From the report: United States law enforcement agencies, from the FBI to local police, have a long history of spying on American citizens and infiltrating or otherwise obstructing political activist groups. Political spying was rampant during the Cold War under the FBI’s COINTELPRO, the CIA’s Operation Chaos, and other program.
I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” he elaborates. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.
Holman W. Jenkins Jr.: Google and the Search for the Future - WSJ.com
Are experienced CCTV operators better than naive participants at judging from an unfolding scene on CCTV whether or not a crime is about to be committed? The short answer is no, they aren’t. Presented with 24 real-life 15-second CCTV clips, and asked to predict which half ended just before a crime was about to be committed (examples included violence and vandalism) and which half were innocuous, 12 experienced CCTV operators managed just 55.5 per cent accuracy - no better than if they’d just been guessing. Twelve naive controls achieved an accuracy of just 46.5 per cent - no worse, in terms of statistical significance, than the CCTV operators.
The key to successful predictions seemed to be to pay attention to the social context. Specifically, when participants spent more time focused on the face or head of single individuals not engaged in any social interaction, or looking at the bodies of those in a social interaction, they tended to more accurately predict whether a crime was about to occur. Grant and Williams think this might be because the former allowed the participants to notice when a lone person in the scene was staring at other people, which could betray their plans to commit a criminal act. Meanwhile, viewing the bodies, rather than faces, of those in a social interaction, might have allowed the participants to notice aggressive body language and the spatial proximity of people in a group.
For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they’re viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”
Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.
A Journal investigation finds that one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet is the business of spying on consumers. First in a series.
The US secret intelligence gathering systems have grown so much since 9/11 that no-one knows their exact cost, nor size, the Washington Post reports.
Taggle keeps tabs on your cattle
Periodically - at intervals that can range from five minutes to an hour, depending on the application - the eartag emits a faint signal.
The signal is picked up by the base stations, each of which time-stamps the signal to the nanosecond, and then transmits the information to a remote computer.
Using the minutely different time stamps, software triangulates the location of the signal to within 5-15 metres, and turns that location into a dot on a computer map.
“Whether it’s from a constellation of small satellites or whether it’s from a blimp or some other type of airborne drone that’s capturing data on a continuous basis,” ERDAS President Joel Campbell told Directions Magazine in a recent interview, “I do think we will find a place where real time or near real time data is available from remote sensing technologies.” [Em. added.]
New Pennsylvania proposal would ban forced implementation of ID chips in peoples—but amendment added would give parents the ability to put them in their children..
High-tech video cameras installed throughout the city captured images from about 300 crimes in the past 18 months and helped Denver police make about 80 arrests, authorities say.
Measures are needed to stop brain scans being misused by courts, insurers and employers, experts have warned.
via news.bbc.co.ukPotentially dangerous psychiatric patients are being fitted with GPS tracking devices to prevent them absconding on day leave.
The South London and Maudsley NHS Trust has attached the £600 ankle devices on more than 60 medium and high risk patients under the pilot scheme.
The trust said it had consulted patients and families.
The devices, which can track a person’s location to within a few yards, are already used for dementia sufferers.
They came into use in south London after rapist Terence O’Keefe, 39, escaped from custody at King’s College Hospital before strangling 73-year-old David Kemp.
A spokesman for the trust said: “We have a duty to provide high-quality patient care while at the same time promoting public safety.
“Our medium secure services provide hospital treatment for people with severe mental health problems - many of whom have restrictions placed upon them by the courts.
“We are currently exploring the use of a tracking system to help us provide safe, secure and effective services.”
We’re adding broadband connections to our televisions, our phones, our reading devices and our game consoles these days, to the point that we expect such connections in almost everything we own. But while connectivity is awesome 90 percent of the time, it’s also scary because it can turn what were once private habits such as reading a book or answering email into something social — in some cases, without us knowing.
It also allows advertisers to better track our activities and to offer up personalized ads. Thanks to more gadgets with a web connection, we all live in glass houses where friends, neighbors, advertisers and potentially the government can see what we’re up to. What’s worse is that the records of our daily activities aren’t a transitory blip; they’re kept for months on end and can be searched, resold or shared.
» via GigaOM
The UK’s largest internet service providers will start collecting the details of customers who unlawfully download films, music and TV programmes early next year, in order to send them warning letters under a code of practice proposed today by the media regulator Ofcom.
Previous: Older Posts >
Total: 1 of 13 Pages
