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  • Missouri University of Science and Technology attempts to paint file-sharers as mentally ill, recommends snooping software be deployed

    Dr. Sriram Chellappan of Missouri University of Science and Technology recommends monitoring students’ file sharing behavior with spyware to identify signs of “mental disorders.”

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/93950152/12-Tech-soc-Kcmwl-1

    Proactively discovering depressive symptoms from passive and unobtrusive Internet usage monitoring:

    Using the correlating Internet usage features derived in our study, we are currently attempting to build a classifier to proactively discover depressive symptoms among students by passive, unobtrusive and run-time monitoring of their Internet usage. The classifier can be readily deployed at campus settings to discover depressive symptoms among students. If privacy is a concern, it is straightforward to deploy the classifier into students’ personal computers also. Privacy is implicit,and the student can voluntarily seek support services. We believe that such an approach will significantly improve both the quality and timeliness of detection and treatment of mental disorders today.

    According to the paper, if use p2p file sharing networks you may be mentally ill and need treatment.  Let me guess what this treatment would involve: Anti-depressants, amphetamines, and therapy by one of the school’s commie social worker therapists? After all, they wouldn’t want any brainwashed slaves-in-training to have access to unapproved information from the underground p2p networks that might interfere with their “education.”

    The Internet usage monitoring spyware they have developed represents a fusion of medical nanny state surveillance with copyright enforcement.  I’d bet money that government, copyright lobby, elite foundations, or some combination thereof funded this abomination.

    Remember, every time you download a copyrighted file, God kills a kitten, because file sharing is terrorism.

  • Machine vision software tags and tracks humans across camera networks

    For your own safety, of course.

  • Cordon motion tracker reads license plates and tracks speed

  • Orwellian telescreen light poles to deliver commercials and propaganda, spy on public

    Prepare to be brainwashed with subliminal imagery and strobing effects while walking down the sidewalk.  I feel a medical discrimination lawsuit coming from those prone to seizures.

    Being forced to watch CNN on light poles is the final phase of the merger of corporations and state toward Fascism.  The mere fact that a company sees an opportunity to create a technology like this, specifically with government in mind as its primary client, illustrates how government has basically made a blank check available to the military industrial complex for surveillance technologies.

    They’re going to need all those surveillance poles though, to maintain order during the implosion of our economy.

  • Qwest CEO imprisoned in retaliation for failure to cut surveillance deal with NSA

    Wayne Madsen
    Online Journal

    Mar 2, 2010, 00:22

    (WMR) — WMR has learned from sources who worked in senior positions for the telecommunications company Qwest that its former chairman and CEO, Joseph Nacchio, was threatened with retaliation after he refused to participate in an unconstitutional and illegal National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping program after he met with NSA officials on February 27, 2001, some six months before the 9/11 attacks. Nacchio refused to turn over customer records without a court order — something NSA did not possess at the time it made its request.

    After Nacchio refused NSA’s request on the grounds that it was illegal, sources close to Nacchio reported his legal problems with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission began in earnest. First, Qwest lost out on several lucrative federal government contracts and second, Nacchio was indicted and convicted in 2007 of 19 counts of insider stock trading. Nacchio was sentenced to six years in the Schuykill federal prison camp in Minersville, Pennsylvania, where he is now assigned prisoner number 33973-013.

    In January, US District Judge Marcia Krieger of the 10th Circuit Court in Denver denied Nacchio’s motion for a new trial. Krieger was nominated for the federal bench by President George W. Bush on September 10, 2001. The September 10 date is significant – it was then clear that Nacchio was not going to be a player in the NSA and FBI illegal surveillance programs and it was the day before the Bush administration would sweep aside the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Qwest is headquartered in Denver.

    The illegal NSA surveillance program, once known by its highly-classified code-name STELLAR WIND, was revealed by AT&T employee Mark Klein, who divulged NSA’s “secret room” on the 6th floor at AT&T’s central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco. The “secret room” was next door to the 4ESS phone switch. According to AT&T documents, NSA had direct wiretaps on key Internet circuits on the floor above. NSA’s operation conducted vacuum-cleaner copying of the data stream of the Internet, which included e-mail, web browsing, VOIP phone calls (e.g., Skype) and all the other common Internet services. There is informed speculation that because of an aggressive AT&T internal campaign to transfer all its old long-distance traffic to fiber lines, traditional phone calls that passed through the 4ESS switch were likely transferred to the Internet circuits, making phone calls also very likely subject to NSA eavesdropping.

    AT&T and Verizon agreed to participate in the STELLAR WIND program.

    Even though there is ample evidence that the federal government engaged in massive prosecutorial misconduct in retaliation for Nacchio’s refusal to participate in STELLAR WIND and associated FBI surveillance programs, the Supreme Court refused to review the case against the former Qwest chief. The Supreme Court also denied Nacchio bail pending his appeal, a clear attempt by the most corrupt Supreme Court in American history to prevent Nacchio from airing the NSA’s dirty laundry about domestic wiretapping and pressure on telecommunication firms’ senior corporate officials.

    Qwest shareholders and retirees blamed Nacchio for their financial losses, however, it is now clear that the NSA and the Bush administration targeted Qwest for retribution after its top boss refused to cooperate in the illegal domestic wiretap programs of the NSA and FBI.

    Qwest founder, railroad and oil magnate Philip Anschutz, a conservative Christian who owns The Examiner chain of metro region newspapers and several entertainment firms and professional sports teams, testified on Nacchio’s behalf.

    The news of NSA’s threats of retaliation against Nacchio will come as little comfort to those NSA employees, including the jailed ex-NSA analyst Ken Ford, Jr., on similar trumped up charges. If someone as wealthy and powerful as Nacchio could be brought down by the illegal domestic joint targeting operations carried out by the NSA, FBI, and corrupt Justice Department prosecutors, those rank-and-file NSA employees who have blown the whistle on NSA’s illegal operations stand little chance of having their “day in court.”

    WMR has been told by NSA insiders that if the full extent of NSA’s illegal operations became public, the American people would go into a “state of shock.”

  • unClick Google

    We can force Google to stop their privacy violations while ridding the internet of advertising… by clicking ads.

    Google is keeping logs of our private lives. (Picture source)

    On March 11, Google revealed its latest plan to violate your privacy: they will now record the types of websites you visit in order to gather a behavioral profile of your interests purportedly so that they can send you targeted advertising. This policy is in addition to their current policy of keeping a record of every single web search you have ever made along with as much other personally identifying information as they can gather. Of course, these behavioral profiles and detailed search histories will also be made available to law enforcement personnel upon request. The disregard for user privacy is a long standing tradition at Google and one that should be challenged. Just as Facebook was recently forced to cave after protests, Google too can be made to backtrack from their creeping violations of our privacy. Every company has their weak point, for Facebook it is the fear that users will stop using the site, and for Google it is the necessity of increasing their advertising revenue. I propose that we collectively embark on a civil disobedience campaign of intentional, automated “click fraud” in order to undermine Google’s advertising program with the goal of forcing Google to adopt a pro-privacy corporate policy.

    As every internet user knows, the web is inundated with advertising. Many of these ads are generated automatically by Google. Unlike advertisements in newspapers or on billboards which are priced per impression (the more people that see an ad the more expensive it is), Google’s ads are priced per click. Therefore, every time you click on a Google AdSense advertisement, some advertiser must pay Google. If the ad you clicked on was displayed on a website other than Google’s then Google must also pay that website. As you can see, if ads are being clicked on automatically then the whole house of cards upon which the AdSense system is built on crumbles. Advertisers will refuse to pay Google and Google will refuse to pay websites.

    Because Google ads are targeted, certain advertisers are willing to pay top dollar for clicks. Some keywords such as insurance, refinance and “IRS problem” are rumored to be worth more than $10 per click. Click fraud can very quickly do major damage to Google and its advertisers but the fact is there is nothing Google can do to stop it, if we work together.

    The system I propose is quite simple and is accomplished in three steps: 1) Install Firefox and restart Firefox 2) Install GreaseMonkey (a useful plug-in for Firefox) 3) Install the Blackspot Google GreaseMonkey script or if you are on a slow network install the Blackspot Google Randomly script which will only click on one ad randomly.

    Now, whenever you use Google your computer will automatically click on all the AdSense advertisements sending a message to Google to stop their privacy violations.

    Note: If you are a techie and want to get involved with this campaign, we need a version of this script that will both remove the ads from our sight and click them automatically. The best would be integration of this script into Adblock Plus. Unfortunately, this script does not work with Adblock Plus so if you want to use Adblock Plus (you should!) then you must disable it on google.com in order to automatically click their ads. If you are a programmer, post your upgraded version of this script below. (Update: One person has already posted an updated version, but I haven’t tested it yet.)

    Special thanks to Alf at Hublog for designing the prototype of this script four years ago which I upgraded to work today.

    Micah White is a Contributing Editor at Adbusters Magazine and an independent activist. He can be reached at www.micahmwhite.com or micah[at]adbusters.org