Slashdot Mirror
Real-Time Gmail Spying a 'Top Priority' For FBI This Year
Fnord666 sends this quote from an article at Slate:
"Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a 'top priority' this year. ... a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and phone companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks. But it doesn't cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers like Skype. Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games ('the chat feature in Scrabble') to Gmail and Google Voice. 'Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,' he said."
So is any mean of communication. Ever heard of the right to be left alone?
Seems we could write a simple gTalk/gMail client that just sent random chatter back and forth. Get enough of them going and it would be near impossible to filter out the noise.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I can hear the criminals conspiring. They are everywhere. They are conspiring in games of scrabble. They are even using mind rays to talk, and I can hear them. The only thing that makes them stop is the foil hat and the power of crystals.
soon it'll be hard to an anonymous coward
That cause me to consider bringing email back home. I switched to gmail several years ago because running a mail server was just too much of a pain in the neck. Then again, maybe running my own smtp/pop server would make it easier to be eavesdropped on by the FBI and their ilk.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
The FBI has also learned that talking face to face us being used in nearly every criminal activity of two or more people (gangs). Henceforth all conversations must be recorded on your official government recorder, which will relay all conversations in real time.
Until you receive your recorder, refrain from I monitored conversations except in the designated monitored talking booths.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
You can have all the power in the world, but I am forced to strive to encrypt more precisely because of this approach. Honor the forth amendment, its words AND intent. Give me the paperwork, get the data. Demand to get the data without a piece of paper, I will blatantly act to encrypt. Pretend you have magic papers that cannot be argued against? Expect to find /no/ data.
Your paper is secret? So are my IM's/E-Mails/Twittered cock shots to my constituents.
One of those falls in to the legitimate realm of non warranted data access. Guess which one? This is not a hard problem if you don't have to contort yourself to answer it.
I AM NOT TERRIFIED.
News at 11.
Just like *some* FBI/CIA/DHS/and other 3 letter acronym agents are criminals.
With that thought process, we should have 24 hour, open, video and audio recordings of every second of every government agent's life open to the public for the "good of the people" since if even ONE agent is a criminal, then they must all be criminals, isn't that the kindergarten mentality the FBI is using for this stunt?
FBI agents - go to the courts with your "suspicions" get yourself a fucking warrant, then go ask google and others to give you access.
Until then, keep the fuck out of our privacy. It's expected, and protected by the constitution of the United States - you know, that pesky little document you swore to uphold and defend, not mutilate and destroy.
Any FBI (CIA or other agency) agent that doesn't go along with this is a constitutional terrorist and should be sent to Gitmo with no chance of parole.
Fuck That Shit
I hope the FBI figures out that the various trolls in online chats are actually terrorist speaking in code.
Be seeing you...
So are regular telephones, and cell phones, and Jitsi, and ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger, and AIM, and Jabber, and Google Talk, and Facetime, and Twitter, and even talking face to face. And let's not forget the U.S. Mail.
And the most frightening (or maybe depressing? disgusting? angering?) things about it are how quickly it's happening in a little backlash there is from the general public.
The thing is, any modernized country in the world has the same access to this type of technology and could be proposing similarly oppressive actions ... and yet most of them are not.
What is so chronically wrong with Americans that the ones in charge pull shit like this and everyone else puts up with it?
Rest assured- the NSA is already slurping unthinkable amounts of Internet traffic, and storing the results on various shadow-Google installations (massive database and search engine facilities using Google's hardware and software designs). What is happening here is that the FBI (and other public facing enforcement agencies) want to use such data openly in court. To do this, they have to pretend the intelligence gathering is not already happening (and has been for more than a decade), and will be implemented in the near future- 'legal' and above board.
Most of how the ordinary citizen is tracked is a national secret. For instance, almost no-one knows the extent to which motor vehicles are monitored by reading the RFID tags present in the rubber of the tires. Instead, the government works hard to make you think most tracking is done by (very visible) camera networks. The under-road RFID reading strips are 'invisible', and vastly more reliable and cheaper than the cameras. The cameras are mostly used to associate a license plate and/or vehicle image with the RFID 'fingerprint'.
The more data the state can grab about the sheeple, the more data it wants to grab. In the early part of the 20th century, there was a reluctance to create or properly fund 'intelligence' agencies, because it was found such agencies always grew like a cancer, and never recognised lines they would not cross. After WW2, with the rise of the cold war, all sides threw caution to the wind, and began this '1984' style nightmare. Before the age of the microprocessor, tech limitations prevented the 'tumors' from growing beyond a certain size. Now the amoral psychopaths these agencies employ desire all of us be placed under 24 hour surveillance.
Only new societal rules can now save us. An addition to the constitution, or a new Commandment. "Thou shall not pre-emptively spy upon a citizen for any reason or cause."
You will be told (by the monsters) that if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear, or a (massive) loss of privacy is a small price to pay for (maybe) improved law enforcement. Ordinary people (especially after schooling) are easily fooled by such arguments. The same ordinary people only finally appreciate the danger when everything goes wrong (you end up in a nation ruled by the Soviets or Nazis, for instance). People in ex-Nazi ruled, and then ex-Soviet ruled nations love to vote in freedom loving, privacy respecting governments- at least until they forget again (see Holland for a sad example of this phenomenon).
This seems like a fairly trivial thing to deal with if you are a commited criminal. Set up a system whereby all that they can get is encrypted messages. I have a key, you have a key and anyone else needs to break the encryption. We could share keys in person or through encrypted messages in encryted messages.
Maybe I've been reading too much Slashdot. :/
Thank God I learned l33t speak as a youngling...now the EffaBeeEye won't ever know my s3cr3t communications about warez to get some good w33d and me @ss@$1n@t10n plans.
You people should know better than to support this. Shame on you.
I wonder what the Fed's make of apk's ramblings?
Yet, they wouldn't be trying to open your physical mail. It's amazing how now that it's digital, your privacy doesn't exist.
Mail encrypting should be a top priority to world population. "Those communications are being intercepted by criminal government agencies,' we say.
if they suggested looking in every letter we sent.. im imagining people would be pretty upset
how is this any different ?
because email can fly around the net in plain text?
are we gonna see a story that says "FBI SCANNING ALL POST CARDS.." ..bleh.
> 'Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,' he said."
"Boy, I'll say," said the Founding Fathers.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
...are going on in washington
What is so amazing about CALEA and future updates to it, is that it mandates that providers be technically insecure.
If a provider is known ahead of time to be technically insecure, then the security problems transcend whatever you happen to think of your government. Presumably it's insecure against criminals too. And other governments (remember, no matter where you live, your government is not the only government or big player).
And then, if it's known to be generally insecure, you can't rely on it for anything, except as a transport for your tunnel.
Thus, given rational actors (*), the problem goes beyond mere fear, paranoia, and cipherpunk dystopias to people realizing that they really do need to encrypt everything, as a simple matter of common sense. You have to do it, just to have some safety against .. well, check your spamtrap for a sampling of the kind of people you need to worry about. They're out there.
So you're going to encrypt, whether your concern is Big Brother or anyone else. And it's just plain irresponsible for anyone to build a communications protocol which doesn't encrypt, so a protocol which is vulnerable to its providers' service known insecurity, is a big sign of lack of quality.
And so Big Brother gets nothing except ciphertext gibberish, even in the unthinkable situation where he does have a warrant. (CALEA is just Congress' way of saying "ha ha, got you!" to all the judges who sign warrants.) All because Big Brother told everyone that the Internet is insecure, not as a matter of bad luck or clever crooks, but because it's legally required to be insecure. Sure, we all know it's insecure, but we're feebleminded faithful trusting little things who prefer to live in ignorance of that. And here we have the US government, getting in our faces like a drill sergeant yelling, "PRIVATE, DID YOU JUST SEND PLAINTEXT?"
If I didn't know better, I'd think this was some kind of public service educational campaign. And a good one, too.
(*) Aye, the flaw in my whole argument.
The car analogy (Hi, Slashdot!) is that the city council passes a law that every car door must be trivially openable by paramedics, using a $5 key that's for sale at Walmart. And so the issue is thrust into everyone's face that no lawfully-available car doors really lock in any reasonable sense of the word, so everyone reluctantly adds a secondary security system to their car, just to keep common thieves out. And thus, whatever motivation the city council had, is undermined, since the police and paramedics and whoever else, can't break into cars as easily as they could before.
2:12 But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and
destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and
shall utterly perish in their own corruption; 2:13 And shall receive
the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot
in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves
with their own deceivings while they feast with you; 2:14 Having eyes
full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable
souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed
children: 2:15 Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray,
following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of
unrighteousness; 2:16 But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass
speaking with man's voice forbad the madness of the prophet.
Or did Orwell just get it wrong by ten years.
What are the alternatives for email services? While I tend to fall under that "nothing to hide" category, that doesn't preclude my desire to maintain the right of privacy. Since I am not willing to run my own mail server, Can someone share some advice on which alternative mail services to use?
It's hardly surprising that Skype isn't mentioned. It's widely believed that there are already backdoors in Skype. Skype has "declined to confirm" that there are no backdoors.
From the Wikipedia Skype Security article
Security researchers Biondi and Desclaux have speculated that Skype may have a back door, since Skype sends traffic even when it is turned off and because Skype has taken extreme measures to obfuscate their traffic and functioning of their program.[26] Several media sources have reported that at a meeting about the "Lawful interception of IP based services" held on 25 June 2008, high-ranking but not named officials at the Austrian interior ministry said that they could listen in on Skype conversations without problems. Austrian public broadcasting service ORF, citing minutes from the meeting, have reported that "the Austrian police are able to listen in on Skype connections".[27][28] Skype declined to comment on the reports.[29]
With the excuse of "these services are used for criminal conversations", the FBI and other organisations will soon be able to plant bugs in every household as that's where criminal conversations sometimes take place as well. Why not tag everyone so you know where every Citizen is at all times?
Americans at least should be outraged by this, as well as all of the other wiretapping bullshit that has gone on since the Patriot act. While I would guess that most Americans have no idea what 'mens rea' is, they should all understand the concept of innocent until proven guilty.
There is no reason for all of these Government agencies to have unlimited access to your personal life without a warrant. None what so ever. If you believe the propaganda and rhetoric, shame on you for being ignorant. Just think, in 7 months the new NSA super computers will be cracking away at your encryption as well, so even that won't be safe.
Combine the FBI, CIA, DHS, ATF, and FEMA resources and you have an army big enough to take on the US Military and more intelligence for a domestic war. Speaking of which, the DHS this year purchased 1.2 billion hollow point bullets (add in other Government agencies and you have over 2 billion rounds of killing bullets, not target bullets). Hmmm, still you find nothing odd with them snooping into _everything_ you do? How about the 1,300 armored vehicles they purchased last year by DHS? Still nothing? Anyone remember the 2011 defense spending bill with the clauses allowing indefinite detention of US citizens without warrant, trial, etc...? How about NSA, DHS, FBI, and CIA drone programs operating domestically? How about the lack of transparency in all of these agencies we were promised over 4 years ago by the then candidate now President, and before that by GWB? Anyone else know about why FEMA has been building dozens of "Relocation Camps" in the US? There is footage of one at least, but of course all of them are denied.
Look at all of that shit, then combine with the fact that the main stream media has become pure propaganda. Suddeny those conspiracy theories really don't seem so whacky do they? It's well passed the time when we should be waking up the neighbors, protesting for change, and voting in new leadership based on Socrates' principles and not politicians!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
To the agents reading this from whatever government agency you may belong to: GO Fuck Yourselves.
Your paper is secret????? So are my IM's/E-Mails/Twittered cock shots to my constituents.!!!!!!
http://arcelikbuzdolabiservisi.net/
Gotta be a real douche bag to work for those people.
Ubiquitous Internet surveillance under color of national security: Because the Congressional exemption for Insider trading attracted too much attention, and prior knowledge of material information under seal of Top Secret is one helluva moat. Ka-CHING!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Isn't The NSA spy room (which splits the internet and makes a "copy" of all data running through that route to a huge hard drive to analyze by the feds), and Project Echelon Enough? (which is another wire tapping program) . These perverted assholes aren't happy with just having all the internet routed, the need your encrypted communications as well. And since gmail is httpS (usually by default) this makes their wiretapping schemes a lot harder. This is why they need an explicit law to legally tell Google to "Allow us monitor all your communications or pay a hefty fine (or even be shut down)" for not complying this this Law. You say Google "don't be evil", but you fuckers don't even understand the position(s) Google gets put in by this "evil" force in the world that is diametrically opposed to freedom and free thought.
Imagine how many unemployed people there would be in there world if there was no completely fake threat like terrorism. Imagine what they would do with their pathetic lives? Would they ever contribute anything useful to humanity other than their snooping, surveillance state, constant perversion, and terrorist boogeymen?
Those communications are being used for criminal conversations.
How do they know? This is guilty until proven innocent. The important question, how can this be a slippery slope? Will they argue 'Those cars are being used for criminal conversations.' or 'Those cars are being used for criminal deeds.', indicating the need for a tracking device on all cars. It already exists de facto, through cell phones. Does Sat-Nav have wi-fi back-doors?
Another reason for WebRTC to take off.
You sir are obviously a terrorist and will be treated as such.
Seriously though, do you really think the creator of such an app would not be treated as such?
What's the difficulty? Get a warrant and Google/Dropbox/Skype/etc will hand over any data covered by it. Couldn't be simpler. Why waste time and effort with all this extralegal surveillance?
(in Yoda voice) You will be...you...will...be...
I tried this service:
http://www.spammimic.com/
It is a great idea, I'm surprised that it did not get more widespread acceptance.
For those who object to this behaviour, write to congress. How many actually do this? As long as the populace is complacent this will get worse. Freedom and its maintenance must be struggled for. "To the States, or any one of them, or any city of the States, resist much, obey little! Resist much! Resist! Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty." -Walt Whitman.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
We could switch to end to end encryption right now. Firstly assuming we go back to using email clients.
Next, the email client sends your public key with every message, the receiving email client picks the key up and after that uses it for every communication it sends back. In effect it thinks fred@bob.com is key [MagicFrdBobKey] because that's the key it received the first time you communicated. After that a manual change and user alert is raised, if fred@bob.com tries to send you a different key, or if fred@bob.com sends you an unencrypted text.
Sure it's vulnerable to FIRST TIME man in the middle key intercepts. An attacker could intercept that first key send and substitute their own, then intercept every email after that and recrypt with the correct key. But they'd have to do that to everyone all the time to keep it going. As soon as they stopped, the alert would be raised.
Sure it's vulnerable to the usual, local computer hacking, and plausible lies as to why the key is wrong etc.. You would still have to be vigilant.
Once a key has been exchanged, the route is secure, the email is encrypted and no longer subject to warrantless snooping.
For real secure email, we could send that first public key via some other route to avoid even the first man in the middle attack.
Use decent encryption and use unknown, foreign email accounts accessed via a VPN to communicate.
2048-bit keys are your friends.
Criminals can just send a fucking god damn mother jesus H christ fucking letter. Watch out some dirty nasty mother fucker might talk face to face. Get the fuck out.
As of age 2, children will group together, and mimick to fit in or be accepted.
I guess they never quite loose that, and even at age 50, will more agree with mainstream common things.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I think we've been missing the obvious benefit here. If anything, we should be demanding that the government go even further! Am I saying that I want the FBI to know what I had for breakfast, my appointments and contacts, and the total mass of the poop I took after breakfast? Yes. Yes I am. Do I want them monitoring my email and Netflix accounts? Yup. Can I possibly be saying that I want to cede my privacy rights to Big Brother? Sure am.
See, I'm kind of forgetful and disorganized. If the FBI wants to keep track of everything for me, let them. I just need access to the surveillance data. Has my routine changed lately? I dunno. Let me ask the guys in the surveillance van. Did I have someplace to be today? Dunno, but they do. I might just catch a ride with them. Wife says she told you all about it, but you're pretty sure this is the first you heard of it? Ask the FBI. Want to learn new things about yourself that could only be revealed by sifting through a mass of mined data? Ask the FBI! Tired of reading your own email? Well, you get the point.
How much would you pay for a service that does all this?? If you turned it into a business, how much would it make, and would you share it with me?
I'm getting myself on some watchlists right now!
I always had a suspicion, that after those planes flew into the two towers, that there were more than a few smiles in high government departments. "Wow, we now have "carte blanche" (sp?) to do anything we want to. All we have to say is "Homeland Security", and the sheep will allow us to do anything we want".
Why we aren't all using email clients that perform end-to-end encryption is beyond me. FBI, hell, I don't even want Gmail pulling keywords out of my messages...
high time
If it saves just one life, isn't it worth it? Just one small smiling cherub?
Aren't civil rights obsolete, when tiny little children's lives are at stake?
...about explosive news from Washington. It's going to be a bomb when public knows it!
One that bounces any mail to you with a bounce message that says: "Please use this link to type in your message to me instead". That link would be to a web-based email interface on your own box. Or the bounce message could say, "Hey I am online right now", lets chat in real-time with this interface. Anyone who emails you more than once will use the link instead of trying email.
Email needs to die anyway. Lets kill it with fire (ie. something that serves us better.)
Um... frak.... the government.
This is Slashdot which has a deep user base of highly skilled technical talent, hates what's happening to the Internet (etc.) via the U.S. Government (etc.), and collectively has the ability to do something about it.
:)
Personally, I often find myself reading articles like this, and becoming very frustrated about it to say the least. The older I get, the more I have seen the encroaching government rules/laws/lack thereof which basically invalidates some of the most important parts of the Constitution. It's gone waaaaayyyy too far at this point, don't you think?
All of this has to be somewhat obvious and common in terms of how you feel when you read this. I don't think I am in the minority here, but I might be crazy.
With the long-winded intro above... there must be something we can do as a collective. There are a lot of great minds here, and a lot of talent which can out-think, and out-perform anything the government can come up with without breaking laws.
What we're lacking is organization, and a plan to do something about it. That could be anything from making sure the world knows what's happening, to creating secure means of communication, to outing politicians, and getting the media involved, to a lot of things we haven't thought of.
I'm ready for the neigh-Sayers, and the "it won't happen because...", but doing something is a lot better than watching this all happen and feeling helpless.
How do we organize? How can Slashdot come together to do something positive which stops this atrocious behavior by our governments?
Before we hear about how silly this idea is or how it won't ever work, who has actually tried on a somewhat large scale in terms of people?
I may be alone, but I am so tired of hearing about all the incredibly ridiculous things our government is doing to the people who pay for them to be there.
Well, it was worth a try... I'm ready to be shot down, but if I didn't say something, I'd just be a lemming like a good percentage of the clueless constituency.
Rant over...
You can bet there were. The PATRIOT act was some control freak's fap fodder, sitting in a desk, ready for just such an opportunity.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Ya know, we might be looking at Advertising 4.0.
*e-mail* is what they are describing in the article, right? But no. They make a point to specifically mention Gmail about 7 times, and not Hotmail or the other online mail services. Product Placement in the middle of news.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Obviously not, since they built that huge new data center in Utah.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
why is the FBI, etc mucking about. Just demand that all internet traffic be routed through government owned and operated IXPs and get it over with. This death of liberty and privacy by bits and bytes is needless torture when we all know what the end result will be.
The is very similar to an article published in Forbes.
Maybe I'm missing something. Only Google, and Chrome, are mentioned in the title, but wouldn’t the same risks apply to any OS and/or browser?
From Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/03/27/new-google-chrome-spell-checker-monitors-everything-you-type-while-fbi-secretly-watches/
Maybe the FBI should just require we record every form of communication 24/7.
If I remember correctly from the book 1984, home TVs were used to monitor behavior. And if they were turned off for too long, it immediately flag you as suspicious. I think its time to just implement this.
If you can't see my rabid sarcasm in this post, you probably wouldn't object to my proposals anyways.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
Is there anything out there marked specifically for people wishing to migrate and help backup all their data from GMail to something else?
There are alternatives but Gmail works really well. I search for something on-a-par.
A blog I run for the wealth
Well, if the rationale for this is that the medium is being used for criminal activity, let us all listen in a police band radios, cell phones and read political emails and have access to all the 3 letter agency networks......
Shut up! it's for your own good!
If the feds stick "lawful intercept" on World of Warcraft, they'll have intercept analysists stabbing out their own eyes after 5 minutes of Trade Channel transcripts. That place makes 4chan look like bingo night at the local old folks' home.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
This whole going dark meme LEA is throwing around is bunk. It does not matter how society is structured or what the state of technology is.
There will always be a basic need for criminals to discover other buyers and sellers in illicit markets. The same skill set that makes a good detective works in all technological environments. The fallacy LEA makes is seeking advantage it is not morally entitled. This needs to be countered to protect LEA from internal corruption as well as the freedom of citizens to be left alone which is essential to maintenance of the social contract.
Obviously there will always be narrow minded types who only see that which makes their job easier or effective in the short term and self-delude themselves into thinking their power grabs are morally justifiable. The unfortunate reality is that every action has a reaction and contrary to LEA lore not every criminal is stupid.
There are enough laws on the books so that basically anyone and everyone is a criminal. Given the fact that they can also track and record everything you do, they can easily accumulate evidence of your criminality.
Then comes selective prosecution. Friends of Big Brother get away with blatant and obvious criminal activity with no legal consequences. Peaceful political dissidents who dare question the status quo incur the full wrath of the government.
Hell, even if you are 100% innocent, the government claims the power to kidnap and/or kill you, so they don't even need to bother with evidence gathering.
Third-world countries could do a good business by awarding folks diplomatic courier status... for a fee. Any communications between two of them would be out. of. bounds.
The real message I hear the FBI telling everyone is: Encrypt the shit outta everything now cause we're gonna be listenin.
Someone wants to tap my communications? Go get a warrant. Show probable cause...
I guess...
Guess so...
Using this logic the FBI should be able to monitor every form of communication in real time because "criminal conversations" might be occurring. This is the definition of unreasonable search and seizure.
> 'Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,' he said."
Oh yeah? Prove it!
Oh, that's right, you can't, not without seeing the conversations...
Seriously, if you were a criminal would you email, skype, whatever in plain language? Would you simply write about your criminal dealings e.g. Hey Gino, we offed Jimmy Hoffa today and buried him at ....? So who is the FBI really after? Is it the low hanging fruit ie. the most incompetent, least successful, and by extension, the least noteworthy of the criminal element? Even the Enron execs covered themselves by cryptic references in email. Having half a clue, any criminal with a substantial investment would be doing business discretely ... i.e. only communicating the most innocuous, mundane, and obfuscated messages via internet or cell.
Better yet, some gangs in Mexico and perhaps elsewhere, set up their own private cell network. If you were an urban gang, with a limited area, why not set up your own wlan completely off the grid?
So what and who is the FBI really targetting ...
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
This is already being considered with the new PS4 and Xbox 720 Kinect cameras. These machines will record in a very wide angle those who are present in the room, and can identify different users.
Rumour is that they can be turned on remotely and law enforcement agencies can co-opt feeds for various purposes. So the Television watching you all the time isn't far off.
-Gel214th
I sure hope this purely rumor and not a bit of truth to it. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be surprised if there's more truth to it than rumor.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
I guess since they're letting us know this, it adds credence to their being the most transparent administration in history. I certainly think I see what they're up to.
http://gamer.blorge.com/2013/02/11/xbox-720-wont-turn-on-without-kinect-connected/
"The next gen Kinect camera is said to be far superior over the current device and can recognize up to six people in the room. There are implications that through the Kinect device, the Xbox 720 will recognize and change various aspects of the dashboard such as theme and avatar to cater to each user."
It can recognise you....
*twilight zone theme song*
-Gel214th
Canada's legal system just pronounced on the subject of text messaging. Before police needed a search warrant. Now the supreme court has ruled that they need legal wiretap orders. (Search Warrants were just signed by the senior police commander, if there was suspected proof of wrongdoing. Now text messages are protected from warrants, the next thing hopefully will be emails).
www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/27/canada-supreme-court-text-messages_n_2961046.html
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
gosgog:, that's me!
Simple answer to putting a stop to this kind of crap, get the FBI, DHS, NSA, CIA etc., email addresses and then all of us, gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail etc....just flood em with every bit of email we send out! If that doesn't bury 'em fast then they'll have to employ thousands more to handle it and that means the U.S. unemployed will vanish and so end payment to the unemployed, and our DEFICITS will reduce by a few Trillion !!