'Big brother' Satellite Set to Launch in 2025

'Big brother' satellite capable of zooming in on ANYONE, anywhere from space is set to launch in 2025 - and privacy experts say 'we should definitely be worried'

Privacy experts are sounding the alarm on a new satellite capable of spying on your every move that is set to launch in 2025.

The satellite, created by startup company Albedo, is so high quality it can zoom in on people or license plates from space, raising concerns among expert that it will create a 'big brother is always watching' scenario.

Albedo claims the satellite won't have facial recognition software but doesn't mention that it will refrain from imaging people or protecting people's privacy. more

"There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met." - TSA

The Transportation Security Administration is planning to expand its facial recognition scanners to more than 400 airports, an agency official said...

The CAT-2 units are currently deployed at nearly 30 airports nationwide, and will expand to more than 400 federalized airports over the coming years,” the TSA official said...

During a discussion at the South by Southwest festival in March 2023, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said “eventually we will get to the point where we will require biometrics across the board because it is much more effective and much more efficient.” more

Stores Silently Deploying Facial Recognition to Spy on Shoppers

Major retailers in the US are already using facial recognition cameras to spy on shoppers, a campaigning group has warned...

Cameras are being used not just to catch persistent shoplifters, but also to monitor shoppers and analyze their emotions, so that stores can deliver personalized adverts on screens inside the store, George warned...

‘But it’s also being used for marketing purposes, they are gathering information on shoppers and seeing what they are buying and not buying - and using AI tools to analyse the emotions of shoppers and see what sort of ads to direct at them.’ more

Odd-Ball Spy News

Fifth of Government Workers Don't Care if Employer is Hacked

(Probably true for all businesses.)

Ivanti, the security vendor polled 800 public sector workers worldwide to compile its new Government Cybersecurity Status Report. It found a “not my job” attitude is exposing governments to excessive cyber-risk. Just a third (34%) of workers recognized that their actions impact their organization’s security posture. Nearly two-fifths (36%) said they haven’t reported phishing emails in the past, while a fifth (21%) said they don’t even care if the organization is hacked. more (This may help.)

Extra Credit: Seven years ago this month... Survey revealed 1 in 5 employees would sell their passwords.

Sweaters That Fool Facial Recognition

Protect your facial biometric data with knit wear? As absurd as that sounds, designer Rachele Didero, of the Italian startup Cap_able, has patented textiles that do just that. The patterns trick facial-recognition cameras into thinking it's not looking at a person. The pieces in the Manifesto Collection which include sweaters, pants, a dress, and a shirt, start at ~$300.

The idea has been around for a while.

Cheaper alternate designs; some with next day delivery!

Famed Manhattan Showroom Loses Peephole Camera Appeal
Manhattan appeals court on Thursday revived the brunt of a lawsuit against the renowned New York Design Center over a video camera... Cast your mind back to 2014... A camera hidden in the wall of a ladies' room at the New York Design Center secretly documented customers and employees for a month, a new lawsuit alleges. According to court documents obtained by the Post, the camera was found behind a broken wall tile on the sixth floor bathroom in April; the custodian who discovered it said it was trained on one of the stalls. more

Who Is Anthony Pellicano?
Infamous Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicano is the subject of a new documentary Sin Eater: The Crimes of Anthony Pellicano. The two-part special debuts on March 10 at 10 p.m. on FX and will stream on Hulu. Pellicano...gained a reputation as a fixer who could dig up dirt on his clients’ enemies to make them go away. But Pellicano’s ruthless methods were eventually his undoing, as he served extensive prison time for weapons charges as well as racketeering, wiretapping, and other crimes. more & as previously reported here.

Chinese Rocket that Delivered Military Spy Satellites Breaks Up Over Texas
The second stage of a Chinese rocket that delivered a trio of military surveillance satellites in June disintegrated over Texas on Wednesday, USNI News has learned. The four-ton component of a Chang Zheng 2D ‘Long March’ rocket punched through the atmosphere on Wednesday over Texas at 17,000 miles per hour and disintegrated, two defense officials confirmed to USNI News on Thursday... The debris field is over the least populated counties in the state, according to the Texas Demographic Center. more

The 10 Best Spy Movies That Aren't James Bond
When it comes to pure action-packed entertainment, few genres serve up as many thrills as spy movies. Spy films have been a mainstay of cinema all the way back to the medium's earliest days, like 1914's silent film The German Spy Peril. The genre kicked into high gear during the Cold War... more

SafeHouse Chicago, Spy-Themed Restaurant and Bar, Abruptly Closes
After six years of catering to secret agents and curious spies across Chicago, a spy-themed establishment has closed its doors. SafeHouse Chicago, a restaurant and bar featuring all things espionage-related, announced its abrupt closure online Monday, saying the business has "completed its last mission in Chicago." "We want to thank all of the spies who visited our Windy City headquarters and for your loyalty and support. It has been an absolute pleasure to welcome and serve spies from around the globe," SafeHouse said, in part, in a message posted on its website. more

Spybusters Tip #692: Head to Milwaukee. Best kept secret since 1966.

Why Casinos Are Spying on Their Ultra-Rich Clients

An integral part of how the casino lavishes services on its members is by monitoring their movements on the premises — with the help of facial-recognition cameras in recent years.

Of the 400 cameras in the building, 10 are linked to a face-scanning system. Whenever a member enters the building or one of its private gambling rooms, staff get pinged on their phones.

Clients, for their part, accept this Orwellian scrutiny as necessary to enhance their experience. “It’s the expectation,” says Ryan Best, the surveillance and security manager at the casino who set up its facial-recognition system up in 2018. 

Several luxury hotels in nearby Mayfair have recently introduced similar systems to alert everyone to arriving VIPs, he says. more

The Unnerving Rise of Video Games that Spy on You

Tech conglomerate Tencent caused a stir last year with the announcement that it would comply with China’s directive to incorporate facial recognition technology into its games in the country.  

The move was in line with China’s strict gaming regulation policies, which impose limits on how much time minors can spend playing video games—an effort to curb addictive behavior, since gaming is labeled by the state as “spiritual opium."

...video games are a natural medium for tracking, and researchers have long argued that large data sets about players’ in-game activities are a rich resource in understanding player psychology and cognition. more

2022 Olympics App Could Be Used for Spying

People traveling to China for the 2022 Winter Olympics—including athletes, government dignitaries, and corporate executives—are all at risk of personal data exposure and being surveilled by the Chinese regime, a data security expert warned. more

Beijing requires all athletes to install a smartphone app called MY2022 to report health and travel data while in China. The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab reported the app as having significant encryption and security flaws and a censorship list (albeit currently inactive) of 2,442 “illegal words.”  The security flaws are by design, allowing authorities to access phones. Such subtle approaches are common among intelligence services.

All laptop communications will be monitored and provided, in near real time, to China’s security services. Chinese law requires the use of government-approved VPN (Virtual Private Network) providers for internet access. Use of non-approved VPN providers could result in criminal charges against the individual.

Cellphone tracking, onsite video surveillance systems, and facial recognition technology will be used to track the movement of each athlete. China has the most sophisticated facial recognition and associated artificial intelligence in the world, thanks in part to collaborations with U.S. universities and businesses.

Personal behavior will also be watched and catalogued by the Chinese government. more

Spy Tech - Facebook and Rayban (Possibly Raybanned in some locales)

The first thing you'll notice about Facebook’s new camera glasses is that they are not called Facebook Glasses — they are called Ray-Ban Stories. This is because they are made in partnership with Ray-Ban (a cool company that no one hates), and Facebook has had a rough couple of years in the public eye. And “Stories” because, you know, Instagram stories and Facebook stories and also Snapchat "story,"

...the real danger here isn’t to your data — it’s the fact that you’re walking around wearing barely perceptible spy glasses, taking videos and photos of anyone you want, likely without them noticing...

If the idea of camera sunglasses seems familiar, perhaps that’s because it sounds like Snapchat Spectacles, which launched in 2016. In what I can only imagine is a loving tribute, Facebook has named its camera sunglasses “Stories” after the other signature product that Facebook/Instagram lifted from Snapchat. more

Tech stuff: "Dual 5MP camera gives your content new depth and dimension. Takes high resolution photos (2592x1944 pixels) and quality video (1184x1184 pixels at 30 frames per second)."

Not as dorky as past creepy-peepies, these glasses may not be recognized as spy glasses at first glance. (Maybe a Buddy Holly or Maurice Moss meets Zuck mash-up instead.) In fact, "Facebook says it's a violation of the Terms of Service to cover up the light that comes on when you're recording." Right, like that's gonna work. Additionally, "Facebook is discussing building facial recognition into its upcoming smart glasses product..." What could possibly go wrong? more

PimEyes: Cool New PI Tool or Privacy Alert - You Decide

You probably haven't seen PimEyes, a mysterious facial-recognition search engine, but it may have spotted you... Anyone can use this powerful facial-recognition tool — and that's a problem.

If you upload a picture of your face to PimEyes' website, it will immediately show you any pictures of yourself that the company has found around the internet. You might recognize all of them, or be surprised (or, perhaps, even horrified) by some; these images may include anything from wedding or vacation snapshots to pornographic images.

PimEyes is open to anyone with internet access. more

Surveillance Startup Used Own Cameras to Harass Coworkers

A surveillance startup in Silicon Valley is being accused of sexism and discrimination after a sales director used the company’s facial recognition system to harass female workers. 

Verkada, which was valued in January at $1.6 billion, equips its office with its own security cameras. 

Employees at Verkada accessed the company's facial recognition system to take photos of women colleagues and make sexually explicit jokes.

Last year, the sales director accessed these cameras to take photos of female workers, then posted them in a Slack channel called #RawVerkadawgz alongside sexually explicit jokes. The incident was first reported by IPVM and independently verified by Vice. more

Privacy Protector – Anonymous Camera for iPhone

 A new camera app has been released for iOS that, unlike basically every other photography app, is designed to hide the photo’s subject rather than highlight them. Called Anonymous Camera, this app works to protect the people captured in a video or photo by blurring or otherwise hiding their faces — or, in cases where it is necessary, by removing their bodies entirely.

There are times when you may need to interview someone or take a picture, but hide someone featured in the content for their sake. This could include interviews with someone who wishes to remain private, protecting whistleblowers, or simply hiding the faces of protesters and activists so that facial recognition technology can’t be used to identify them.

Anonymous Camera is a free app that can perform these actions, as well as entirely removing the subject’s body in cases where they have other identifiers like tattoos. The app is free to download, though there’s also a Pro version priced at $2 that includes watermark-free video recording. more

How Not to be Seen - Evading CCTV Surveillance

It's theoretically possible to become invisible to cameras. But can it catch on? 



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

Face Masks v. Facial Recognition - China has it Covered

Hanwang, the facial-recognition company that has placed 2 million of its cameras at entrance gates across the world, started preparing for the coronavirus in early January.

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

FutureWatch: You've Probably Been Photo-Napped by an App

Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared.

The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants...

The computer code underlying its app, analyzed by The New York Times, includes programming language to pair it with augmented-reality glasses; users would potentially be able to identify every person they saw...

Searching someone by face could become as easy as Googling a name. Strangers would be able to listen in on sensitive conversations, take photos of the participants and know personal secrets. Someone walking down the street would be immediately identifiable — and his or her home address would be only a few clicks away. It would herald the end of public anonymity. more

FutureWatch: The Demise of the Common Spies

Not so long ago, Secret Agent Man could globe-hop with impunity (sing-a-long) and hide with undercover diplomatic immunity. Now, he may as well wear the Scarlet Letter "A", for Agent.

WTF happened? Quite a bit...

9/11, for one. It's not so easy to fly under the radar these days.

In 2014, U.S. spies were exposed when the Office of Personnel Management was hacked. About 22 million fingerprints, security clearance background information, and personnel records allegedly fell into Chinese hands. In 2015 it happened again.

One can be fairly sure this isn't just a problem for U.S. spies. Other countries get hacked, too. You just don't hear about it.

If all this wasn't bad enough, a spy's best friend turned on him in the 2000's. Technology.

Video cameras are planted everywhere, and facial recognition is becoming more accurate every day. It is being used at airports, in buildings, and with in conjunction with city surveillance cameras. This list will grow, of course.

The latest advancement is analysis of video streams using artificial intelligence logarithms.  Suspicious movements, packages left unattended, predictions of future movements and crimes are analyzed by mindless machines 24/7, waiting to trigger an alert.

On the communications side spyware is a concern. Smartphone and GPS tracking don't help spies hide either.

It has been reported that some countries are compiling real-time databases which incorporate the above-mentioned speed bumps with: taxis, hotel, train, airline, credit card, customs and immigration information. As soon as one enters the country, they know where you are—minute by minute. And, if one takes too long going between locations, or a dual timeline appears (being in different places at the same time), a security alert is generated.

Couple all this with countries sharing information, e.g. EU, being a spy who needs to make in-person contacts becomes nearly impossible.

Think staying out of view is a good spy strategy? For now, perhaps. However, progress is being made by constructing a person's face by the sound of their voice.

The future of spying (no, it won't go away) will be radically different out of necessity. One can only guess how, but I understand they are working very hard on mind-reading.

Be seeing you.

FutureWatch: Your Voice Can Give Away What You Look Like

Spying is multifaceted. It includes everything from plain old audio eavesdropping, to spycams (thus adding the visual element), to aggregating all the telltale data about us. Once science fiction, even facial recognition is coming to airports. Is it possible to squeeze more from a spy's cornucopia of tricks?

What if you want to know what a person is thinking, or what they look like?
These two challenges are the future of spying, and they are being worked on today.

We started covering mind reading advancements in 2006. And now, how to tell what a person looks like—and even their environment... just from the sound of their voice.

San Francisco Prohibits Deployment Of ‘Secret Surveillance’ Technologies

Although the facial recognition aspects of the ordinance have been the most publicized, it also targets a long list of other products and systems.

According to the ordinance, "Surveillance Technology" means “any software, electronic device, system utilizing an electronic device, or similar device used, designed, or primarily intended to collect, retain, process, or share audio, electronic, visual, location, thermal, biometric, olfactory or similar information specifically associated with, or capable of being associated with, any individual or group.” Broadly interpreted, that’s a lot of devices.

The ban only applies to city departments and agencies, not to private businesses or the general public. Therefore, San Franciscans can continue to use facial recognition technology every day when they unlock their smart phones.

And technologies such as facial recognition currently used at the San Francisco airport and ports are not impacted because they are under federal jurisdiction. more

FutureWatch - Who Really Lives in that Apartment

NY - A Brooklyn landlord intends to install facial recognition technology at the entrance of a roughly 700-unit rent-stabilized complex, raising alarm among tenants and housing rights attorneys about what they say is a far-reaching and egregious form of digital surveillance...

“We don’t want to be tracked,” said Icemae Downes, a longtime tenant. “We are not animals. This is like tagging us through our faces because they can’t implant us with a chip.” more

Court: Authorities Can't Force Technology Unlocks with Biometric Features

A judge in California ruled Thursday that U.S. authorities cannot force people to unlock technology via fingerprint or facial recognition, even with a search warrant.

Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, made the ruling as investigators tried to access someone's property in Oakland.... (however)

The judge in her ruling stated the request was "overbroad" because it was "neither limited to a particular person nor a particular device." The request could be resubmitted if authorities specify particular people whose devices they'd like to unlock. more

Happy New Year! It's 1984 ...in 2019

Students at more than 10 schools in Guizhou Province, one of China’s poorest provinces, and the neighboring Guangxi region are now required to wear “intelligent uniforms,” which are embedded with electronic chips that track their movements.

The uniforms allow school officials, teachers, and parents to keep track of the exact times that students leave or enter the school, Lin Zongwu, principal of the No. 11 School of Renhuai in Guizhou Province, told the state-run newspaper Global Times on Dec. 20.

If students skip school without permission, an alarm will be triggered.

If students try to game the system by swapping uniforms, an alarm also will sound, as facial-recognition equipment stationed at the school entrance can match a student’s face with the chip embedded in the uniform. more

FutureWatch: Chips embedded in the students.