surveillance

DOJ still wants spy suit against Verizon tossed

Much has been made of an El Paso Times interview last week in which Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell acknowledged the "private sector" has assisted in the president's so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. Some opponents of the phone-call-and-email-snooping regime promptly pounced on the remarks, suggesting they implicate telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon, which have been accused in numerous lawsuits of consumer privacy violations and illicit cooperation with the Bush administration.

"Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies," McConnell told the paper, … Read more

Congress to revisit expanded spy law next week

Congressional Democrats don't plan to waste much time in revisiting a temporary expansion of federal eavesdropping law that has met with hostility in privacy and civil liberties circles.

The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday afternoon said it plans to hold a hearing on September 5--that is, the day after politicians return from their August recess--to begin exploring, well, changes to the changes to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, better known as FISA.

According to committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), the move is in part a response to misgivings by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She has said … Read more

Congress to eye feds' spy satellite scheme

When politicians return to Washington from their August recess next week, one of their first orders of business will be lobbing questions at Bush administration officials over recently disclosed plans to open up powerful spy satellites to the likes of American border-security agents and police.

On September 6, the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee plans to hold a morning hearing entitled "Turning Spy Satellites on the Homeland: the Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications of the National Applications Office," according to a press release issued by the panel. Scheduled to appear for questioning are the Department … Read more

Discussing NSA surveillance kills Americans? Hogwash

Having a free society requires being able to report on and publicly discuss what our government is doing with our tax dollars. This principle is even more important when there are allegations of wrongdoing.

Which is why it's odd to see National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell say that Americans will die because of the discussion of National Security Agency spying in public and in the U.S. Congress.

This is, unfortunately, no exaggeration. Check out this excerpt from an interview that McConnell, a former NSA director, recently gave to the El Paso Times:

Q. So you're saying that … Read more

Democrats press Bush to respond to FISA, surveillance requests

Top Democrats in Congress have come up with a strategy to force President Bush to respond to their unanswered questions about the National Security Agency's surveillance program. They seem to be saying: Unless you do, we may not renew your eavesdropping legislation you like so much. Scroll down for the letter they sent yesterday.

It's an interesting approach because it's designed to force Bush to choose what he dislikes the least--more disclosure of a broad and arguably illegal NSA wiretapping plan, or increased legal risk and decreased powers for his surveillance-industrial complex.

Bush can counter, of course, … Read more

When Google Earth isn't good enough...

The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have reported that the U.S. government plans to offer military-grade remote-sensing data to police agencies. (Those links may require registration or disappear entirely; sorry.)

Unlike some, I'm not going to leap to any conclusions about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I think that depends on how these data are used. If the observations are reported accurately and not taken out of context, well, they're just facts. Morality lies in how facts are used, not in the mere knowledge of them.

Over time, the U.… Read more

Because you know your phone is tapped

The market timing for products like the "Tele-Data Guard" couldn't be better, coming on the heels of the recent spate of spy movies such as The Good Shepherd, Breach and The Company. We can think of no better way to heighten people's sense of paranoia.

Besides, who hasn't had their phones tapped as part of international conspiracies? That's what this device is aimed at detecting (well, maybe not the conspiracy part), by flashing a green light during conversation if someone is eavesdropping on your line, according to Uber-Review. It supposedly works on faxes and … Read more

GPS Jammer is an in-car spy sweeper

If your bulletproof raincoat, tape-recorder blocker, and surveillance detection device are just not enough to give you peace of mind, this in-car GPS jammer might be just what you're looking for. Once plugged in to your car's 12-volt cigarette lighter port, the device will apparently block all GPS signals in a broadcasting range of 1450 to 1600Mhz--translating into a a 2- to 4-meter radius of GPS anonymity, according to manufacturer Chinavision.

The GPS jammer might not be good enough to protect you from autonomous surveillance drones or spying robotic insects, but at least it will take them longer … Read more

Robotic flies are future spies

Leave it to Harvard to replace spies with flies.

According to the MIT Technology Review, robotic insects may be the future of military surveillance.

With funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a team of Harvard researchers led by Robert Wood have developed a robotic fly that could be used for surveillance and chemical-detecting missions.

Videos of the fly taking off and a slow-motion clip of the wing mechanics are available on the Technology Review site.

With a wingspan of 3 centimeters and a scant weight of just 60 milligrams, the fly's tiny robotic parts are … Read more

Congress OKs new direction for privacy panel

A White House panel charged with flagging privacy and civil liberties foibles in the government's electronic eavesdropping programs may soon be gaining a little more freedom.

Both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have approved a 567-page conference report that would change the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from a panel within the Executive Office of the President to an "independent agency" within the executive branch.

Just last week, the current vice chairman of the panel, a former Reagan White House attorney, told a congressional committee that the panel was fine as-is. But Lanny … Read more