Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

Facebook has gone rogue, drunk on founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of world domination. It’s time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed.

Facebook used to be a place to share photos and thoughts with friends and family and maybe play a few stupid games that let you pretend you were a mafia don or a homesteader. It became a very useful way to connect with your friends, long-lost friends and family members. Even if you didn’t really want to keep up with them.

Soon everybody — including your uncle Louie and that guy you hated from your last job — had a profile.

And Facebook realized it owned the network.'

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Police forces to Be Equipped With Mobile Fingerprint Scanners

Every police force in England and Wales will soon start using mobile fingerprint scanners to check suspects' identity in the street. Security officers on patrol will be able to use the devices, which are about the size of a mobile phone, to check the fingerprints against national records.

Up to 3,000 devices will be distributed to each of the 43 forces across England and Wales after senior officers claimed they will save hours of police time and speed up inquiries.

The National Policing Improvement Agency has signed a three-year contract worth £9million with U.S. firm Cogent System to provide the devices. Deputy Chief Constable Peter Goodman, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: 'This new technology will allow police to more easily confirm the identity of suspects on the street without having to arrest them and return to the police station to confirm who they are - as we currently have to do.'

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Facial Recognition Phone Application Described as a 'Stalker's Dream'

A prototype camera phone application that enables the user to find names and numbers of complete strangers has been labelled a 'stalker's dream'.
The application, called Recognizr, has been developed to find personal information through facial recognition software.
The user simply has to take a picture of a person and hit the 'Recognize' button.

The photo is then compared to shots on social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter before personal information, which can include phone numbers, addresses and email addresses, is sent to the user.
The software developer, Swedish company The Astonishing Tribe, is currently testing the software, which works on phones with a camera of five or more megapixel resolution.

Security experts have blasted the new software for enabling burglars to find out where targets live.
Simon Davies from Privacy International said: 'It takes the dangers that already exist and increases them infinitely.'

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Echelon Computers Can't Cope With Bad Lines

Who remembers Echelon, the top-secret telecommunications spy network said to be run by the US and allied Anglophone nations, and to be triggered as soon as certain key words or phrases are spoken on the phone?

A lot of you, we'd guess. So it's interesting to note that Pentagon boffins have now stated that perhaps the most intriguing reputed capability of Echelon - the ability to automatically pick out words of interest and flag that conversation up as important to its human masters - doesn't work. Or anyway, it only works on good, clear lines: a noisy or degraded signal frustrates it.'

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Fourth Amendment Trashed As Airport Tyranny Hits The Streets

Tampa police, TSA and Homeland Security agents are teaming up “to keep your family safe,” according to ABC News, by implementing random searches at bus depots, in yet another example of how airport tyranny is being rolled out onto the streets.

“Bomb sniffing dogs, pat-downs and metal detector wanding, gloved inspections of hand-held bags” are all now going to become a routine part of everyday life as the Fourth Amendment is completely trashed in the name of “security”.'

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Police State USA: TSA to Swab Airline Passengers' Hands in Search For Explosives

To the list of instructions you hear at airport checkpoints, add this: "Put your palms forward, please."

The Transportation Security Administration soon will begin randomly swabbing passengers' hands at checkpoints and airport gates to test them for traces of explosives.

Previously, screeners swabbed some carry-on luggage and other objects as they searched for the needle in the security haystack -- components of terrorist bombs in an endless stream of luggage.

But after the Christmas Day attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit, Michigan, the TSA began a program of swabbing passengers' hands, which could be contaminated by explosive materials, experts say. The TSA will greatly expand the swabbing in the coming weeks, the agency said.'

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Michael Savage - New World Order Attack in Full Gear and Liberties to be Abolished!

Israeli Mind-Scanner May Take Over US Airports

As part of stringent measures to beef up airport security, US authorities may use an Israeli-made mind-reading scanner that allegedly predicts whether a passenger is a potential threat or not.

The Transportation and Safety Administration (TSA) and the Homeland Security are considering the installment of a controversial mind-reading system, that was recently developed by the Israeli-based WeCU Technologies, in all American airports, AP reported on Thursday.

The device, which functions by blending high computer technology and behavioral psychology, is essentially designed to "get inside the evildoers head" without the subject's knowledge and prevent him or her from placing the lives of fellow travelers in jeopardy.'

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The Great Airport Scanner Scam

Scan, baby, scan. That’s the mantra among politicians at all levels in the wake of the thwarted terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet. According to conventional wisdom, the would-be “underwear bomber” could have been stopped by airport security if he’d been put through a full-body scanner, which would have revealed the cache of explosives attached to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s groin.'

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New Zealand's Cyber Spies Win New Powers

New cyber-monitoring measures have been quietly introduced giving police and Security Intelligence Service officers the power to monitor all aspects of someone's online life.

The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand.'

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Big Brother Britain: £380 a Minute Spent on Tracking Your Every Click Online

An astonishing £380 a minute will be spent on surveillance in a massive expansion of the Big Brother state.

The £200million-a-year sum will give officials access to details of every internet click made by every citizen - on top of the email and telephone records already available.
It is a 1,700 per cent increase on the cost of the current surveillance regime.'

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Homeland Security Plans to Scan Air Travelers’ Bodily Functions

CNN's Jeanne Meserve described DHS's Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) as "marrying a lot of existing technology, some of it medical," to measure breathing, heart rate, blinking, fidgeting, and other bodily functions of passengers at airports.

The idea is essentially to create a remote lie detector, where sensors placed at airport security screening areas would be able to monitor a passenger's physical reaction to questions being asked by screeners.

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Rights Go Out the Window to Create a Seamless 2010 Olympics Circus

In the flush of bidding for and winning the right to host the Olympics, nobody talked about how staging them might mean limiting civil liberties.

It's only now, with seven months until the 2010 Winter Games begin, that organizers and compliant politicians are revealing plans to make it more difficult to exercise our fundamental constitutional rights to free speech, peaceful assembly and free expression.

For months now, police have been knocking on the doors of known activists and tracking them down in their neighbourhoods to "chat" about their Olympic protest plans. But that's only part of it.

An omnibus bylaw that staff insists is "critical to the success of the Games" goes to Vancouver city council today.

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The bylaw relaxes rules for Games-related events, limits free expression and speech in public and private spaces, and grants sweeping discretionary powers to Mayor Gregor Robertson and City Manager Penny Ballem to do whatever is "warranted," "necessary or desirable" to ensure the Olympics' "safety and security" and "protection of commercial rights."

Hundreds Of ISPs Refuse To Go Along With Big Brother Spy System

A group of over 300 internet service providers and telecommunications firms is fighting back against the British government’s plans to monitor all emails, phone calls and internet activity nationwide.

The London Internet Exchange (LINX), which represents some 330 companies, including BT, Virgin and Carphone Warehouse, says that the government is misleading the public about the extent to which it plans to monitor their communications and internet activity.

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Spy Bugs May be Deployed for 2012 Olympics

BRITISH police are studying Chinese-style surveillance tactics as they prepare security for the 2012 London Olympics, a leaked Scotland Yard report has revealed.

The report, marked “restricted”, reveals that among the “Big Brother” tactics deployed at last summer’s Beijing Games was the installation of miniature microphones in thousands of taxis.

The bugs transmitted passengers’ conversations to a police control room. There, officers could activate disabling devices to stop the cabs if they suspected criminal activity.

In another operation, athletes, visitors and journalists were believed to have been tracked by tiny microchips on their tickets and passes.

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Jacqui Smith Says ID Cards Could be Available From High Street Shops

High street chemists and photographic shops are in talks with the Government about taking photographs and fingerprints for the national identity card scheme, Jacqui Smith will announce today.

The move comes as figures show that the cost of the project has risen by more than £200 million, to more than £5.3 billion.

The Home Secretary will also announce that residents of Greater Manchester will be the first to be able to volunteer for identity cards.

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Your Conversations Are Being Intercepted: The Truth About Project ECHELON

In a sleepy suburb on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Margaret Newsham is attempting to lead a normal life away from the days where she worked at a giant listening station at RAF base Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, England. Despite this, she is unable to escape her past.

She sleeps with a loaded gun under her bed and is protected by her 120-pound German shepherd, who is trained to guard and attack. At any time, certain factions in the NSA and the CIA may attempt to silence her for her role in the most extensive espionage network on earth, capable of tapping into millions of phone calls an hour: project ECHELON.

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