Leaked Doc Reveals Which Messengers Send the Most Data to FBI

December 3, 2021Leave a comment

3 December 2021 — RT International

An internal FBI report reveals how WhatsApp and iMessage happily hand over users’ data to the Feds, sometimes providing the source and destination of messages every 15 minutes.

The sensitive Federal Bureau of Investigation paper, unearthed by the transparency group Property of the People, spells out in concise yet shocking detail the Bureau’s ability to secure messaging app content and associated metadata via warrants and subpoenas — and shows that WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage turn over the most information to authorities.

It’s a rare insight into the systematic manner in which U.S. authorities can access private information, and can only cast significant doubt on the publicly avowed positions of Apple and Facebook/Meta in respect of user privacy.

WATCH: Digital ID: Freedom-As-A-Service. The Lure of Entitlement as the Method for Entrapment

November 19, 2021November 19, 2021Leave a comment

18 November, 2021 — Wrong Kind of Green

“Our identity is, literally, who we are, and as the digital technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution advance, our identity is increasingly digital. This digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us.”

– September 2018, World Economic Forum insight report, Identity in a Digital World, A new chapter in the social contract

November 1, 2018: “If Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion is correct, identity is the new money.” [Source]

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From citizen scores to facial recognition – we’re fighting back!

November 13, 20211 Comment

13 November 2021 — Big Brother Watch

t’s been a busy few weeks at Big Brother Watch, as ever! Here’s a quick run down of what we’ve been doing to fight facial recognition, ‘no jab no job‘ policies, censorship, and citizen scoring in the welfare system.

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On the horizon: drone spies coming to UK skies

October 26, 2021Leave a comment

26 October 2021 — Drone Wars

On the horizon: drone spies coming to UK skies 26/10/2021Tim Street SkyGuardian flight trials over the UK in September 2021 In the last few months Drone Wars and UK Drone Watch have organised protests outside RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire and RAF Lossiemouth in North East Scotland. We were protesting the decision to allow US arms manufacturer General Atomics to conduct experimental flights of their SkyGuardian drone in UK airspace. SkyGuardian is a prototype of the UK’s new armed drone, named Protector, which will replace the UK’s current Reaper armed drone fleet in 2024. As we have shown, the prospect of such large drones regularly flying in UK airspace raises significant safety and accountability concerns.

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The PATRIOT Act And The Whistleblowers Who Challenged Mass Surveillance After 9/11

October 26, 2021October 26, 2021Leave a comment

26 October 2021 — THE DISSENTER

Mark Klein, former AT&T technician who blew the whistle on NSA warrantless wiretapping (Photo: insunlight)

[Editor’s Note: To mark the 20th anniversary of the rise of the American security state after the September 11th attacks, The Dissenter continues a retrospective on this transformation in policing and government.]

Mark Klein worked for over twenty years as a technician for the AT&T Corporation. He blew the whistle on the AT&T’s collaboration with the National Security Agency, which allowed for warrantless wiretapping of phone and internet communications.

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What’s Really at Stake with Vaccine Passports

October 7, 2021Leave a comment

7 October 2021 — Wrong Kind of Green

Centre for International Governance Innovation

April 5, 2021 By Elizabeth M. Renieris

In February, 2021, ID2020 launched Good Health Pass

Elizabeth M. Renieris is a technology and human rights fellow at Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, a fellow at Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab and an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. In May 2020, Renieris, an adviser to the ID2020 Alliance, which aims to bring digital identities to billions of people, resigned over the organization’s direction on digital immunity passes and COVID-19. In her resignation Renieris cited ID2020’s opacity, “techno-solutionism” and corporate influence along with the risks of applying blockchain to immunity passes. [Source: CoinDesk]

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Covid passports – illiberal, intrusive, and counterproductive

October 6, 2021Leave a comment

6 October 2021 — Manifesto Club

The government has published plans for Covid passports to be possibly introduced over the winter.

Here below is the Manifesto Club response, showing how these plans are illiberal, intrusive, and counter-productive.

If you would like to respond to the consultation (before 11 October) you can do so here.

All the best,
Josie Appleton

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Golden age or collapse? Snowden teases future without Big Tech after trolling Facebook throughout disastrous six-hour-long outage

October 6, 2021Leave a comment

4 October 2021 — RT

File photo: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaks at a conference in Moscow, Russia September 2, 2021. © REUTERS/Olesya Astakhova

While millions were wailing and gnashing their teeth over the outage affecting Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was having a bit of fun – daring to suggest the world would be better without them.

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Government’s Online Safety Bill “poses greatest threat to UK free speech in living memory”, say campaigners

September 5, 2021September 5, 2021Leave a comment

5 September, 2021 — Big Brother Watch

Big Brother Watch Team

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Big Brother Watch has launched a new report warning against the “censorious” Online Safety Bill, and sounding the alarm on the rise of Big Tech speech police.

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Watch SpyCops: How the UK Police Infiltrated Over 1,000 Political Groups

August 6, 2021August 6, 2021Leave a comment

6 August 2021 — MintPress News

The Watchdog

As part of their false personas, many officers entered romantic relationships with political activists, leading to the births of a number of children whose mothers were completely unaware of their partners’ double lives.

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Blinken comes riding the Pegasus

July 26, 2021Leave a comment

25 July 2021 — Indian Punhline

by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Pegasus: the spyware technology that threatens democracy

Pegasus, the winged divine horse from Greek mythology, symbolises a range of things. The mythological salad can include many symbolic narratives — ranging from soul’s immortality to poetic inspiration — even the Marxist eschatological myth of the withering away of the state.

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Meet Toka, the Most Dangerous Israeli Spyware Firm You’ve Never Heard Of

July 23, 2021July 23, 2021Leave a comment

21 July 2021 — MintPress News

LONDON – This past Sunday, an investigation into the global abuse of spyware developed by veterans of Israeli intelligence Unit 8200 gained widespread attention, as it was revealed that the software – sold to democratic and authoritarian governments alike – had been used to illegally spy on an estimated 50,000 individuals. Among those who had their communications and devices spied on by the software, known as Pegasus, were journalists, human rights activists, business executives, academics and prominent political leaders. Among those targeted political leaders, per reports, were the current leaders of France, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Iraq.

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Councils’ “hidden algorithms” profile millions on benefits, Big Brother Watch investigation finds

July 20, 2021July 20, 2021Leave a comment

20 July 2021 — Big Brother Watch

Big Brother Watch Team

Big Brother Watch’s new report “Poverty Panopticon: the hidden algorithms shaping Britain’s welfare state”, published today, reveals:

540,000 benefits applicants are secretly assigned fraud risk scores by councils’ algorithms before they can access housing benefit or council tax support.1
Personal data from 1.6 million people living in social housing is processed by commercial algorithms to predict rent non-payers.2
250,000+ people’s data is processed by a range of secretive automated tools to predict the likelihood they’ll be abused, become homeless or out of work.3
Campaigners file complaint with data watchdog

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U.S. Takes Down Israeli Spy Software Company

July 20, 2021Leave a comment

19 July 2021 — Moon of Alabama

A number of international papers report today on the Israeli hacking company NSO which sells snooping software to various regimes. The software is then used to hijack the phones of regime enemies, political competition or obnoxious journalists. All of that was already well known but the story has new legs as several hundreds of people who were spied on can now be named.

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Statewatch: Call for expressions of interest

July 19, 2021July 19, 2021Leave a comment

19 July 2021 — Statewatch

State databases, biometrics, policing and migration control

As part of our ongoing work on the development and deployment of biometric technologies for policing and migration control, we are organising two workshops in October this year.

These training and collaborative learning sessions will involve:

Teaching about EU databases and information policy in the field of policing and migration;
Learning from others working on similar and related topics; and
Discussion of relevant issues with peers in the field.

To find out more and to express your interest in attending, please see our call, available in:

—
Statewatch – working for civil liberties in Europe since 1991
www.statewatch.org

____________________________________
Statewatch: Monitoring the state and civil liberties in Europe
c/o MDR,88 Fleet St, London EC4Y 1DH
tel: +44(0)203 691 5227
http://www.statewatch.org
Privacy policy: https://www.statewatch.org/about/privacy-policy/

Politicians, Journalists, HR Activists And Others Spied Upon Using Pegasus Spyware

July 19, 2021Leave a comment

19 July 2021 — Counter Currents

NSO Group, a private Israeli firm that sells surveillance technology to governments worldwide, insists that its Pegasus spyware is used only to “investigate terrorism and crime.” Leaked data, however, reveals that the company’s hacking tool “has been used to facilitate human rights violations around the world on a massive scale.”

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The ‘Vaccine Passport’ Agenda

July 15, 2021Leave a comment

February 2021 — Swiss Policy Research

Published: February 2021 (upd.)

On the strategic implications of the coronavirus pandemic.

Overall, medical aspects are only the operational level of the coronavirus pandemic: in countries where the median age of covid deaths is above 80 years, the public health impact of the pandemic will be quite limited and primarily related to serious cases of ‘long covid’. Indeed, even the WHO recently acknowledged that the coronavirus pandemic “wasn’t necessarily the big one”.

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⛔ Stop Thermal Surveillance

July 10, 20214 Comments

10 July 2021 — Big Brother Watch

Throughout the pandemic, we have all been subjected to surveillance measures like never before.

Surveillance companies have been selling invasive and inaccurate thermal scanners on the false claim they can “detect fevers” or even detect coronavirus.

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Privacy International launches new guide to resisting high tech police surveillance

June 29, 20211 Comment

29 June 2021 — NetPol

This is a guest post by Harmit Kambo, Campaigns Director, Privacy International

Imagine going to a peaceful protest and having to show your ID to the police before you can join it. Or having to fill out a form about why you are attending that particular protest.

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Statewatch News 18 June (Issue 12/21, also available as a PDF)

June 18, 2021Leave a comment

18 June 2021 — Statewatch

Statewatch News 18 June (Issue 12/21, also available as a PDF)

Global call to ban public biometric surveillance

As public and private sector institutions push ahead with the development and deployment of remote biometric surveillance systems – currently best-exemplified by facial recognition technology – opposition is increasing.

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