Free Republic

<p>What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don’t need to have any “national security” related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other “selector” into the NSA’s gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called “national security” will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes. And we don’t have to guess who’s going to suffer this unconstitutional indignity the most brutally. It’ll be Black, Brown, poor, immigrant, Muslim, and dissident Americans: the same people who are always targeted by law enforcement for extra “special” attention.</p>

If the FBI wins in its case against Apple to help it unlock the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone 5C, it won’t be long before the government forces Apple to turn on users’ iPhone cameras and microphones to spy on them, according to the company’s head of services Eddy Cue. The FBI has demanded that Apple creates custom software that bypasses certain security features of the company’s iOS to allow law enforcement to brute force the passcode of the gunman’s iPhone 5C. But according to Apple, making the modifications necessary in this case would set a dangerous precedent in offering backdoors...

The Pentagon has deployed drones several times over U.S. territory on non-military spy missions, but the flights have been rare and lawful, according to a Defense Department report obtained by USA Today under the Freedom of Information Act.

(Apr 24, 2012) The Pentagon is launching drones and spy planes from at least 63 locations within the United States. The Federal Aviation Administration released the data following a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But this information is bound to ruffle the feathers of privacy activists, who are concerned that unmanned aerial drones could be used to spy over residential areas.

It all began with a car crash. I was doing some ironing when my mum came in to tell me that a family friend had been killed in a road accident in Thailand. My phone was on the worktop behind me. But the next time I used the search engine on it, up popped the name of our friend, and the words, "Motorbike accident, Thailand" and the year in the suggested text below the search box.

One of the things here I've noticed is that there's a debate going on about this topic. Donald Trump is right and I've said it, but come under fire. See the tweet below: Boycott all Apple products until such time as Apple gives cellphone info to authorities regarding radical Islamic terrorist couple from Cal— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2016 It would be one thing to talk about doing this to people who are alive. But the Radical Islamic Terrorists who carried out San Bernadino are dead. I don't care about their civil liberties. Keep America safe, which will...

Up to 46,000 Internet-accessible digital video recorders (DVRs) that are used to monitor and record video streams from surveillance cameras in homes and businesses can easily be taken over by hackers. According to security researchers from vulnerability intelligence firm Risk Based Security (RBS), all the devices share the same basic vulnerability: They accept a hard-coded, unchangeable password for the highest-privileged user in their software -- the root account. Using hard-coded passwords and hidden support accounts was a common practice a decade ago, when security did not play a large role in product design and development. That mentality has changed in...

As increasing numbers of devices connect to the internet and to one another, the so-called internet of things promises consumers increased convenience – the remotely operated thermostat from Google-owned Nest is a leading example. But as home computing migrates away from the laptop, the tablet and the smartphone, experts warn that the security features on the coming wave of automobiles, dishwashers and alarm systems lag far behind. ... James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, was more direct in testimony submitted to the Senate on Tuesday as part of an assessment of threats facing the United States. "In the...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is planning to cut 50 percent of the budget for aerial surveillance along the U.S.-Mexico border, agents revealed at a congressional hearing Thursday. In an effort to understand why DHS is cutting funding, Texas's Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, wrote a bi-partisan letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. "Any decrease in aerial observation is not only imprudent, but contradicts the very mission of border security enforcement," the letter states. The lawmakers' letter also asks for detailed information about the reduction aerial-based border security, also known as Operation Phalanx. Abbott and...

The new way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat ‘score’ - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/the-new-way-police-are-surveilling-you-calculating-your-threat-score/2016/01/10/e42bccac-8e15-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html A national debate has played out over mass surveillance by the National Security Agency, a new generation of technology such as the Beware software being used in Fresno has given local law enforcement officers unprecedented power to peer into the lives of citizens. Nabarro said the fact that only Intrado — not the police or the public — knows how Beware tallies its scores is disconcerting. He also worries that the system might mistakenly increase someone’s threat level by misinterpreting innocuous activity on social...

The White House announced Friday afternoon that it is launching an inter-agency task force to counter the sharp growth in violent extremism in America, according to an announcement. As senior members of the Obama administration's national security team meet with technology leaders in Silicon Valley, the White House’s National Security Council announced that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security would team up to launch a Countering Violent Extremism Task Force, according to the announcement. The White House background document accompanying the announcement does contain any specific reference to the types of "violent extremism" the administration seeks to counter. The...

Part 315 of 314 in the series Wisconsin's Secret War MADISON, Wis. - He walked into work Tuesday morning to find he had received an "unbelievable" notice. Opening the manila envelope, the Wisconsin conservative learned that government agents had secretly seized his emails - professional and personal - sent and received over a two-year period beginning Jan. 1, 2009. He found out he had, without his knowledge, been dragged into Wisconsin's notorious John Doe investigation, one of perhaps dozens of individuals who in recent days have received similar notices from former John Doe special prosecutor Francis D. Schmitz. Some, like...

The Intercept has obtained a secret government catalog that law enforcement agencies use to source even-more-secret cellular spying devices, mostly variants on the Stingray/Dirtbox, which pretend to be cellular towers in order to harvest the subscriber details of all the people within range (up to an entire city, for the airplane-mounted Dirtboxes). The catalog details the capabilities and costs of the different devices in use in at least 60 law enforcement agencies in the US, most of whom will not admit to owning them (this can go to absurd lengths, such as lying in court, or police-on-police raids to confiscate...

I'm for Ted Cruz but there is a lot to like about Marco Rubio, so I'm of two minds about the clashes between the two that highlighted Tuesday night's debate. On the one hand, I'm buoyed by how good they are. We haven't had candidates of this quality for a very long time. (On that score, while I am not a Chris Christie guy for substantive reasons, his talent cannot be denied.) On the other hand, I'm dismayed to see the exchanges between the two senators get so bitter. I think some combination of the two of them is ultimately...

Once again our national security agencies failed at detecting dangerous terrorists. ... Who knew that collecting massive amounts of irrelevant data on tens of millions of innocent Americans unrelated to terrorism does not prevent terrorist attacks? Actually, making the data haystack bigger makes it harder to find the needle. Like the country music song “Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places,” our country is determined to look for terrorists in all the wrong places. Our government responded by patting down grandmothers and young children at airport security screening, after the trauma of the terrorist attacks on September 11, while...

Despite urging from a variety of left-wing luminaries, discussions in most households over the Thanksgiving holiday did not pan out as hoped. Early summations of conversations picked up from eavesdropping by "smart TVs" revealed that the vast majority leaned toward right-wing views. "The President asked Americans to talk about gun control," Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. "They did, but the gist of the sentiment was that more people wanted to arm themselves. Likewise, conversations about immigration evinced a preference for less of it. And practically no one seemed concerned about global climate change. Obviously, American opinion is not where it...

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama–GOP front runner Donald Trump is tearing into the media, and vowing to fight terrorists. Before an enthusiastic crowd of 10,000 at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex on Saturday, Trump told the crowd, "They’re dishonest people. The media is so dishonest." Trump then set the record straight on how he wants to deal with the ISIS terrorist threat to America. "I want surveillance of certain mosques," he told the crowd. "You know what? We've had it before and we'll have it again." The New York real estate billionaire mocked how the media will react to this announcement. "Oh, they’re going...

...Thanks to secret interpretations of the PATRIOT ACT, top-secret Fourth Amendment exceptions allowed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and broad cooperation at the local, state, and federal level, we can! ...Every day, people leave a digital trail of electronic breadcrumbs as they go about their daily routine. They go to work using electronic fare cards; drive through intersections with traffic cameras; walk down the street past security cameras; surf the internet; pay for purchases with credit/debit cards; text or call their friends; and on and on. ...In the spirit of openness and transparency, here is a partial list of...

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.