Sipsey Street Irregulars: Three more stories from the files of the Digital Stasi, including one from my favorite nest of corporate-government spies, AT&T.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Three more stories from the files of the Digital Stasi, including one from my favorite nest of corporate-government spies, AT&T.

FBI can turn on your Web cam, and you’d never know it

Law Enforcement Using Methods from NSA Playbook

Cell Providers Collect $ Millions Selling Your Personal Phone Data to Police

Major U.S. cellphone providers received more than $20 million from law enforcement agencies in conjunction with more than 1.1. million user information requests in 2012, according to documents released Monday by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. . .

AT&T said it received $10,298,000, T-Mobile USA said approximately $11 million, Verizon Wireless said less than $5 million, U.S. Cellular said $241,000 and C Spire said $55,000.

Lotta money in that Stasi business, huh, Mr. W.?

4 comments:

The Old Coach said...: I foresee a bull market for my collection of obsolete Dell C640s, which have no camera for the SOBs to turn on!; December 10, 2013 at 10:42 AM
Pat H. said...: It's quite easy to cover the camera, with a piece of cloth, or tape.; December 10, 2013 at 3:53 PM
Anonymous said...: Because I have a pacemaker, my phone is in a case on my belt. I wonder what 8 hours worth of an image of of black nylon costs them? Of course, they could pay me directly...

Does this mean that Senator Markey has suddenly become a privacy advocate? I do not know much about him.

Reminder-unless you use Skype or similar products regularly, make sure your computer's camera and microphone are shut off. Cardboard taped over the camera also works.; December 10, 2013 at 4:56 PM
PJ said...: Such exploits no doubt depend on dodgy consumer-grade routers and on Windows. Moral of the story, upgrade your routers (e.g. pfsense or dd-wrt) and start trying out Linux (see distrowatch.com). It's not that hard, folks. All it takes is the willingness to experiment a bit. You can dig a computer out of a dumpster and use it to play with Linux, which does not need near the hardware that Windows does.; December 11, 2013 at 9:37 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Three more stories from the files of the Digital Stasi, including one from my favorite nest of corporate-government spies, AT&T.

4 comments:

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