Tag: surveillancestate

An update on Snowden

i wonder why we haven’t seen more snowden reveals in a while.

THE MESSAGE ARRIVES on my “clean machine,” a MacBook Air loaded only with a sophisticated encryption package. “Change in plans. Be in the lobby of the Hotel ______ by 13:00. Bring a book and wait for ES to find you.” ES is Edward Snowden, the most wanted man in the world. For almost 9 months, I have been trying to set up an interview with him—traveling to Berlin, Rio de Janeiro twice, and New York multiple times to talk with the handful of his confidants who can arrange a meeting. Among other things, I want to answer a burning question: What drove Snowden to leak 100Ks of top-secret documents, revelations that have laid bare the vast scope of the government’s domestic surveillance programs?

Internet of Cops

FirstNet—pitched as a state of the art communications network for paramedics, firemen and law enforcement at the federal, state and local level—will give cops on the streets unprecedented technological powers, and possibly hand over even more intimate data about our lives to the higher ends of the government and its intelligence agencies. The system has already been tested in a handful of states, and 2014 will likely see it rolled out further.

apparently it’s going to be called DonutNet

DARPA Skynet

poindexter tried to build what the nsa has today. of course he was fired for it, but nsa still built it.

From 1983 to 1993 DARPA spent over $1B on a program called the Strategic Computing Initiative. The agency’s goal was to push the boundaries of computers, artificial intelligence, and robotics to build something that, in hindsight, looks strikingly similar to the dystopian future of the Terminator movies. They wanted to build Skynet.

Deaf Surveillance

this is very clever. turn a disadvantage (no hearing) into an asset (no distractions from chatty coworkers & noise). bravo!

In the fall of 2012, the governor of Oaxaca decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. He hired 20 people who could not hear or speak to monitor footage from the state capital’s 230 surveillance cameras. The move didn’t just provide to jobs to people who normally can’t get them in Mexico. It also improved the city’s surveillance system.The video footage is silent, and deaf monitors are both capable of reading lips and less easily distracted than officers who can hear by other things happening in the command center.