• In the latest battle in the war between Anonymous and the US government, the hacking collective has announced that it "owned" defense and intelligence contractor Mantech International, a firm working for the FBI. This after reports that PayPal gave the FBI a list of 1,000 IP addresses it says were connected to the denial of service attacks on its servers earlier this year. Online activists have initiated a Twitter-mobilized boycott of PayPal.
• Read the EFF's friend of the court brief in a case challenging the prosecution of a man who criticized a public official on Twitter. The government says the criticism violated a 2005 anti-online stalking bill. EFF says the government's interpretation of the law violates the First Amendment.
• In related news, Irregular Times has a great piece on the expanding surveillance powers being pushed through Congress amidst the debt crisis madness. The piece highlights both the "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011" and the recent, behind closed-doors meetings of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. It is rumored that the Committee is working to push through renewal of the controversial Fisa Amendments Act of 2008 without public debate.
• Senators Collins and Lieberman are raising questions about how DHS evaluates its IT programs in light of a critical GAO report. Last year the department spent over $6 billion on 348 different IT projects. Meanwhile, the government's intelligence organizations are thrilled with the new culture of information sharing, all the way down to the local cop on the beat.
• West Palm Beach, FL is installing 10 surveillance cameras, courtesy of a $100,000 grant from Target Corporation.
• The CDC has moved its disease surveillance system to the cloud. As has the General Services Administration's employee email, via Google mail. These are just two of 78 government systems the feds have identified for a shift to the cloud.
• The Canadian take on NSA meta-data spying.
• Two 22 year-old Bulgarian women were shocked to find that the Florida apartment they'd rented for the summer was full of surveillance cameras. (VIDEO)
• Israeli firm ELTA Systems, Ltd. has won a $17 million contract with an unspecified "Asian country" to build surveillance and defense intelligence systems.
• Boeing is set to continue work on a mid-altitude Army surveillance plane, "a manned multi-intelligence system that (will) detect, locate, classify, identify, and trace surface targets in day and night, near-all-weather conditions with a high degree of timeliness and accuracy. (It) will provide direct support to Brigade Combat Teams with a vital intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability."