Spying and Surveillance
A summary of the chilling new anti-terrorism/freedom of speech laws introduced by the Abbott Government in Australia this week. George Orwell must be rolling in his grave… again. “Under the National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014, anyone including, “journalists, whistle-blowers and bloggers” – who “recklessly” disclose “information” … [that] relates to a special intelligence operation” will now face up to 10 years in jail for doing so.
As part of the FBI’s new Next Generation Identification System, a facial recognition database known as the Interstate Photo System will have collected 52 million of our faces by the end of 2015. But that is only a small part of the story. According to Edward Snowden, the NSA has been using advanced facial recognition technology for years.
In 2007, Yahoo fought back against the government’s demand for information on certain overseas customers, saying that the request was over-broad and violated the constitution.
In true “Spy v. Spy” fashion, Turkey is itself is the target of intense surveillance even as it cooperates closely with the U.S.— one NSA document describes the country bluntly as both a “partner and target.”
Brad Templeton argues that we’re all a part of a surveillance apparatus that would be beyond the imagination George Orwell. The problem, he says, is the belief that privacy and security are mutually exclusive. Templeton is a Board Member and Former Chair of Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Track Chair for Computing at Singularity University.
Governments around the world, spearheaded by Uncle Sam, monitor communication via email, phone, social networks, webcam etc. en masse. Even though government surveillance is becoming more and more invasive, there are ways to shield yourself from prying eyes.
In an in-depth interview published by Wired Magazine on Wednesday, Edward Snowden discloses what government activities proved to be the “last straw,” prompting the whistleblower to expose the depths of the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance operation. Speaking with investigative journalist James Bamford—who blew the whistle on a government eavesdropping program when stationed in Hawaii during the Vietnam War and later wrote a number of best-selling books about government secrecy and the NSA—Snowden reveals how a botched U.S. government hacking operation caused Syria’s 2012 internet blackout.
Mass surveillance is now a part of our social, economic and political lives—governments and companies snoop on us like never before. But are we really heading toward an Orwellian future? When George Orwell finished work on 1984 he was already a man without a future. Fading rapidly from tuberculosis, his most celebrated novel was to be his last. He died shortly after its publication. Yet more than half a century later, his dystopian vision of the future is alive and in rude good health.
Nearly half of the U.S. government’s terrorist suspects have no connection to any known terrorist groups, The Intercept reported on Tuesday.
Australia is now more deeply embedded strategically and militarily in US global military planning, especially in Asia, than ever before…“The Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap outside Alice Springs remains the most important US intelligence base outside the US itself.”
The virtually inescapable government surveillance has impaired if not eliminated the ability of news-gatherers and attorneys to communicate confidentially with their sources and their clients.
As a matter of faith, some people believe that God can see and hear everything. But as a matter of fact, the U.S. government now has the kind of surveillance powers formerly attributed only to a supreme being.
The U.S. National Security Agency was given legal authority to gather communications covering nearly the entire globe, the Washington Post has revealed. A 2010 classified document leaked by Edward Snowden and obtained by the Post shows that the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, gave the NSA allowance under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to intercept information that “concerns foreign powers” in all countries except the four that, with the United States, make up the “Five Eyes” alliance—the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The list of the 193 countries includes Afghanistan, Bolivia, France, Israel, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Palestinian Authority.
Top security experts – including the highest-level government officials and the top university experts – say that mass surveillance actually increases terrorism and hurts security. And they say that our government failed to stop the Boston bombing because they were too busy spying on millions of innocent Americans instead of focusing on actual bad guys.
WikiLeaks has grown stronger over the last two years by building its database of leaked documents and entering into agreements with 130 media outlets, despite attempts by the US government to build a legal case against the organization and founder, Julian Assange.
