It’s not just for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars anymore. The Department of Homeland Security is interested in a camera package that can peek in on almost four square miles of (constitutionally protected) American territory for long, long stretches of time.
Homeland Security doesn’t have a particular system in mind. Right now, it’s just soliciting “industry feedback” on what a formal call for such a “Wide Area Surveillance System” might look like. But it’s the latest indication of how powerful military surveillance technology, developed to find foreign insurgents and terrorists, is migrating to the home front.
The Department of Homeland Security says it’s interested in a system that can see between five to 10 square kilometers — that’s between two and four square miles, roughly the size of Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood — in its “persistent mode.” By “persistent,” it means the cameras should stare at the area in question for an unspecified number of hours to collect what the military likes to call “pattern of life” data — that is, what “normal” activity looks like for a given area. Persistence typically depends on how long the vehicle carrying the camera suite can stay aloft; DHS wants something that can fit into a manned P-3 Orion spy plane or a Predator drone — of which it has a couple. When not in “persistent mode,” the cameras ought to be able to see much, much further: “long linear areas, tens to hundreds of kilometers in extent, such as open, remote borders.”
If it’s starting to sound reminiscent of the spy tools the military has used in Iraq and Afghanistan, it should. Homeland Security wants the video collected by the system to beam down in “near real time” — 12 seconds or quicker — to a “control room (T) or to a control room and beyond line of sight (BLOS) ruggedized mobile receiver on the ground,” just as military spy gear does. The camera should shift to infrared mode for nighttime snooping, and contain “automated, real time, motion detection capability that cues a spotter imager for target identification.” Tests for the system will take place in Nogales, Arizona.
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In a rare defeat for law enforcement, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed on Monday to bar police from installing GPS technology to track suspects without first getting a judge’s approval. The justices made clear it wouldn’t be their final word on increasingly advanced high-tech surveillance of Americans.
Indicating they will be monitoring the growing use of such technology, five justices said they could see constitutional and privacy problems with police using many kinds of electronic surveillance for long-term tracking of citizens’ movements without warrants.
While the justices differed on legal rationales, their unanimous outcome was an unusual setback for government and police agencies grown accustomed to being given leeway in investigations in post-Sept. 11 America, including by the Supreme Court. The views of at least the five justices raised the possibility of new hurdles down the road for police who want to use high-tech surveillance of suspects, including various types of GPS technology.
“The Supreme Court’s decision is an important one because it sends a message that technological advances cannot outpace the American Constitution,” said Donald Tibbs, a professor at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University. “The people will retain certain rights even when technology changes how the police are able to conduct their investigations.”
A GPS device installed by police on Washington, D.C., nightclub owner Antoine Jones’ Jeep and tracked for four weeks helped link him to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before an appeals court overturned his conviction.
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It’s a good thing Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World reporters are out of business, because they would have loved the hacking opportunity recently uncovered by two security professionals.
HD Moore and Mike Tuchen of Rapid7 discovered that they could remotely infiltrate conference rooms in some of the top venture capital and law firms across the country, as well as pharmaceutical and oil companies and even the boardroom of Goldman Sachs — all by simply calling in to unsecured videoconferencing systems that they found by doing a scan of the internet.
“These are literally some of the world’s most important boardrooms — this is where their most critical meetings take place — and there could be silent attendees in all of them,” Moore told the New York Times.
Moore found he was able to listen in on meetings, remotely steer a camera around rooms as well as zoom in on items in a room to discern paint flecks on a wall or read proprietary information on documents.
Despite the fact that the most expensive systems offer encryption, password protection and the ability to lock down the movement of cameras, the researchers found that administrators were setting them up outside firewalls and failing to configure security features to keep out intruders. Some systems, for example, were set up to automatically accept inbound calls so that users didn’t need to press an “accept” button when a caller dialed into a videoconference, opening the way for anyone to call in and eavesdrop on a meeting.
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Secrets: the currency of spies around the world.
The rise of social media, hash-tags, forums, blogs and online news sites has revealed a new kind of secret — those hiding in plain sight. The CIA calls all this information “open source” material, and it’s changing the way America’s top spy agency does business.
NPR recently got a rare behind-the-scenes look at the CIA’s Open Source Center. It operates on the down-low, though it deals with public material. We aren’t allowed to tell you where the Open Source Center is. All we can say is that it’s housed in an unmarked and unremarkable office building just off a nondescript, busy street.
My producer and I were asked to leave our phones in our car. We were ushered inside to a small room with half a dozen analysts working at cubicles, their eyes fixed to computer screens. There was a bank of television monitors on the wall projecting news from around the world, which gave it kind of a newsroom feel.
The managing editor is Glen; he gave no last name. He pointed out a poster on the back wall made to look like a 1950s comic book, and in one corner it read, “There’s no escaping the information highway.”
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A year and a half ago, a Silicon Valley community college student wound up in the cross hairs of a shadowy but common law enforcement practice now at the center of an unfolding legal drama in the U.S. Supreme Court.
On his way to school, Yasir Afifi, an Arab-American, stopped for an oil change and later discovered that the GPS tracking device he found on the underbelly of his car had been put there by the FBI without a warrant.
Now the Supreme Court is expected to decide any day whether the government has a right to use that tactic without a search warrant in a case that highlights the tensions between law enforcement needs and the privacy implications of new technologies that can track our every move.
In a Washington, D.C., case, the Supreme Court is considering whether warrantless GPS tracking violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable search and seizure, one of the core rules in any criminal case. The scope of the court’s ruling could have far-reaching implications when everything from smart phones to dashboard gadgets offer authorities a generous menu for tracking suspects.
The Obama administration and law enforcement groups say GPS tracking is no different from ordinary police surveillance on public streets. There is no constitutional barrier to GPS tracking in public places, they argue.
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The United States Government’s cabinet-level national security agency, Department of Homeland Security has ensured the keeping of tabs on who is saying what and why. The Department’s National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative is going out of its way to spend time, money and resources on watching over those that help bring news to the masses.
The NOC and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) collects personal information of news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audiences situationally aware and informed.”Surveillance is extended to what foreign officials say and for what purpose. Apart from monitoring ‘foreign officials’, it has been revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is mainly tracking media stories that “reflect adversely” on the US government.
Through these media stories, profiles of journalists are gathered, why these journalists cover and write particular stories, and the effect of those stories are analysed. Also included in the roster of those subjected to the spying are government officials, domestic or not, who make public statements, private sector employees that do the same and “persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest,” which opens the possibilities even wider.
Whereas the Department of Defence is charged with military actions abroad, the Department of Homeland Security works in the civilian sphere to protect the United States within, at, and outside its borders. Its stated goal is to prepare for, prevent, and respond to domestic emergencies, particularly terrorism.
Immigration, naturalisation
On March 1, 2003, DHS absorbed the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and assumed its duties. In doing so, it divided the enforcement and services functions into two separate and new agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Citizenship and Immigration Services.
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A 20-year-old man is facing 24 counts of voyeurism after police found hidden cameras in his bathroom and a bedroom.
Paul Zajac, 20, was charged with 24 counts of voyeuristic recording of another person.
Zajac first appeared in court in April 2011 after a woman found a hidden camera in the bathroom of the home they both lived in.
Police say he was living with his pregnant girlfriend and her family in a home on Brook Street in South Windsor.
South Windsor police said he confessed to hiding the camera below the base board heater in the bathroom, and officers report finding evidence it was frequently turned on.
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Canadian law enforcement officials have never been hindered by having to abide by the country’s current privacy laws, say documents revealed Wednesday, yet Ottawa remains adamant police need more online surveillance powers.
Vancouver-based advocacy group OpenMedia.ca published details of an internal Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) email message to its members who represent more than 90% of the country’s police community. The message, OpenMedia says, asks CACP members to provide examples, even those with “confidential operational information,” of investigations thwarted by Canada’s privacy legislation.
The goal of the call for case studies would appear to be to justify the federal government’s proposed lawful access legislation. Originally included as part of the omnibus crime bill Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to pass if elected while campaigning last spring, the law would expand police powers to demand personal customer data from Internet service providers, who would in turn be required to make costly investments in surveillance technology.
Ottawa plans to reintroduce the legislation soon, following multiple unsuccessful attempts over the past decade. The proposed laws – C-50, C-51 and C-52 – have garnered widespread opposition from Members of Parliament, federal and provincial privacy commissioners as well as leading academics.
Opponents say the new laws would allow police to obtain personal information on a suspect whenever they wished without first obtaining a warrant, while current laws only allow police to bypass a warrant in emergency situations.
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Earlier this week we discussed the case of a St. Louis City Treasurer’s Office employee who is accused of timesheet fraud. Federal investigators followed the man around after hearing reports that he was collecting a salary despite not doing any work. After the investigation the man was charged with wire fraud and federal program theft. The main question that remains is whether the evidence against the employee was obtained illegally.
The government is not allowed to use evidence against a person that is the result of an unreasonable search and seizure. It is unclear whether the FBI’s decision to clip a GPS tracking device to the man’s car constituted an illegal search and the issue is currently before the Supreme Court.
FBI agents tracked the man’s car movements and compared the movements with his timesheets. Although the admissibility of the GPS tracking information is unclear, challenging the validity of a search is one of first things that an experienced criminal defense attorney will consider when devising a comprehensive defense strategy against federal charges. The inadmissibility of key evidence may destroy the government’s case and result in the dismissal of charges against a defendant.
It is unclear what the government’s case against the man will consist of if the GPS evidence is deemed inadmissible. There is also a separate issue of whether the man’s job was necessary in the first place. It appears that the treasurer’s office outsourced many of the functions of the man’s job. The Post Dispatch also reported that the man has not been suspended despite the federal charges against him.
The man is also accused of embezzling $250,000 in public funds from the Paideia Academy charter school which he used to run.
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13 Undercover gets a hidden camera inside a Houston constable’s office and wait till you hear what they said when they didn’t know we were listening.
The FBI has made the arrests, and now 13 Undercover has the video even the feds haven’t seen.
Long before the FBI moved in, 13 Undercover was already watching Precinct One by surveillance of deputies using our hidden cameras. And we got an earful. We want to warn you, too. Some of the language here may not be right for kids.
Let’s take a trip downtown, headquarters — Precinct One Constable Jack Abercia. Wouldn’t you have loved to have been a fly on their wall? You can, thanks to our 13 Undercover hidden camera.
“This man is gonna stand so far back from that s*** like he didn’t know what the f*** was going on,” Michael Butler says on hidden camera.
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Remote-control specialists Interactive Toy Concepts will offer two new radio-controlled vehicles whose names leave little doubt as to their purpose – the ‘Wi-Spi’ and the ‘Intruder.’
Both are controlled via smartphone applications and deliver a live stream of video back to the user’s screen.
A company representative said that the Intruder was, ‘perfect if you want to spy on your colleague in the next cube,’ according to electronics site EETimes.
The smartphone app can also record videos and rapidly upload them to Twitter and Facebook.
The gadgets are due on the market in autumn 2012, priced at £80 for ‘Wi-Spi’ and £65 for the intruder.
Both are controlled via wi-fi – and thus will, at least have a limited range.
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That company-issued cellphone, laptop or tablet could be keeping tabs on you away from the office.
More employers nationally are adopting technology to monitor their employees’ productivity, efficiency and even whereabouts, with the scrutiny going beyond merely placing GPS units in company vehicles.
“Too much snooping is going on,” said George Barrett, a civil rights attorney in Nashville. “Big Brother has arrived.”
Some states have passed laws requiring employers to notify employees of surveillance, but Tennessee is not among them, said Elizabeth A. Alexander, a partner in Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein’s local office.
“The law hasn’t been fully developed on the issue of how far employers can go,” she said.
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