BIG BROTHER in the age of INTERNET # (Ongoing - Links, Articles & Videos)

UN Control Of The Internet Would Mean UN Control Of Free Speech
Michael Snyder, Contributor
Monday, December 3, 2012
Activist Post

If the UN is given control of the Internet, that would be a massive step toward making the UN a true global government. The Internet is the number one venue for free speech and freedom of expression on the planet today, and if the UN is given authority over the Internet it would only be a matter of time before free speech is severely cracked down on. Of course it would not happen immediately. At first, UN officials would likely mostly keep their promises of maintaining a "free and open Internet". But inevitably you would see them act to remove "terrorists" from the Internet, to crack down on "hate speech" and to repress any "politically incorrect" speech that is likely to insult anyone in any way.

If you were censored or banned from the Internet, you could scream about the 1st Amendment all you want, but the United Nations is not bound by the 1st Amendment. The UN is not there to protect you or your freedoms. If the UN becomes "the government of the Internet", you can essentially kiss freedom of speech goodbye.

If you do not believe that this could ever happen, you might want to pay close attention to a UN conference that is being held over in Dubai starting today. It is called "the World Conference on International Telecommunications", and it is scheduled to last for two weeks.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Here is one for you Roxy.


EP32B. The Future of Human-Landscape Systems II

[link to youtu.be]

New Boeing missile disables computers.

[link to vr-zone.com]

YouTube Caught Reducing Burien Video View Count
From Walter Burien - CAFR1
12-9-12


CAFR1 NATIONAL POST

Yesterday Bill Windsor released an 8-min YouTube of Walter Burien's commentary for his documentary "Lawless America" - [link to www.youtube.com]

I sent the link to view the segment to the CAFR1 National email list; had the same published on Rense.com and a few other news sites where thousands of views would be generated.

Well, I kept an eye on the video view counter. Hit about 1,753 the last I looked yesterday. Checked this morning and it was verging on breaking 1,900 of which was low for the thousands that were clicking and viewing.

Well, just looked a few minutes ago and I used the search feature from YouTube to find the segment and the icon hits for the search showed 1,545 views which is usually running behind being lower than the actual video views. Well, when I clicked on the icon to go to the video page, now the view count said and was frozen at 1,331 - YOUTUBE REDACTED!

CONTINUE: [link to rense.com]

Thanx Isis!

Biggest Social Media Sites Censor Alternative News
By Washington's Blog
December 15, 2012

“Unreliable News Sources”
The mainstream media skews the news to defend the status quo, and serves the interests of the rich and powerful.

But at least web news sources are free of censorship … one would hope.

Unfortunately, that’s not true.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

US and European Orwellian Surveillance Deepens

Internet Safe From Globalized Censorship as UN Treaty Fails
By David Kravets
12.14.12

The doomsday predictions that the internet would become a centralized, globalized tool for governments to suppress and eavesdrop on speech didn’t come to fruition Friday, after a two-week secret meeting between world governments failed to reach a consensus.

The World Conference on International Telecommunications, which opened two weeks ago in Dubai with some 193 nations discussing the global internet’s future, collapsed after Western nations, including the United States, failed to sign onto a global pact that for the first time would have left internet governance in the hands of the United Nations.

“It’s with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the U.S. must communicate that it’s not able to sign the agreement in the current form,” said Terry Kramer, the U.S. ambassador to the summit.

The day before, he said “internet policy should not be determined by member states, but by citizens, communities and broader society.”

The discord ranged from human rights, privacy, spam, censorship to who would control the domain-naming system, which is now maintained in the United States.

The idea behind the meetings was to update the International Telecommunications Regulations governed by the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations agency known as the ITU, that is responsible for global communication technologies.

CONTINUE: [link to www.wired.com]

Expansion of Surveillance and Intelligence Community Empower Big Brother
Susanne Posel, Contributor
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Activist Post

The Intelligence Community (IC) is growing by leaps and bounds since its inception in 1964, when it was called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Through “acquisition of raw information” through “interviews, technical and physical surveillance, human source operation, searches, and liaison relationships; information can be gathered from open, covert, electronic, and satellite sources.”

Collaborations with the National Security Agency (NSA) and National Intelligence form policies and procedures that define signals intelligence – wherein the “interception of signals, whether between people, between machines, or a combination of both” are utilized along with imagery intelligence that monitors wither electronically or optically “film, electronic devices or other media” for the purpose of classifying information collected for dissemination, archival and quick retrieval.

The IC took $1.8 billion out of its annual $5 billion budget to build a headquarters that is bigger than the Pentagon and can house 16,000 employees that can perform the task of “the nation’s primary source of geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT.”

CONTINUE (TO VIDEO): [link to www.activistpost.com]

THIS IS WHAT FACEBOOK SENDS THE POLICE WHEN THEY COME ASKING FOR YOUR INFORMATION.

The Boston Phoenix’s recent article on the Craigslist killer uncovered something very interesting in it’s research into how the web hunt for the killer was conducted; something neither it’s reporters, or the general public, had never seen before: The full results of a Facebook subpoena.

This is some scary stuff; for the first time, we can now see EXACTLY what Facebook sends when the Police, or a judge, ask them to hand over your information.

CONTINUE: [link to superchief.tv]

2012 in Review: Biometric ID Systems Grew Internationally … And So Did Concerns About Privacy
Rebecca Bowe
Saturday, December 29, 2012

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2012 and discussing where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy.

Around the world, systems of identification that employ automatic recognition of individuals’ faces, fingerprints, or irises are gaining ground. Biometric ID systems are increasingly being deployed at international border checkpoints, by governments seeking to implement national ID schemes, and by private-sector actors. Yet as biometric data is collected from more and more individuals, privacy concerns about the use of this technology are also attracting attention. Below are several examples of the year’s most prominent debates around biometrics.

FRANCE: In early March, the French National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale) passed a law proposing the creation of a new biometric ID card for French citizens, saying the measure would combat “identity fraud.” Embedded in the cards would be a compulsory chip containing personal information such as fingerprints, a photograph, home addresses, height, and eye color. All of this information would be stored in a central database. French Senator François Pillet called the initiative a time bomb for civil liberties. Near the end of March, however, the French Constitutional Council ruled that the new law proposing the introduction of a new biometric ID for French citizens was unconstitutional.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Orwell in the Electronic Age: Phone Calls, Facebook, Emails. Congress Extends Warrantless Spying
By Stephen Lendman
December 30, 2012

Congress plunged another spike into freedom. On September 12, the House passed HR 5949: FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2012. The measure carried 301 – 118. Seventy-four Democrats joined 227 Republicans.

Nancy Pelosi voted Yea. So did Steny Hoyer, Howard Berman, Brad Sherman, Gary Ackerman, Nita Lowey, and Marcy Kaptur.

On December 28, the Senate followed suit. With little debate, it overwhelmingly renewed warrantless spying 73 – 23. Thirty Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman joined 42 Republicans.

Congressional profiles in courage don’t exist. America’s Secretary of State designee, John Kerry, voted Yea. So did Democrats Reid, Levin, Conrad, Cardin, Mikulski, Feinstein, Stabenow, and Schumer.

Perhaps before year end, Obama will sign it into law. He may have already done so quietly. He calls the measure a national security priority.

New Year’s eve enactment would repeat last year’s December 31 disgrace. Indefinite detention harshness became law. US citizens and permanent residents are as vulnerable as others.

Unpopular measures slip under the radar when few notice. Weekends and holiday breaks conceal blows to freedom.

Warrantless spying is extended another five years. Overseas phone calls, emails, and other communications of US citizens and permanent residents may be monitored without court authorization.

Probable cause isn’t needed. Electronic eavesdropping will look for “foreign intelligence information.” Virtually anything qualifies. Vague language is all-embracing.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

How to Evade Government Surveillance and Stay Anonymous Online
Chris Dougherty, Contributor
Friday, January 4, 2013
Activist Post

Why stay anonymous online? In today’s society there are people and automated devices that are recording your deepest, most private thoughts and activities. Each day we voluntarily divulge the most intimate details of our lives through social networking accounts, email, banking apps, online games and more. In addition, governments and corporations can censor and block our traffic based on whatever standards are in place that day.

Government agencies, hackers and sophisticated bot networks are capturing every piece of digital data that we transmit through all of our Internet-connected gadgets. Smartphones, Smart TVs, computers, tablets, and so much more…they are all vulnerable, nothing is safe these days. Even your old clam-shell phone isn’t safe. This is because many phone providers route your calls over media using the Internet Protocol at some point within their network. For example, long distance providers transfer calls over VoIP all the time.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

EPIC obtains documents on NSA Perfect Citizen program monitoring private U.S. computer networks
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Activist Post

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has finally obtained documents on the Perfect Citizen program, run by the National Security Agency (NSA), which monitors private computer networks in the United States.

This program, which the NSA claims is an effort to increase domestic cyber security, sounds much like proposed legislation reported on in February of 2012 but this is being done without any such authorization, although Obama was reportedly considering the implementation of cyber security measures by executive order.

The NSA has increasingly shifted their focus toward cybersecurity and digital communications with the construction of a massive, heavily fortified $2 billion spy complex and a close relationship with Google which we will probably never know the details of thanks to a U.S. appeals court.

The “Perfect Citizen” program was first revealed to the American public by a story published in the Wall Street Journal on July 8, 2010.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Hacked Phones Could Be Listening To Everything You Say
Chris Dougherty, Contributor
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Activist Post

Most people believe their phone conversations are private. Well, they may not be as private as you think if your office or home is filled with hacked phones.

Researchers at Columbia University have discovered a flaw in telephones that allows a hacker to turn a phone’s microphone into a sophisticated recording device. Using this flaw an attacker can eavesdrop on conversations remotely.

5th year PhD candidate Ang Cui and Columbia Professor Sal Stolfo discovered the flaw while working on a U.S. Defense Department grant for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). According to the researchers, they can remotely command a hacked phone to do anything they want.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

2012 malware Top Ten and revisiting 2012's Threatblog
by David Harley
January 7, 2013

Apparently we posted 235 blogs here in 2012, just a fraction under 20 blogs per month on average. So this would be a perfect moment to produce one of those summaries of the year's activities that wordpress.com provides, telling you how many people viewed your blog site and how many times they'd go round the equator if they laid down end to end. Or something less ambitious, like whether they'd all fit into a telephone box.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to as much of that data regarding the Threatblog as I do regarding some of my other blogs, so when Stephen suggested I might contribute to the End of Year Threat Report with another look back at 2012 as seen on the Threatblog, the result was less statistical and more a summary of the trends and topics that caught our attention in the past 12 months. Clearly, I couldn't include all those 235 blogs, even in a fairly lengthy article. In fact, the article ThreatBlogger FootSloggers Review 2012 was so lengthy that there wasn't much room for anything else. (If you want the customary predictions for the coming year, you'll need to check out 2013 Forecast: Malware, scams, security and privacy concerns and Trends for 2013: astounding growth of mobile malware!) We did, however, include a guide to some of the articles, papers, presentations, podcasts and webcasts that ESET's research teams generated in 2012. And, of course, there are descriptions of the ten most prevalent examples of malware flagged in 2012 by ESET's Live Grid telemetry, as shown in the following graph:

CONTINUE: [link to blog.eset.com]

Move Over GPS, Big Brother Has A New Way of Tracking Everyone
Susanne Posel, Contributor
Friday, January 11, 2013
Activist Post

On December 12th of last year, Locata was given a contract from the US Air Force (USAF) to employ their non-GPS technology. This multi-million dollar endeavor will install LocataNet positioning systems with the US Military, as it is currently being tested at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Locata recently acquired Leica Geosystems for data mining purposes. This move furthers the corporation’s technological move away from GPS to a more precise radio positioning system (RPS). The Jigsaw Positioning System (JPS) will revolutionize locator-tracking abilities with the utilization of ground-based transmitters.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Unlocking Your Mobile Phone Is No Longer Legal
By David Kravets
01.25.13

Mobile phones purchased beginning Saturday can no longer be legally unlocked by U.S. consumers to enable them to work on different networks.

The reason, as we reported three months ago, was that the U.S. Copyright Office is no longer granting unlocking an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA makes it illegal to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access” to copyrighted material, in this case software embedded in phones that controls carrier access.

But in all practicality, nothing will really change for consumers. Before unlocking was first exempted in 2006 and again in 2010, the carriers never sued individuals for unlocking their own phones, and they don’t plan to. And even when unlocking was exempted and allowed, the carriers and phone makers were successfully suing illicit businesses that bought throw-away phones by the thousands, unlocked them, and shipped them overseas.

CONTINUE: [link to www.wired.com]

The Social Network Spy Software Created By War Criminals
Mick Meaney, Contributor
Monday, February 11, 2013
Activist Post

This video details “new” surveillance software that is capable of gathering vast amounts of personal information about people from websites like Facebook and Twitter.

Raytheon, the company behind the software, has confirmed that it had already shared the technology with the US government in 2010, effectively creating what has been dubbed as a “Google for spies”.

CONTINUE (TO VIDEO): [link to www.activistpost.com]

US Department of Defense Tactical Electromagnetic Cyber Warfare: Plant Malware Through the Air
by Phantom Report
January 18, 2013
Source: Defense News

It was right around that time that scientists began to turn their attention to another project: trying to access these protected networks remotely, through the air, by reading activity via electromagnetic field distortions and inserting code via radio frequencies. Accessing these networks — networks that don’t have wireless routers and aren’t connected to the Internet — became something of a holy grail, dubbed “jumping the gap.”

The science has progressed significantly, and now the Army is looking at demonstrating technology that can be deployed on aircraft and ground vehicles that can wage this kind of cyber warfare.

Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz may have had one of the most secure computer systems in the world. The building housing the nuclear program’s equipment is underground, protected by a combination of concrete walls, earth and military guards.

CONTINUE: [link to www.phantomreport.com]

CISPA cyber bill resurrected in Congress
Feb 13, 2013
During President Obama's State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, the commander-in-chief touched on the subject of cybersecurity. Obama announced that he has signed an executive order to strengthen America's cyber infrastructure, and on Wednesday Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, along with other members of Congress resubmitted the Cyber Intelligence Sharing Protection Act, the bill known as CISPA that failed to reach the Senate during the last Capitol Hill session.
SOURCE: [link to www.youtube.com]

Intel's new TV box to point creepy spy camera at YOUR FACE - One day we're gonna watch you like it's 1984
By Bill Ray
13th February 2013

Intel has confirmed it will be selling a set-top box direct to the public later this year, along with a streaming TV service designed to watch you while you're watching it.

The device will come from Intel Media, a new group populated with staff nicked from Netflix/Apple/Google and so forth. Subscribers will get live and catch-up TV as well as on-demand content - all delivered direct from Intel over their broadband connections. It's a move which will put Chipzilla firmly into US living room, and no doubt ignite a host of privacy concerns from those who want to watch without being watched.

CONTINUE: [link to www.theregister.co.uk]

Last Edited by RoXY on 02/14/2013 11:04 AM

Destroying Online Privacy: Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) Is Back
By Stephen Lendman
February 21, 2013

It shouldn’t surprise. The 2011 Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) never really went away. It ducked and covered for another day.

It’s more about destroying personal freedom than online security. It gives government and corporate supporters unlimited power to access personal/privileged information online.

Civil liberty protections are ignored. Security experts, academics, and other professionals expressed outrage. They called CISPA and John McCain’s SECURE IT Act measures that “allow entities who participate in relaying or receiving Internet traffic to freely monitor and redistribute those network communications” unjustifiably.

They encourage transferring private communications to government agencies. Accountability and transparency are lacking. Vague language describes network security attacks, threat indicators, and countermeasures.

Innocuous online activities can be called cyber security threats. Eroded privacy laws will be gutted. Web sites visited, personal emails, and other online contact may be freely accessed.

Obama’s State of the Union address stressed no-holds-barred cyber war. Earlier he declared waging it globally.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Limitless Surveillance and the Death of Privacy: Inside the FISA/Echelon Spy Grid
While the public was preparing to ring in the New Year, the US Senate was busy passing the FISA Amendments Act extension to continue the US warrantless spying program in the name of the war on terror. As critics like MI5 whistleblower Annie Machon point out, however, the Anglophone world has already had these powers for decades under the Echelon system.
SOURCE: [link to www.youtube.com]

America's Draconian Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Stephen Lendman
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Activist Post

It's an anti-hacking law. It criminalizes accessing computer systems "without authorization."

"(E)xceeds authorized access" terminology was left undefined. Misinterpretations and abuse followed. Overzealous prosecutors take full advantage.

In 1984, CFAA was enacted. It was amended numerous times. It's primarily a criminal law. At issue are seven types of offenses.

They include obtaining national security information, compromising confidentiality, trespassing in a government computer, accessing a system to defraud and/or obtain value, damaging a computer or information therein, trafficking in passwords, and threatening to damage a computer.

A 1994 amendment permits civil actions. In 2001, Patriot Act provisions addressed computer crime. They require Internet service providers to report suspicious information or activity "without delay."

In 2008, the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act criminalized conspiracy to commit CFAA related crimes.

See more at: [link to www.activistpost.com]

ISPs Now Monitoring for Copyright Infringement
By David Kravets
02.25.13

The nation’s major internet service providers on Monday said they are beginning to roll out an initiative to disrupt internet access for online copyright scofflaws.

The so-called “Copyright Alert System” is backed by the President Barack Obama administration and was pushed heavily by record labels and Hollywood studios.

The plan, more than four years in the making, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. Others could soon join.

CONTINUE: [link to www.wired.com]