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Showing posts with label Illegal surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Illegal surveillance. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Schoolchildren 'Routinely Monitored' by CCTV


Surveillance cameras are now installed in most UK schools, despite little warning given to parents or pupils, it was claimed.

As many as 85 per cent of teachers have reported the use of CCTV in their schools and one-in-10 said cameras had even been placed in toilets.

According to the study, some schools are also using other techniques such as fingerprinting, metal detectors, electronic identity cards, eye scanners and facial recognition systems.

Research funded by Salford University said that schools were increasingly becoming a “hotbed for surveillance practices” in the UK as children were subjected to checks for often mundane reasons such as borrowing a book from a library or paying for lunch.'

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'Fingerprint' of Germs Unique to Each Individual


They were able to map a unique bacterial genetic signature left by nine different people, and said this germy DNA lasted though day-to-day temperature changes, humidity and sunlight.

"Each one of us leaves a unique trail of bugs behind as we travel through our daily lives," Noah Fierer, a researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder who led the study, said in a statement.

"While this project is still in its preliminary stages, we think the technique could eventually become a valuable new item in the toolbox of forensic scientists," he said.

Researchers have been learning that people are colonized with billions of microbes, both inside and on the body. And studies have shown that these colonies are unique to the individual and even to the place on the body.'

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Friday, March 12, 2010

Sneaky Anti-Terrorist Cameras to be Used in War on Motorists


Councils routinely use Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology to clamp down on parking offences, they claim.

The device scans 3,000 vehicles an hour and cross-checks in seconds with police, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and insurance databases.

This allows parking tickets to be issued by computer.

Minister for Security and Counter-Terrorism Lord West said the technology is for fighting serious crime. In a parliamentary written answer, he told how it is “used by police forces for intelligence-led policing and investigative purposes”.

Shadow Communities Minister Stewart Jackson said councils are using “spy technology” to penalise motorists for “minor breaches” of parking rules.

“This is yet another sign of the march of the town hall Stasi under Labour,” he said.'

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Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Dissenters To Be Detained As 'Enemy Belligerents'?


Since the establishment media is convinced that tea party members, 9/11 truthers, libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, and basically anyone with a dissenting political opinion is a likely domestic terrorist, they should be celebrating the fact that a new bill would allow the government to detain such people as “enemy belligerents” indefinitely and without trial based on their “suspected activity”.

The “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” introduced by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday with little fanfare, “sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning,” writes the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder.'

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Monday, March 08, 2010

Hundreds More Town Hall Staff to Get Police-style Powers


Almost 1,700 people, also including car park attendants and dog wardens, already have powers to hand out a string of fines and even take photographs of low level offenders under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme.

But the Government has quietly announced it plans to review the scheme with chief police officers to see how it can be expanded further.

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Saturday, February 27, 2010

Dad Branded A Paedophile Over Picture Of Son


Kevin Geraghty-Shewan had taken four-year-old Ben to the Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland to spend £10 the boy had been given as a treat.

He told Sky News: "Ben spotted a children's ride which had a train on it and wanted to have a go because he's obsessed with trains.

"When he got on my wife suggested we take a picture of him.

"I took the picture on my phone and suddenly this security guard came up and told me it wasn't allowed because I could be a paedophile.

"I told him Ben was my own son. But he said I couldn't prove it. He said there is a real problem with paedophiles and that if I didn't like it, he'd call the manager.'

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Monday, February 22, 2010

Big Brother Not Just Spying On Schoolchildren Through Their Laptops

The scandal surrounding kids being spied on at home via webcams in laptops provided by schools extends further than just schoolchildren – four years ago Google admitted that it was implementing similar invasive surveillance technologies that would target all Americans.

In 2006, Google announced that they would use in-built microphones to listen in on user’s background noise, be it television, music or radio – and then direct advertising at them based on their preferences.

“The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject,” reported the Register.'

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Saturday, February 13, 2010

Zero Bin Waste or Get a Fine

An army of snooping bin police will inspect the ­rubbish of millions of families under a sinister Government plan to create “zero waste” in Britain.

Squads of spies will carry out dawn raids to check that householders are not throwing out any rubbish and recycling it all instead.

People failing to comply with the strict rules face hefty fines. The cloak-and-dagger crackdown from the so-called “Talibin” has been launched in six pilot areas, the Daily Express can reveal, and could eventually apply to virtually all UK households. It is the latest draconian scheme to be forced through by Labour ministers who have already masterminded the hated fortnightly ­collections and pay-as-you-throw bin taxes.'

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Surveillance Drones To Zap Protesters Into Submission


Illustrating once again that the prison planet being built around us far outstrips anything Aldous Huxley or George Orwell ever imagined, a Wired News report details how police forces worldwide are preparing to unveil drone aircraft that can not only conduct surveillance of protesters, but also zap them into submission with non-lethal weapons.

As part of their ongoing mission to "protect and serve" the new world order, cops across the world are getting access to military drones which allow them to "carry out surveillance on everyone from protesters and antisocial motorists to fly-tippers," reports Wired News.

The report details how the future of policing will resemble something approaching a combination of They Live and The Running Man, with unmanned drones replacing police helicopters whizzing around everywhere torturing and knocking out anyone who misbehaves.'

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Friday, February 12, 2010

Police State USA: Government want to Track All Cell Phone Users

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.'

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Monday, February 08, 2010

Unlawful Anti-Terror Powers Planned For Use During 2012 Olympics


Police are planning to use an anti-terror law deemed unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights across the country during the London Olympics, The Times has learnt.

Senior officers are considering using Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 at every Underground and railway station nationwide.

Privacy campaigners criticised the proposal yesterday. The powers would enable police to stop and search members of the public without any suspicion that they were involved in terrorism.

The Times understands that this would be the first time that the powers would have been used across such a wide area. Police said that Section 44, which must be granted by the Home Secretary for a designated area, would be used only in the event of an escalated terror threat. Officers are being trained to use behavioural profiling to spot suspicious characters during stop- and-search operations.'

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Monday, February 01, 2010

Spying on Americans: A Multibillion Bonanza for the Telecoms


But in a surprise buried at the end of the 289-page report" Wired disclosed, "the inspector general also reveals that the Obama administration issued a secret rule almost two weeks ago saying it was legal for the FBI to have skirted federal privacy protections."

Investigative journalist Ryan Singel revealed that the "Obama administration retroactively legalized the entire fiasco through a secret ruling from the Office of Legal Counsel nearly two weeks ago".'

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