By DANIEL CHAITIN (@DANIELCHAITIN7) • 3/22/17 9:07 PM
The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward warned on Wednesday that there are people from the Obama administration who could be facing criminal charges for unmasking the names of Trump transition team members from surveillance of foreign officials.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said earlier that he had briefed Trump on new information, unrelated to an investigation into Russian activities, that suggested that several members of Trump’s transition team and perhaps Trump himself had their identities “unmasked” after their communications were intercepted by U.S. intelligence officials.
The revelation is notable because identities of Americans are generally supposed to remain “masked” if American communications are swept up during surveillance of foreign individuals.
Proposal obtained by Vocativ asks for surveillance at nine NYC ‘crossing points’
By Kevin Collier
Jan 27, 2017 at 9:27 AM ET
The state of New York has privately asked surveillance companies to pitch a vast camera system that would scan and identify people who drive in and out of New York City, according to a December memo obtained by Vocativ.
The call for private companies to submit plans is part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s major infrastructure package, which he introduced in October. Though much of the related proposals would be indisputably welcome to most New Yorkers — renovating airports and improving public transportation — a little-noticed detail included installing cameras to “test emerging facial recognition software and equipment.”
“This is a highly advanced system they’re asking for,” said Clare Garvie, an associate at Georgetown University’s Center for Privacy and Technology, and who specializes in police use of face recognition technologies. “This is going to be terabytes — if not petabytes — of data, and multiple cameras running 24 hours a day. In order to be face recognition compliant they probably have to be pretty high definition.”
In a wide-ranging request for documents and analysis, President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team asked the Department of Homeland Security last month to assess all assets available for border wall and barrier construction.
The team also asked about the department’s capacity for expanding immigrant detention and about an aerial surveillance program that was scaled back by the Obama administration but remains popular with immigration hardliners. And it asked whether federal workers have altered biographic information kept by the department about immigrants out of concern for their civil liberties.
The requests were made in a Dec. 5 meeting between Trump’s transition team and Department of Homeland Security officials, according to an internal agency memo reviewed by Reuters. The document offers a glimpse into the president-elect’s strategy for securing the U.S. borders and reversing polices put in place by the Obama administration.
Trump’s transition team did not comment in response to Reuters inquiries. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment.
In response to the transition team request, U.S. Customs and Border Protection staffers identified more than 400 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, and about the same distance along the U.S.-Canada border, where new fencing could be erected, according to a document seen by Reuters.
Reuters could not determine whether the Trump team is considering a northern border barrier. During the campaign, Trump pledged to build a wall and expand fencing on parts of the U.S.-Mexico border but said he sees no need to build a wall on the border with Canada.
One program the transition team asked about, according to the email summary, was Operation Phalanx, an aerial surveillance program that authorizes 1,200 Army National Guard airmen to monitor the southern border for drug trafficking and illegal migration.
The program once deployed 6,000 airmen under President George W. Bush but was downsized by Barack Obama, a move blasted by some conservatives who argue the surveillance is vital to border security.
“Obama has managed to put together the most intensive surveillance state in the history of the world,” the ‘Snowden’ director told THR while discussing his film at the Toronto Film Festival. “This is pretty frightening when you think about the implications.”
Oliver Stone warned against the dangers of global surveillance in a sit-down with The Hollywood Reporter at the Toronto Film Festival.
The Snowden director, speaking about his biopic of famous whistleblower Edward Snowden, spoke about the current state of the country’s surveillance system, which says has intensified under the Obama administration.
“I thought Obama, like everyone else, was going to be a reformer. He had criticized the surveillance prior,” Stone told THR. “Since 2013, I have to tell you it’s gotten a lot more serious because they’ve expanded the surveillance. It’s gotten better.”
Ridgewood NJ, NJ.COM is reporting that casual commuter conversations on light rail trains are being recorded by NJ Transit.
NJT has long held the belief that video and audio surveillance systems are designed to make riders more secure and that
the on-board cameras and audio surveillance systems are needed to fight crime and maintain security.
In recent years NJT has installed video surveillance on transit buses and video and audio devices have already been installed on River Line light rail vehicles and are currently being installed on the Hudson-Bergen and Newark Light Rail.
According to the Port Authority ,PATH trains also have on-board cameras to monitor riders, which was a built in feature of the new PA-5 cars that replaced older trains.
While NJT claims commuter rail trains are not equipped with surveillance devices.We could not get a confirmation to the extent of which bus riders were under surveillance.
According to Transit all light rail vehicles that are equipped with surveillance have signs informing customers of their presence.So the question arises does on-board surveillance go too far when the agency records everything passengers are saying, without telling customers how long they keep or who has access to the recordings?
Bloggers, Surveillance and Obama’s Orwellian State Justin Lynch July 11, 2014 U.S. President Barack Obama (R) arrives to make a statement to the news media about the recent problems at the Veterans Affairs Department with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House May 21, 2014 in Washington, DC.Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images
Advancements in technology have fueled this White House’s obsession with controlling the message.
Jay Carney is free. But not loose – at least so far. After resigning as the press secretary for President Obama on June 20, Carney gave insight into the Obama administration’s handling of classified documents, and responded to criticism that this administration has been the most Orwellian in recent history.
“I know — because I covered them — that this was said of Clinton and Bush, and it will probably be said of the next White House,” said Carney in a recent New York Times Magazine interview. “I think a little perspective is useful…It is a serious, serious matter to leak classified information. Some of the debate around this kind of forgets how serious that is.”
But, it could also be the changing nature of the relationship between the media and the White House. At a recent event at the New America Foundation, journalists and historians challenged Carney, arguing that this White House has been more secret than previous occupants.
“Increasingly, the Obama White House has become so brittle, and so controlling of the message, that people are afraid to respond to me,” said Kimberly Dozier, a former Associated Press reporter. She was one of the journalists whose phone records were obtained by the Department of Justice last spring during its investigation into a leak of classified information about a failed Al-Qaeda plot. The scope of that investigation, some critics said, was unprecedented overreach.
