The Freedom Watch

Dan Rather: NSA ‘is demolishing the trust in the government’

"AXS TV anchor Dan Rather and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night said the National Security Agency couldn’t justify its sweeping surveillance powers. An internal audit found the NSA had violated its own privacy rules due to errors, such as using wrong the area codes. On Wednesday, it was revealed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had halted an NSA online surveillance program because the agency was unable to separate American emails from foreign emails. Rather said he was skeptical that the NSA’s actions could simply be attributed to ineptitude." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDan Rather: NSA ‘is demolishing the trust in the government’

NSA admits: Our analysts ‘willfully violated’ rules of surveillance system

"'NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and co-operates fully with any investigations – responding as appropriate,' the NSA said in a statement. 'NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities.' It said none of the abuses involved violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or the Patriot Act – violations of which have been highlighted by the Guardian based on documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Instead, the abuses were related to misuse of the 1981 Executive Order 12333, which governs how US intelligence operations are used." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA admits: Our analysts ‘willfully violated’ rules of surveillance system

NSA inspector general admits to ‘willful violations’ of agency’s authority

"US intelligence analysts have deliberately broken rules designed to prevent them from spying on Americans, according to an admission by the National Security Agency that undermines fresh insistences from Barack Obama on Friday that all breaches were inadvertent. A report by the NSA’s inspector general is understood to have uncovered a number of examples of analysts choosing to ignore so-called 'minimisation procedures' aimed at protecting privacy, according to officials speaking to Bloomberg. These cases flatly contradict assurances given by President Obama that the NSA was only ever acting in good faith." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA inspector general admits to ‘willful violations’ of agency’s authority

Retiring FBI director warns ‘the threat is still here’

"He took the reins of the FBI a week before the attacks of September 11, 2001. Twelve years later, Robert Mueller is retiring, convinced that 'the threat is still here.' At the time, 2,000 out of 11,000 special agents were immediately transferred from fighting crime to combatting Al-Qaeda. Since then, the number of intelligence analysts at the FBI has more than tripled. Telephone and Internet surveillance programs are 'tremendously important,' Mueller explained. He was in the top FBI post for the second longest period after J. Edgar Hoover, who held it for 48 years until his death." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingRetiring FBI director warns ‘the threat is still here’

Don’t Fly During Ramadan

"No matter how I’ve tried to rationalize this in the last week and a half, nothing can block out the memory of the chilling sensation I felt that first morning, lying on my air mattress, trying to forget the image of large, uniformed men invading the sanctuary of my home in my absence, wondering when they had done it, wondering why they had done it. In all my life, I have only felt that same chilling terror once before - on one cold night in September twelve years ago, when I huddled in bed and tried to forget the terrible events in the news that day, wondering why they they had happened, wondering whether everything would be okay ever again." Continue reading →

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Guantanamo Bay Authorities Ban Solzhenitsyn’s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’

"The legal team for Shaker Aamer, a British resident who has been detained in Guantanamo without charge or trial for 11 years, attempted to deliver a copy of The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn during a recent visit. Of course, this isn't the first time that 'The Gulag Archipelago' has had problems with the authorities: when it was completed in 1968, it had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfilm so that it could be published in the West." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGuantanamo Bay Authorities Ban Solzhenitsyn’s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’

300-pound fake corrections officer gets 10 years for sneaking into jails

"Jail fetishist Matthew Matagrano, 36, was sentenced to 10 years in prison today for posing as a correction officer and sneaking into the Manhattan Detention Complex earlier this year. The 300-pound convicted sex offender waddled into Manhattan Supreme Court in a bright orange jumpsuit looking sullen as Judge Ronald Zweibel handed down his punishment for the bizarre July 27th crime. The former counselor for at-risk-youth spent seven hours gleefully strolling through the White Street facility where he strip searched an inmate, stole a $2,500 walkie talkie and handed out cigarettes. It wasn’t a first for the Yonkers prison enthusiast – he’s been accused of sneaking into jails in four boroughs." Continue reading →

Continue Reading300-pound fake corrections officer gets 10 years for sneaking into jails

Bar Shares Scanned ID Card Data with Cops

"Across the country, citizens are surprised and sometimes outraged by increasing demands by businesses and government to submit to the instant capture and downloading of all of the data contained on their driver’s licenses and ID cards as a condition for access. You might wonder what your data is being used for after it is taken. The article below gives one example of how your once lowly driver’s license that is now empowered with machine readable technology (RFID or 2D barcodes) and your facial biometrics, is performing exactly as designed. These technologies are designed to make you easier to track, monitor and control." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBar Shares Scanned ID Card Data with Cops

One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Big Data

"In 2012, the Senseable City Lab, part of MIT, conducted an experiment called Trash Track to see just what happens when someone takes out the trash. By attaching transmitters to over 3,000 pieces of rubbish they were able to track where that item went, whether they went to the correct recycling facility or not, and how far they traveled. Now move to the story in the papers last week about the Renew bins in London. It came to light that a dozen of London’s recycling bins fitted with digital screens were tracking each smartphone and device that connected to them with WiFi. It allowed advertisers to deduce whether the same phone — although not necessarily the same person — is passing by" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingOne Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Big Data

‘Data is the new oil’: Tech giants may be huge, but nothing matches big data

"'Data is the new oil,' declared Clive Humby, a Sheffield mathematician who with his wife, Edwina Dunn, made £90m helping Tesco with its Clubcard system. Though he said it in 2006, the realisation that there is a lot of money to be made – and lost – through the careful or careless marshalling of 'big data' has only begun to dawn on many business people. About 90% of all the data in the world has been generated in the past two years (a statistic that is holding roughly true even as time passes). There are about 2.7 zettabytes of data in the digital universe, where 1ZB of data is a billion terabytes (a typical computer hard drive these days can hold about 0.5TB, or 500 gigabytes)." Continue reading →

Continue Reading‘Data is the new oil’: Tech giants may be huge, but nothing matches big data