surveillance

The latest installment of the ongoing slow release of the whistleblower Edward Snowden's cache of 1.7 million stolen NSA documents has revealed over 1,000 targets of the NSA's and GCHQ's international spying efforts between 2008 and 2011. The targets include high-ranking officials in allied nations, economic regulatory bodies, humanitarian aid agencies, and -- seemingly as an afterthought -- individuals being watched for hypothesized ties to terrorism. These particular documents were reported Friday by the American newspaper New York Times, Britain's the Guardian and Germany's Der Spiegel.

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Modern life is recorded on a million (give or take) surveillance cameras, and those who live in particularly large metropolitan locations are often under the watchful eye of cameras mounted all over the place -- on buildings, street posts, inside stores. You're not likely to notice many of them, and some people don't like that idea. That's where a concept wearable called the surveillance spaulder comes in.

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A new analysis of the Snowden papers by German magazine Der Spiegel shows GCHQ--the English counterpart to the US's NSA--served false copies of LinkedIn and Slashdot pages to install malware on a few target individuals' computers. This latest revelation is not a mass spying program, but a server-heavy, speed-dependent initiative to spy on key individuals deemed to be assets by the GCHQ. Targets included employees of GRX providers Comfon, Mach (now owned by Syniverse), and nine members of OPEC, the global oil cartel.

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The NSA directorship might revert from a military to a civilian post, The Hill has reported. The Pentagon "has already drawn up a list of possible civilian candidates for the next NSA director," the report said, although "no formal decision has been made yet." The NSA directorship would relinquish authority over Cyber Command, and a separate military officer would be appointed to Cyber Command. If the report is correct, the change would represent a planet-shaking change at the NSA, which since 1971 by law has been directed by military officers.

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Google's executive chairman Erc Schmidt has publicly rebuked the NSA over recent revelations the US spy agency has tapped the company's international data cables to conduct surveillance on hundreds of millions of people around the world, including most of the American Internet user base. He has registered formal complaints with the NSA and members of Congress. His statements turn up the heat on an ever-widening public sphere investigation of the NSA's digital mass spying activities.

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The latest revelation to come out of the famous Snowden papers is that England and mainland Europe all spy on citizens in the same way the NSA does. According to yet another new analysis of the papers--this time by England's The Guardian--spy agencies in multiple nations collaborate with privately run telecommunications companies to gather data on private citizens on a mass scale.

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Samsung Techwin, maker of security and surveillance devices, has unveiled the SmartCam HD PRO, a WiFi IP surveillance camera offering 1080p Full HD video recording and a 128-degree ultra-wide-angle lens. With the SmartCam HD, users will be able to remotely monitor various premises with a mobile device via an Android and iOS app.

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According to a set of secretive documents reportedly authored by the NSA and delivered to the public by Der Spiegel, the security agency is or has been able to access vital data on three of the world's most popular operating systems with relative ease. These documents suggest that Apple iPhones, Google Android devices, and BlackBerry devices are all able to be tapped by the NSA. These documents suggest that NSA taps of these devices are able to reveal "most sensitive data" including SMS traffic, location information, notes, and contact lists.

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Facebook has recently released the first 'Global Government Requests Report' which covers the first six months of this year. Specifically, the report covers requests made from January 1 up through June 30. In terms of the information, Facebook has detailed which countries are making these requests, how many requests they are making and more.

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More information was revealed today about how the National Security Agency (NSA) obtained information about U.S. private citizens. According to The Washington Post, leaked court documents show that the NSA paid tech companies like Google and Facebook millions of dollars to participate in their PRISM surveillance program.

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D-Link has taken the wraps off its new home and small business surveillance camera, the Pan & Tilt Day/Night DCS-5010L Camera. The company says the camera offers an "advanced" video surveillance solution for those with modest needs and, in terms of budget, modest means. As the name suggests, the camera can be pivoted and tilted, and has night vision for use in low-light and night settings.

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Thursday of this week there was a bit of a one-two punch in effect as NSA leakster Edward Snowden announced first that encrypted email service Lavabit would shut down, followed closely by a similar announcement by Silent Circle. While Lavabit shut down in what very much appeared to be a government-pressured incident, Silent Circle made clear that they'd be cutting service before any said incident was allowed to happen. So what's left for encrypted email services?

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