

In the trial of 22-year-old Ali Saleh of Queens, the FBI is using his retweets of pro Islamic State messages against him.

“The FBI has been using retweets as evidence against Twitter-happy ISIS wannabes in other cases, as well. This summer a 17-year-old Virginia resident was arrested after regularly retweeting fawning statements about ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. So this is a tactic,” Kate Knibbs from Gizmodo writes. In Mississippi, two people were arrested for attempting to go to Syria to join the terror group again citing Twitter as evidence.

This is very troubling, because the implication is that, if convicted, this will establish a precedent that says what you share on social media can, in fact, be used against you. It also raises some pretty serious questions. (Read more from “Twitter Users: FBI Says Everything You Retweet Can Be Used as Evidence in Criminal Investigations” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

California Officials Considering Using This to Spy on Residents

/2 Comments/in , /by

camera_man_spying_from_carUnder a new proposal, sanitation workers could be picking up much more than trash during their weekly visits to residents’ homes.

Officials in San Jose, California, are working on a proposal to increase Big Brother’s spying powers by affixing law enforcement license plate readers to city garbage trucks.

According to a proposal from San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and Councilmen Johnny Khamis and Raul Peralez, the city wants to place license readers with the ability to send real-time information to the police to the front of each of the privately operated sanitation vehicles collecting trash in the city . . .

Northern California-based ACLU privacy attorney Chris Conley noted that the scheme would provide police with far more information than leads on stolen vehicles.

“If it’s collected repeatedly over a long period of time, it can reveal intimate data about you like attending a religious service or a gay bar,” the attorney told a local reporter. “People have a right to live their lives without constantly being monitored by the government.” (Read more from “California Officials Considering Using This to Spy on Residents” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.