Free Republic

The Islamic State’s claim of responsibility for the Paris attacks that killed 129 people -- including one American college student -- has potential to dramatically alter U.S. intelligence assessments of the group's capabilities to carry off well-orchestrated, mass casualty attacks. At the same time, the attacks underscore the mounting difficulties U.S. and Western intelligence agencies are having in tracking the terror group, resulting in repeated warnings that their efforts to conduct surveillance of Islamic State suspects were "going dark." Over the past year, current and former intelligence officials tell Yahoo News, IS terror suspects have moved to increasingly sophisticated methods...

The worldwide collection of phone calls, emails, text messages and our total loss of privacy is all about taxes – NOT terrorism. With all this power and the demand that encryption be outlawed, not any of this surveillance has stopped one terrorist act. There was the Boston bombers, two kids using cell phones. They didn’t catch that either.

While the debate over road funding has been a prominent story in news outlets lately, few people have noticed that cameras on highways and at traffic lights could be a way for governments to take in more money from motorists. While governments may financially benefit from the cameras, the companies that lease them to governments lobby heavily for their use. But now a bill in the Michigan Legislature seeks to clarify the state's position on traffic cameras. Senate Bill 593, introduced by State Sen. Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, bans the use of unmanned traffic monitoring devices to detect or enforce violations...

BALTIMORE —The FBI was flying spy and surveillance planes over west Baltimore during the April riots. Two surveillance planes were spotted flying over west Baltimore during the riots, circling for days. "We've done it in Baltimore, we did it in Ferguson as well, as I recall," FBI Director James Comey told members of Congress this week. The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland said Friday that it has obtained reams of documents through a Freedom of Information request from the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration that detail the flights.

I need some help. I’m a private investigator. I’m trying to build a self-contained, 12-volt surveillance camera rig that I can set up in a vehicle. I want to be able to either run it off of the vehicle’s power or off of a battery pack. [I’ve already got the battery pack set up].

A bi­par­tis­an bid to re­form an elec­tron­ic-pri­vacy law has the sup­port of the tech com­munity and the White House, but fed­er­al law en­force­ment of­fi­cials tell Con­gress the changes would hamper civil pro­sec­u­tion. Civil law en­force­ment agen­cies like the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion and the Se­cur­it­ies and Ex­change Com­mis­sion would not be able to ob­tain crit­ic­al in­form­a­tion if the law were changed to re­quire crim­in­al war­rants for ac­cess to data stored on cloud ser­vices, ac­cord­ing to wit­nesses from those agen­cies testi­fy­ing in front of the Sen­ate Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee Wed­nes­day. The law en­force­ment of­fi­cials were re­act­ing to bills from Sens. Mike Lee and...

Kiriakou, 47, was a source for stories by The New York Times and other news organizations in 2008 and 2009 about some of the agency’s most sensitive operations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ......... that the information Kiriakou supplied to journalists ... enabling defense attorneys there to obtain photographs of CIA operatives suspected of being involved in harsh interrogations. Some of the pictures were subsequently discovered in the cells of high-value detainees.

To hear FBI Director James Comey tell it, strong encryption stops law enforcement dead in its tracks by letting terrorists, kidnappers and rapists communicate in complete secrecy. But that’s just not true. In the rare cases in which an investigation may initially appear to be blocked by encryption — and so far, the FBI has yet to identify a single one — the government has a Plan B: it’s called hacking.

You don’t have to agree with all or even most of Senator Rand Paul’s brand of libertarianism to concede that his candidacy once held so much promise. Paul entered the race buoyed by what seemed like a burgeoning libertarian moment. From the conduct of the global war on terrorism to massive comprehensive reform packages, American political culture had grown suspicious of the federal government’s ability to avert the unforeseen negative consequences of its good intentions. For several weeks in the summer of 2014, Rand Paul led a field of nine prospective Republican presidential candidates in the polls. It was a...

The National Security Agency lost its authority to collect the phone records of millions of Americans, thanks to a new reform measure Congress passed on Tuesday. President Barack Obama signed the bill into law on Tuesday evening. It is the first piece of legislation to reform post 9/11 surveillance measures. "It's historical," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, one of the leading architects of the reform efforts. "It's the first major overhaul of government surveillance in decades." The weeks-long buildup to the final vote was full of drama. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul assailed the NSA in a 10-hour speech that roused...

(NationalSecurity.news) The FBI will send undercover agents to the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada to test new “intelligence collecting” technology aimed at combating “terrorist activities,” something the agency has admitted it has done since 2010. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2012, the FBI said its Special Events Management unit has been maintaining files on attendees of the alternative lifestyle festival, who are known as “burners,” in an attempt to “aid in the prevention of terrorist activities and intelligence collection.” However, much of the FBI’s 16-page response to the FOIA request is heavily redacted, the...

Attorneys in Baltimore are reviewing hundreds of convictions after an investigation revealed that police there have secretly used cell phone surveillance tools in nearly 2,000 criminal cases. Following a report in USA Today that exposed the extent of the Baltimore Police Department’s use of cell-tracking technology to locate suspects sought in connection with low-level crimes, lawyers in the city’s public defender office now tell the paper they plan to ask the court to toss out “a large number” of convictions.

"security has to preside...and be pre-eminent" "if anyone wants to listen to my phone calls, it's fine" "I think we have to err on the side of security" "we don't love it, but we have probably not much of a choice" "it doesn't seem to be very popular, what [Rand Paul's] doing" "Most people seem to feel the way I do" "My best trait will be security"

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.” AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003...

Google CEO Larry Page has rapidly positioned Google to become an indispensable U.S. military contractor. Google recently purchased Boston Dynamics, a robotics pioneer that produces amazing humanoid robots for the U.S. Defense Department. This development invites attention to Google’s broader military contracting ambitions — especially since Boston Dynamics is the eighth robotics company that Google has bought in the last six months. ... In 2012, Google hired Regina Dugan, the head of DOD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), DOD’s in-house “moon-shot” idea factory. At the time a Google spokesperson said: “Regina is a technical pioneer who brought the future...

How your smartphone's battery life can be used to invade your privacy A group of researchers have demonstrated how to track users with nothing more than their remaining battery power, which could compromise privacy Alex Hern Tuesday 4 August 2015 08.18 BST A little-known feature of the HTML5 specification means that websites can find out how much battery power a visitor has left on their laptop or smartphone – and now, security researchers have warned that that information can be used to track browsers online. The battery status API is currently supported in the Firefox, Opera and Chrome browsers, and...

DEABORN, MI -- Robert Snell of the Detroit News analyzed flight data that shows a single-engine, 2010 Cessna tied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by an Associated Press investigation this June spent a good amount of time in the skies above the Muslim-concentrated city of Dearborn this weekend. The flight data showed the plane on Saturday and Sunday made 19 slow-speed, several-mile-wide loops above Dearborn, as well as neighboring cities of Allen Park, Melvindale, Dearborn Heights and Taylor. "The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times,...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday said a controversial new surveillance bill could sweep away “important privacy protections”, a move that bodes ill for the measure’s return to the floor of the Senate this week. The latest in a series of failed attempts to reform cybersecurity, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa) grants broad latitude to tech companies, data brokers and anyone with a web-based data collection to mine user information and then share it with “appropriate Federal entities”, which themselves then have permission to share it throughout the government. Minnesota senator Al Franken queried the DHS in...

I stepped from the warmth of our source's London flat. That February night in 1977, the air was damp and cool; the buzz of traffic muted in this leafy north London suburb, in the shadow of the iconic Alexandra Palace. A fellow journalist and I had just spent three hours inside, drinking Chianti and talking about secret surveillance with our source, and now we stood on the doorstep discussing how to get back to the south coast town where I lived. Events were about to take me on a different journey. Behind me, sharp footfalls broke the stillness. A squad...

Like a lot of teenagers, Aanya Nigam reflexively shares her whereabouts, activities and thoughts on Twitter, Instagram and other social networks without a qualm. But Aanya's care-free attitude dissolved into paranoia a few months ago shortly after her mother bought Amazon's Echo, a digital assistant that can be set up in a home or office to listen for various requests, such as for a song, a sports score, the weather, or even a book to be read aloud. After using the Internet-connected device for two months, Aanya, 16, started to worry that the Echo was eavesdropping on conversations in her...