Tag Archives: spying

Tune Out

02 Monday Mar 2020

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You’re not just watching the TV. It’s watching you. Really.

As you can see, not only can the companies watch you watch TV, but the technology is intelligent enough to pick up on your facial expression, engagement level, and other significant data. This information has provided insight into not only what shows people watch the most or are the most engaged in, but what commercials they prefer to watch as well.

TVision was co-founded by Dan Schiffman and one of his classmates from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Through the installation of a Microsoft Kinect device, most often used for Xbox video games, on top of TVs, TVision tracks the movement of people’s eyes in relation to the TV. The device can then record even tiny shifts from everyone in the room, and then the company matches the movements to what they’re watching.

The device’s sensors can record minute shifts in all of the people in the room. The company then matches those viewing patterns to shows and commercials using technology that listens to what is being broadcast on the TV.

We’ve known this for years. Even so, so many people still cling to their digital cave walls, defensive of their favorite mind-numbing stupidity. At some point, this is going to become a questionable issue for the globos and the AI: why bother watching such idiots? Change the viewer?

More Benefits of Academic Inclusion

24 Monday Feb 2020

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More Chinese spying. Also in Boston. Hotbed?

When a researcher from a Chinese military academy applied to study with celebrated Boston University physicist Eugene Stanley, he said her affiliation didn’t raise red flags.

“I’m not interested at all in politics. I’m a scientist,” said Mr. Stanley, whose wide-ranging research has included using artificial intelligence to decode financial markets and applying statistical physics to prevent diseases.

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A range of U.S. agencies, from the Defense Department to the National Institutes of Health, have sounded alarms over Beijing’s alleged attempts to tap U.S. university expertise to boost China’s military and technological competitiveness.

U.S. officials accuse China of targeting academia, including by sending military researchers to American labs and using talent-recruitment programs to attract to China top-flight scientists, entrepreneurs and experts, as well as their intellectual property.

Yet, the Trump and the Mick still want more migrants. And, could that AI also be used to say, track or spread diseases? Heck with it, it’s XFL season!

I Think I Can Explain

24 Monday Feb 2020

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A lot of Chinese spies tourists in Florida lately.

In total, four Chinese men have been arrested for trespassing and taking photos at Naval Air Station Key West since September 2018, and two Chinese women have been arrested for trespassing at Mar-a-Lago since March 2019.

“Coincidences take a lot of planning,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence.

Maybe. Or maybe it’s all literary. I have no idea about Mar-a-Lago, but the NAS visitors obviously wanted to see where Tom Ironsides crashed that Dassault Falcon in Shaded of Cuba (THE SUBSTITUTE). Ever wonder where the plane came from? You’ll find out soon enough, along with whatever became of their passenger.

A Dream Job

19 Wednesday Feb 2020

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This roaring economy really has wages rising! Check this out:

In a brief hearing, Cabrera, 35, did reveal that he had bank accounts and jobs in different parts of the world. He told a magistrate judge that he was making $7,500 a month as a researcher at the National University of Singapore and another $5,000 a month from a part-time job with an Israeli company in Germany, along with holding about $100,000 in bank accounts in Mexico, Singapore and the United States.

All you have to do to earn an easy $12,500 per month (probably tax-free) is to become a Russian-Israeli-German-Singaporean-Chinese-Mexican spy! While the charges seem a tad mysterious, the underlying facts are clear – doing the spying Americans just won’t do anymore.

*Dream job does require acquiring two wives, a certain issue of complexity…

The CIA was Listening

12 Wednesday Feb 2020

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Big surprise there. The CIA owned the sole provider of encryption technology for decades. It’s called spying and they do it (did it) very well. Tom Ironsides mentioned something about this a few meetings ago.

Things are changing, with the Chinese poised to start doing the mass listening. That might be better for average Americans, as the Chinese, even with they hear your private conservations, etc., won’t be in much of a position to do anything about it other than target you with ads.

Mr. Snowden, Thank You for Your Service

31 Friday Jan 2020

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Remember Snowden? The “traitor” who endangered all those whatevers by blowing the whistle on the rampant abuse of civil liberties by the government? A bill is floating to reign in some of the abuse.

A bipartisan cadre of lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced legislation that would reform the 9/11-era authorities used by the intelligence community to access Americans’ phone records and other domestic communications.

The Safeguarding Americans’ Private Records Act would narrow Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which provided the National Security Agency and sister intelligence agencies sweeping information-gathering authorities following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. According to lawmakers, the bill would end the phone surveillance program that would ensnare Americans’ phone records and prohibit the warrantless collection of location data. The bill would reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, adding transparency to secretive court processes that decide whether to surveil individuals.

While previous presidential administrations and Congresses have continually renewed the authorities, privacy advocates have voiced increasing opposition to the authorities, which allow for records and data to be vacuumed up without a warrant. The program was first exposed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

In a statement, Sen. Ron Wyden, D, Ore., said the bill “preserves authorities the government uses against criminals and terrorists, while putting Americans’ constitutional rights front and center.” A companion bill has been introduced in the House, led by Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Warren Davidson, R-Ohio.

9/11 and the “PATRIOT” Act were scams. Time to take it back. It would be better to abolish the NSA and the CIA (and the whole FedGov), but this is a start.

Wuhan Sickness Spreads

29 Wednesday Jan 2020

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It’s not the nCoV virus, but they have confirmed a case of something China-related in Cambridge.

A Harvard University professor has been charged with lying about his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program and concealing payments he received from the Chinese government for research, federal officials said Tuesday.

Charles Lieber, chair of the department of chemistry and chemical biology, is accused of hiding his involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Plan, a program designed to lure people with knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property to China.

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Under Lieber’s Thousand Talents program contract, prosecutors say he was paid $50,000 a month by the Wuhan University of Technology in China and living expenses up to $158,000. He was also awarded more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at the Chinese university, prosecutors said.

American as apple pie. I wonder if this might have any effect on the Asians v Harvard case. And, I wonder what was in the vials they were sneaking out? Something come back to bite them? Interesting, if predictable.

Why Would Any Sane Homeowner Install This Stuff?

29 Wednesday Jan 2020

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People use to value privacy. Now they pay to get rid of it. Ring clandestinely sells out users to Farcebook.

Amazon’s Ring smart doorbell surveillance product has been caught sending user data to Facebook and other companies without making Ring users aware their data was being shared. That’s according to an investigation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). What’s even more alarming is Ring users are having their data sent to Facebook even if they themselves don’t have Facebook accounts.

The EFF examined Ring’s latest Android app and found that it had four unlisted trackers sending Ring user data back to four websites including branch.io, mixpanel.com, appsflyer.com, and facebook.com. This is despite Ring’s privacy policy, which purports to list all the trackers being used in its software. That privacy policy was last updated over a year and a half ago and doesn’t list three of the four new trackers discovered.

And, why would anyone do business with the big tech companies that… Oh, yeah. Monopolies and all. Maybe low tech (or no tech) is the way of the sane future. Otherwise, is it One Ring to report them all?

I Spy, With My Little Eye, Something That Looks Like BS

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

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Mass Attendance, mass surveillance, what’s the difference? And, these days, what is the point of attending most Amerikan universities? The University of Missouri mandates spying on its student inmates.

New students at the University of Missouri will be required to participate in a tracking program designed to measure and enforce class attendance, according to a new report from The Kansas City Star.

Despite privacy concerns, officials defended the decision as one to the benefit of students, as the school’s athletics department has already been using the same app, SpotterEdu, to track certain student-athletes.

“From labs to auditoriums our technology can expand to cover any size of space accurately and precisely” Tweet This
“A student will have to participate in this recording of attendance,” Jim Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies at MU, said in a statement to The Kansas City Star.

Individual professors have to opt-in to using the app, but once they do, students in those professors’ classes will not be able to opt-out.

SpotterEDU, developed by a former basketball coach, is designed to monitor a user’s attendance by “pinpoint[ing] students within a classroom until they leave, providing continuous, reliable and non-invasive attendance,” according to the app’s website. While the app ensures that students are in the classroom during class times, it claims it does not track students’ locations anywhere else.

“We only care if students are in class during class; no GPS tracking means we can’t locate them anywhere else,” the app’s website states.

However, the app is not incapable of tracking students’ locations outside the classroom.

They even use Newspeak! We can’t track them elsewhere, only in class. Well, it’s not incapable of outside tracking. BTW, SEC school graduates, that means it is capable of tracking them outside. And, it will. This isn’t ripe for abuse. It is abuse. By the same Mizzou (Columbia) that rates a solid “D” on ACTA’s 2019 What Will They Learn index. (St. Louis also = “D,” Kansas City = “F”). So, what will they learn? Not much, outside of the joys of being herded like cattle, lied too and fleeced. “F” that.

The Homeland Security Never Stops

22 Wednesday Jan 2020

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Spying. Facial recognition for all international flights.

READ all about the automated targeting system and the associated risks.

[One of many] Privacy Risk[s]: There is a risk that biometrics CBP uses to verify the identities of individuals and to determine whether to refer travelers for additional customs and immigration inspection in the Global Entry Program will be used for a purpose inconsistent with the purpose of the original collection.

When do government programs ever stick with their original purposes?