Tag: SURVEILLANCE

China has always maintained tight control over what its citizens read and write online. But according to the New York Times, the Leviathan of governmental censorship seems to be digging its tentacles even deeper into the lives of mainland Web surfers. In the wake of the Middle East protests, the Chinese regime has only ratcheted up its surveillance and censorship of electronic communications ...

The ACLU and other civil liberties groups can continue their legal battle against a federal wiretapping law, now that a New York appeals court has reinstated their lawsuit. At issue is a 2008 federal law known as the FISA Amendments Act, which empowered the U.S. government to conduct widespread electronic surveillance on suspected terrorists. The ACLU's challenge had been previously thrown out ...

The LunchCommunicator, developed by Japanese researchers, packs a camera and touchscreen PC that automatically records the person making lunch and plays it back while the other party is eating it, and vice-versa. Maybe it'll make school kids more appreciative of their mothers' efforts, but it just kind of makes us uncomfortable. We figured the one place we didn't have to check for a spycam ...

RIM may have resolved its BlackBerry issues in the Middle East and Indonesia, but the company's negotiations with India seem to have hit a wall. Today, the smartphone manufacturer reiterated that it cannot allow the Indian government to monitor corporate e-mails sent from Blackberry devices because, according to RIM, the technology simply doesn't exist. "We can't give a solution for enterprise ...

Share The U.S. Air Force is developing a $211 million surveillance mega-blimp, which, if completed, could stay in the air for a week and will be seven times larger than the Goodyear Blimp. The project, dubbed 'Blue Devil,' could change the way surveillance missions are carried out in Afghanistan by serving as a floating information hub, according to Wired. The 350-foot-long blimp could ascend as ...

The worst part about visiting the Most Magical Place on Earth is, without a doubt, waiting in those exhausting, long lines. But, according to the New York Times, Disney World is attempting to shorten waits at its attractions by building a new underground command center that would allow employees to intervene immediately when an area of the park becomes gridlocked, or when a ride becomes ...

Twenty-year-old Yasir Afifi took his car to the mechanic last week for an oil change, and wound up a minor Internet celebrity. When the California resident's Lincoln was raised on the car lifts Afifi and his mechanic, Mazher Khan, noticed something strange, with an antenna, near the car's exhaust. Afifi and his friend posted images of the device on Reddit, wondering if it was an FBI tracking ...

Public events in the U.K., including football games (which we call soccer here in the good ol' U.S. of A.), may be getting a little security help from smart cameras. New CCTV systems called Smart Eyes use software to scan crowds, and identify anything out of the ordinary. The software is able to flag areas of a concert audience, allowing security personnel to better focus their monitoring ...

Thomas Voor 't Hekke has placed birds with surveillance cameras for heads all over the city of Utrecht, Netherlands. The 'panoptICONS', as he calls them, are clear in their meaning, and reflect his distrust of government supervision in broad strokes. But, like a Banksy stencil come to life, their menacing visual contrast startles passersby, reminding them of the eye in the sky. ...

A federal judge in California recently ruled that police can place a GPS on a person's car without his or her knowledge without seeking a warrant. CNN reports that Juan Pineda-Moreno's appeal was rejected for the third time in early August by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers nine West Coast states. Pineda-Moreno claimed that Oregon DEA agents had violated his privacy by ...

Our commenters give us a lot of heat for hating on Facebook (e.g., "Whassamatta, AOL? Jealouz??"), but we have to admit that, from time to time, we love to use the social network to stalk. And, frankly, who doesn't? Employers have known for a few years now that some of the best insight into a job applicant's life is through their unvarnished Facebook profile. Those knee-jerk rants and party pics ...

The next time the police think about slapping a GPS tracking device on your car, they may be required to have a search warrant in their hands beforehand. In an opinion issued Friday, a D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals determined that unwarranted and prolonged GPS surveillance violates constitutionally mandated protections against unreasonable searches. Federal prosecutors used evidence ...

How seriously does the Department of Homeland Security take illegal immigration? So seriously, apparently, that it's ready to turn the Texas border into Tora Bora. According to the AP, the government will begin deploying unmanned surveillance drones to the U.S.-Mexico border in a revamped attempt to stem the flow of illegal aliens entering the country. So far, Homeland Security has obtained ...

In an effort to assist U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Army has commissioned a company to develop a surveillance airship that's longer than a football field. According to Space.com, Northrop Grumman Corp. recently received a $517 million contract from the Army to build as many as three Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles (LEMV), which can carry 2,500-pounds while hovering 20,000-feet above ...

In 'Minority Report' Tom Cruise's character, John Anderton, has a radical surgery to replace his eyes so that he can get past security systems that scan his retina to identify him. As he's lying in a tub recovering from his black-market procedure, tiny robots sneak into the room and scan his eyes in an attempt to track down the fugitive Future Crime officer. The ability to scan retinas to ...