Shopper Stalking: Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year's Day, two U.S. malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- will track guests' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones. "It's just not invasive of privacy," said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. "There are no risks to privacy, so I don't see why anyone would opt out." (
Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones.)
posted by Blake
on Nov 23, 2011 -
153 comments
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.
posted by Trurl
on Jun 13, 2011 -
46 comments
NSA E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress. "Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Jun 17, 2009 -
44 comments
NewsFilter: I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?
posted by I Love Tacos
on Feb 18, 2006 -
154 comments
Psst... I know you called your girlfriend last night. No, not the one you live with. The naughty hottie that she doesn't know about. I know this because I paid
a website $110 to buy your cell-phone records, which they delivered in two hours. Did you know that
your private phone records are for sale?
posted by digaman
on Jan 7, 2006 -
49 comments
Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis Federal Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner imagines a world in which US citizens are constantly under electronic surveillance.... and is totally okay with it.
Once you accept Posner's premise that "machine collection and processing of data cannot, as such, invade privacy," how far are we from cameras and microphones in private homes. After all, there is no privacy invasion so long as it is only a computer flagging "
suspicious" activity, right?
posted by GregW
on Dec 21, 2005 -
164 comments
Virgin Mobile Phone Records Which Map Users Whereabouts Kept Indefinitely. Admittedly, this data is only accurate to within a few hundred metres at the moment, but '
When the new breed of 3G - third generation - phones comes on stream, probably next year, they will enable the users' location to be pinpointed to within a couple of metres'. I know the current climate is increasingly pro-identity cards, pro-police state, but this can't be right, surely? Why do they want to keep this information indefinitely?
posted by boneybaloney
on Oct 30, 2001 -
15 comments
And so it begins - "Federal police are reportedly increasing Internet surveillance after Tuesday's deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Just hours after three airplanes smashed into the buildings in what some U.S. legislators have dubbed a second Pearl Harbor, FBI agents began to visit Web-based, e-mail firms and network providers, according to engineers "
How do you think the attacks of the 11th will affect civil liberties?
posted by jed
on Sep 12, 2001 -
11 comments
Hands where I can see them, and turn off that tape recorder! Today the Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man for violating the commonwealth's electronic surveillance law when he secretly recorded police who pulled him over in a traffic stop. While it's generally bad to tape people without telling them, should there be an exception w/r/t to recording public officials acting in their official capacities? Or is wrong just wrong?
posted by dchase
on Jul 13, 2001 -
22 comments
ALL YOUR EMAIL ARE BELONG TO US! How serious is this threat? What precautions do you routinely take? What precautions do you think you *should* be taking? What viable options do we have today, for those of us who aren't computer programmers by profession? And how secure are they, anyway?
posted by rushmc
on May 30, 2001 -
12 comments
No Hiding Place "According to most experts in the field, a police state with powers of control and surveillance beyond the wildest dreams of Hitler or Stalin could now be established in Britain within 24 hours" Here's how...
posted by hmgovt
on Apr 20, 2001 -
4 comments
The ACLU wants to protect your privacy from government electronic surveillance programs like Echelon and Carnivore. Their
full page ad in today's NYT claims
4th amendment rights are being violated by the US government, which is overstepping their bounds, and nearly free of up-to-date laws. Is it to late or can anything be done to protect civilian electronic communication?
posted by mathowie
on Apr 15, 2001 -
7 comments
