Big Brother is Watching You

[Vrede too]

I wouldn't normally link and quote a Russian state-owned news agency article, but the NYT has the same story, with a paywall, and all the other sites I tried quote the NYT's 1st paragraph then link to the NYT.

Biden Admin Seeking Reauthorization for FISA Warrantless Surveillance of Foreigners

The Biden administration wants to reauthorize a key legal passage allowing US intelligence agencies to spy on foreigners without seeking a warrant - even when they interact with Americans.

I'm not happy with the spying on foreigners, but sounds like it could be used as an excuse to spy on Americans.

... Congress passed FISA in 1978 in the wake of the Church Committee and other investigations that had revealed the essentially unchecked behavior of US intelligence services since the 1940s, including especially the CIA. The law was intended to systematize and legalize surveillance processes by forcing them through a secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

Section 702 was created in 2008 as part of a broader expansion of FISA, and allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct searches of foreigners' communications without a warrant. It “incidentally” also surveils Americans with whom those foreigners interact, according to US intel agencies.

Only “incidentally”? What a relief.

...

Abuse of FISC and of Section 702 has long been exposed by whistleblowers, but so have US intelligence reports themselves. One report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) published in April 2022 showed extensive evidence of the FBI searching through data acquired under the act without first seeking FISC authorization, which must accompany a search for explicit information.

According to the report, the FBI queried Section 702 data an estimated 3.39 million times between December 1, 2020, and November 30, 2021. It noted that the FBI had previously been found to be abusing the FISA process in 2018.

282,500 per month
9,288 per day
Busy busy snoops.

“The fact that Section 702 surveillance regularly results in the collection and search of innocent Americans’ communications is an intended and inherent part of the system,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a pro-privacy group, said in a blog post. “That means the government casts a spying net that routinely catches the communications of law-abiding Americans, who are protected by the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections.”

Republicans have strongly objected to Section 702, noting that the FBI abused the FISC as part of the Russiagate investigation in which Democrats and pro-Hillary Clinton parts of the state claimed that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was aided by the Russian government. With the GOP in control of the US House of Representatives, reauthorizing Section 702 will be easier said than done.

Most of that has been debunked by Durham's utter failures. Besides, the RepuQs are just as technofascist as the Dems. They'll make some noise, "win" some minor changes or unrelated concessions that they can brag about, then vote for the reauthorization en masse.

Ahead of the impending battle, DNI Avril Haines and Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a joint letter to Congress arguing for its renewal, and other top Justice Department officials have made similar appeals to the major conservative think tanks.

Always our favorite AG.

[Vrede too]

Appeals court rules carmakers can store data permanently and share it

Mark Jones and Michael McKee filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington state in September 2021 against Ford Motor Company. The case alleged that since at least 2014, Ford's infotainment systems had been permanently storing data such as call logs and SMS messages found on any phone plugged into the vehicle via USB, and keeping those messages on internal vehicle memory. The suit noted that a third-party company called Berla develops software and hardware known as the iVE Ecosystem is able to access those messages, and Berla can "pass the acquired communication to law enforcement, civil agencies, military, regulatory agencies, and selected private organizations." The plaintiffs alleged these actions violate the Washington Privacy Act, as the WPA forbids "any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or the State of Washington, its agencies and political subdivisions" from capturing or storing private phone communications without the consent of everyone involved in those communications....

[Vrede too]

“butts are funny” . . . or not.

How Your Child’s Online Mistake Can Ruin Your Digital Life

I support the goal, but Google's investigation and appeal processes need major improvement.

[O Really]

“butts are funny” . . . or not.

How Your Child’s Online Mistake Can Ruin Your Digital Life

I support the goal, but Google's investigation and appeal processes need major improvement.

Yeah and not to mention their penalties. Cutting off future access is one thing; deleting all their existing data is way much without giving an opportunity for them to retrieve it.

Also, the content standards might be a bit tight. Wouldn't be surprised if the (formerly) traditional 'naked baby on fur rug" or"2 year old in the bathtub" pics would get booted. Not that anybody ought to be posting those anymore, but still.

And all this heavy hand from a company that can't seem to control stuff like, oh, election lies.

[Vrede too]

“butts are funny” . . . or not.

How Your Child’s Online Mistake Can Ruin Your Digital Life

I support the goal, but Google's investigation and appeal processes need major improvement.

Yeah and not to mention their penalties. Cutting off future access is one thing; deleting all their existing data is way much without giving an opportunity for them to retrieve it.

Also, the content standards might be a bit tight. Wouldn't be surprised if the (formerly) traditional 'naked baby on fur rug" or "2 year old in the bathtub" pics would get booted. Not that anybody ought to be posting those anymore, but still.

And all this heavy hand from a company that can't seem to control stuff like, oh, election lies.

Another tech consequence, enabling domestic abusers:

An abused wife took on Tesla over tracking tech. She lost

The headline names Tesla and the article cites it as an example, but any newer vehicle can be tracked and the automakers are taking various steps to address the issue of abuse. Then, it's not just cars. With Apple AirTags and copy cat location-tracking devices anything can be tracked. Anything.

Crap.

[GoCubsGo]

So not surprising.

Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored?

[Vrede too]

So not surprising.

Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored?

Is your mail being secretly surveilled?

Law enforcement is spying on thousands of Americans’ mail, records show

The U.S. Postal Service has shared information from thousands of Americans’ letters and packages with law enforcement every year for the past decade, conveying the names, addresses and other details from the outside of boxes and envelopes without requiring a court order....

In a letter in May 2023, a group of eight senators, including Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), urged the agency to require a federal judge to approve the requests and to share more details on the program, saying officials there had chosen to “provide this surveillance service and to keep postal customers in the dark about the fact they have been subjected to monitoring.”

... Wyden said in a statement, “These new statistics show that thousands of Americans are subjected to warrantless surveillance each year, and that the Postal Inspection Service rubber stamps practically all of the requests they receive.” He also criticized the agency for “refusing to raise its standards and require law enforcement agencies monitoring the outside of Americans’ mail to get a court order, which is already required to monitor emails and texts.”...

GoWyden,etcGo

[Vrede too]

Stasi reincarnated:

DOGE’s Pursuit Of Sensitive Unemployment Data Sparks Alarm

DOGE is assailing all of the federal protections of personal info - SSI, IRS, and now the Labor Department. Totalitarianism is the obvious goal.

[O Really]

For fans of the Orwell version of "Big Brother" ...

"I drove 300 miles in rural Virginia, then asked police to send me their public surveillance footage of my car. Here’s what I learned."

https://cardinalnews.org/2025/03/28/i-d ... i-learned/

[Vrede too]

For fans of the Orwell version of "Big Brother" ...

"I drove 300 miles in rural Virginia, then asked police to send me their public surveillance footage of my car. Here’s what I learned."

https://cardinalnews.org/2025/03/28/i-d ... i-learned/

... Speaking of trust and ethics: two weeks later, Lt. Greg Jones called me at the Roanoke office. The Amherst County Sheriff’s Office had a question about my request for data about my vehicle.

“You weren’t trying to spy on a cheating wife or something like that, were you?” he asked.

I assured him that I wasn’t. As Cardinal Executive Director Luanne Rife points out in her column on Sunshine Week, public agencies don’t have to agree with why you’re asking for their public information. The idea is that it belongs to you already. They are under legal obligation to provide it to you.

Not to say this question didn’t cause some thought and conversation in the newsroom. Public surveillance data like this could indeed be used to stalk an ex; it could also be used by a person suspicious their ex is stalking them to see if their ex’s vehicle actually could be found on the same roads as theirs and at the same times, which could then be used to secure a protective order or even open a criminal investigation. It could be used by private investigators to find bail jumpers and missing persons. Now imagine all those requests coming in to the local police agency…

The only reason it hadn’t happened yet was because people really didn’t know they could do that. Suddenly the cops could be in the position to find themselves spending hours looking up public surveillance for citizens with all sorts of reasons to utilize the data.

So was this a fool’s errand I was on? I didn’t think so. The police in over 80 of our local communities had chosen to start photographing citizens in their vehicles in public and sharing this with other agencies in our region and beyond, even out of state. I wasn’t the one running over 500 searches a month on its citizens, as the Roanoke police were doing. And who knows who they were running those searches on, and why? ...

Great, stalkers, anti-stalkers, bail jumpers, "missing" persons, etc.

Do the little rubbery Jesus toys on every table have cameras and mics?

... It’s a paradigm shift where we go from having an expectation of privacy even in public spaces to its inverse. Not only do we not have a right to privacy in public; we don’t even have a right to see ourselves as the government and police might see us — a set of still moments in place and time from which they, not us, can decide what our story is.

These are just the public cameras. As the writer points out there are private cameras everywhere, which LEOs can access by simply asking or through court order. The cop shows aren't exaggerating and I hate it. All the tools of totalitarianism are there if some government wants to use them.

Big Brother really is watching us.

[Vrede too]

Dozens of DHS staffers, including top FEMA officials, given lie detector tests over alleged leaks

... The FEMA official told CNN that the idea DHS is only testing workers accused of leaking classified information is “extremely farcical” based on knowing some of the people who were given the tests and the positions they hold.

“They are just covering up the unpopular stuff they’re doing,” the official said. “FEMA is a consumer of classified information, not a producer of classified information, and the FEMA programs that are truly classified are all an extremely small group of people.”

A second FEMA official called the tests “a witch hunt.”

“I find it very, very hard to believe that within the normal course of business, any of these employees had their hands on classified material,” the official said. “They are trying to incite fear. They are trying to get rid of people.”

Are those "leaks"?

Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project, a non-partisan, nonprofit whistleblower support organization, said he’s surprised by the number of polygraphs administered in just the first three months of the Trump administration.

“Government agencies for decades, have used lie detectors to catch leakers or anyone else they perceived as wrongdoers. The difference here is the volume,” Devine said. “What used to be a sensitive, carefully considered high-risk decision, is now a knee-jerk reaction, and that’s what’s scary.”

Gestapo, or "Gazpacho" according to EmptyG.

As CNN previously reported, experts have questioned the validity of polygraphs, as they are subject to coercion and can be unreliable, and they are often inadmissible in court.

Accuracy has never been PINO's strong suit.