“Surveillance Society” – Page 14

Disguised “Agitators”: German Spy Agency Runs Thousands of Fake Social Media Accounts

German intelligence workers have reluctantly admitted they are running fake accounts on social media and are now unwilling to go into detail about their purpose.

287 such accounts are run by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Brandenburg alone, according to the response to a parliamentary question from the AfD. Party official Hans-Christoph Berndt said this suggests there could be “10,000 such disguised provocateurs” across the whole of Germany, joking that Erich Mielke—the Stasi boss whose tactics earned him the nickname “The Master of Fear”—“is back.”

by Blazingcatfur•June 5, 2025June 4, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society", Germany, WTF?

Supermarket workers are wearing body cameras. Welcome to the new dystopia

At some Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart stores, you may soon see employees strolling about wearing a new accessory: body cameras. Walmart is also piloting this tech in Canada. They’re compact and sometimes colourful devices that hang from a lanyard like a name tag at a conference. Except instead of sweetly introducing you to a clerk, they introduce the tacit threat of being recorded.

This technology is typically associated with law enforcement, not retail clerks. Though the cameras aren’t always storing video or audio, they can be switched on during “escalations.” It’s a surreal update to the kind of “Karen”-esque supermarket-aisle showdowns you sometimes see on social media, but more importantly, it’s a dark sign of what’s being asked of wage workers in today’s surveillance economy.

by Blazingcatfur•May 19, 2025May 19, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society", Canada

Police face lawsuit after former officer arrested over ‘thought crime’ tweet

A retired special constable is preparing to sue Kent Police after being arrested over a social media post warning about rising anti-Semitism.

Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from the force he had served for a decade after replying to a pro-Palestinian activist on X.

The 71-year-old was detained for eight hours, interrogated and ultimately issued with a caution after officers visited his home on November 2 2023.

The police haven’t just been arresting citizens over memes—they’ve gone after their own former officers.

You probably didn’t hear about this case, but in November 2023, Kent Police arrested retired special constable Julian Foulkes.

His so-called crime?

Posting a warning about… pic.twitter.com/Zb8oIyJNxH

— The Stark Naked Brief. (@StarkNakedBrief) May 10, 2025

Turns out retired cop Julian Foulkes—arrested then cleared over a “thought crime” tweet—wasn’t far off in 2023. By April, pro-Palestine activists were practically storming Heathrow, looking for “Jewish” departures. See linked post. https://t.co/dpJYZOScJM pic.twitter.com/w6LJezjtF5

— Starmer Sycophant (@sirwg202110) May 10, 2025

by Blazingcatfur•May 12, 2025May 12, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society"

Retired police officer arrested over ‘thought crime’ tweet

A retired special constable was arrested and detained over a social media post warning about the threat of anti-Semitism in Britain, The Telegraph can reveal.

Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from Kent Police – the force he had served for a decade – after challenging a supporter of pro-Palestinian marches on X.

Police body-worn camera footage captured officers scrutinising the 71-year-old’s collection of books by authors such as Douglas Murray, a Telegraph contributor, and issues of The Spectator, pointing to what they described as “very Brexity things”.

by Blazingcatfur•May 11, 2025May 11, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society"

Border agents are going to photograph everyone leaving the US by car

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans on photographing every single person who leaves the US by car, an agency spokesperson told Wired. The agency says it will start using facial recognition technology at official border crossings to match all outbound travelers’ faces to their passports, visas, or other travel documents, though there’s no public timeline for when this will happen.

by Blazingcatfur•May 11, 2025May 10, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society"

Digital ID is a danger to us all

Few things stir the imagination of conspiracy theorists like the prospect of a government-backed digital-identity scheme. The obsessive advocacy of digital ID by Tony Blair of all people is just more grist to their mill. But there are perfectly rational reasons to be wary of the British state’s digital-ID scheme. For one thing, it will make us less safe.

by Blazingcatfur•May 3, 2025May 2, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society"

Can AI spot a killer? Inside the Government’s murder prediction tool

In 2004, Daniel Gonzalez went on a three-day killing spree. Could predictive AI have identified him as a threat before it was too late?

At age 24, Daniel Gonzalez was well-known to the authorities. He was an intelligent child, with an IQ of 125. But by his late teens, he had already racked up a long history of violence – from punching a bus driver over a disputed fare to threatening his carer with a knife.

Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia aged 19, not helped by a fondness for LSD and Ketamine binges, he was soon spending time on the streets, in and out of mental hospitals, and in prison.

by Blazingcatfur•April 22, 2025April 21, 2025•0•"AI - Artificial Intelligence", "Surveillance Society"

Live facial recognition would enhance UK justice, says Tony Blair

Innovations such as digital identities and live facial recognition should shape the future of the criminal justice system, Tony Blair has said.

Proposals for technological advancement such as the establishment of a unique digital identifier to connect a person’s data, such as health and tax records, have been included in The Times Crime and Justice Commission’s full report and recommendations, which were released on Monday.

Blair was always a creep.

by Blazingcatfur•April 15, 2025April 15, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society"

‘Chilling’ tool aims to predict who will kill by using personal data

A system that aims to predict who may go on to commit serious violent crimes, including murder, by analysing data held by police and probation services is being developed by the government.

The Ministry of Justice is working with researchers on a test project that uses algorithms to identify patterns in the personal data, in an effort to improve public safety, according to documents that were obtained by freedom of information requests by the pressure group Statewatch.

by Blazingcatfur•April 9, 2025April 8, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society", WTF?

I heard the full story of the woman jailed for two years for a tweet. Her injustice shames Britain

It is many years since I clambered into a cage in Cambridge’s King’s Parade for Amnesty International and stared glumly through the bars at a photographer who snapped me for the front page of the student paper. On that drizzly, damp day, we were trying to draw attention to the plight of prisoners in authoritarian countries where people could be thrown into jail for no reason, except to deter other critics of the regime, and denied their basic human rights.

In the past few days, I’ve found myself wondering what that idealistic young student would have thought if you’d told her that, 40 years in the future, she would be writing about a woman thrown into jail in our own country largely to act as a warning to others. A widely-respected and adored childminder described by one parent as “the kindest British person I’ve met”, a mother of two children (one living, one dead), a carer to a sick husband, by whose side she also appeared in his role as a Tory councillor.

by Blazingcatfur•April 6, 2025April 5, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society"

Police arrest parents who complained about daughter’s primary school in WhatsApp group

The parents of a nine-year-old girl were arrested by police after they complained about their daughter’s primary school in a WhatsApp group.

Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine were reportedly detained in front of their young daughter by six officers before being left in a cell for eight hours.

They said they were questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property.

The police are the enemy of the people.

This is not policing by consent. This is China.

It’s about time we stopped paying taxes to fund the salaries of these little gestapo pricks. https://t.co/NNQMw7ESTZ

— Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) March 29, 2025

by Blazingcatfur•March 29, 2025March 29, 2025•0•"Criminalizing Dissent", "Surveillance Society", WTF?

Croydon to get UK’s first permanent facial recognition cameras

Facial recognition cameras that scan for wanted criminals are being installed permanently on UK high streets for the first time, The Times can reveal.

The Metropolitan Police will permanently put up live facial recognition (LFR) cameras in Croydon, south London, as part of a pilot project that may see the scheme extended across the capital.

The cameras, set to go live in June or July, will monitor the faces of people on the high street and match their image to a database of alleged criminals, including rapists, burglars and robbers.

by Blazingcatfur•March 24, 2025March 23, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society"

Replacing Cash With a Digital Dollar Would Pose a Grave Threat to Our Rights and Freedoms

The Bank of Canada has made no secret of its efforts to explore a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), a “digital dollar” issued and controlled by the central bank. The Bank of Canada is not alone. To date, 134 countries and currency unions have explored a CBDC, and 66 countries are already in advanced stages of implementation.

In 2023, cash accounted for a mere 11 percent of total payments made by Canadians. Consumers increasingly tap their credit and debit cards at checkouts, send e-transfers, or use online banking to pay bills, make investments, and donate to charities. For many Canadians, metal coins function less like a currency and more like a locker or shopping cart token; paper bills are for birthday cards, not for “serious” transactions. New legislation in Quebec empowers law enforcement to presume that cash sums of $2,000 or more are the proceeds of unlawful activity.

by Blazingcatfur•March 24, 2025March 23, 2025•0•"Digital Currency", "Surveillance Society"

Ontario’s provincial police force could be using Israeli spyware, report finds

Researchers have uncovered “possible links” between Ontario’s provincial police force and an Israel-based military-grade spyware maker called Paragon Solutions, raising questions about the extent and scope of Canadian authorities’ use of cyber weapons.

The new findings were published by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which tracks and identifies digital threats against civil society, and come three years after a parliamentary committee in Canada called for Ottawa to update the country’s privacy laws in the wake of press reports that the national police force was using spyware to hack mobile phone devices. No laws were ever passed to address the controversy.

The Citizen Lab, in a report published on Wednesday, found a possible technical link between Paragon, which sells a spyware known as Graphite to government clients, and entities based in Ontario, Canada, including one that used the address of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).

This stuff always ends up used well beyond the original intent.

by Blazingcatfur•March 19, 2025March 19, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society", Canada

Grandmother spoken to by police after criticising Labour politicians online

A grandmother was spoken to at her home by police after she criticised Labour politicians online for sending offensive WhatsApp messages.

In a series of Facebook posts Helen Jones called for the resignation of a councillor embroiled in the WhatsApp scandal which led to the sacking of Andrew Gwynne, the former health minister.

The 54-year-old school administrator, who was not accused of committing a crime, said she was left feeling scared to post on social media following the unannounced visit by two officers on Tuesday.

by Blazingcatfur•February 24, 2025February 23, 2025•0•"Surveillance Society"