Obama renews Patriot Act for Another Year

Thanks, Barry!

Obama doesn't want you to have privacy using a cellphone

The Obama administration is arguing in court that there is no expectation of privacy while using a cell phone. That is, the administration wants to track you without probable cause or a warrant. As usual, the EFF and the ACLU seem to be the only people that care...

FBI violates your privacy... again

From Slashdot which links to the Washington Post:

An anonymous reader writes to tell us of a report from the Washington Post which alleges that the FBI "illegally collected more than 2,000 US telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records."

Sprint served 8 million customer GPS coordinate requests to law enforcement in one year

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

If you build it, they will come... and infringe on your privacy.

Homeland Security to Start Collecting Fingerprints at Airports

Under the guise of combating illegal immigration, the government is planning to implement yet another privacy-infringing policy and expand the surveillance state by scanning the fingerprints of non-US citizens as they exit the country. The pilot program begins in Atlanta soon.

Michael Chertoff wants your fingerprints

Michael Chertoff, head of DHS, wants to build a "server in the sky" of all fingerprints from all citizens of a variety of countries. When questioned about the potential for privacy invasions, he answered, "A fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private." Nevermind that fingerprints can be used as unique identifiers for a person, nor that government-managed databases have huge potential for misuse, theft, misidentification, leaks, etc. Great, this idiot is in charge of keeping us "safe?"

Via thinkprogress, Schneier

Crossing the border? You're a terrorist!

From the Washington Post via Slashdot: It seems as though the federal government has hatched yet another brilliant idea with which to invade Americans' privacy. The culprit is another data-mining and analysis mega-project aimed to screen everyone who enters and leaves the country for a potential terrorist threat.

In a round-the-clock operation, targeters match names against terrorist watch lists and a host of other data to determine whether a person's background or behavior indicates a terrorist threat, a risk to border security or the potential for illegal activity. They also assess cargo.

Each traveler assessed by the center is assigned a numeric score: The higher the score, the higher the risk. A certain number of points send the traveler back for a full interview.

Yet another opportunity for bigoted assumptions about the nature of terrorists and bad data to act as an excuse for the government to expand its power. A little imagination reveals what the scoring system might look like:
+5 points if an Arab
+5 points if you are under 30
+5 points if you are dark-skinned
+5 points if you are wearing a turban
+5 points if you have no intention of returning to your home country
... and so on ...
+5 points if you look at the border officer the wrong way
+5 points if you assert your rights as a U.S. citizen
+5 points if you have recently attended a peace rally
+5 points if you have ever spoken against any policy of the political party in power

But, of course, DHS et al feel no accountability to any individual citizen, just like their no-fly (and other) lists. Once you've been marked as a terrorist (however apocryphal that label might be), just try getting off of it:

According to yesterday's notice, the program is exempt from certain requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974 that allow, for instance, people to access records to determine "if the system contains a record pertaining to a particular individual" and "for the purpose of contesting the content of the record."

Scary.

Point and Click Surveillance

Wired has an excellent article on the FBI's surveillance system used to eavesdrop on anyone with a cellphone. Some of the pictures are particularly revealing; they show how simple it is to use this powerful system. Some commentary on the system from the article:

Columbia's Bellovin says the flaws are appalling and show that the FBI fails to appreciate the risk from insiders.

"The underlying problem isn't so much the weaknesses here, as the FBI attitude towards security," he says. The FBI assumes "the threat is from the outside, not the inside," he adds, and it believes that "to the extent that inside threats exist, they can be controlled by process rather than technology."

Bellovin says any wiretap system faces a slew of risks, such as surveillance targets discovering a tap, or an outsider or corrupt insider setting up unauthorized taps. Moreover, the architectural changes to accommodate easy surveillance on phone switches and the internet can introduce new security and privacy holes.

"Any time something is tappable there is a risk," Bellovin says. "I'm not saying, 'Don't do wiretaps,' but when you start designing a system to be wiretappable, you start to create a new vulnerability. A wiretap is, by definition, a vulnerability from the point of the third party. The question is, can you control it?"

Well it's a good thing that we can completely trust the FBI to understand the scope of its responsibilities and the limits of its power because it has never abused the privileges entrusted to it in the past. Oh, wait.

TIA is back with a new name (suprise!)

Be afraid. Be very afraid. TIA never went away, of course, when congress banned it in 2003. It simply got its name changed. Now it is known as ADVISE -- Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement. Nice doublespeak name. Infowars says it best:

"Shortly after the announcement of TIA, the Pentagon backtracked and told us that TIA was shutting down, but the tools are there waiting to be used, They'll just rename it and start it up again at any given time. The Tools of TIA include "LifeLog" which is described as "a multimedia, digital record of everywhere you go and everything you see, hear, read, say and touch". Another tool is the MATRIX database, A federally funded crime database run by multiple states at once.

<snip>

The National Journal reported that the program is now accessed by, among others: the NSA, the CIA, DIA, CENTCOM, the National Counterterorrism Center, the Guantanamo prison, and Special Operations Command (SOCOM)... Big Brother is most definitely still watching. Enjoy watching your tax dollars at work watching you."

The military is now your personal accountant

It seems that the New York Times has revealed that the Pentagon has been doing a little peeking into the financial records of Americans. What makes this so troubling is that the military usually keeps out of cracking down on domestic activities, and focuses on important things abroad like instigating civil wars in Iraq. As Ars Technica points out, the CIA and the Pentagon have been requesting financial records of Americans from financial institutions and then feeding them into TALON, the data-mining anti-terrorist program. This makes all of us red-blooded Americans feel a bit safer, knowing that a computer program, which has the vast potential to register false positives, is now charged with labeling you a terrorist threat. Awesome. Not only that, but we get the peace of mind that comes along with the military and the CIA investigating us. I feel safe, because they never screw up.

Reading your email might not be a privacy invasion

A peddler of male-enhancement formulas and similar goods is of no help to anyone in society (for those not stupid enough to buy them, your suspicions are confirmed -- the products do not work). However, he still has rights, and among those a right to privacy. Too bad the government doesn't think so. Government investigators looked at the aforementioned businessman's email without the blessing of a search warrant, arguing that email is akin to postcards, which apparently can be looked at without opening anything and are therefore privacy-less. Strange reasoning, but if anyone can get away with it, it's the government.

Funny, I don't view my email, through which I send 90% of my correspondence to distant (and near) friends/family/associates/etc., as something that can be treated as a billboard...