Friday, January 5, 2024
Disney’s AI CCTV
Sunday, November 12, 2023
AirTags: The New Go-to Tool for Cops
Sunday, December 18, 2022
Reno 911: Mayor Finds GPS Tracker on Her Car – Sues PI
The lawsuit alleges that the investigator trespassed onto her property to install the device without her consent. It says Schieve was unaware until a mechanic noticed it while working on her vehicle.
The complaint says, further, that the investigator was working on behalf of an “unidentified third party” whose identity she has not been able to ascertain...
There was no immediate response to a request for comment emailed Friday by The Associated Press to David McNeely, the investigator alleged to have placed the tracking device, and 5 Alpha Industries, the company... She brought it to police in neighboring Sparks, and they were able to determine that it had been purchased by McNeely. more
Do-it-Yourself Vehicle GPS Tracker Detection
Tuesday, December 6, 2022
Just Because You are Paranoid... Device Found in CEO's Car
This comes after details were provided to press in October about a circuit board, described as an “NSA-level device”, that De Ruyter found while cleaning his car.
Articles cited a preliminary report prepared by former police commissioner George Fivaz who claimed the device isn’t commercially available, and is typically used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies...
Journalists were provided photos of the circuit board, which they duly published....
Security researcher Daniel Cuthbert was willing to comment on the record.
He explained that, based on the evidence, the device was likely nothing more than a remote of some kind.
Such a remote button could be a gate or garage opener, a panic button, or a way to arm and disarm a home alarm.
MyBroadband’s in-house researcher and electronic engineer Wikus Steyn agreed.
“There is no GPS chip or antenna, so no tracking that way. I see no mic onboard, although there is what seems to be a 2-pin input at the top, but that is most likely for a push button,” Steyn stated. He also said the quality of soldering suggests cheap mass production. more
- Low-Power, High-Performance, Wireless Systems With Data Rate Up to 1250 kbps
- ISM/SRD Bands: 169, 433, 868, 915, and 920 MHz
- Possible Support for Additional Frequency Bands: 137 to 158.3 MHz, 205 to 237.5 MHz, and 274 to 316.6 MHz
- Smart Metering (AMR/AMI)
- Home and Building Automation
- Wireless Alarm and Security Systems
- Industrial Monitoring and Control
- Wireless Healthcare Applications
- Wireless Sensor Networks and Active RFID
- IEEE 802.15.4g Applications
- Wireless M-Bus, All Modes
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Police Use New Tool to Track People Without a Warrant
The tool enables law enforcement officers to see “patterns of life” – where and when people work and live, with whom they associate and what places they visit. The tool’s maker, Fog Data Science, claims to have billions of data points from over 250 million U.S. mobile devices. more
Monday, February 14, 2022
An Update on AirTag and Unwanted Tracking
Apple has been working closely with various safety groups and law enforcement agencies. Through our own evaluations and these discussions, we have identified even more ways we can update AirTag safety warnings and help guard against further unwanted tracking...
Advancements Coming to AirTag and the Find My Network
The following updates represent important steps Apple is taking... more
Monday, August 30, 2021
Weird Files: Somewhat Covert Microphone is a Blast & Bugged Bugs
Its cardioid capsule and machined vents allow for high off-axis rejection and a focused recording, great for stringed acoustic instruments.
The GREEN12 is handmade from an actual discharged 12Ga shell. more
---
The state agriculture staff netted, tagged
with a tracker and released three of hornets Aug. 11, to Tuesday, Aug.
17, according to a news release from the Washington State Department of
Agriculture. One of the so-called “murder hornets” slipped out of the
tracking device, another hornet was never located and one eventually led
the team to the nest. more
Read more here: https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article253621598.html#storylink=cp
Friday, March 19, 2021
Cars Know Your Location. A Spy Firm Wants to Sell It to the Military
• 15 billion car locations.
• Nearly any country on Earth.
‘The Ulysses Group’ is pitching a powerful surveillance technology to the U.S. government.
A surveillance contractor that has previously sold services to the U.S. military is advertising a product that it says can locate the real-time locations of specific cars in nearly any country on Earth. It says it does this by using data collected and sent by the cars and their components themselves, according to a document obtained by Motherboard.
"Ulysses can provide our clients with the ability to remotely geolocate vehicles in nearly every country except for North Korea and Cuba on a near real time basis," the document, written by contractor The Ulysses Group, reads. "Currently, we can access over 15 billion vehicle locations around the world every month," the document adds. more
Placed in my Grain of Salt file until I can verify.
Monday, February 15, 2021
Pretty Good Phone Privacy - Protects Both User Identity and Location
Abstract
To receive service in today’s cellular architecture phones uniquely identify themselves to towers and thus to operators. This is now a cause of major privacy violations as operators sell and leak identity and location data of hundreds of millions of mobile users.In this paper, we take an end-to-end perspective on the cellular architecture and find key points of decoupling that enable us to protect user identity and location privacy with no changes to physical infrastructure, no added latency, and no requirement of direct cooperation from existing operators.
We describe Pretty Good Phone Privacy (PGPP) and demonstrate how our modified back end stack (NGC) works with real phones to provide ordinary yet privacy-preserving connectivity. We explore inherent privacy and efficiency trade-offs in a simulation of a large metropolitan region. We show how PGPP maintains today’s control overheads while significantly improving user identity and location privacy. more
BONUS... "It protects users from fake cell phone towers (IMSI-catchers) and surveillance by cell providers." a good summary explanation
Thursday, January 7, 2021
Court Order Doesn't Stop Man from Eavesdropping & GPS Tracking
Dutchess County resident Brett M. Marinaccio, 33, of Hopewell Junction, was arrested on Monday, Jan. 4, by New York State Police, said Trooper AJ Hicks.
According to Hicks, an investigation determined Marinaccio utilized hidden GPS tracking devices with audio capabilities to eavesdrop (similar to this) on the victim while an order of protection was in place issued by the Dutchess County Family Court to protect the victim. moreTuesday, August 25, 2020
Clearly Creepy - The Billboards are Watching You
Clear Channel Outdoor, one of the world’s largest billboard companies, will in coming days roll out technology across Europe capable of letting advertisers know where people go and what they do after seeing a particular billboard.
Sounds creepy, no?Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Verizon Launches Hyper-Precise GPS Location Technology
Verizon launched its Hyper Precise Location using Real Time Kinematics (RTK), a location technology that provides location accuracy within 1-2 centimeters, on the Verizon network.
Verizon has built and deployed RTK reference stations nationwide to provide pinpoint level accuracy to RTK compatible internet of things (IoT) devices. RTK will also support emerging technologies that depend on high level location accuracy such as delivery drones and customer-approved location data for first responders during emergencies...Additionally, the rollout of hyper-precise location services paired with Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband (UWB) network and 5G Edge, will pave the way for more autonomous technologies. more
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
NSA Tells Mobile Users Beware of Find-My-Phone
Thursday, July 30, 2020
GPS Tracker – World’s Smallest and More
- SOS buttons
- Audio eavesdropping capability
- Integration with Google Maps
- Speed reporting
- Geo-fencing with automatic alerts
- Disable vehicle
- Updates every five seconds
- Wireless recharging
- Worldwide coverage
- Bluetooth – for tracking the last few feet
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Santa and Cuebiq Know if You've Been Naughty or Nice
For the Fourth of July weekend, a new analysis of cell phone data suggests even more people hit the road among 10 coronavirus hotspots, despite warnings from health experts.
The analysis comes from data shared with CNN by Cuebiq, one of the private companies that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses to track general movement in the United States.
Cuebiq gets its data when people download apps on their phones and opt into anonymous location data tracking. The company's full data set includes 15 million phones nationwide. more
Thursday, April 23, 2020
IR Eye of Ra, or The Drone Patrol
The new drone platform will also be used to determine when people are closer than six feet to each other. Police will be able to deliver a verbal warning through the drone’s speaker to anyone not practicing social distancing.
The new drone technology was developed by a company called Draganfly Inc., which has been around since the late 1990s, and uses Westport PD’s existing quadcopter drones with Draganfly’s software. Draganfly worked with a deep-learning company called Vital Intelligence Inc. and researchers from the University of South Australia to develop the new tech, according to a press release. more
Monday, April 13, 2020
How Not to be Seen - Evading CCTV Surveillance
Right now, you're more than likely spending the vast majority of your time at home. Someday, however, we will all be able to leave the house once again and emerge, blinking, into society to work, travel, eat, play, and congregate in all of humanity's many bustling crowds.
The world, when we eventually enter it again, is waiting for us with millions of digital eyes—cameras, everywhere, owned by governments and private entities alike. Pretty much every state out there has some entity collecting license plate data from millions of cars—parked or on the road—every day. Meanwhile all kinds of cameras—from police to airlines, retailers, and your neighbors' doorbells—are watching you every time you step outside, and unscrupulous parties are offering facial recognition services with any footage they get their hands on.
In short, it's not great out there if you're a person who cares about privacy, and it's likely to keep getting worse. In the long run, pressure on state and federal regulators to enact and enforce laws that can limit the collection and use of such data is likely to be the most efficient way to effect change. But in the shorter term, individuals have a conundrum before them: can you go out and exist in the world without being seen?
Bottom line as of now...
All of the digital simulations run on the cloak worked with 100-percent effectiveness, he added. But in the real world, "the reliability degrades." The tech has room for improvement.
"How good can they get? Right now I think we're still at the prototype stage," he told Ars. "You can produce these things that, when you wear them in some situations, they work. It's just not reliable enough that I would tell people, you know, you can put this on and reliably evade surveillance." more
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Face Masks v. Facial Recognition - China has it Covered
Huang Lei, the company’s chief technical officer, said that even before the new virus was widely known about, he had begun to get requests...to update its software to recognize nurses wearing masks...
The company now says its masked facial recognition program has reached 95 percent accuracy in lab tests, and even claims that it is more accurate in real life, where its cameras take multiple photos of a person if the first attempt to identify them fails. more
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Schools Using Kids' Phones to Track and Surveil Them
At least 10 schools across the US have installed radio frequency scanners, which pick up on the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals from students' phones and track them with accuracy down to about one meter, or just over three feet, said Nadir Ali, CEO of indoor data tracking company Inpixon.
His company has been in talks with other school districts, and a few schools in the Middle East are also considering the product... more
Monday, February 3, 2020
How to Turn a Tesla Into a Surveillance Station
“It turns your Tesla into an AI-powered surveillance station,” Kain told the magazine. “It’s meant to be another set of eyes, to help out and tell you it’s seen a license plate following you over multiple days, or even multiple turns of a single trip.” more