Surveillance

San Diego is joining the ranks of cities clamping down on surveillance technology. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports the City Council has given a final greenlight to an ordinance requiring approval for tech that can identify and track individuals, such as body and streetlight cameras. Municipal government workers will have to outline the intended uses of a surveillance system, while a new privacy advisory board and residents will be asked for input. Councillors will also conduct yearly reviews of in-use systems. The…

The head of Greek intelligence told a parliamentary committee his agency had spied on a journalist, two sources present said, in a disclosure that coincides with growing pressure on the government to shed light on the use of surveillance malware. The committee's closed-door hearing last week was called after the leader of the socialist opposition PASOK party lodged a complaint with top court prosecutors over an attempted bugging of his mobile phone with surveillance software.PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis made his…

Amid the inflection point of library digitization, publishing corporations want to reduce and redefine the role that libraries play in our society. Their suit seeks to halt loans of legally purchased and scanned books, cementing a future of extortionate and opaque licensing agreements and Netflix-like platforms to replace library cards with credit cards. If successful, they will erode the public’s last great venue to access information free from corporate or government surveillance. This dire threat to the privacy and…

It’s not children who are committing these heists, of course. It’s people running jobs on the inside and the outside. Internet-connected cell phones and electronic money transfers through Green Dot prepaid cards, or mobile payment services like Cash App—often with an advance cut to outside conspirators who receive the balance on delivery–make them much easier to coordinate.“Frankly, prisoners for the longest time were inward looking,” says Stirling. “All of a sudden, smuggling contraband became very lucrative for folks…

To improve the efficacy of military operations, quality intelligence depends on accurate ISR data ISR, also known as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, is frequently used to denote military applications. ISR refers to the coordinated gathering, handling, and dissemination of precise, timely information and intelligence to assist a commander’s decision-making. To assure the success of operations, the majority of land, sea, air, and space installations play crucial roles in ISR acquisition. ISR…

‘Seeing is believing,” goes the old adage, and yet, for a film that investigates the intimate relationship between surveillance and the police state, Theo Anthony’s absorbing documentary chooses to begin with an eerie, unseeing image. The lens turned on the director’s own eyeballs, it inspects the optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain but itself holds no visual information. Like the neurology of human perception, the recording devices used by police forces also sit on the edge of seeing and not seeing. By…

China has introduced a new method of surveillance in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: 20 driverless electric patrol vehicles, RFA reported. China began testing its first domestically-manufactured, high-tech patrol car in Karamay (in Chinese, Kelemayi), an oil-rich city in the northern part of the region. Zhao Wenchuan, the secretary for the city’s Chinese Communist Party Committee, has said Karamay was chosen as the production and testing base for the smart patrol vehicles because it is the leading digital city in…

New York Times: As China builds up its vast surveillance and security apparatus, it is running up against growing public unease about data security and privacy in the country — Beijing's swift move to censor news about one of the largest known data breaches shows keen awareness of how major security lapses can harm its credibility. New York Times: As China builds up its vast surveillance and security apparatus, it is running up against growing public unease about data security and privacy in the…

PUBG: Battlegrounds will get drones to up your team's ante and have yet another means to win a fight. The drone surveillance feature is highlighted in a new teaser. Games like PUBG: New State already have drones to provide a tactical advantage to players. According to Krafton, PUBG Battlegrounds will be free-to-play for all users starting January 12. Although the game will be free to download and play, Krafton will reportedly restrict some items and game modes to paying gamers.A teaser video was posted on the PUBG:…

Photo: Patrick T. Fallon (Getty Images)It turns out Mexico may actually pay for an expensive U.S. border wall after all, but certainly not in the way former president Donald Trump would have hoped. Following a wide-ranging meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden this week, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador agreed to spend some $1.5 billion over the next two years investing in so-called “smart” border technology. The agreement amounts to both a departure from the contentious Trump-era political bickering between…