The Golden Ratio

IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

via cnet

The ACLU has obtained internal IRS documents that say Americans enjoy “generally no privacy” in their e-mail messages, Facebook chats, and other electronic communications.

Supermarket Giant Uses Wristband Trackers To Monitor Employees’ Every Move

Via Technoccult

The former Tesco employee said the device provided an order to collect from the warehouse and a set amount of time to complete it. If workers met that target, they were awarded a 100 per cent score, but that would rise to 200 per cent if they worked twice as quickly. The score would fall if they did not meet the target.

If, however, workers did not log a break when they went to the toilet, the score would be “surprisingly lower”, according to the former staff member, who worked in an Irish branch of Tesco. He said the devices put staff under huge pressure and many of his colleagues using them in Ireland were eastern Europeans, with limited English.

Canada Trying to One-Up the US: Warrantless Wiretapping Announced

Canada – always trying to one-up the United States – has announced it, too, will begin warrantless wiretapping of phones.

Parliamentary bill C-55 would allow police to wiretap telephones without a warrant in an “emergency.” The government has announced it will move ahead with the proposal after throwing civil rights campaigners a bone by agreeing to withdraw an even more controversial bill: C-30. That measure would have required internet service providers to maintain systems for police to “plug-in” to online communications to make sure naughty Canadians weren’t looking at anything they weren’t supposed to.

Tiny Pet Quadcopter Could Be Your Own Personal Cameraman

MeCam is an upcoming product from the San Francisco-based company Always Innovating, and it promises to change self-centered video documentation forever, potentially. The copter would have a battery of 14 sensors to keep it from running into walls and other people, and would be voice controlled. You could shout at it to go “up” or “down” or just tell it to follow you like a flying, robotic member of the paparazzi.

Stealth Wear: Counter-Surveillance Fashions

Artist Adam Harvey, previously noted for his CV Dazzle project revealing how to style hair and makeup to avoid detection by facial recognition software, has developed a Stealth Wear clothing line, including a hoodie to evade drones’ infrared heat sensors.

Government officials installing audio surveillance systems on public buses

via The Daily

The era of private conversations on city buses — and even on San Francisco’s iconic streetcars — may be coming to an end.  

Government officials are quietly installing sophisticated audio surveillance systems on public buses across the country to eavesdrop on passengers, according to documents obtained by The Daily. Plans to implement the technology are under way in cities from San Francisco to Hartford, Conn., and Eugene, Ore., to Columbus, Ohio.

Saudi Arabia Introduces Electronic Tracking Of Women

via International Business Times

In Saudi Arabia, Siri tells you everything your wife is doing. Males will automatically receive text message notifications whenever their spouses, relatives, or daughters pass through travel checkpoints

FBI investigation of Broadwell reveals bureau’s comprehensive access to electronic communications

via Washington Post

Utah Cops May Be Required To Wear Camera Glasses

Google: Government Surveillance Requests Are Way Up—and the U.S. Is the Leader

via Slate

How To Conceal Your Face From Machines

CV Dazzle is a project to develop a toolkit of styling and beauty-based methods to fight back against camera and computer facial recognition, allowing you to hide in plain sight:

The primary objective [is] thwarting face detection under the guise of high-fashion aesthetics. While there are several obvious approaches to hiding from face detection, some of these can be dismissed.

Sunglasses, for example, are a known occlusion which some algorithms account for. Wearing masks in public can be illegal. Hoods are popular and effective but make the wearer’s intent to hide too obvious. As an alternative, this project explores ways using ambiguously deceptive fashion.

CV Dazzle™ is camouflage from computer vision (CV). It is a form of expressive interference that combines makeup and hair styling (or other modifications) with face-detection thwarting designs. The name is derived from a type of camouflage used during WWI, called Dazzle, which was used to break apart the gestalt-image

The Biggest New Spying Program You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Via ACLU

What if a government spy agency had power to copy and data mine information about ordinary Americans from any government database? This could include records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records. Literally anything the government collects would be fair game, and the original agency in charge of protecting the privacy of those records would have little say over whether this happened, or what the spy agency did with the information afterward. What if that spy agency could add commercial information, anything it – or any other federal agency – could buy from the huge data aggregators that are monitoring our every move?

Canadian Airports Being Wired With Cameras and Microphones To Eavesdrop on Travelers’ Conversations

Reports Ian MacLeod in the Ottawa Citizen:

Airports and border crossings across Canada are being wired with high-definition cameras and microphones that can eavesdrop on travellers’ conversations, according to the Canada Border Services Agency.

A CBSA statement said that audio-video monitoring and recording is already in place at unidentified CBSA sites at airports and border points of entry as part of an effort to enhance “border integrity, infrastructure and asset security and health and safety.”

As part of the work, the agency is introducing audio-monitoring equipment as well.

“It is important to note that even though audio technology is installed, no audio is recorded at this time. It will become functional at a later date,” CBSA spokesman Chris Kealey said in a written statement. But whenever that occurs, the technology, “will record conversations,” the agency said in a separate statement in response to questions from the Ottawa Citizen…