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Video at source. A proposed federal rule that would require black boxes or event data recorders (EDRs) in every U.S. automobile may mean “Big Brother” could be in your passenger seat for every drive. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rule requires all light passenger vehicles be equipped with an EDR by Sep.1, 2014. Ninety-six percent of new cars already have them - measuring such inputs as speed, lateral acceleration, pedal effort, seat belt use, wheel spin, steering wheel turn and direction. Black box data retrieved from U.S. car accidents in a single day would provide more information than a...

Ladar Levison, 32, has spent ten years building encrypted email service Lavabit, attracting over 410,000 users. When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was revealed to be one of those users in July, Dallas-based Lavabit got a surge of new customers: $12,000 worth of paid subscribers, triple his usual monthly sign-up. On Thursday, though, Levison pulled the plug on his company, posting a cryptic message about a government investigation that would force him to “become complicit in crimes against the American people” were he to stay in business. Many people have speculated that the investigation concerned the government trying to get access...

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) recently expressed his concern about Sarah Palin someday becoming president and having control over the information gathered by the U.S government about Americans citizens. In an interview with Shark-Tank.net, Rep. Grayson said he has introduced a bill, 'The Mind Your Own Business Act,' that would ban the U.S. Department of Defense from gathering Internet, phone and other personal information about U.S. citizens without probable cause or evidence of a criminal offense, which is what the Fourth Amendment is supposed to do. Rep. Grayson explained how 'The Mind Your Own Business Act' was modeled "very closely after...

Made-up Threat Rehabilitates the Big Brother 07.08.2013 Made-up Threat Rehabilitates the Big Brother. 50778.jpeg The U.S. State Department issued a global alert about the terrorist threat allegedly posed by Al-Qaeda in Yemen. The USA announced the closure of its missions in the Middle East and Africa, and their example was followed by France, Britain, and Germany. However, this was only an attempt to justify the activities of the National Security Agency. Last Saturday, right after alerting of the terror threat civilians and BOLO complex ("be on the lookout") that includes law enforcement and federal officials, President Barack Obama went to...

A former U.S. official told The Journal that some of the technology allows the FBI to remotely activate the microphones in phones running on Google Inc.'s Android software to record conversations.

CNET has learned the FBI has developed custom "port reader" software to intercept Internet metadata in real time. And, in some cases, it wants to force Internet providers to use the software. The U.S. government is quietly pressuring telecommunications providers to install eavesdropping technology deep inside companies' internal networks to facilitate surveillance efforts. FBI officials have been sparring with carriers, a process that has on occasion included threats of contempt of court, in a bid to deploy government-provided software capable of intercepting and analyzing entire communications streams. The FBI's legal position during these discussions is that the software's real-time interception...

Today's high-end televisions are almost all equipped with "smart" PC-like features, including Internet connectivity, apps, microphones and cameras. But a recently discovered security hole in some Samsung Smart TVs shows that many of those bells and whistles aren't ready for prime time. The flaws in Samsung Smart TVs, which have now been patched, enabled hackers to remotely turn on the TVs' built-in cameras without leaving any trace of it on the screen. While you're watching TV, a hacker anywhere around the world could have been watching you. Hackers also could have easily rerouted an unsuspecting user to a malicious website...

SEATTLE - An internal memo at Seattle City Hall is causing quite a stir. It suggests government workers no longer use the terms "citizen," or "brown bag."  According to the Office for Civil Rights, the terms are potentially offensive and other words should be used. "Luckily, we've got options," Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights wrote in the memo. "For 'citizens,' how about 'residents?'" Bronstein wrote. The Office of Civil Rights says Seattle serves all residents, whether they're United States citizens or not. And while city leaders publicize "brown bag" lunch meetings as a way to designate...

You want one of these?! Motorola's new "Moto X" is said to be listening all the time for your commands. Really? All the time? So you want your phone to be "active" all the time with the microphone up and running, scanning whatever is said in vicinity? And you trust this device to only do what you want it to do? You've got to be kidding me. "The phone is going to be listening all the time for my commands." Oh boy.....

It was a confluence of magnificent proportions that led six agents from the joint terrorism task force to knock on my door Wednesday morning. Little did we know our seemingly innocent, if curious to a fault, Googling of certain things was creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history. Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe...

The U.S. Department of Justice has revealed in a court filing it agrees with the philosophy of the German government that bureaucrats can punish homeschooling parents. The agency contended parental rights to keep children free from instruction that violates faith essentially are negligible when the government’s goal is an “open society.” The arguments were made in a pleading before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that urges the judges to send a German homeschooling family, the Romeikes, back to Germany where members likely would face persecution. “The goal in Germany is for an ‘open, pluralistic society,’” wrote the government’s...

Mara ShankarYalie20-something The New Boss of Everything Maya Shankar is a senior policy advisor at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. Her mandate is to supervise the organization of a federal government 'nudge squad' that will subtly change the behaviors of bureaucrats -- and the rest of us. When does a nudge become a shove? Americans may find out, as the federal government is setting up a 'behavioral insights team' to tinker with the way we accomplish everything from saving money and staying in school to losing weight and becoming more energy-efficient. The Obama administration's grand plans...

According to Fox News, the Obama administration is building a team of experts in psychology to come up with ways to subtly persuade Americans to change their behavior in ways the government approves of – kind of like lab rats, Pavlov’s dogs or teachers unions. The “Behavior Insights Team” team is only in its formative stages, but its goals are all ambitious, according to a recruiting letter Fox said it obtained from a university professor who was identified for membership: “Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve...

The federal government is hiring what it calls a "Behavioral Insights Team" that will look for ways to subtly influence people's behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient. While the program is still in its early stages, the document shows the White House is already working on such projects with almost a dozen federal departments and agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. "Behavioral sciences can be...

The U.S. government is looking to recruit members for what some are calling a “Behavioral Insights Team,” a panel of experts that will study human behavior so as to “design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals,” according to a document describing the program...

Low-income families in New York City struggling with obesity will soon be offered doctor prescriptions -- not for pills, but for fruits and vegetables. The idea is that families will meet with a doctor at each clinic, as well as a nutritionist and community health worker, to discuss the connection between health and nutrition. They will then be offered Health Bucks equivalent to $1 per family member per day, so that they can buy unprocessed fruits and vegetables at the markets. That adds up to about $128 per month for a family of four. Patients are asked to return to...

Throughout the summer, Americans for Tax Reform will be highlighting the most outrageous new powers that the IRS will have under the Obamacare law. According to a report from GAO, the IRS is tasked with nearly four dozen new powers under that law. Each day, one will be selected for a brief review. Thanks to Obamacare, you can no longer buy non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines with your health savings account (HSA) or workplace flex account (FSA).

A teenage motorist who is believed to have been racing when he caused a crash that killed two Brandeis High School students has been indicted — five months later — on manslaughter charges, court records show. Antonio Flores, 19, a Brandeis senior at the time, plowed his 2012 Mitsubishi Lancer into a 2011 Chevrolet pickup while he and a group of students were on their lunch break Feb. 19, police and school officials said. The wreck, which occurred at the northbound access road of Loop 1604 just before Hausman Road, killed back-seat passengers Gabriella “Gabby” Lerma, 17, and Georgina Rodriguez,...

Pornography depicting rape will be outlawed as part of a government crackdown on web filth. David Cameron today unveiled a raft of reforms to shield children from 'poisonous' websites that are 'corroding childhood'. In a victory for the Daily Mail, the Prime Minister announced every householder connected to the internet will have their access to online porn blocked unless they ask to receive it. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2372833/Internet-porn-depicting-rape-BANNED-Cameron-unveils-opt-rule-web-users.html#ixzz2ZncKS1Bp Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

As Professor Jacobson’s recent pictorial essay noted, there is something for both the left and right to hate about the Obama Administration’s use of drones. As the co-founder of San Diego’s first Tea Party group, I love the grassroots initiative displayed by the citizens of one Colorado town to address the concerns Americans have over the use of these aerial vehicles over their skies. They propose a new type of hunting license that combines free market savvy while targeting statist government tactics. The small town of Deer Trail, Colo. is considering a bold move. The town board will be voting...

Would you trust thousands of low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your private financial and medial information? Under Obamacare you won’t have any choice. As the Obamacare train-wreck begins to gather steam, there is increasing concern in Congress over something called the Federal Data Services Hub. The Data Hub is a comprehensive database of personal information being established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement the federally facilitated health insurance exchanges. The purpose of the Data Hub, according to a June 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, is to provide “electronic, near real-time...

WASHINGTON — People who fire guns at drones are endangering the public and property and could be prosecuted or fined, the Federal Aviation Administration warned Friday.

Few, if any, of the confrontations captivating Washington this summer will affect daily life in America more than a subdued regulatory process that will begin Friday in an office building far from the capital's downtown power centers. On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission will start restructuring the "E-rate" under which Washington provides funds to help schools connect to the Internet. This seemingly obscure decision could trigger an education revolution by enormously accelerating the deployment of tablets and other digital tools into classrooms. Even lawyers' eyes may glaze over when confronted with the gray columns in the "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking"...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Chances are, your local or state police departments have photographs of your car in their files, noting where you were driving on a particular day, even if you never did anything wrong. Using automated scanners, law enforcement agencies across the country have amassed millions of digital records on the location and movement of every vehicle with a license plate, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings, the scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, uploading that information into police databases....

Via Facebook: Ben Franklin wrote: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The government needs to stay out of our garage, refrigerator, church, gun safe, bookshelf, etc. America, are you willing to give up freedom for more government control? Take a look at this article linked at the top of Drudge. Government is out of control and too many citizens are sheepishly and sleepily okay with it all. This is not what generations of Americans have fought and died for. We should be ashamed of ourselves if we give...

LONDON — You can ditch your computer and leave your cellphone at home, but you can't escape your DNA. It belongs uniquely to you — and, increasingly, to the authorities. Countries around the world are collecting genetic material from millions of citizens in the name of fighting crime and terrorism — and, according to critics, heading into uncharted ethical terrain. Leaders include the United States — where the Supreme Court recently backed the collection of DNA swabs from suspects on arrest — and Britain, where police held samples of almost 7 million people, more than 10 percent of the population,...

A new Android app asks users to expose the home addresses of gun owners they deem “potentially unsafe” -- and share that information with the world. The Gun Geo Marker app, released to Google’s Play app store on July 7, invites users to mark the homes and businesses of “suspected unsafe gun owners … to help others in the area learn about their geography of risk from gun accidents or violence."

In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.

He's looking to the private sector U.S. President Barack Obama said he wants a "smarter government" with a little help from the private sector yesterday.  When introducing the the “new management agenda” at the White House Monday, Obama told his Cabinet that he wants a high-technology and more user-friendly government. He feels that his campaign was the most technologically advanced to date, and that should lead to greater progress in the government's technology sector.  “We created one of the most inclusive and one of the most successful campaigns in American history,” Obama said. “Once we got to Washington, instead of an...

President Barack Obama announced Monday that he will bring more Silicon Valley tech experts into his White House to help devise a new government system called MyUSA to deliver “a smarter, more innovative and accountable government." MyUSA will, among other things, auto-fill citizens’ personal information on government forms and provide real-time tracking of benefits. Obama’s initiative carries echoes of Vice President Al Gore’s 1993 “reinventing government” plan that purportedly applied private sector solutions to public sector problems. Whether Obama’s attempt to reboot public perceptions about his Administration’s bureaucratic failures and inefficiencies will succeed now five years into his presidency remains...

US President Barack Obama quietly signed his name to an Executive Order on Friday, allowing the White House to control all private communications in the country in the name of national security. President Obama released his latest Executive Order on Friday, July 6, a 2,205-word statement offered as the “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.” And although the president chose not to commemorate the signing with much fanfare, the powers he provides to himself and the federal government under the latest order are among the most far-reaching yet of any of his executive decisions. “The Federal Government must have...

As EAGnews reported previously, the data compiled through Common Core will yield all sorts of non-education related information about students for bureaucrats: family income, religious affiliation, discipline problems, number of hours worked per weekend, medical laboratory procedure results, amount of non-school activity involvement and computer screen name. How would voters react if they knew an aspect of Common Core is to collect this sort of information on kindergarteners?

Imagine, for more than half a century, American preachers were being told what not to say from their pulpits by an all-powerful IRS. And too many disinterested souls forgot that in politics, continuing to ignore what happens to others may put a noose around your own neck. Now we find that some of our government agencies are monsters under the bed with revelations coming out every day that should wake up the sleeping masses. People in America, especially the younger crowd, must begin to think hard about what is happening in our government and how it affects them as individuals...

THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.” It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s...

Half of all voters consider radical Muslims the bigger terrorist threat facing the nation, but supporters of President Obama consider the Tea Party to be as big a danger. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters consider radical Muslims to be the bigger threat to the United States today. Thirteen percent (13%) view the Tea Party that way, and another 13% consider other political and religious extremists to be the larger danger. Six percent (6%) point to local militia groups. Two percent (2%) see the Occupy Wall Street movement as the bigger terrorist...

In response to Mitch McConnell Decries Obama Regime's Culture Of Intimidation and Stifling Of Speech (Video): Labeling James Rosen a co-conspirator in espionage (working with a foreign power) wasn't some lapse by the Obama Administration. It's actually White House policy. Incredible story from McClatchy. Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions. President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as...

If the NSA is not spying on all Americans, why does it need such a huge data storage facility on top of what they already have? I think we know the answer and it is not pretty!!!!!!

If the NSA is not spying on all our telecommunications, then why do they need such a huge data storage facility on top of what they already have??? I think we know the answer and it is not pretty!

The past month’s news about our national government’s acceleration towards tyranny (“arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority”) made me recall the most memorable lines in “Like a Rolling Stone,” arguably Bob Dylan’s best work, and according to Rolling Stone magazine the best rock and roll song ever. Dylan’s masterpiece is a sarcastic six-minute “See, I told you so” directed at a condescending high-society princess. She thought she had it all, only to see it disappear at the hands of a betraying, conniving beau. As a result, she is forced to fight for her everyday survival like...

BANNING {Californai} (CBSLA.com) —Authorities have installed a dozen surveillance cameras in Banning to watch its residents. Banning Police Chief Leonard Purvis said the cameras are a way for officers to keep an eye on the city without having as many patrols on the ground. “We definitely don’t want anybody to feel that we’re trying to be Big Brother, we just want to be able to provide an extra presence,” he said. While the cameras aren’t manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the video is stored for 30 days. “They’re not going to know when we’re watching and...

PRISM and Boundless Informant. Don’t you just love names like that. They have a nice ring to them. But do not be fooled. Those are bad for your privacy and, with time, even worse for a true democracy. But thank heavens for Free Software and those making them available. With much gratitude to them, here are two Free Software services that can help you deal with PRISM and Boundless Informant. Maybe not completely, but a little something is better than nothing.1. Tor is a well-known anonymizing service. Many privacy-conscious people already use it. According to the official description: Tor software’s...

Aside from fears of government intrusion into the private lives of ordinary citizens, what about intrusion from the private business sector of telecoms, internet apps companies, credit card services, and private data aggregators? I finally took time out to watch the 2002 film "Minority Report". Within the movie, which takes place in something like 2056, iris-recognition technology is fully integrated into society: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ....kinda like today in 2013. The technology is here. Earlier this month was this story about a school conducting iris scans of its students: Parents in Polk County, Florida were outraged after being informed that their children’s...

The immigration bill the Senate began debating this month will create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the US.The immigration bill will create a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country. Mother Jones reported: Pointing to a section of the bill that mandates a CIS “photo tool” database to enhance E-Verify checks (PDF), Wired last month ominously warned that it “would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the US” through the collection of state-issued photo IDs....

Edward Snowden, America's most wanted whistle-blower, participated in a live online chat with the Guardian newspaper on Monday. "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," Snowden wrote. "Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

The vast majority of the annual shooting homicides are committed by inner-city and minority youths below the age of 30. Handguns are involved in 80% of all murders. Rifles and shotguns account for less than 10% of homicides. No matter; the National Rifle Association is now blamed for generic gun violence, especially the mass shootings at schools, even though usually no one knows of any proposed gun law — barring outright confiscation of previously purchased firearms, bullets, and clips — that would have prevented the shooters at Sandy Hook and Columbine. Gun merchants are blamed by the president while in...

A new rule issued late Friday requires state, federal and local agencies as well as health insurers to swap the protected personal health information of anybody seeking to join the new health care program that will be enforced by the Internal Revenue Service. Personal health information, or PHI, is highly protected under federal law, but the latest ruling from the Department of Health and Human Services allows agencies to trade the information to verify that Obamacare applicants are getting the minimum amount of health insurance coverage they need from the health "exchanges." The ruling, explained on pages 72-73 of the...

Fighting terrorism? Don't be a chump. Excuses usually trade on something very important and genuine. But what is truly important can be abused, precisely because it should impress us. Government tries to fool us with phony excuses to do whatever officials and bureaucrats want to do. The NSA, et al., failed to detect the Tsarnaev brothers -- even after being tipped off by Russia -- before the Boston Marathon bombing. FBI agents actually investigated the Tsarnaev family in detail. Russia's tip would justify continuing, specific search warrants and phone taps. Yet the NSA and FBI never saw the bumbling brothers...

National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.

<p>George Orwell was right. He was just 30 years early.</p> <p>In its April cover story, Wired has an exclusive report on the NSA's Utah Data Center, which is a must read for anyone who believes any privacy is still a possibility in the United States: "A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks.... Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.�... The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013." In other words, in just over 1 year, virtually anything one communicates through any traceable medium, or any record of one's existence in the electronic medium, which these days is everything, will unofficially be property of the US government to deal with as it sees fit.</p>

I haven't been able to write this week here because I've been participating in the debate over the fallout from last week's NSA stories, and because we are very busy working on and writing the next series of stories that will begin appearing very shortly. I did, though, want to note a few points, and particularly highlight what Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez said after Congress on Wednesday was given a classified briefing by NSA officials on the agency's previously secret surveillance activities: "What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today. . ....