As protests continue to swell across the United States in response to aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions, civilians are turning to homebrew digital tools to track ICE arrests and raids in real time. But restricted government documents, obtained by the nonprofit watchdog Property of the People, show that US …
Read More »Here’s What Marines and the National Guard Can (and Can’t) Do at LA Protests
That said, there are numerous scenarios in which the military can provide assistance to police, including by giving them “information” obtained “in the normal course” of their duties, unless applicable privacy laws prohibit it. Military members can also provide police with a wide variety of assistance so long as it’s …
Read More »How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance
If you insist on using biometric unlocking methods to have faster access to your devices, keep in mind that some phones have an emergency function to disable these types of locks. Hold the wake button and one of the volume buttons simultaneously on an iPhone, for instance, and it will …
Read More »Airlines Don’t Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS
A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected US travelers’ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to …
Read More »A GPS Blackout Would Shut Down the World
Around 12,500 miles above our heads, the satellites that make up the Global Positioning System (GPS) quietly keep the world running. A blackout would result in almost instantaneous chaos. “You would see traffic jams, a lot more traffic accidents, because transportation is going to see the first most immediate impact,” …
Read More »How the Farm Industry Spied on Animal Rights Activists and Pushed the FBI to Treat Them as Bioterrorists
Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by WIRED reveal top lobbyists and representatives of America’s agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as an …
Read More »The US Is Storing Migrant Children’s DNA in a Criminal Database
The United States government has collected DNA samples from upwards of 133,000 migrant children and teenagers—including at least one 4-year-old—and uploaded their genetic data into a national criminal database used by local, state, and federal law enforcement, according to documents reviewed by WIRED. The records, quietly released by the US …
Read More »