Free Republic

One of the reasons identify theft is considered by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to be the crime of the century is because of the IRS. The Internal Revenue Service makes growing demands for information about people’s businesses and private lives every day. There is no such thing as personal privacy these days. That the IRS sends citizens a so-called “Privacy Act Notice” in all its mailings is a farce. The IRS lays claim to your data without court authority more so than any other government agency. And to make matters worse, they share the data with any...

If Oregon Governor Kate Brown has her way, the Beaver State will become the first to require universal home visits for newborn children in the care of their own parents. Senate Bill 526, introduced this month in the Oregon Legislative Assembly as part of Brown's budget, orders the Oregon Health Authority to "study home visiting by licensed health care providers." Lawmakers went so far as to declare that SB 526 is an "emergency" measure — one that requires a resolution by the end of the year. The intro to the bill, the language of which has not yet been crafted,...

For months now, the Department of Justice (DOJ) quietly has been working on a revision to its guidelines governing how, when and why prosecutors can obtain the records of journalists, particularly in leak cases. The work has been supervised by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s office, especially since former Attorney General Jeff Sessions departed, but is not wrapped up. ADVERTISEMENT The effort has the potential to touch off a First Amendment debate with a press corps that already has high degrees of distrust of and disfunction with the Trump administration. Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker is aware of the effort...

The Border Patrol on Wednesday (19 Dec) unveiled a new mobile video surveillance system along the U.S.-Mexico border in California that can look into the mountains with infrared scopes in the day and at night. “It’s game-changer for them,” ...“One agent who goes on patrol can multiply his vision many many miles.” The camera systems are carried on Ford F-150 pickup trucks outfitted with surveillance towers. Five of the vehicles will be used by border agents along San Diego’s southern border beginning Friday (21 Dec).

An informative and even-handed segment from VICE News (not a source I usually find to be of much value) recently explored the Orwellian “Social Credit System” in China. The use of this system in China, however, prompts an obvious question, which the VICE segment did not consider: Could something like this happen in America? With the nation’s increasing embrace of socialism and the rise of the PC snowflake culture, government intrusion into the minutest details of our lives is a commonplace today, so the notion might not be as implausible as it may initially seem.The Chinese Social Credit System is...

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A user of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant in Germany got access to more than a thousand recordings from another user because of “a human error” by the company. The customer had asked to listen back to recordings of his own activities made by Alexa but he was also able to access 1,700 audio files from a stranger when Amazon sent him a link, German trade publication c’t reported. “This unfortunate case was the result of a human error and an isolated single case,” an Amazon spokesman said on Thursday. The first customer had initially got no reply...

A terrifying moment for a Houston-area family. The parents of a four-month old boy say a man hacked into their Nest Wi-Fi camera and threatened to kidnap their baby. "We heard sexual expletives being said in his room. So we throw on the light in our room. He turned that camera on and told us, said 'turn off the light' and then said, 'I'm going to kidnap your baby, I'm in your baby's room,'" said Ellen Rigney, the baby's mother. The parents raced up the stairs and found their son safe and sound.

All your activity are belong to us Updated A feature introduced in the April 2018 Update of Windows 10 may have set off a privacy landmine within the bowels of Redmond as users have discovered that their data was still flowing into the intestines of the Windows giant, even with the thing apparently turned off.In what is likely to be more cock-up than conspiracy, it appears that Microsoft is continuing to collect data on recent user activities even when the user has explicitly said NO, DAMMIT!First noted in an increasingly shouty thread over on Reddit, the issue is related to...

... Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, a 46-year-old math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her. An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Ms. Magrin’s identity was...

Former Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski told Judge Jeanine on Saturday that the Obama Administration wiretapped sitting US Senator Jeff Sessions while he was still a sitting senator! Lewandowski: What we’ve seen from the previous administration is that they did spend time listening to conversations between then Senator Jeff Sessions and the ambassador to Russia while he was in his US Senate office. if that were to take place which supposedly did take place, what other conversations did they listen in on? Judge Jeanine: Whoa, you’re saying they were listening to conversations between then Senator Sessions and the Russian Ambassador...

Patents recently issued to Google provide a window into their development activities. While it’s no guarantee of a future product, it is a sure indication of what’s of interest to them. What we’ve given up in privacy to Google, Facebook, and others thus far is minuscule compared to what is coming if these companies get their way. These patents tell us that Google is developing smart-home products that are capable of eavesdropping on us throughout our home in order to learn more about us and better target us with advertising. It goes much further than the current Google Home speaker...

For many, a car symbolizes freedom and individual choice. In China, electric cars serve as a tool for government surveillance. The Associated Press reports that car manufacturers around the world have built their EVs to send tracking data back to China’s government without the knowledge of their owners — including big names like Tesla, Ford, and GM: In China, your car could be talking to the government @AP finds global automakers send real-time electric vehicle data to monitoring centers. https://t.co/XjD1jLi4Uy pic.twitter.com/woksVAS5qu— The Associated Press (@AP) November 29, 2018 More than 200 manufacturers, including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General...

The Chinese are making doubly sure public displays of displeasure with their totalitarian regime such as occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989 will never be repeated. They are instituting a technological surveillance program so pervasive that when completed -- quite soon, it seems -- it will enforce conformity throughout their giant country on a scale that would stupefy Orwell and Huxley. China’s plan to judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior is moving a step closer to reality, with Beijing set to adopt a lifelong points program by 2021 that assigns personalized ratings for each...

BANGKOK, Thailand -- China's government sent more than one million majority ethnic Han Chinese to live uninvited in the homes of minority Uighur families in Xinjiang province and report if the Muslims display Islamic or unpatriotic beliefs which need to be forcibly reformed. "Had a Uighur host just greeted a neighbor in Arabic with the words 'Assalamu Alaykum'? That would need to go in the notebook," and reported to China's authorities, said American anthropologist Darren Byler. "Was that a copy of the Koran in the home? Was anyone praying on Friday or fasting during Ramadan? Was a little sister's dress...

Millions of sleep apnea patients rely on CPAP breathing machines to get a good night’s rest. Health insurers use a variety of tactics, including surveillance, to make patients bear the costs. Experts say it’s part of the insurance industry playbook. Last March, Tony Schmidt discovered something unsettling about the machine that helps him breathe at night. Without his knowledge, it was spying on him. From his bedside, the device was tracking when he was using it and sending the information not just to his doctor, but to the maker of the machine, to the medical supply company that provided it...

Newly declassified documents reveal the CIA—which is supposed to be strictly limited in the types of surveillance and other secret operations it conducts on U.S. soil—routinely monitors U.S. government computer systems. That information is contained in two formerly secret letters of “congressional notification” written in 2014 by the Intelligence Community inspector general at the time, Charles McCullough. In the letters, McCullough reveals the CIA secretly intercepted and collected emails between congressional staff and the CIA’s head of whistleblowing and source protection. The collection was said to occur as part of the CIA’s “routine counterintelligence monitoring of government computer systems.” Several...

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have put an "undisclosed number of covert surveillance cameras inside streetlights" across the country, according to federal procurement documents obtained by Quartz. It's unclear how many cameras the agencies purchased or where, exactly, the "video recording and reproducing equipment" has been placed. But the documents obtained by Quartz show the DEA paid a company called Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC about $22,000 since June 2018, while ICE made payments of $28,000 over the same time period. ICE offices in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio provided funding for the cameras, while...

Maybe you once thought the CIA wasn’t supposed to spy on Americans here in the United States. That concept is so yesteryear. Over time, the CIA upper echelon has secretly developed all kinds of policy statements and legal rationales to justify routine, widespread surveillance on U.S. soil of citizens who aren’t suspected of terrorism or being a spy. The latest outrage is found in newly declassified documents from 2014. They reveal the CIA not only intercepted emails of U.S. citizens but they were emails of the most sensitive kind — written to Congress and involving whistleblowers reporting alleged wrongdoing within...

Congress secretly boosted U.S. spy agency funding last year, pushing intelligence budgets to their highest publicly known level and raising questions about the reason for the surge. Non-military spy agency budgets soared nearly 9 percent to $59.4 billion in fiscal 2018, and military intelligence funding grew more than 20 percent to $22.1 billion. Overall intelligence spending increased more than 10 percent to $81.5 billion, according to the figures released Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Defense Department, a month after the fiscal year ended.

U.S. spy agencies have determined that Russia and China are eavesdropping on President Trump's phone calls in order to gain information that they can use to influence American policy, according to a New York Times report. Although Trump's aides have repeatedly warned him that his three personal iPhones are not secure, the president refuses to give them up, the Times reported. He continues to use them to chat with friends and confidantes. China has reportedly been keeping track of the people who Trump speaks to the most, compiling them into a list of figures to target with pro-Chinese messaging. While...