You're Going to Need a Warrant For That, Officer

FBI Tracking Device found on American citizen's car
without a warrant. (Source)

Sandra Fulton
ACLU

Last year Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, found a strange device attached to his car. When he posted a photo of it online, the FBI showed up at his home two days later. They wanted their GPS tracking device back. The FBI had been tracking Afifi’s movement for months without his knowing about it. Moreover, the agency did so without a warrant and apparently based on the flimsy rationale that his friend wrote a blog they felt was questionable. This type of warrantless tracking seems to be an increasingly common government practice.

Following this incident, as well as revelations about how much location information Apple and Google are storing about their customers, there has been a significant public outcry over the privacy of location information. Congress has held a number of hearings on the topic and today Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced companion bills in the Senate and House, respectively, to protect location privacy. The bills not only require law enforcement to get a warrant based on probable cause before accessing location information, but also regulate the use of this information by businesses. With location tracking cases popping up all over the country, this would provide a strong and clear national standard for law enforcement.

The NutriSmart system would put RFIDs into your food for enhanced information

Katie Gatto
PHYSORG

RFID, short for Radio Frequency ID, tags have found their way into a wide variety of applications. These pellets, which are often roughly the same size as a grain of rice, can help us to be reunited with our lost pets, keep towels inside the hotel, and keep big box stores shipping the right boxes to the right places at the right time.

In time you may even find them inside your own stomach. At least they will be there if Hannes Harms has anything to say about it. Mr. Harms, who is currently a design engineering student at the Royal College of Art in London, has designed the NutriSmart system. The system is based on edible RFID tags that will tell you more about your food then you ever wanted to know.


NutriSmart from HannesRemote on Vimeo.

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Feds to Mandate Black Box on all New Cars

Editor's Note: See, the Patriot Act did create innovative technology. Congress says let's keep the surveillance-industrial complex strong for at least another 4 years.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars

The Feds will mandate next month that all new cars be fitted with a black box, according to news reports. So-called black boxes record information about speed, seat belt use and brake application.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been involved in the use of black boxes since their introduction. In 2006, the safety administration encouraged but did not require automobile manufacturers to install the systems and also did not set a single standard for the way data would be recorded, according to the New York Times.

Apple, Google to attend hearing on mobile privacy

Editor's Note:  More political theater to delude the sheeple.  Do you really think these people are concerned about your privacy?  Don't believe what they say, believe what they actually do!  

A customer looks at an iPhone 4 at the Apple
store in Palo Alto, California
© AFP/Getty Images/File David Paul Morris

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US lawmakers have invited Apple, Facebook and Google to attend a hearing on mobile phones and privacy on Thursday -- the second Capitol Hill appearance in a week for executives from Apple and Google.

Senator Jay Rockefeller said the hearing of the Senate Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance Subcommittee would focus on "industry practices with respect to online mobile data collection and usage."

"The hearing will also explore the possible role of the federal government in protecting consumers in the mobile marketplace and promoting their privacy," the Democrat from West Virginia said.

FBI using GPS to track activists (Video)

Youtube


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Big Brother Gov't Seeks to Tax and Track All Drivers

Dees Illustration

Eric Blair
Activist Post

"Oh, say can you see...the land of the fee, and home of the slave?" Americansreally better wake up before it's too late. Perhaps it already is. 

Today Pete Kasperowicz of The Hill reported that the Obama administration, following a March Congressional Budget Office report, has "floated" the idea of taxing drivers per mile.  Kasperowicz writes: 

The plan is a part of the administration’s 'Transportation Opportunities Act,' an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly. 

...Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations. (my emphasis) 

If this doesn't alert you to the direction of America, I don't know what will. The government wants to tax Americans for simply leaving their homes, and track their cars via mandatory GPS chips.

US lawmakers ask Apple about tracking feature

Senator Al Franken
© AFP/File Saul Loeb

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US lawmakers are seeking an explanation from Apple following a claim that iPhone and iPads are constantly logging the location of the devices and storing the information in a hidden file.

Senator Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, sent a letter to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs on Wednesday and Representative Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, sent Jobs a letter on Thursday.

The letters came after a pair of British security researchers, Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, said the position-logging feature is contained in iOS 4, the operating system for the iPhone and iPad released in June of last year.

Feds to Supreme Court: Allow Warrantless GPS Monitoring

Navstar GPS Wikimedia Commons

David Kravets
Wired

The Obama administration is urging the Supreme Court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.

The Justice Department, saying “a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements (.pdf) from one place to another,” is demanding the justices undo a lower court decision that reversed the conviction and life sentence of a cocaine dealer whose vehicle was tracked via GPS for a month without a court warrant.

The petition, if accepted by the justices, arguably would make it the biggest Fourth Amendment case in a decade — one weighing the collision of privacy, technology and the Constitution.

In 2001, the justices said thermal-imaging devices used to detect marijuana-growing operationsinside a house amounted to a search requiring a court warrant. The justices are likely to accept the government’s petition to clear conflicting lower-court rulings on when warrants are required for GPS tracking.

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10 Ways We Are Being Tracked, Traced, and Databased

Are technological advances infringing on our right to privacy? 

Activist Post

The war on terror is a worldwide endeavor that has spurred massive investment into the global surveillance industry - which now seems to be becoming a war on "liberty and privacy."  Given all of the new monitoring technology being implemented, the uproar over warrantless wiretaps now seems moot.  High-tech, first-world countries  are being tracked, traced, and databased, literally around every corner.  Governments, aided by private companies, are gathering a mountain of information on average citizens who so far seem willing to trade liberty for supposed security.  Here are just some of the ways the matrix of data is being collected:

• GPS -- Global positioning chips are now appearing in everything from U.S. passports, cell phones, to cars.  More common uses include tracking employees, and for all forms of private investigation.  Apple recently announced they are collecting the precise location of iPhone users via GPS for public viewing in addition to spying on users in other ways.

• Internet -- Internet browsers are recording your every move forming detailed cookies on your activities.  The NSA has been exposed as having cookies on their site that don't expire until 2035.  Major search engines know where you surfed last summer, and online purchases are databased, supposedly for advertising and customer service uses.  IP addresses are collected and even made public.  Controversial websites can be flaggedinternally by government sites, as well as re-routing all traffic to block sites the government wants to censor. It has now been fully admitted that social networks provide NO privacy to users, while technologies for real-time social network monitoring are already being used.  The Cybersecurity Act attempts to legalize the collection and exploitation of your personal information.  Apple's iPhone also has browsing data recorded and stored.  All of this despite the overwhelming opposition to cybersurveillance by citizens.

• RFID  -- Forget your credit cards which are meticulously tracked, or the membership cards for things so insignificant as movie rentals which require your SSN.  Everyone has Costco, CVS, grocery-chain cards, and a wallet or purse full of many more.  RFID  "proximity cards" take tracking to a new level in uses ranging from loyalty cards, student ID, physical access, and computer network access.  Latest developments include an RFID powder developed by Hitachi, for which the multitude of uses are endless -- perhaps including tracking hard currency so we can't even keep cash undetected. (Also see microchips below).

• Traffic cameras -- License plate recognition has been used to remotely automate duties of the traffic police in the United States, but have been proven to have dual use in England such as to mark activists under the Terrorism Act.  Perhaps the most common use will be to raise money and shore up budget deficits via traffic violations, but uses may descend to such "Big Brother" tactics as monitors telling pedestrians not to litter as talking cameras already do in the UK.

• Computer cameras and microphones -- The fact that laptops -- contributed by taxpayers -- spied on public school children (at home) is outrageous.  Years ago Google began officially to use computer "audio fingerprinting" for advertising uses.  They have admitted to working with the NSA, the premier surveillance network in the world.  Private communications companies already have been exposed routing communications to the NSA.  Now, keyword tools -- typed and spoken -- link to the global security matrix.

• Public sound surveillance -- This technology has come a long way from only being able to detect gunshots in public areas, to now listening in to whispers for dangerous "keywords." This technology has been launched in Europe to "monitor conversations" to detect "verbal aggression" in public places.  Sound Intelligence is the manufacturer of technology to analyze speech, and their website touts how itcan easily be integrated into other systems. 

• Biometrics -- The most popular biometric authentication scheme employed for the last few years has been Iris Recognition. The main applications are entry control, ATMs and Government programs. Recently, network companies and governments have utilized biometric authentication including fingerprint analysis, iris recognition, voice recognition, or combinations of these for use in National identification cards.

• DNA -- Blood from babies has been taken for all people under the age of 38.  In England, DNA was sent to secret databases from routine heel prick tests.  Several reports have revealed covertPentagon databases of DNA for "terrorists" and now DNA from all American citizens is databased.Digital DNA is now being used as well to combat hackers.

• Microchips -- Microsoft's HealthVault and VeriMed partnership is to create RFID implantable microchips.  Microchips for tracking our precious pets is becoming commonplace and serves to condition us to accept putting them in our children in the future.  The FDA has already approved this technology for humans and is marketing it as a medical miracle, again for our safety.

• Facial recognition -- Anonymity in public is over.  Admittedly used at Obama's campaign events, sporting events, and most recently at theG8/G20 protests in Canada. This technology is also harvesting data from Facebook images and surely will be tied into the street "traffic" cameras.

All of this is leading to Predictive Behavior Technology -- It is not enough to have logged and charted where we have been; the surveillance state wants to know where we are going through psychological profiling.  It's been marketed for such uses as blocking hackers.  Things seem to have advanced to a point where a truly scientific Orwellian world is at hand.  It is estimated that computers know to a 93% accuracy where you will be, before you make your first move.   Nanotech is slated to play a big role in going even further as scientists are using nanoparticles to directly influence behavior and decision making.   

Many of us are asking:  What would someone do with all of this information to keep us tracked, traced, and databased?  It seems the designers have no regard for the right to privacy and desire to become the Controllers of us all.

Related Activist Post Article:
10 Ways You're Being Fleeced by Banks

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Oil change reignites debate over GPS trackers

Comment:  As reported by Raw Story in early October in the article, Student finds tracking device on his car; FBI demands it back, the mainstream media is now picking up on the story as the legal issues involved in the case gain traction in the courts.  It is time for them to begin spinning the story to defend the government's position.

SAN FRANCISCO – Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old computer salesman and community college student, took his car in for an oil change earlier this month and his mechanic spotted an odd wire hanging from the undercarriage.

The wire was attached to a strange magnetic device that puzzled Afifi and the mechanic. They freed it from the car and posted images of it online, asking for help in identifying it.

Two days later, FBI agents arrived at Afifi's Santa Clara apartment and demanded the return of their property — a global positioning system tracking device now at the center of a raging legal debate over privacy rights.

One federal judge wrote that the widespread use of the device was straight out of George Orwell's novel, "1984".

"By holding that this kind of surveillance doesn't impair an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy, the panel hands the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives," wrote Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a blistering dissent in which a three-judge panel from his court ruled that search warrants weren't necessary for GPS tracking.

But other federal and state courts have come to the opposite conclusion.

Law enforcement advocates for the devices say GPS can eliminate time-consuming stakeouts and old-fashioned "tails" with unmarked police cars. The technology had a starring role in the HBO cops-and-robbers series "The Wire" and police use it to track every type of suspect — from terrorist to thieves stealing copper from air conditioners.

That investigators don't need a warrant to use GPS tracking devices in California troubles privacy advocates, technophiles, criminal defense attorneys and others.

The federal appeals court based in Washington D.C. said in August that investigators must obtain a warrant for GPS in tossing out the conviction and life sentence of Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner convicted of operating a cocaine distribution ring. That court concluded that the accumulation of four-weeks worth of data collected from a GPS on Jones' Jeep amounted to a government "search" that required a search warrant.

Judge Douglas Ginsburg said watching Jones' Jeep for an entire month rather than trailing him on one trip made all the difference between surveilling a suspect on public property and a search needing court approval.

"First, unlike one's movements during a single journey, the whole of one's movements over the course of a month is not actually exposed to the public because the likelihood anyone will observe all those movements is effectively nil," Ginsburg wrote. The state high courts of New York, Washington and Oregon have ruled similarly.

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Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

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