Internal emails from Texas-based private intelligence firm Stratfor leaked by Wikileaks show that it is, at best, a sleazy operation, offering corporate and government clients dubious information and advice. Julian Assange goes further, crowing that Wikileaks' cache of Stratfor emails reveals a corrupt and nefarious…
I'm currently reading James Bamford's definitive history of the NSA, Body of Secrets, because I find that scaring the shit out of myself right before bed helps me sleep better. Amid the book's disheartening narrative of our country's endlessly-expanding surveillance apparatus and how the government has found new and…
The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture.
When Jason Biggs wrote that being a celebrity meant having constant anxiety about being recognized, he had no idea — high-end retail stores are testing technology that scans customers against a database of celebrity photos and alerts store clerks when there's a match.
As the dust settles on yesterday evening's revelation that the U.S. government has been mining data from most of Silicon Valley's largest companies in a program called "PRISM," one question stands out: How did the NSA get access?
Since at least April, the National Security Agency has been collecting the telephone records of every Verizon customer in the US. In total, the NSA has gathered data from millions of Verizon customers, including for phone calls placed within the US and for calls made from the US to other countries.
A Pennsylvania bus driver survived a terrifying encounter with a wild deer that burst through the windshield before frantically jumping around looking for a way out. The driver had some minor cuts on his hands from the broken glass but otherwise just wanted a copy of the security video "before it went viral."
It's quaint how people still manage to get outraged about surveillance. You are being monitored, right now, just like everybody else with a phone or a computer or a bank account or a pressure cooker, because Total Information Awareness is real. ‘Welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak…
Are all our telephone calls being secretly recorded by the government? Sure thing, says former FBI counterterrorism agent.
A federal judge in Texas has told the FBI that they cannot "install sophisticated surveillance software" on a suspect's computer in order to spy on them.
When New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is not busy performing musical numbers for the City Hall press corps, or teaming up with Joe Biden to push for gun reform, he's taking his time gently explaining the permanent surveillance apparatus that will soon cover every inch of New York City.
The idea of drones over New York City have inspired art projects and a rap song. Now they may be a reality too. The FAA is investigating a report from an Alitalia passenger jet of a drone spotting over Brooklyn, as he approached JFK airport in Queens. "We saw a drone, ad drone aircraft," the pilot told controllers,…
It often seems as if people save all their most obnoxious and excruciating conversations for public transit, just to make sure the pain is spread to more of their fellow humans. So imagine if every conversation that occurred on public transit was recorded: What twisted portrait of humanity would be produced? We may…
We've called him a "seed-spilling sex creep," a "pale nerd king," and "a real-life The Matrix extra," so we figured it was about time to talk to Wikileaks founder and megalomaniacal Bond villain Julian Assange. In order to promote his new book, Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, Assange agreed to a…
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is increasingly coming to resemble an all-year, urban Gathering of the Juggalos. It's hard to walk down Bedford Ave., Williamsburg's bustling main drag, without seeing someone dressed like an exploded taxidermist workshop or a steampunk pirate scientist. Now the entire internet can gawk at the…
The internet has been freaking out all weekend over an ominously-titled surveillance program called "TrapWire," after it showed up in some leaked Wikileaks emails. If you've listened to the hype, you might think TrapWire was an evil omniscient spy robot that runs off the fumes of our burning Constitution. But What is…
The Department of Homeland Security struggled to avoid monitoring or suppressing the Occupy Wall Street movement last year, despite being bombarded with requests from various federal agencies for intelligence on the protests, according to documents released via the Freedom of Information Act.
The FBI conducted a three-year investigation, dubbed "Seizing Thunder," into a animal-rights and environmental "terrorists" in the Pacific Northwest that devolved into widespread—and seemingly pointless—surveillance of activists for no apparent reason aside from the fact that they were anarchists, or protested the war…
The FBI has released some of its files on the late Christopher Hitchens, including records indicating that he was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation in the 1980s.
It surprised no one that Russian President Vladimir Putin was overwhelmingly re-elected on Sunday. But the massive panoptic webcam network he set up to monitor polling stations across the country captured some unexpected visuals: snoozing cops, abandoned AK-47s and dirty dancing.
