Thursday technology links round-up

• Guys, gals and everyone else: cover your webcam when you aren't using it, pretty please? There are many creeps out there, and government spooks, who can use tricky software to hack into your webcam and look at you in your private zones. Just do it. A piece of post-it note cut up works just fine, as you can see:

Occupy and Tea Party activists, lookout! Your anger with the government is suspect.

Occupiers and Tea Partiers alike should take note. The government thinks your upset could be a terrorism indicator.

“Blackballing” FOIA requests at the FBI is bad practice, says expert

Truthout's Jason Leopold ran a story yesterday detailing the FBI's process of "blackballing" FOIA requests. The process has benign reasons to exist, but appears to be used to inappropriately deny FOIA requesters the records they seek.

An FBI spokesman told Leopold what the term means:

Shot-spotter is listening to more than just gun violence

Remember those creepy, listening street lights we told you about a while ago? Turns out those aren't the only Orwellian technologies that can listen to you as you walk down the street. An upcoming court case in Massachusetts highlights circumstances in which the police used the "ShotSpotter" to listen to someone shouting on a public street.

Joystick warfare and the coming dangers of domestic surveillance drones

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The video above shows DHS customs agents using one of their newly acquired Predator drones monitoring the US border. The agents are operating out of a trailer that has been reconfigured as a drone command center.

Thursday technology link round-up

UPDATE: ACLUm challenges secrecy surrounding Twitter subpoena case

Today the ACLU of Massachusetts and cooperating attorney Peter Krupp filed a motion to attempt to break down the walls of secrecy surrounding our legal challenge to a Suffolk county subpoena to Twitter. We wrote about the secrecy surrounding the case a few weeks ago; catch up here.

If you see something, say – ‘Enough Already!’

 

Thursday technology link round-up

• DHS has posted a document on its website describing the expansion of its social media and online media monitoring program to include the collection and retention of personally identifiable information about users, including journalists. FastCompany scooped it, and highlighted key sections:

The role of courts in our system is to do just this

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court today ruled that a 2009 law denying state funded healthcare to certain legal immigrants violated the Massachusetts state constitution's equal protection clause.