Tag: Surveillance

[2019] US military begins testing flying surveillance balloons across the country to TRACK people’s movements

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Screenshot from YouTube.

US military begins testing flying surveillance balloons across the country to TRACK people’s movements

The tests were carried out by U.S. Southern Command, or Southcom, which is part of the Department of Defense and is responsible for intelligence operations, security cooperation and disaster response in Central and South America. It’s a joint effort by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Army and other forces whose main task is finding and intercepting drug shipments that are destined for the U.S. According to the Guardian, as many as 25 unmanned solar powered balloons were launched from rural South Dakota and made their way 250 miles across the neighboring states in tests.

Related:

Worldview Stratollites are commercial high altitude balloons like Google Loon – Worldview had an explosion December 2017

Stratollites can maintain position over specific areas of interest for days, weeks, and eventually months on end. This allows for more sustained measurements and monitoring capabilities over a targeted area. Stratollites can carry a wide variety of commercial payloads (sensors, telescopes, communications arrays, etc.), launch rapidly on demand, and safely return payloads back to earth after mission completion.

Some interesting ‘coincidences’:

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Why Not Defund the Military?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Amidst all the talk about defunding the police, notice something important: No one talks about defunding the military. That’s because the military establishment is too powerful and has come to be accepted as a permanent feature in American life. Except for libertarians, everyone treats the military as their god.

Why Not Defund the Military?

Not sure if he’s correct about military capabilities but I can get behind defunding the military!

Peace activist sentenced for criticizing German war policy in Ukraine

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Berlin-Tiergarten District Court sentenced peace activist Heinrich Bücker in January for speaking out in public against Germany’s war policy in Ukraine. The verdict is a massive attack on the basic democratic rights of freedom of speech and assembly. It is reminiscent of the persecution of anti-militarists in the Weimar Republic who—like Carl von Ossietzky—opposed the rearmament of the Reichswehr (armed forces).

Peace activist sentenced for criticizing German war policy in Ukraine

H/T: George Galloway

Related:

Conviction for a commemorative speech for the attack on the USSR against Heinrich Bücker, Coop Anti-War cafe Berlin (in German)

More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.

More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

I Don’t Want to #StopAsianHate. I Want to End US Imperialism

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Elizabeth Tang – July 8, 2021

Editorial note: As a rule Orinoco Tribune does not re-publish opinion pieces more than 10 days after their original publication, but in this case we are making an exception, because this is a on a very sensitive issue that demands attention.

I don’t like the #StopAsianHate hashtag. First of all, Asians are not the ones doing the “hating.” And second, why are we calling it “hate” at all? Anti-Asian violence is systemic—it cannot be reduced to individual feelings.

I Don’t Want to #StopAsianHate. I Want to End US Imperialism

Army spied on lockdown critics: Sceptics, including our own Peter Hitchens, long suspected they were under surveillance. Now we’ve obtained official records that prove they were right all along

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A shadowy Army unit secretly spied on British citizens who criticised the Government’s Covid lockdown policies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Military operatives in the UK’s ‘information warfare’ brigade were part of a sinister operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response.

Army spied on lockdown critics: Sceptics, including our own Peter Hitchens, long suspected they were under surveillance. Now we’ve obtained official records that prove they were right all along (archived)

H/T: Der Friedensstifter

Related:

The 77th Brigade Spied on Lockdown Sceptics, Including me

NYPD commissioner reveals plans for smartphone app, new cameras

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

NYPD commissioner reveals plans for smartphone app, new cameras

“Between its use of spying drones, rampant facial recognition technology, and other invasive policing tactics, we’ve seen time and time again that the NYPD cannot police itself,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “As it looks to deploy new apps to officer and civilian phones, the Department needs to be transparent about its plan for these technologies and how they will store and protect New Yorkers’ data — ensuring that this rollout complies with the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act. To truly uphold New Yorkers’ privacy and safety, any technology adopted by the NYPD must be subject to public scrutiny and review,” she said in a statement.

U.S. Press Starts To Figure Out College TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

U.S. Press Starts To Figure Out College TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance

One, the bans are generally designed to agitate a xenophobic base and give the impression the GOP is “doing something about China.” But the party that couldn’t care less about rampant corruption or privacy violations isn’t doing much of anything meaningful to thwart China. In fact, letting adtech, telecom, and app companies run rampant with little oversight runs contrary to any such goal.

Two, the bans distract the public and press from our ongoing failure on consumer privacy and security issues. Banning TikTok, but doing nothing about the accountability optional free for all that is the adtech and data-hoovering space, doesn’t actually fix anything. China can just obtain the same data from a universe of other international companies facing little real oversight on data collection.

Three, the ban is really just about money. Trump gave the game away with his proposal that TikTok be chopped up and sold to Oracle and Walmart. That cronyistic deal fell through, but it’s pretty clear that this moral panic is designed to either help TikTok’s competitors (Facebook lobbyists are very active on this front), or force the sale of the most popular app in modern history to GOP-allies. At which point they’ll engage in all the surveillance and influence efforts they pretend to be mad about.

Related:

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