Hackers may be pickin’ up good vibrations from your phone. All the better to surveil you with, my dear. Researchers at the Electrical and Computer Engineering school of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discovered that the vibration motor in your devices can operate like a microphone, according to the researchers’ paper. That means, if…
Category: Computer Related
Technology: Sci-Fi Classics That Accurately Predicted the Future
With all this talk lately of “Minority Report” type technology in Bio-Metrics and other Security apparatus, I thought it would be interesting to look at other sci-fi movies that nailed it as far as actual current or “coming soon” technology. -SF Did you know a kid’s cartoon predicted 3D-printed food in 1962? Or that…
Surveillance State: The FBI’s Secret Biometric Database
FBI wants to keep secret who’s stored in its massive biometric database The FBI said it would retain the data to “aid in establishing patterns of activity” to help discover new criminals when they arise. The FBI is proposing keeping information that it stores as part of a massive biometric database private — even to…
Cyber-Security Threat Update: Don’t Get Juice-Jacked
You are racing through the airport. The low power light is blinking red. You are desperate to plug into any outlet you can find. Watch out. You could get juice jacked. Guess what? In every smart phone—no matter what the model—power and data flow through the same USB port and power cable. That creates a potential attack…
Surveillance State: Everything We Know About How the FBI Hacks People
RECENT HEADLINES WARN that the government now has greater authority to hack your computers, in and outside the US. Changes to federal criminal court procedures known as Rule 41 are to blame; they vastly expand how and whom the FBI can legally hack. But just like the NSA’s hacking operations, FBI hacking isn’t new. In…
Book Review: Playing to the Edge, American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
by Michael V. Hayden Penguin, 448 pp When Michael Hayden was a young air force officer in the 1980s, the military stationed him as an intelligence attaché in Bulgaria. There, the man who would rise to the top of the American intelligence community in the post–September 11 era lived under constant surveillance: he and his…
The Surveillance State: Twitter Lawsuit and FISC Court Updates
A federal judge delivered a blow Monday to Twitter’s drive to release more details on surveillance orders it receives, but the tech firm won a chance to try to reformulate its case. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Rogers said the government has the power to prohibit the release of classified information, barring claims Twitter made…
The Surveillance State: What Happened to the 5th Amendment and “Innocent Until Proven Guilty?”
Consider for a moment the implications of a world without the protections afforded under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights…the man in this story does not have to do that, he is living it right now. Now I am against child sex predators as much as anybody, but this case STINKS! The Man has…
Cyber-Crime: Hackers Steal $81 Million in Sneak Attack on World Banking
Bet you did not hear about this during your morning coffee.Your money is not safe in banks anymore folks..between crooked Governments and wily Hackers you are better off using a coffee can.-SF NEW YORK — Tens of millions of dollars siphoned from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A shadowy set of casinos…
The Surveillance State: Phone Database Security Called into Question
As if Illegal Mass Surveillance does not have enough downside, now it has also become a National Security risk??? -SF Federal officials fear that national security may have been jeopardized when the company building a sensitive phone-number database violated a federal requirement that only U.S. citizens work on the project. The database is significant because…