#BigBrother is in the house!! Well, your house and mine, via our webcams. #notcool (via DemocracyNow.org)

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I guess we've known for a while that your webcam could be hacked by those who know how (safe to assume NSA has a few people who do) but I this is the first time I've heard of this "Operation Optic Nerve" which the NSA and the UK's GCHQ used to grab image and video streams en masse and save them for later perusal. Here's the most alarming bit from the Democracy Now piece:

The program was reportedly used for experiments in "automated facial recognition" as well as to monitor terrorism suspects. A more accurate name for the "Optic Nerve" program may have been "Peeping Tom," because it ended up collecting a large number of sexually explicit images. According to the documents, between 3 and 11 percent of the Yahoo webcam images contained what the GCHQ called "undesirable nudity."

In other words, they're just grabbing everything and watching enough of it to know that they've gone too far. Surely, we, as Americans--no--as human beings have the right to not have our clotheless bodies seen by people without our permission.

Read/watch all of Democracy Now's coverage of this--it's a real window into how our government has gone over the line and doesn't seem to have a problem with it.

And people say Google Glass is invasive?

AP reports: NSA phone record collection ruled unconstitutional. I love how we need a judge to tell us this.

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Yeah, this is just sad. You know who is supposed to enforce the law first? Nooo, not the police--the individual. You and me and our leaders, we all have to enforce the law. The law isn't there for people to ignore it until they get caught--it's there as the last level of protection against the criminal act being committed. In our every day lives, we (hopefully) ask ourselves if what we are doing is wrong in anyway. Our leaders, when deciding to collect our phone call info in bulk, CLEARLY did not ask this question of themselves.

And if they did, you seriously have to wonder how they could have answered "Yes, I believe that collecting the phone records of MILLIONS OF AMERICANS is perfectly moral and legal."

Now, more than ever, it's painfully obvious how corrupt our leaders are. I mean, if we live in a free country, that means that we can generally do what we want and that our government CANNOT.

Anyway, check out the original AP article for the details.

@NYTimes reports on how USG and UKG spies infiltrated #WorldOfWarcraft and #SecondLife. #ThisIsGettingRidiculous

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From the original article:

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

This is the most ridiculous rationalization for spying ever. What about Xbox and Playstation's networked games? What about the ALL the various chat/instant messaging networks out there, like Line, Kik and Snapchat? What about all the social networks that could be used by bad people? There are damn near infinite ways to communicate in the world today. Does the USG want to tap them all?

Our tax dollars at work.

And don't forget--the vaaaast majority of WoW players and Second Life users are NOT terrorists (not to mention those of us who have had our online and phone data swept up, as well). However, now, we are all now potential suspects.

My buddy @JayThePal on the NSA spying stuff

http://youtu.be/zFGMu93DhiI

I am in complete agreeance.

NYTimes interviews the founder of LavaBit.com and explains why he committed business suicide.

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From the article:

“I’ve always sort of believed it’s important for Americans to have private conversations with other Americans,” Mr. Levison said in a telephone interview Monday, “and not fear that their conversations were being monitored by the government.”

More:

Lavabit’s mysterious legal drama began six weeks ago. One of its more than 400,000 users was Edward J. Snowden, the leaker who had worked as a National Security Agency contractor. Mr. Levison has not said whether or what kind of government order he was served with, or how it might have been served.

His lawyer, Jesse Binnall, made it clear that Lavabit had complied with “narrowly tailored” court orders for user information on at least two dozen occasions in the past.

Mr. Levison, now 32 and living in Dallas, added: “What I’m opposed to are blanket court orders granting government access to everything.

Read the whole interview: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/lavabit-founder-says-he-had-obligation-to-shut-service/

More scary stuff from the surveillance state. Or should I say the police state? This is what a police state looks like. We're still a Police State Lite, but the fact that the USG feels the need to collect data on all of us means that we're all potential criminals, which is, by definition I believe, a police state.

Luckily, no one is getting arrested for what they say or write, that we know of. In a country where the government lies and obfuscates to it's people and the country's news media largely plays along, how can we know for sure that it won't come to that, or isn't there already?

TheAtlantic.com: big Internet companies are being commandeered by the USG.

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From the opinion piece:

We're already starting to see that. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others are pleading with the government to allow them to explain details of what information they provided in response to National Security Letters and other government demands. They've lost the trust of their customers, and explaining what they do -- and don't do -- is how to get it back. The government has refused; they don't care.

Read the whole piece: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/the-nsa-is-commandeering-the-internet/278572/

This is seriously scary stuff and is right on the money. Corporations and the USG are beholden to each other in a way us normal civilians once were but can now never be. We don't have the money to be important enough to the USG. The USG is too corrupt and, by definition, corporations are only in it for the money, so... we're screwed.

I feel strongly that we need an Independent Internet--a network of devices that link together and don't necesarily rely on a mega-corporation to provide a "backbone" of hardware or of services. I think it's well within the abilities of technology available to us to create a new Internet that could function outside of the control of both corporations AND the USG or any government for that matter.

NYTimes reports on FISA Court giving the NSA even more power to amass private data related to non-terror cases. Did the USG start a new war and not tell us?

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From the article:

In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.

The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

I mean, seriously, did the USG start a war and not tell us? What is all this data for? Last time I checked, the vast majority of us are not invovled in nuclear proliferation or cyberterrorism. I also don't remember the Fourth Amendment being suspended. Soooo... WTF, USG? Why so serious?

Ballpoint Adventures for January 5, 2006: This is how Billy Dealt with NSA Phone Snooping...

Remember how we were worried about the government eavesdropping on our mobile phone conversations? I sure hope that's not going on any more, but how would we know if it was? We didn't know the first time.