A little known database managed by the U.S. military tracks civilian traffic tickets including parking tickets or minor traffic citations.
The Law Enforcement Information Exchange, also called LinX, has over 500 million law enforcement records. The information includes more than just official citations. The database includes information cards filled out by officers when no crime took place.
LinX is run by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and it is raising concern among privacy advocates that the database is allowing the military to access information on ordinary citizens in violation of the law.
A military law expert at Yale University called the system “domestic spying.”
“Clearly, it cannot be right that any part of the Navy is collecting traffic citation information,” Eugene Fidell said. “This sounds like something from a third-world country, where you have powerful military intelligence watching everybody.”
The National Security Agency has a program that is so powerful it can record all the phone calls coming out of a nation and provide them the chance to play them back over the course of a month.
A manager for the NSA compared the program to a “time machine” and said that any individual recorded by the machine can be listened to without that person’s permission or a warrant from a court.
The program is called MYSTIC and started in 2009. The program has a component called RETRO, which stands for “retrospective retrieval”, which allows the user to search and play back phone calls from the previous month.
The program was initially proposed as a one-off operation but according to last year’s intelligence budget, five countries have come under the MYSTIC program and a sixth country was scheduled to be put in place by the end of 2013.
The program was disclosed by the Washington Post who withheld the names of the country confirmed to be under surveillance at the request of the government who claimed national security issues.
The latest release from fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden shows that the National Security Agency used a website that looked almost identical to Facebook as a way to plant malware on computers.
The deception was part of a program codenamed TURBINE that would plant malware on computers allowing the NSA access to the computer’s microphone and camera without the user’s knowledge.
The report said that as many as 100,000 computers worldwide have been infected with the NSA’s spying software using the false Facebook page.
In addition to allowing video and audio surveillance of the computer user, the NSA would be able to track internet browsing history, login details and passwords for websites, keystrokes by the users and could corrupt files on the user’s system.
The report says the system is so sophisticated that many people will never be able to spot the fake website.
Fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden told members of the European Parliament that many more spy operations are yet to be revealed that could show major violations of the rights of EU citizens.
Snowden said he’s going to allow the journalists to whom he’s given classified information to decide which operations are released to the public.
“I don’t want to outpace the efforts of journalists,” Snowden testified, “but I can confirm that all documents reported thus far are authentic and unmodified, meaning the alleged operations again Belgacom, SWIFT, the EU as an institution, the United Nations, UNICEF and others based on documents I have provided have actually occurred. I expect similar operations will be revealed in the future that affect many more ordinary citizens.”
Snowden testified that he still loves the United States and that the government likely missed terror plots because they were busy collecting large amounts of information and not taking the time to monitor it all.
Snowden invoked the Boston Marathon attack in his testimony, claiming the Russians had warned U.S. intelligence about one of the bombers but the FBI did only cursory investigations.
A new document from the trove of NSA leaker Edward Snowden shows that the British intelligence services used webcams of Yahoo users to spy on them including taking nude pictures of users.
The GCHQ ran a program called Optic Nerve between 2008 and 2010 that collected images from Yahoo webcam chats and stored them even if the users in the chats were not considered targets of intelligence operations.
In one six month period over 1.8 million Yahoo users were spied on worldwide.
When the Guardian newspaper contacted Yahoo, officials were furious to find out they had been targeted by intelligence services. The company termed the action “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy.”
There are no restrictions in British law that would keep them from tracking Americans and storing information about them without an individual warrant.
The next time you walk into a building that is lit by an LED lighting system, you might not be simply walking into the light.
Newark Liberty International Airport’s new LED lighting system is actually spying on the passengers that come through the airport before they reach the gates. The lights include computer chips, cameras, sensors and Wi-Fi antennas. They collect data that police can scan in real time to look for possible problems.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport, said the special spy lights are currently only in the ticketing area of the airport but they could soon spread to the rest of the complex. The Port Authority claimed the lights were installed as part of a plan to cut energy use within the complex.
The company behind the “NetSense” system says that while the idea of putting cameras on light poles isn’t new, the system they’ve developed is unique in that it is turnkey. Anyone can install the lights, plug them in and then observe through a computer.
Representatives on the House Armed Services Committee reportedly were “shocked” by the amount of information the NSA fugitive leaker Edward Snowden released beyond the NSA’s surveillance program.
Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas said that the information given in the meeting of the panel’s Intelligence, Emergency Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee was “very highly classified” and thus it could not be discussed in public. However, Rep. Thornberry said the lawmakers “left the briefing disturbed and angered.”
Rep. Thornberry said that the information released by Snowden “went well beyond programs associated with the NSA and data collection.”
Rep. Buck McKeon of California said that he would have to later release a statement because of his anger after hearing the news.
“Ed Snowden isn’t a whistleblower,” Rep. McKeon said. “He’s a traitor.”
Security critics are raising the alarm about a new surveillance system that can track all the citizens and vehicles in a small city at the same time.
Dayton, Ohio based Persistent Surveillance Systems has been demonstrating a system where a low flying aircraft continually monitors traffic and humans in a wide area. While the system cannot show individual details like hair color, the motion of the objects and their travel locations can help police and federal agents identify and track civilians.
The system does not require a warrant from a judge to be used for tracking an individual.
Defense contractors are working on similar systems for military use but the PSS unit is designed to be used by civilian sources as well.
Ross McNutt of PSS says that a single camera from their system mounted on the top of the Washington Monument would allow police to monitor and track every person and vehicle that uses or approaches the National Mall. He says the devices could help police make a significant dent in crime levels.
The National Security Agency “probably” has been collecting the phone records of Congressmen and Senators.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole admitted under questioning from lawmakers of the House Judiciary Committee that the NSA likely tracked the calls in and out of Congressional offices.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca.) asked Cole if they collected information from the prefixes used to call congressional offices.
“We probably do, Mr. Congressman,” Cole answered. “But we’re not allowed to look at any of those, however, unless we have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that those numbers are related to a known terrorist threat.”
While most security observers were not surprised that the spying had been happening, they were surprised that a member of the Justice Department admitted it so openly in a public hearing.
NSA Director Keith Alexander has previously told Senator Bernie Sanders that nothing the NSA did could be considered spying on members of Congress.
