By 2020, Commercial Vendors Will Offer Quantum Encryption

One of the major problems with challenging the surveillance state is that it is extremely difficult to prove legally that you have been under surveillance. The only people able to prove it are the government themselves, or (in highly unusual cases) people to whom the government has accidentally disclosed that they are under surveillance. What … Continue reading By 2020, Commercial Vendors Will Offer Quantum Encryption

By 2020, Law Enforcement Will Use Brain Scans To Identify Recidivists

A new study from the Mind Research Center in Albuquerque, N. M., uses functional MRI to predict the likelihood of whether a criminal will reoffend after release from prison. Inmates “with relatively low anterior cingulate activity were twice as likely to reoffend than inmates with high-brain activity in this region.” Society is developing the ability … Continue reading By 2020, Law Enforcement Will Use Brain Scans To Identify Recidivists

By 2020, Americans May Have Started Talking About The Right To Obscurity

Americans are used to thinking of ourselves as “rights pioneers.” But the American constitution is particularly difficult to amend, and is therefore slower than most to respond to a rapidly changing technological and cultural landscape. Justice Brandeis’s 1890 law review article on “The Right to Privacy” conceived of the Constitution as embodying a central, unarticulated … Continue reading By 2020, Americans May Have Started Talking About The Right To Obscurity

By 2020, Stingray Will Be Launched! New Doohickey Allows Police To Get Everybody’s Cellphone Locations Without Going Through the Telcos

We continue our series updating you on the exciting new world of mass surveillance you should expect in a few short years (previous posts include discussions of real-time life recording, terahertz surveillance and indoor cellphone tracking), by bringing you the Stingray.

By 2020, There Will Be Eyes On Everyone: Implications of Universal, Mass, Peer-to-Peer Surveillance

We’re used to the fact that data storage technologies, once so sensationally expensive, are becoming drastically cheaper. What we don’t yet clearly realize is what that will mean for our everyday lives. Within ten years, it will be reasonably cheap to track every moment of your life. The technology already exists. You could each have … Continue reading By 2020, There Will Be Eyes On Everyone: Implications of Universal, Mass, Peer-to-Peer Surveillance

By 2020, Terahertz Surveillance Will Be Here, and the NYPD Will Love It

Once again, Mayor Bloomberg’s private army is in the vanguard of new surveillance technologies. The NYPD has just taken delivery of a portable machine capable of detecting the terahertz radiation emitted by every human being. It allows them to remotely detect guns or other inorganic illegal materials being concealed under people’s clothing. Suspects! We meant … Continue reading By 2020, Terahertz Surveillance Will Be Here, and the NYPD Will Love It

By 2020, Cellphones Will Be Able To Track You Inside Buildings Too

Science Daily reports that one of the technological limitations on cellphones’ tracking capabilities is about to be lifted. A research team led by Professor Dong-Soo Han of the Department of Computer Science at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has developed a way of locating cellphones using their WiFi fingerprints to within 10 … Continue reading By 2020, Cellphones Will Be Able To Track You Inside Buildings Too

The Seven Years’ War

Boston police used their fusion center to surveil my journalistic actions. It took nearly seven years for BPD to hold itself somewhat accountable, and only after they used my information in a Department of Homeland Security conference presentation. The department violated transparency laws and their own policies to hide their surveillance of me covering the Boston … Continue reading The Seven Years’ War

It’s A Whole New World

Every two years, the Massachusetts legislature starts a fresh session. Here, we review bills on the top ten topics relating to surveillance, privacy and the Fourth Amendment, that have been introduced in the new session. Please contact your legislators via https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator, to express your support, and to ask for theirs. Our thanks to Julie Bernstein … Continue reading It’s A Whole New World

FBI & Boston PD Work Together To Convene Grand Jury To Investigate Left-Wing Activists, Citing Jan 6

During the Trump years, the President loved to lay into the FBI, and in consequence, the FBI found new allies on the left. Lifelong Republican Jim Comey became a darling of the Sunday morning talk shows, and after the January 6 attack on Congress, the FBI went full tilt after insurrectionists, to the applause of … Continue reading FBI & Boston PD Work Together To Convene Grand Jury To Investigate Left-Wing Activists, Citing Jan 6