Even before opening his stocking on Christmas morning, Barack Obama has his holiday reading cut out for him. His Review Group on Intelligence and Surveillance Technologies has handed him a 300-page report…
Since June, thanks to the information disclosed by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, a troubling truth has come to light. The internet, and with it the entire gamut of new communication…
More than 500 high-profile names, including authors, musicians and five Nobel laureates, have signed a petition to the United Nations calling for a bill of digital rights to be developed in the wake of…
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is moving to “real-time” monitoring of share trading as another weapon in the ongoing fight against insider trading. But will the use of this form of…
Last week in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, jurors were shown surveillance footage in the trial of a Sydney man, Simon Gittany, who stands accused of murdering his girlfriend Lisa Harnum. It is…
With each new revelation of the scope of the American National Security Agency’s spying, perceptions of the importance of privacy are hardening around the world. Systematic monitoring of the world’s communications…
Over the past year or so, surveillance issues have become more visible to the public, especially forms of what Australian computer scientist Roger Clarke calls “dataveillance”, or the systematic collection…
“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.” These aren’t lines from Nineteen Eighty-Four but the words of Eric Schmidt, Google’s notoriously…
If you’re thinking about planning a trip to Russia for the Winter Olympic Games in February next year, prepare to have every aspect of your communications monitored under “the most invasive and systematic…
XKeyscore is an online surveillance tool run by America’s National Security Agency (NSA) that allows analysts to search contents of chats, emails and browsing histories without warrants, according to leaked…
Hot on the heels of data analyst whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the existence of the PRISM electronic surveillance program operated by the United States’ National Security Agency since…
Many people have expressed their outrage at recent revelations concerning the United States’ PRISM program, linking it to the overpowering gaze of Big Brother. The PRISM program is rightly a subject of…
So the US National Security Agency (NSA) and possibly GCHQ could have access to our emails. This should not have come as a surprise. It should be seen as a sign of things to come. We already send close…
In the wake of former CIA employee Edward Snowden’s revelations of the PRISM NSA mass surveillance, people are once again asking why the general public should care if they’ve got nothing to hide. “Nothing…
Citizen sleuths were out in numbers (or holed up inside, frantically tweeting) after last week’s Boston Marathon bombings. Alongside the drip-drip from mainstream media and the trickle of information from…
The FBI has released photos and CCTV footage of the two men considered suspects in this week’s Boston bombing, and has appealed to the public to help identify them. Both are young men, wearing baseball…
In the late 1970s I found myself wandering the mostly deserted streets of East Berlin, having successfully negotiated Checkpoint Charlie and a horde of East German border guards. I remember commenting…
Earlier this week Greens Senator Scott Ludlam asked the Federal Government to reveal whether the TrapWire video surveillance system is being used in Australia or if it has been used in the past. Senator…
Your friend Kate answers the phone. You remind her you’re meeting at 10am tomorrow for breakfast. You tell her your fractured wrist is healing but the doctor said there’s still some way to go. Your mum’s…
For the past hundred-odd years, commercial aviation has relied on a human pilot sitting behind the controls of an aircraft. Today, designers and engineers are beginning to ask: “Is it even necessary to…