Category: surveillance

Government continues to seek total access to every microprocessor

Jacob Sullum is one of America’s most gifted writers on civil liberties. His most recent column points out that federal police-state control freaks are (once again) seeking to ensure that all future federal laws governing computer technology be written so that the surveillance freaks in the federal government (the NSA, FBI, etc.) will always be …

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U.S. Census Workers Violate Privacy, “Camp out” in Yards of Americans who Decline to Participate

by Dr. Roger I. Roots, founder, Lysander Spooner University I remember years ago after I graduated from law school, I applied for a job with the U.S. Census Bureau. I attended an initiation meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. At that meeting I recall a Census official telling applicants that as Census agents we would be …

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Kuwait becomes first country to mandate government DNA registry for all subjects

The endless quest by governments to monitor, surveil and control all human life and activity continues. It went mostly unnoticed 10 years ago when the U.S. Congress enacted a “Real ID” law requiring that every state impose some form of biometric identifier in its driver-licensing. There was a minor popular backlash in state legislatures; then …

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NSA Secretly Expands Its Powers Without Authorization–Again!

The New York Times is reporting today that the TSA has once again expanded its spying on Americans’ internet and email communications, despite the lapsing of the USA Patriot Act and a total lack of congressional authorization. The new spying apparently does have the approval of President Obama, who campaigned in 2008 that he would …

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FBI Now Using Secret Airforce to Monitor Citizens’ Communications and Movements

It has now come out that the FBI has been operating a fleet of small aircraft to monitor and surveil Americans’ movements and communication without warrants. The story is here.

Rand Paul States the Obvious: Government Has a Stake in Promoting Terrorism So It Can Increase its Control and Power

Great USA Patriot Act theater as May turns into June 2015. U.S. Senator Rand Paul, arguing to allow the unconstitutional USA Patriot Act to expire, states that many people are hoping for new terrorist attacks on American soil, so that such attacks can be blamed on Rand Paul. The video and commentary are here. This …

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Federal “Cybercrime” Investigators Seek Total Power over Internet; Are Caught Engaging in Online Identity Theft, Online Blackmail, Online Money Laundering, etc.

About a month ago, federal prosecutors successfully prosecuted an internet entrepreneur for launching a lucrative anonymous cyber exchange known as “the Silk Road.” FBI agents supposedly worked to investigate and shut down the free-exchange web network for several years. Federal efforts against “the Silk Road” exchange were accompanied by a massive across-federal-agencies offensive promoting more …

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Courts Continue Abandoning Surveillance Restrictions, While Congress and the President Slowly Abandon Plans to Limit NSA

February 27, 2015. In the immediate wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations that the NSA is unconstitutionally intercepting, seizing and storing virtually every American email and phone record, there were many promises by congressional candidates and President Obama to stop the NSA’s mass surveillance. Now, months later, a federal court has again renewed an order allowing …

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Edward Snowden Reveals that NSA’s Surveillance Is Now Harming the American Economy by an Amount Larger than the NSA’s Budget

Exiled U.S. surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden recently spoke to an audience at Harvard University, via videofeed from Russia. The occasion was the Harvard Institute for Applied Computational Science’s “Data Privacy Symposium” on January 23, 2015. Professor Bruce Schneier joined Snowden for an enlightening discussion. Snowden pointed to published media reports showing that the NSA is …

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