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

Big Brother isn't the government ...

It's us. People with phones that made videos and show the reality of the moment.

Kids reporting their parents for smoking pot. A drug that should be legal.

The mother that turns in her son for not filing money he made in cash.

WE are big brother. Each and every one of us. Humans.

It's true what I say. Pay attention.

Smart Phone Ap Allows Thieves to Steal Credit Card Information - Fraud fears grow over contactless bank card technology
Thursday 29 March 2012

Millions more British bank customers have been exposed to fraud through the latest credit and debit card technology, writes Channel 4 News technology producer Geoff White.

Millions more British bank customers have been exposed to fraud through the latest credit and debit card technology.

On Friday Channel 4 News reported that Barclays Visa contactless cards (ones which bear the symbol pictured) can be read using an off-the-shelf mobile phone running a special app.

ViaForensics, the company which carried out the research for Channel 4 News, has now shown the same technique works on a Visa debit card issued by Lloyds. And banking industry insiders have told us that all Visa contactless cards can potentially be read in this way.

The app reads the full name, number and expiry date from the card. Channel 4 News was able to use just these three details to order goods through Amazon; setting up an account under a dummy email address and having the goods shipped to an address which does not match that of the cardholder.

CONTINUE + VIDEO: [link to www.channel4.com]

OnStar’s Family Link enables spousal spying and parental monitoring
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Activist Post

The pervasive paranoia of American culture never ceases to amaze me. Be it citizen spying applications distributed by government agencies or private individuals, incentivizing such activities through “soft control,” or the rise of cloud-based video surveillance, it has become impossible to deny that our society has become obsessed with surveillance.

This love affair has shown up in a wholly novel fashion with OnStar’s Family Link, a $3.99 per month add-on to General Motors’ OnStar service.

This will allow parents to spy on their children, and, even more importantly, allow suspicious spouses to keep tabs on those who they supposedly love and trust.

OnStar Family Link provides a website where paranoid parents and snooping spouses can see the location of the enrolled OnStar vehicle in real time.

Furthermore, it allows the account holder to receive location updates via text message or straight to their computer at specified intervals.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Britain to monitor citizens’ text messages and emails
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, April 1, 2012

The British government wants to expand its powers to monitor email exchanges and website visits, The Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Internet companies would be instructed to install hardware to allow the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — Britain’s electronic “listening” agency” — to go through “on demand” every text message and email sent, websites accessed and phone calls made “in real time, the broadsheet said.

The plans are expected to be unveiled next month.

The Home Office said ministers were preparing to legislate “as soon as parliamentary time allows” but said the data to be monitored would not include content.

“It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public,” a spokesman said.

“We need to take action to maintain the continued availability of communications data as technology changes.

“Communications data includes time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call, or an email address.

CONTINUE: [link to www.rawstory.com]

Project Glass
A new project by Google...

Congress renames SOPA to CISPA and hopes no one notices!



[link to video.godlikeproductions.com]

RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1 - Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon are among the ISPs preparing to implement a graduated response to piracy by July, says the music industry's chief lobbyist.
by Greg Sandoval
March 14, 2012

NEW YORK - The country's largest Internet service providers haven't given up on the idea of becoming copyright cops.

Last July, Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other bandwidth providers announced that they had agreed to adopt policies designed to discourage customers from illegally downloading music, movies and software. Since then, the ISPs have been very quiet about their antipiracy measures.

But during a panel discussion before a gathering of U.S. publishers here today, Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, said most of the participating ISPs are on track to begin implementing the program by July 1.

CONTINUE: [link to news.cnet.com]

Your Cell Phone Makes You A Prisoner Of A Digital World Where Virtually Anyone Can Hack You And Track You
Michael Snyder, Contributor
Friday, April 6, 2012
Activist Post

If you own a cell phone, you might as well kiss your privacy goodbye. Cell phone companies know more about us than most of us would ever dare to imagine. Your cell phone company is tracking everywhere that you go and it is making a record of everything that you do with your phone. Much worse, there is a good chance that your cell phone company has been selling this information to anyone that is willing to pay the price - including local law enforcement. In addition, it is an open secret that the federal government monitors and records all cell phone calls. The "private conversation" that you are having with a friend today will be kept in federal government databanks for many years to come.

The truth is that by using a cell phone, you willingly make yourself a prisoner of a digital world where every move that you make and every conversation that you have is permanently recorded. But it is not just cell phone companies and government agencies that you have to worry about. As you will see at the end of this article, it is incredibly easy for any would-be stalker to hack you and track your every movement using your cell phone. In fact, many spyware programs allow hackers to listen to you through your cell phone even when your cell phone is turned off. Sadly, most cell phone users have absolutely no idea about any of this stuff.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd wants to resurrect SOPA, confirms secret negotiations
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Activist Post

Many people thought that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was going to be dead for good after it was protested by millions of Internet users and some of the Web’s largest entities like Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and more.

Unfortunately, Chris Dodd, the Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and formerly a long-time Senator and Congressman, wants to bring it back and once again threaten everything that the Internet was built upon.

When asked if there were negotiations currently going on surrounding a revival of SOPA, Dodd said that he was “confident that’s the case.”

However, he wants to keep this out of the public eye and away from the scrutiny it deserves. “I’m not going to go into more detail because, obviously, if I do, it becomes counterproductive,” Dodd said.

While this isn’t a current legislator standing up and demanding that it be brought back on the floor, Dodd is the head of one of the entertainment industry’s most powerful lobbyist groups while also being a man with major connections on Capitol Hill.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

I guess... Yes!

SPYING ON AMERICANS: Obama's Backdoor "Cybersecurity" Wiretap Bill Threatens Political and Private Rights
Spying on Social Media
by Tom Burghardt
April 10, 2012
Antifascist Calling

Under the guise of "cybersecurity," the new all-purpose bogeyman to increase the secret state's already-formidable reach, the Obama administration and their congressional allies are crafting legislation that will open new backdoors for even more intrusive government surveillance: portals into our lives that will never be shut.

As Antifascist Calling has frequently warned, with the endless "War on Terror" as a backdrop the federal government, most notably the 16 agencies that comprise the so-called "Intelligence Community" (IC), have been constructing vast centralized databases that scoop-up and store all things digital - from financial and medical records to the totality of our electronic communications online - and do so without benefit of a warrant or probable cause.

The shredding of constitutional protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment, granted to the Executive Branch by congressional passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) after the 9/11 attacks, followed shortly thereafter by the oxymoronic USA Patriot Act set the stage for today's depredations.

Under provisions of multiple bills under consideration by the House and Senate, federal officials will be given broad authority over private networks that will almost certainly hand security officials wide latitude over what is euphemistically called "information-sharing" amongst corporate and government securocrats.

As The Washington Post reported in February, the National Security Agency "has pushed repeatedly over the past year to expand its role in protecting private-sector computer networks from cyberattacks" but has allegedly "been rebuffed by the White House, largely because of privacy concerns."

"The most contentious issue," Post reporter Ellen Nakashima wrote, "was a legislative proposal last year that would have required hundreds of companies that provide such critical services as electricity generation to allow their Internet traffic to be continuously scanned using computer threat data provided by the spy agency. The companies would have been expected to turn over evidence of potential cyberattacks to the government."

Both the White House and Justice Department have argued, according to the Post, that the "proposal would permit unprecedented government monitoring of routine civilian Internet activity."

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]

The lucrative future of CCTV: remote biometrics and behavioral suspect detection
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Activist Post

Recently I reported on how the cloud video surveillance industry, which offers Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS), has been experiencing considerable growth with no end in sight. However, the growth in this industry is dwarfed by the potential of the technological revolution of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance.

According to the Homeland Security Research Corp. (HSRC), this decade will see a fusion of several technologies including CCTV surveillance, so-called “standoff biometrics” (somewhat similar to the systems being developed by the military and the Department of Homeland Security) and human behavioral signatures or “behavioral recognition” systems.

According to HSRC, this market could reach up to $3.2 billion by just 2016, although that figure includes the sales of systems, upgrades, and post-warranty services and repairs.

These systems were created in order to break through some of the obstacles currently arising in the surveillance industry and the bottlenecks they experience in processing and responding to data.

As of now, there is a lack of ability to respond to information from cameras in real time, but that is being changed through behavioral recognition and almost unbelievably fast facial recognition software.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

19 Things That The Talking Heads On Television Are Being Strangely Silent About
Michael Snyder, Contributor
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Activist Post

If the talking heads on television don't tell us about something that happens, does it make that event any less real? Of course the answer to that question is quite obvious, but unfortunately way too many Americans allow their realities to be defined by what they hear from the mainstream media.

Way too many people use phrases such as "if that was true I would have heard about it on television" to deflect conversations that are starting to become uncomfortable.

Critical thinking is a skill that is in short supply in America today, and most Americans seem content to let their televisions do their thinking for them. Sadly, the pretty people on television do not spend a lot of time talking about the things that are truly important. Instead, they love to talk about the latest celebrity scandal and they love to divide people into groups and get them fighting with one another.

In this day and age, it is absolutely critical that we all learn to think for ourselves. The talking heads on television are concerned with keeping their bosses happy and with keeping the ratings up. Most of them are not really concerned about what happens to you. They just want you to keep watching them so that they can continue to earn their inflated salaries.

Unfortunately, most Americans seem perfectly content with the "infotainment" that they are getting from the major news networks, so major changes to the mainstream media are not likely to happen any time soon.

For those wanting something different, you will have to seek out alternative sources of news (such as this website) that are willing to discuss the truly earth shattering events that are continually taking place all over the globe.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Cellphone Radiation Detector App Banned by Apple
Mike Barrett
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Activist Post

Although many individuals think nothing of radiation emitted by cell phones, or even believe it to be true, there is a large amount of evidence showing how damaging cell phone use can actually be. In response to the released information and growing fear of cell phone radiation, a company has ironically released a mobile app which reportedly measures radiation levels emitted by smart phones.

Company Creates Radiation Detector App, Apple Bans it from App Store
The app was created by an Israeli company named Tawkon, and while not necessarily brand new, it is relatively unknown. The lack of popularity probably has much to do with Apple’s banning of the app from their online app store since Apple rules the smartphone market. The company instituted the ban because it felt the app would be confusing to customers, though the ban was likely due to the fact that the app could only decrease sales for Apple’s iPhone. Whether Apple’s decision was driven by profit or not, there are some valid questions and concerns regarding the app’s accuracy.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

New microchip for smartphones to provide unprecedented ultra-precise location data
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Activist Post

The Broadcom Corporation, a Fortune 500 company, recently unveiled a brand new microchip for smartphones which will provide ultra-precise location details, potentially even within a few centimeters, far beyond what current smartphones can detect.

Today cell phones, but smartphones in particular, have become one of the most powerful surveillance tools available with Carrier IQ, citizen spying applications distributed by both the private sector and government agencies, techniques to encourage citizen spying, and a total lack of privacy.

The new chip, called Broadcom 4752 or BCM4752, will relay information about the vertical and horizontal position, if the individual is indoors or out, all through combining a wide variety of information sources.

It is loaded with sensors that can draw data from global navigation satellites, which is common in many modern smartphones, along with cell phone towers, wireless hotspots, gyroscopic information, data from the phone’s accelerometer, step counters and even altimeters.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Draconian Cybersecurity Bills
by Stephen Lendman
12-04-'12

Obama supports congressional effects. Internet freedom is at stake. So are other civil liberties.

On March 8, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conducted a mock New York cyber attack. At issue was gaining support for pending Senate legislation.

White House spokesperson Caitlin Hayden called the stunt a way to give “senators….an appreciation for new legislative authorities that would help the U.S. government prevent and more quickly respond to cyber attacks.”

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said: “The fact that we could be subject to a catastrophic attack under the right circumstances and we now know some of the things that would help us to protect against such an attack, that’s why it’s important now for the Congress to take this up.

Destroying a free and open Internet and other civil liberties is no way to do it. Power grab politics are in play. Major media scoundrels are silent.

Obama supports congressional effects. Internet freedom is at stake. So are other civil liberties.

On March 8, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conducted a mock New York cyber attack. At issue was gaining support for pending Senate legislation.

White House spokesperson Caitlin Hayden called the stunt a way to give “senators an appreciation for new legislative authorities that would help the U.S. government prevent and more quickly respond to cyber attacks.”

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said: “The fact that we could be subject to a catastrophic attack under the right circumstances and we now know some of the things that would help us to protect against such an attack, that’s why it’s important now for the Congress to take this up.

Destroying a free and open Internet and other civil liberties is no way to do it. Power grab politics are in play. Major media scoundrels are silent.

CONTINUE: [link to www.mathaba.net]

Last Edited by RoXY on 04/14/2012 08:20 PM

Google paying users to track 100% of their Web usage via little black box
By Casey Johnston

Google is working to collect information about Internet users that it can't get from just monitoring its own browser, services, and Android devices. The company has set up a new program called Screenwise, which offers money to users who install a black box on their home network to "measure Internet use." A smaller amount of money will go to those who install a browser extension on their computers that will do the same thing.

Google quietly started up the Screenwise data collection program Tuesday night, taking the e-mail addresses of people who are interested in "add[ing] a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them." For their participation, Google offers the extension users a $5 Amazon gift card for signing up and another $5 gift card for every three months they stay with the program. Less publicly, Google also started looking for people who would install a piece of hardware on their network to do more extensive monitoring.

CONTINUE: [link to arstechnica.com]

Hacking Expert David Chalk Joins Urgent Call to Halt Smart Grid - "100% certainty of catastrophic failure of energy grid within 3 years"

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Apr 12, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) - The vulnerability of the energy industry's new wireless smart grid will inevitably lead to lights out for everyone, according to leading cyber expert David Chalk. In an online interview for an upcoming documentary film entitled 'Take Back Your Power' ( www.ThePowerFilm.org ), Chalk says the entire power grid will be at risk to being taken down by cyber attack, and if installations continue it's only a matter of time.

“We're in a state of crisis,” said Chalk. “The front door is open and there is no lock to be had. There is not a power meter or device on the grid that is protected from hacking - if not already infected - with some sort of trojan horse that can cause the grid to be shut down or completely annihilated.”

CONTINUE: [link to www.marketwatch.com]

CISPA Could Allow Companies to Filter or Block Internet Traffic
Dan Auerbach & Mark M. Jaycox
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
EFF

Rep. Rogers is adamant that CISPA, the Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, is cybersecurity legislation intended to help protect critical infrastructure intrusions and private and government information. But as we've written in the past, CISPA is a bill that allows for companies to spy on users, pass along the information to government agencies like the NSA, and potentially filter or block Internet traffic, which could serve as justification for action against sites like Wikileaks. That's why we're calling on users to contact Congress to speak out against this bill.

One of the scariest parts of CISPA is that the bill goes above and beyond information sharing. Its definitions allow for countermeasures to be taken by private entities, and we think these provisions are ripe for abuse. Indeed, the bill defines "cybersecurity purpose" as any threat related to safeguarding or protecting a network. As long as companies act in "good faith" for a cybersecurity purpose, they have leeway to protect against “efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy [a] system or network.”

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Terahertz-Band Mobile Phones Could See Through Walls
Rebecca Boyle
19 Apr 2012

Terahertz scanners could potentially see through walls, inside pockets and into wallets, but they're either large and expensive, or contain high-powered nanolasers that limit their use. Now a Texas team has a new approach that could use everyday mobile phones, making terahertz-band scanners simple and ubiquitous.

Electromagnetic waves in the terahertz range can penetrate where optical light can't, and they can sense any molecule, so they are useful for security scanners, medical devices and various other applications. Their energies fall between microwaves and infrared light. But terahertz imaging devices require tons of energy and multiple lenses to focus light, so they are prohibitively large. Kenneth O, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas, is developing new versions that would not require multiple lenses.

The key breakthrough was a new fabrication process using familiar complementary metal-oxide semiconductors, the CMOS chips that power most consumer devices. O and his team found they could build a specific type of high-speed diode, called a Schottky diode, in CMOS. These high-speed light devices can reach the THz range using standard CMOS manufacturing processes, which means they'd be fairly simple to integrate into existing devices - without major impacts on cost or size. O presented his work at an IEEE conference this spring.

CONTINUE: [link to www.popsci.com.au]

"FIGHT THE NET": Pentagon Media Psyops and "Black Propaganda" - Pentagon Smears USA Today Reporters Investigating … Wait for It … Illegal Pentagon Propaganda
by Washington's Blog
April 20, 2012

(If the draconian Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) bill passes, the spying on journalists will only increase.)

They are also actively manipulating social media for propaganda purposes, to crush dissent (and see this), to help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses (and here), and to promote viewpoints which have nothing to do with keeping us safe.

We noted in 2009: The U.S. government long ago announced its intention to “fight the net”.

As revealed by an official Pentagon report signed by Rumsfeld called “Information Operations Roadmap”: The roadmap [contains an] acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military’s psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

“Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience,” it reads.

“Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” it goes on.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]

University of Texas researchers design chip allowing mobile devices to see through walls
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Friday, April 20, 2012
Activist Post

As unbelievable as it sounds, researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have created an imager chip for mobile devices which would turn an ordinary cell phone into something which can see through walls, wood, plastics, paper, skin and other objects.

Using the terahertz (THz) band of the electromagnetic spectrum, the wavelengths of which fall between the microwave and infrared bands, the chip could signify a revolution in the surveillance capabilities of mobile phones along with new chips like Broadcom’s BCM4752 which is capable of providing ultra-precise location data.

Combine this with citizen spying applications and the techniques which gently push people to conduct surveillance without them knowing what they’re actually doing, patents from Google which would allow them to collect the data from such chips and the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) new data center and you have the penultimate surveillance state.

The research team connected two separate advances in science: the mostly untapped terahertz frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum, and cutting edge microchip technology.

For those who are unfamiliar or need a refresher, the electromagnetic spectrum makes up all wavelengths of electromagnetic energy from visible light to radio waves to microwaves to infrared to ultraviolet and everything in between.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Google Inc: "Don't Be Evil"
by James Corbett
April 21, 2012
International Forecaster

For a company whose corporate motto is "Don't Be Evil," Google Inc. certainly has found itself at the receiving end of its share of lawsuits, claims and controversies. Still, even by Google's standards this past week has been a difficult one.

A strange press release touting a company calling itself "Planetary Resources" - which promises to combine the "space exploration and natural resource" sectors and is being backed by a who's who of technorati and big-name investors including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin - is providing plenty of fodder for speculation in the press ("Is asteroid mining in our near future?"). But not even an announcement that Google itself was about to go interplanetary would be enough to keep the company's legal woes off the business pages of the newspapers (let alone its own online news service).

Dominating the attention of the tech world at the moment is Oracle's lawsuit against Google over an alleged misuse of Oracle's programming platform, Java. The claim: Google used some Java in Android, their mobile offering, without licensing. The stakes: Oracle is seeking $1 billion and an injunction from further Android sales until the issue is settled. The hype: Testimony by both Larry Page and Larry Ellison, the CEOs of Google and Oracle respectively, earlier this week generated plenty of buzz and press attention. The bottom line: Oracle's original $6.1 billion claim was thrown out of court because the judge determined that they were essentially making up their calculations, and no one really expects that they will receive the $1 billion they are now asking. In fact, it's far from clear they will be awarded damages at all, although an injunction against the use of Java in Android could be an important and precedent-setting outcome.

But this was not Google's biggest headache of the week.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]