surveillance

the new normal?, toward a "Psychocivilized" Society?, our "Brave New World"? ... (I had to remove all links) I noticed the other day on a comment about books from East Germany's stasi era: "Zersetzen: Strategie einer Diktatur, von Sandra Pingel-Schliemann" (books which have become very popular...

A little side story that didn't seem to get much attention (perhaps due to those mean duck guys) via WaPo: The NSA's response: "Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons", which means, as far as I can tell, precisely zero. While in a way I'm glad to see that...

From Aug. 9th, in a speech by Obama: Claim: the government is not actually abusing these programs, there's only the potential that they could be abused. Now comes the story that makes him a liar: NSA Surveillance Broke Privacy Rules Thousands Of Times Per Year: Report

Via The Guardian: The founder of Lavabit, Ladar Levison, said that government restrictions kept him from explaining the events that led to the crisis point. Silent Circle, a startup working on end to end secure communications, has also announced that they have shut down their email service...

Via Reuters: The DEA's Orwellian term for lying about the sources of their information is "Parallel Construction". The idea is to work backwards when creating a case against a defendant so that the sources (such as a wiretap or informant) is concealed. Of course, this makes it impossible for...

This BBC news item describes the new (ish) network of number plate reading cameras covering British roads. Jacqui Smith says it's all fine, and we can trust Jacqui. She wouldn't lie, would she? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/whos_watching_you/8064333.stm Opinions?

Again, the terrorists have won: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_9725077 This is gold: Denver police Lt. Tony Lopez, commander of Denver's intelligence unit says "We don't snoop into private citizens' lives. We aren't living in a communist state." ROTFL!!! What in the world makes you think...