Big Brother is Watching You

[Vrede too]

CIA 'torture' psychologists to stand trial

[billy.pilgrim]

CIA 'torture' psychologists to stand trial

And they'll be let off just as is happening to the blackwater murderers, or as had happened over and over from lt. Calley to netandyahoo.

[Vrede too]

Could be, but I'm glad that they're at least still sweating it all these years later and that other "psychologists" are being duly warned.

[rstrong]

"Your decades are numbered."

[Vrede too]

I meant "psychologists" that may contemplate abetting torture in the future, not the ones that did so in the past.

[rstrong]

Engadget: DOJ demands info on 1.3M visitors to protest-organizing website

...the page in question, disruptj20.org, had helped organize protests of Trump's inauguration. And the DOJ is demanding personal info and 1.3 million IP addresses of visitors to the site.

According to Dreamhost, that personal info includes "contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people." That could easily lead the DOJ to identify anyone who used the site in service of exercising their Constitutionally-protected rights of free speech, the website host pointed out.

[billy.pilgrim]

Engadget: DOJ demands info on 1.3M visitors to protest-organizing website

...the page in question, disruptj20.org, had helped organize protests of Trump's inauguration. And the DOJ is demanding personal info and 1.3 million IP addresses of visitors to the site.

According to Dreamhost, that personal info includes "contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people." That could easily lead the DOJ to identify anyone who used the site in service of exercising their Constitutionally-protected rights of free speech, the website host pointed out.

But, but I'm sure they asked the same from Spencer's contact list for the riots he sponsored this weekend

[Vrede too]

Engadget: DOJ demands info on 1.3M visitors to protest-organizing website

But, but I'm sure they asked the same from Spencer's contact list for the riots he sponsored this weekend

Petition to Attorney General Jeff Sessions:

We demand that you immediately withdraw the Justice Department’s warrant requiring the web-hosting platform DreamHost to turn over 1.3 million IP addresses, emails and message content for people who visited the disruptj20.org website. There is no legitimate law enforcement purpose for this information, and this warrant has a chilling effect on speech. It runs afoul of both the First and Fourth Amendments. As such, it must be withdrawn immediately.

Petition to Jeff Sessions:

We demand that you immediately withdraw the DOJ effort to force Dreamhost, the web host for the Trump Resistance site disruptj20.org, to turn over the IP addresses, emails and message content from the 1.3 million site visitors leading up to the Resistance March on Inauguration Day.

[billy.pilgrim]

Shouldn't there be a movement to post on this site. Give the fucks 50 million names.

We are all Dreamhost.

[Vrede too]

Shouldn't there be a movement to post on this site. Give the fucks 50 million names.
was
We are all Dreamhost.

I thought about that but assumed the warrant was only for site visitors before and perhaps just after J20. If it's for current ones, too, I will visit and join.

[Vrede too]

Thank you for raising your voice for free speech and calling for the Department of Justice to withdraw its overly broad, speech chilling warrant for information from DisruptJ20.org

You may have heard that yesterday the government narrowed its warrant to drop the request for the 1.3 million IP addresses of all those who visited the anti-Trump protest site.

This is an important victory and it would not have happened without people like you standing up for our rights. However, the government has not dropped the warrant altogether and is still seeking information about First Amendment protected activity. The government is still conflating dissent with criminality by promoting a false narrative that an information sharing hub about inauguration day protests is responsible for a "premeditated riot."

The warrant needs to be withdrawn, not amended.

This is not an isolated occurrence; it is part of a wider crackdown on dissent. The fight isn't over yet, DreamHost will still go to court to challenge the government's warrant tomorrow. We will continue to monitor the situation and fight for the right to dissent.

We will continue to keep you updated as this situation develops.

#Resist,

Chip Gibbons
Policy & Legislative Counsel
https://rightsanddissent.org/

[Vrede too]

Trump Administration Can Sift Through User Data of Inauguration Protest Website, Judge Rules

FBI Paid Informant + Mentally Ill Man = Another Fake Terror Plot

Trump May Not Finish His Term But the Assassination Complex Will Live On

... a dangerous consequence of the overwhelming, obsessive focus on the daily Trump affairs is a virtual dearth of coverage on the permanent, unelected institutions of U.S. power, namely the military and the CIA....

[billy.pilgrim]

Trump Administration Can Sift Through User Data of Inauguration Protest Website, Judge Rules

FBI Paid Informant + Mentally Ill Man = Another Fake Terror Plot

Trump May Not Finish His Term But the Assassination Complex Will Live On

... a dangerous consequence of the overwhelming, obsessive focus on the daily Trump affairs is a virtual dearth of coverage on the permanent, unelected institutions of U.S. power, namely the military and the CIA....

"Only the government could have made a ‘terrorist’ out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope,” the trial judge, Judge Colleen McMahon said. Nevertheless, she sentenced him to 25 years in jail."

[rstrong]

FBI Paid Informant + Mentally Ill Man = Another Fake Terror Plot

To quote a comment about it on Techdirt:

Just to be clear:
They took an actual Paranoid Schizophrenic and actually concocted a government conspiracy to have him arrested.
Let that sink in a while, then tell me who the crazy party in this debacle really is.

[Vrede too]

... tell me who the crazy party in this debacle really is.

The US taxpayer? Lots of other good comments there, too.

[rstrong]

Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies”
Leaked documents and public records reveal a troubling fusion of private security, public law enforcement, and corporate money in the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline.

TigerSwan is based in Apex, North Carolina in Wake County.

As Standing Rock Camps Cleared Out, TigerSwan Expanded Surveillance to Array of Progressive Causes

TigerSwan is in the news again:

Gizmodo: Data Breach Exposes Thousands of Job Seekers Citing Top Secret Government Work

Thousands of files containing the personal information and expertise of Americans with classified and up to Top Secret security clearances have been exposed by an unsecured Amazon server, potentially for most of the year.

Their defense: "It wasn't us! It was the people we subcontracted the work to!

[Vrede too]

Couldn't happen to a nicer company and group of job applicants.

Can you graffiti their HQ in VR?

[rstrong]

Can you graffiti their HQ in VR?

Setting aside the legal and ethical showstoppers on that one....

First I'd need their HQ in VR. Which it probably is, in Google Earth. Even my home town has been scanned from the air in LIDAR. I can view my apartment and my workplace in 3D, with the trees and vehicles around them in as 3D blobs. In Oculus you can see them in 3D, as opposed to 3D objects on a 2D screen.

The Oculus Rift has some wonderful 3D painting and sculpting tools. (I haven't tried them yet, but they get great reviews. And demos on YouTube.) But Google's tools for adding your own 3D models to Google Earth are still in the 2D screen world. And they would only let others see your graffiti in Google Earth and Google Maps.

[rstrong]

Techdirt: Bill Introduced That Would Make Arrested Protesters Pay Police Overtime, Gov't Expenses

Another anti-protesting law is in the works, prompted by oil pipeline demonstrations both in North Dakota and, closer to home, in the district of the state rep introducing the bill, Scott Martin of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

The bill won't survive a Constitutional challenge, but that doesn't mean it can't become law and cost people a lot of money in the mean time.

[Vrede too]

But again, it won't be just the FBI. The NYPD will demand it. The DEA will demand it. The TSA will demand it. A hundred other police agencies will demand it. Consider the Stingray phone tracker - a mass surveillance device developed for the military and intelligence communities "to catch the terrorists", but now in widespread use by local and state law enforcement agencies. Now consider that every other country's police agencies will demand this "custom OS" too.

A Stingray device sets up a fake cell site to do man-in-the-middle attacks. It lets you download personal data from people's phones, track people through their cell phones, and listen to calls.

Developed for the military and intelligence community, they're not in common use by local police forces. The LAPD used a Department of Homeland Security grant in 2006 to buy a StingRay for "regional terrorism investigations". However, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the "LAPD has been using it for just about any investigation imaginable." They've shown up in Canada and Britain and elsewhere.

The latest to make the news is Memphis. Their mayor's election campaign explicitly mentioned Stingrays and the secrecy surrounding them, but now supports them post-election.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called the devices "an unconstitutional, all-you-can-eat data buffet." The police defend this not in court, but signing nondisclosure agreements stating that law enforcement officers must do everything up to swallowing their cyanide pills (let suspects walk, route FOIA requests through the FBI, engage in parallel construction, etc.) to prevent information about the technology from making its way into the hands of defendants, judges or peskily inquisitive members of the public.

Suppose the FBI gets their mandatory back door into everyone's devices. (This fight is about setting a precedent for other brands of phones too. Plus fitness trackers and all those "internet of things" devices showing up in people's homes and devices now standard in new cars, tracking enabled even when you don't buy the service.) Does anyone believe for an instant that the TSA, CIA, DEA, NYPD, LAPD and everyone else will demand it? And similar organizations in other countries?

Does anyone believe for an instant that it won't be leaked? Consider the data breach that gave Chinese hackers personal details on 21.5 million government employees.

On June 11, 2015, ABC News also said that highly sensitive 127-page Standard Forms (SF) 86 (Questionnaire for National Security Positions) were put at serious risk by the hack. SF-86 forms contain information about family members, college roommates, foreign contacts, and psychological information. At the time, OPM stated that family members names were not compromised. However, on June 13, 2015, OPM spokesman Samuel Schumach said that investigators had "a high degree of confidence that OPM systems containing information related to the background investigations of current, former, and prospective federal government employees, to include U.S. military personnel, and those for whom a federal background investigation was conducted, may have been exfiltrated."
[...]
The stolen data included 5.6 million sets of fingerprints. Biometrics expert Ramesh Kesanupalli said that because of this, secret agents were no longer safe, as they could be identified by their fingerprints, even if their names had been changed.

Other government agencies have had massive leaks too. The IRS has had multiple leaks of all the information needed for identity theft of huge numbers of citizens, repeatedly, even after declaring "all fixed!" We now know that Snowden wasn't the only one in the NSA leaking documents.

DC Court of Appeals Decides That Police Stingrays Require a Warrant