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Category: Surveillance

  • Policing of Palestine Movement in Canada

    A new report has been published by the Anti-Racism Program of the CJPME Foundation (ARPCF), documenting how Canadian authorities have responded to pro-Palestinian activism with disproportionate policing, surveillance, and legal targeting.

    Titled “Policing Palestine Solidarity: A crisis of Civil Liberties in Canada (2021-2025),” the 71-page report finds that in the wake of Gaza solidarity mobilizations, state institutions increasingly treated a largely peaceful human-rights movement as a “national security threat,” and built an enforcement posture designed to deter participation rather than facilitate Charter-protected protest.

    Based on protest data from 2021–2025 and extensive documentation, the report highlights a stark disparity: pro-Palestine demonstrations accounted for 10.1% of all protests but drew 37% of all police interventions, even though over 96% of pro-Palestine protests were entirely peaceful.

    The report highlights key findings:

    • Disproportionate policing: Pro-Palestine protests faced dramatically higher rates of police intervention than any other protest cause in Canada (2021–2025).
    • Surveillance and coordination: The report describes an “unprecedented apparatus” of surveillance and inter-agency coordination, including integration between federal agencies and municipal police forces.
    • Legal and political escalation: The report warns that proposed federal measures—including Bill C-9 (Combatting Hate Act)—risk codifying repression through “bubble zones” and expanded discretion around “hate” and symbols.

    The report urges governments to act immediately, including:

    • Withdraw or fundamentally overhaul Bill C-9 and reject “bubble zone” style repression that criminalizes legitimate protest.
    • Launch a Federal Commission of Inquiry to investigate political interference and the national-security framing used to justify these policing operations.
    • Amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to include “political belief” as a prohibited ground of discrimination, to help stop political persecution and institutional retaliation against pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist speech.
    • End the criminalization pipeline (including punitive bail conditions and “hate-motivated” enhancements applied to protected political speech).
    • Dismantle surveillance and demilitarize public-order policing (including limits on drone/biometric surveillance and the use of militarized crowd-control units).

    Canada cannot claim to uphold democratic rights while building the machinery to suppress dissent. The report warns that once these tools are normalized, they can be used against any movement that challenges the political status quo.

    The post Policing of Palestine Movement in Canada first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Western elites fear a ‘globalised intifada’ because they are its targets, not Jews

    Western establishments’ fear of the phrase “Globalise the intifada” has little to do with any danger supposedly posed to Jewish populations from its use.

    The threat is posed by the slogan’s central idea, not by some specific target.

    “Globalise the intifada!” is the modern equivalent of “Power to the people!” – a slogan long used by anti-colonial movements, by revolutionary socialist parties, by the ANC in its fight against South African apartheid, and by the Black Panthers in their struggle against white supremacy in the US.

    The emblematic anti-colonial struggle of our times is in Palestine. It is hardly surprising that any emerging, popular mass movement against oppressive, unaccountable, increasingly anti-democratic Western elites should look to the language of that struggle.

    “Intifada” refers to “shaking off” a system of oppression.

    We can all see where Israel’s ethnic supremacist agenda has led for the Palestinians: to military occupation, apartheid, and genocide.

    Many of us sense, too, that this is where our own societies are heading. The ultimate destination of the technological developments – from smartphones to social media – that have atomised and pacified us over the past two decades is absolute control over our lives through surveillance, facial recognition, and more militarised and robotic policing, and our ever-greater redundancy and powerlessness in the face of artificial intelligence and greater mechanisation.

    These technologies have been tested and refined for at least a quarter of a century in the Palestinian territories illegally occupied and ruled by Israel.

    Why is Israel viewed as so essential to Western elites that they are willing to be seen openly backing its genocide in Gaza? Because Israel is creating a vision of the near-future, it is developing the template for how they deal with surplus sections of western populations in a world of diminishing resources and an ever-more hostile climate.

    And all the better for our rulers, any resistance on our part to the Palestinians’ enslavement and slow extermination – and to our own growing servitude and abuse – can be characterised as antisemitism. In outsourcing this project to Israel, Western establishments have devised the ultimate cover story.

    Every time some deluded group or individual falls for this ploy and blames Jews collectively for what Israel and its patrons are really responsible for, the noose tightens a little more around the neck of those trying to liberate our minds before the confinement of our bodies becomes permanent.

    While we are being demonised as racists, the technology and strategies used today against Palestinians will become the walls of tomorrow’s prisons for us.

    “Globalise the intifada” isn’t a call for harming Jews, though Western establishments would love you to think it is. It’s a call for showing solidarity with Palestinians before it is too late for them, and for us. It is about throwing sand in the cogs of a machinery of oppression before it grows too powerful to be confronted.

    Over decades, the Palestinians have moved between peaceful and violent intifadas, and found neither has won them greater freedom. That is not because intifada is necessarily the wrong path to liberation and justice. It is because the forces ranged against them have been insurmountable.

    That is why we, at the heart of the imperial hub, must show them solidarity – and why we need to learn from their experience before we run out of time to act for ourselves.

    The post Western elites fear a ‘globalised intifada’ because they are its targets, not Jews first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Bondi Beach Attack Is Weaponized to Suppress Palestine Solidarity in Australia

    When news broke of the Bondi Beach shooting, those of us in the global Palestine solidarity movement knew immediately what was coming. We’ve seen this pattern: when liberation movements challenge state power and when genocide is named and resisted, states seize on any incident, any tragedy, to justify criminalizing that resistance. Since October 2023, as Israel has carried out genocide in Gaza…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Texas Now Has a Drone Fleet Nearly as Large as the US Border Patrol’s

    Texas Republicans have been wary of unmanned aerial vehicles, with some even backing proposed laws to allow the citizenry to gun down invasive airborne drones. Now, thanks to years of Operation Lone Star, Governor Abbott’s multi-billion dollar border mission, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is ushering in what might fairly be called the Drone Star State with an expansive fleet of…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Faith-based protesters shut ICE regional headquarters in SF; Oakland considers Police contract with private surveillance company – December 16, 2025

    Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

    The post Faith-based protesters shut ICE regional headquarters in SF; Oakland considers Police contract with private surveillance company – December 16, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.


    This content originally appeared on KPFA – The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israeli ‘Predator’ Smartphone Spyware Exposed

    New research published by Amnesty International exposes the disturbing internal workings of Intellexa, and its constellation of digital espionage products. This includes ‘Predator’, a highly invasive resource linked to grave human rights abuses in multiple countries. Intellexa’s menacing technology allows government customers to access target smartphones’ cameras, microphones, encrypted chat apps, emails, GPS locations, photos, files, browsing activity, and more. It’s just the latest example of an Israeli-linked spyware specialist acting with no consideration for the law – although one wouldn’t know that from Amnesty’s probe.

    The post Israeli ‘Predator’ Smartphone Spyware Exposed appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Palestinians in Gaza Are Watched, Tracked, and Targeted by Israeli Surveillance

    Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for New York magazine about Israel’s surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Watched, Tracked & Targeted”: Gaza Writer Mohammed Mhawish on Life Under Israeli Surveillance

    Surveillance

    Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for New York magazine about Israel’s surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations, biometric data and more.

    This all-encompassing surveillance system is “reshaping how people speak, how they’re moving, how they’re even thinking,” says Mhawish. “It manufactured behavior for people, so they shrink their lives to reduce risk, they rehearse what version of themselves feels safest to present, and that creates an enormous psychological burden.”

    Mhawish also describes the terror of when his family’s house was bombed, killing two of his cousins and two neighbors in an attack he says was linked to Israeli surveillance of his reporting activities. “I was being watched and tracked,” he says.


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New Orleans Resists ICE Invasion Despite Surveillance and State Repression

    When concerned residents of the New Orleans metro area stepped out into the streets with their whistles and phone cameras over the weekend, ready to protest and document the Trump administration’s unwelcome assault on immigrant communities, they faced both widespread digital surveillance by state and federal authorities and a vague state law that makes hindering federal immigration enforcement a…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A Nashville Proposal Could Outsource Surveillance and Policing to a Nonprofit

    Days before Thanksgiving shuffled Nashville’s political calendar, the mayor quietly submitted a resolution to approve a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to the Metro Council. The legislation would enable $15 million in state surveillance funding to flow to a local nonprofit — a controversial move that could stymie accountability over the use of such surveillance technology.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Camera System Feeds Information To Police On Drivers Nationwide

    The United States public has been treated to round after round of revelations disclosing that our actions — public and private, digital and physical, criminalized and legal — are tracked and surveilled in a bevy of ways. New realms of egregious privacy violations and excesses continue to be regularly broached by corporations and police. One of the most concerning contemporary cases is that of the AI-enabled security camera start-up Flock Safety, which, by surveilling enormous expanses of public terrain and facilitating the tracking of innocent individuals, is both testing the limits of warrantless dragnet surveillance and indulging in extremes of vacuous start-up hype and negligent absurdity.

    The post Camera System Feeds Information To Police On Drivers Nationwide appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A Vast Camera System Now Feeds Information to Police on Drivers Across the US

    The United States public has been treated to round after round of revelations disclosing that our actions — public and private, digital and physical, criminalized and legal — are tracked and surveilled in a bevy of ways. New realms of egregious privacy violations and excesses continue to be regularly broached by corporations and police. One of the most concerning contemporary cases is that of the…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Even the former head of MI6 says the digital ID scheme is a terrible idea

    Keir Starmer’s digital ID system will immediately become a target for foreign powers, ex-MI6 chief Richard Dearlove has warned. The authoritarian proposal, which has proved deeply unpopular so far, would soon be left behind by technology anyway.

    Dearlove told shithouse merchants GB News:

    When you aggregate data into one massive base, of course it immediately becomes a target for the country’s enemies. You therefore must be sure that the citadel is impregnable. However, secure you believe the system to be, quantum computing when it arrives could render redundant your defenses.

    Dearlove led the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better know as MI6, from 1999 to 2004. A YouGov poll from September found only 14% of adults strongly support digital ID and 30% strongly oppose it.

    Digital ID carries the hand of Blair

    Manufacturing consent for the so-called ‘Brit card’ has fallen partly to the Tony Blair Institute (TBI). TBI knows a thing or two about authoritarianism: it snuggles up to dictators on the regular. And digital ID’s, for those old enough to recall two months ago, were a quintessentially Blairite idea.

    Asked if Starmer should abandon the idea, Dearlove said:

    Better not to create the target and the temptation in my view.

    A petition opposing the ID scheme quickly gained two million signatures in September 2025. And in another weird moment of Anglo-brain, Louis Mosley, head of Palantir UK and descendant of British fascist Oswald Mosley, was forced to deny his firm would be involved.

    As the Canary reported In October, Mosley told the press that Palantir that given digital IDs were not on the Labour Party’s manifesto for the 2024 general election the company therefore hasn’t seen “a clear resounding public support at the ballot box.” In other words, Mosley rebuffed Labour’s plan as unwanted and undemocratic. It’s coming to something when your government is told to roll back the fascism a little via Oswald fucking Mosley’s descendent on behalf of cartoon villains, Palantir.

    A Cabinet Office spokesperson told GB News:

    We’ve all been shopping and banking online for years. Its time public services are caught up. We are currently developing proposals, exploring how we can learn from other countries with successful schemes that make using government services much easier.

    We will be consulting on the proposals in the new year, including by working with people with a range of know-how – from banks and the UK’s leading security experts to privacy groups and the wider public.

    Dearlove ran MI6 at the start of the War on Terror – another of Blair’s greatest hits. It was a moment of increasing authoritarianism and Dearlove was centre stage. It follows that this is not a man who is squeamish about securitising national life or curtailing civil liberties.. The fact that even he is opposed to this hair-brained ID scheme, then, is deeply fucking worrying.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ICE Is Collecting More Data, Aims to Outsource Judgment to Private Contractors

    When most people think about immigration enforcement, they picture border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new front line may be your social media feed. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published a request for information for private-sector contractors to launch a round-the-clock social media monitoring program. The request states that private contractors will be paid to…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Tommy Robinson’s case exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of counter-terror legislation

    Last week’s judgment clearing Tommy Robinson of a terror-related offence laid bare the double standards at the heart of the UK’s counter-terror legal infrastructure. And, it brings to mind a well-known quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm:

    All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

    It also proves what many of us have long argued – that the UK’s counter-terrorism laws are not about protecting the public, but about policing identity, criminalising dissent and establishing a surveillance state.

    Tommy Robinson precedent

    Robinson was stopped under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 – one of the most intrusive and discriminatory powers in UK law. He refused to hand over his phone’s pin code citing journalistic privilege. The prosecution claimed they had reasonable suspicion that the far-right agitator’s device contained material related to terrorism. Yet the judge concluded that Robinson had been targeted for his political beliefs.

    While I fundamentally differ with Robinson’s political and ideological persuasions, the judgment clearing him was in principle, correct. The case could be used as precedent in future matters relating to protecting journalistic or legal privilege, but it will not change the arbitrary nature of Schedule 7 stops. At best, it would compel police to be more specific and detailed in court when citing ‘reasonable suspicions of terrorism’.

    What the case should prompt us to ask however, is whether the judgment would have been the same if Tommy Robinson was from a Black or ethnic minority community in the UK? We may speculate about what could have happened to a keffiyah-wearing Tommy Robinson; a Muslim Tommy Robinson; a black or brown Tommy Robinson, a leftist Tommy Robinson; or a Tommy Robinson who was investigating possible abuses of state power.

    Plenty of examples of state repression

    We do however, have several cases over the last few years that point to the possibilities. In 2017, I was found guilty of a terrorism offence for refusing to hand over passwords to my phone and laptop after being stopped at Heathrow Airport. As Managing Director of CAGE International, I had obtained information from a client about the torture he was subjected to by US security agencies. Aside from the pure principle of privacy, I was protecting crucial testimony implicating high ranking officials. I found myself in court a few months later,
    convicted of a terrorism offence, but walked out with my integrity and the principle of privacy intact.

    Phantom Parrot – a documentary covering my case – took its name from a programme referred to in leaked information. It revealed a policy of stopping people under Schedule 7, with the explicit purpose of downloading their device data. This is then fed into a larger database, which by 2023 already, was reported to have contained over a billion records.

    Earlier this year, human rights lawyer Fahad Ansari was detained under Schedule 7 after a family holiday. He was grilled about his religion, political beliefs, and whether he supported Palestine Action, and about Hamas – who he had legally represented in a de-proscription application in the UK. Despite information on his device being legally privileged, police mirrored the contents of his work phone. A High Court later refused to prevent the state from accessing that data. The message is clear: privilege and protection apply selectively in the UK.

    Stop and search

    CAGE International has documented dozens of similar cases. From a Black Muslim father, Muzaffar Abdullah, harassed repeatedly for travelling to see his children in Egypt, to a Muslim mother detained after a trip to Makkah and denied medication while her DNA was taken; or Umar Butt, stopped some forty times and falsely accused of withholding his pincode – until a recording exposed the police lie.

    These aren’t anomalies. They are the predictable outcomes of a racist and Islamophobic law designed to target Muslims, people of colour, and those with dissenting political views. The UK Institute for Race Relations cites statistics showing that in the year ending 31 March 2020, Schedule 7 was used to stop 8311 people, with 76% of those stopped identifying as being from ‘black and minority ethnic’ communities.

    In 2017, CAGE International produced a report, Schedule 7 – Harassment at Borders, which refers to a 2014 study by a team of students at Cambridge University, which found that 88% of the sample of those stopped under Schedule 7 at a particular airport, were Muslim.

    Intimidation

    Even politicians though, who may have views that don’t align with the establishment, may face similar intimidation. In recent years, far-right leader Paul Golding who had returned from a trip to Russia; and former MP George Galloway – known for his pro-Palestine stance, were both stopped under counter-terror laws.

    Similarly, journalists like Matt Broomfield and Martin Banks were held and interrogated not about violence, but about their opinions and articles they had written. French publisher Ernest Moret was detained in 2023 en route to a London book fair. He was asked if he had taken part in anti-government demonstrations in France and if he backed French President Emmanuel Macron. Moret refused to give his phone passcodes to officers
    and was arrested. His phone and laptop were confiscated for several weeks.

    Unlike any of the other cases, police later dropped charges against Moret and agreed to pay him out.

    Tiered justice system

    The pattern though is unmistakable: these laws are political weapons. They are used not to prevent terrorism, but to extract intelligence and silence criticism of state policy. Under Schedule 7, individuals are detained, interrogated, and “digitally strip-searched” – with the state having carte blanche access to their devices and personal information. Some have reported even being pressured to become informants for MI5. This is all despite a 2016 ruling which found Schedule 7 incompatible with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judgment was in relation to the 2013 detention of David Miranda, who was carrying encrypted material derived from Edward Snowden for journalistic purposes.

    While the courts upheld his detention as lawful, it found that there were inadequate safeguards for journalists under Schedule 7. What begins to emerge from these cases however, is that even after a Schedule 7 stop, there appears to often be a differently tiered justice system for different people. It seems that convictions, and rulings for the state to access protected information are habitually reserved for those who are Muslim, brown, black, or whose political views aren’t the flavour of the day at Downing Street.

    Staggering hypocrisy

    The hypocrisy is staggering, and it simply exposes the wider complicity of the judiciary within the system.
    After two decades of this failed system, the conclusion is unavoidable: the UK’s counter-terrorism framework is beyond repair. It is a machine built on discrimination, a lack of transparency and on unethical political expediency. Minor reforms cannot fix it – it must be abolished.

    Under the guise of ‘national security’, the UK has built an authoritarian legal infrastructure. It has normalised surveillance, intimidation, the curtailment of civil liberties and the criminalisation of certain communities and ordinary people.

    Schedule 7, and the wider counter-terror regime it represents, is not about keeping the UK safe. It is about establishing a society where some are treated as more equal than others.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Muhammad Rabbani

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • #1. ICE Solicits Social Media Surveillance Contracts to Identify Critics

    US Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to hire private contractors to “monitor and locate ‘negative’ social media discussion” about the federal agency, according to February 2025 articles by Sam Biddle for The Intercept and Brett Wilkins for Common Dreams. Biddle and Wilkins reviewed a lengthy request for bids from contractors…

    The post #1. ICE Solicits Social Media Surveillance Contracts to Identify Critics appeared first on Project Censored.


    This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israeli propaganda machine targets AI and Christian groups in $100m campaign

    Israeli media have caught up and acknowledged that the occupation regime and its backers are spending a fortune trying to control what westerners think. They want to control what AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude tell them. In particular, their targets are the Christian groups it thinks owe it their fealty — as well as the younger people it has lost through its genocide, occupation and warmongering. Israeli propaganda has been showing clear signs of bullshit — obvious even to the untrained eye, and they need this to change.

    Israeli propaganda gets digital upgrade

    Disclosures have come as US firms representing foreign governments register under the ‘Foreign Agents Registration Act’ – though Israel’s biggest and most shameless lobbying groups like AIPAC and the ADL still evade registration. Israel has signed a slew of contracts, through its Foreign Ministry, Tourism Ministry and Government Advertising Agency (LAPAM), with firms for them to promote Israel’s interests, including one run by former Trump adviser Brad Parscale. In an attempt to put the campaign at arm’s length, Israel routes payments to its agents through Havas Media Germany GmbH. Documents show that the company has received at least $100 million since 2018.

    As well as wider ad and AI campaigns, Israel is also tracking and targeting US Christians physically, through the use of:

    geofencing: drawing a virtual boundary around places of worship and sending targeted ads to cell phones that enter the boundary. According to the documents, the campaign plans to “geofence the actual boundaries of every major church in California, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado and all Christian colleges during worship times.

    As the misuse of AI platforms and surveillance spreads in Western Countries – with the UK government in particular dismantling privacy rights and public freedoms, Alex Karp – the nationalist CEO of Palantir, one of the US firms handed huge UK government data contracts – is happy to say publicly that he’s relaxed about Western Nations becoming surveillance states, as long as his country and firm are at the heart of the surveillance.

    Karp told Axios that:

    when people are worried about surveillance, of course, there are huge dangers there, but you know, you will have far fewer rights if America’s not in the lead.

    As AJ Dellinger summed it up for Gizmodo:

    Basically, we might completely destroy our economy, our culture, our sense of privacy and individuality, our sense of pride in contributing to our communities—but we’ll be damned if we let anyone else do it to us.

    An out of tune ‘Karp’

    Karp went on to claim that people’s concerns about AI-driven surveillance are because they fear it will catch them cheating on their spouses. However, he is on record telling shareholders that the job of his company is to:

    scare enemies and on occasion kill them,

    so the reality is far darker, particularly as his company chair and fellow founder Peter Thiel recently equivocated when asked whether he wants the human race to survive and admitted that:

    I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

    Karp and Thiel are also ardent Zionists who supply products and services to the Israeli military for its use in the Gaza genocide. So when they say that ‘we’ should create and control the surveillance state, it’s a safe bet that ‘we’ also includes Israel. This of course is very, very bad news for ordinary people in Western Asia and any western country, and for any notion they have of freedom.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Legal Groups Sue Administration Over Use Of Israeli Spyware

    Civil rights attorneys are suing the Trump administration to force the release of records detailing whether federal immigration agencies are using sophisticated Israeli spyware to track, monitor, and target immigrants and activists across the country.

    The lawsuit, filed on Oct. 30 in federal court by Just Futures Law and the Center for Constitutional Rights, demands that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) comply with Freedom of Information Act requests related to their contracts with tech companies Cellebrite and Paragon Solutions. Both companies have been linked to government surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, and protesters around the world. 

    The post Legal Groups Sue Administration Over Use Of Israeli Spyware appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Rights Groups Sue Trump Admin Over Use of Israeli Spyware to Target Immigrants

    Civil rights attorneys are suing the Trump administration to force the release of records detailing whether federal immigration agencies are using sophisticated Israeli spyware to track, monitor, and target immigrants and activists across the country. The lawsuit, filed on Oct. 30 in federal court by Just Futures Law and the Center for Constitutional Rights, demands that Immigration and…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump’s White House Ballroom Is Being Bankrolled by Genocide and ICE Profiteers

    Money has always distorted U.S. politics, but the current Trump regime has entered new territory with an unabashed pay-to-play setup that’s stuffing the president’s political coffers while enriching him and his family. Donald Trump’s coldly transactional dealings have been on full display as he’s tapped billionaire allies and major corporations to shower his administration with donations to…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New DHS Proposal Expands Biometric Surveillance Program to Include DNA Sex Test

    A proposed change to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rule could impose “biological sex” DNA testing on millions of immigrants and Americans as part of the Department’s mass biometric surveillance program — which also includes retinal scans, voice capture, and more. In addition to the obvious human rights violations posed by the changes — which, among other things…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • AI-Powered Drones Used In Gaza Now Surveil US Cities

    AI-powered quadcopter drones used by Israel in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza are now being used to surveil US citizens, from protestors to spring breakers, in all major US cities, according to a report from the journalist project ¡Do Not Panic! published on 3 November.

    Hundreds of drones manufactured by the US company Skydio were delivered to Israel after the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023 for use in the strip. Now, they are flying daily above all major US cities, including Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego, Cleveland, and Jacksonville, while automatically uploading millions of images to an evidence database.

    The post AI-Powered Drones Used In Gaza Now Surveil US Cities appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • New Prison Mail Policies Threaten Newsletters by and for Incarcerated People

    On September 3, Illinois prison officials moved — by emergency rule — to replace most physical mail with scanned copies, though a key legislative panel has already pushed back. At the same time, New York is installing mail scanners in prisons, raising alarms about privacy and attorney-client privilege. Texas has already shifted to “digital mail,” where letters are scanned and delivered on tablets…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • This $470 Million Surveillance Program Is Watching Immigrants Across the US

    Diallo crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization in December 2023, with hopes of escaping the violence and injustice he experienced back home in Guinea, Conakry. He traveled from Guinea through Turkey, then through South America and Central America, and finally to the United States. After arriving in New York, he filed for asylum within the required one-year deadline.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • This $470 Million Surveillance Program Is Watching Immigrants Across the US

    Diallo crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization in December 2023, with hopes of escaping the violence and injustice he experienced back home in Guinea, Conakry. He traveled from Guinea through Turkey, then through South America and Central America, and finally to the United States. After arriving in New York, he filed for asylum within the required one-year deadline.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sainsbury’s goes full-on Big Brother as it rolls out facial recognition

    Sainsbury’s has started using facial recognition in two of its stores, apparently to “crack down on shoplifting.” But let’s call the new machines that have been installed in one store apiece in Bath and London exactly what they are: the eye of Big Brother. A Live Facial Recognition (LFR) camera bolted to the ceiling, staring down at some of the poorest people in London, waiting for me, or the ghost of who I was, to fuck up.

    ​I spent two and a half brutal years of my life homeless and stuck, struggling with trauma I didn’t know I had. My late teens and early twenties are a blur of addiction, self-destruction, and being totally and utterly lost. I was a thief, yes, I will admit it. But I only stole to survive and only from corporate giants. The disgusting irony of Sainsbury’s rolling out this dystopian surveillance technology to “combat crime” is a total slap in the face, given that they boasted a £1.6 billion profit last year.

    Turning to surveillance cameras to address people stealing food criminalises a symptom and ignores a much larger problem: why are people going hungry in the first place? And, for that matter, what kind of absurd cruelty is it to then punish those people for needing to steal to eat?

    Manufactured desperation from Sainsbury’s

    Retail bosses often talk about a ‘spiralling crime epidemic.’ They throw out stats, reducing those struggling to nothing but a number, and use them to justify a dystopian surveillance state.

    Shall we look at some of those stats?

    The British Retail Consortium stated losses from theft reached £2.2 billion in 2023/24. That is a massive 22% increase from the previous year. Official police statistics are equally as stark – there were 516,971 shoplifting offences in England and Wales by year ending December 2024. That’s the highest figure in over twenty fucking years, when such statistics began to be recorded.

    These numbers are screamed as an existential threat to retail, shocking figures thrown out to scare the public, and leave them cheering for these cameras. But where is the outrage? This massive explosion of theft is a result of our crumbling society; surely people can see that? Why are people so content to give away their freedoms so easily? This explosion of theft mirrors the destruction of the social safety net, driven by well over a decade of brutal austerity and the cost-of-living crisis.

    Economic violence

    In the years I was forced to steal from these corporate giants, I stole to eat and drown my sorrows. One grim-looking security firm claims that, based on their experience, packaged meat, baby formula, and alcohol are the most popular items shoplifted. It’s hardly the work of master criminals. Back then, I wasn’t a criminal; I was a desperately lost girl whose basic human needs had been made illegal.

    If a society strips away services, cuts benefits, and artificially inflates the price of food, you cannot act surprised when the most vulnerable turn to desperate measures to survive. If the establishment legislates poverty, this is not governance. Actually, it is economic violence used to justify technological suppression. The state itself admits that 70% of retail thefts are carried out by frequent hard drug users, proving that addiction is a disease, homelessness is a desperate crisis, and shoplifting is a direct result of this.

    This isn’t a crime wave. This is a wave of hunger and trauma, crashing against the doors of the wealthy elite.

    The war on families

    The CEO of Sainsbury’s, Simon Roberts, says trialling the LFR is essential because colleagues are concerned about “rising abuse” and must “put safety first.”

    But who are the real victims here?

    Last year, Sainsbury’s Retail Underlying Operating Profit was over £1 billion, up a massive 7.2% on the previous year, and what was CEO Simon Roberts’ compensation for this? A ridiculous £5.19 million.

    If Sainsbury’s has the money to pay one man over £5 million, don’t they have the capability to help poor people? They are spending a wild amount of money on facial recognition technology, as good capitalist bastions of the surveillance state. Simultaneously, that same state is starving social services, housing support, and addiction centres… the things that would actually solve the problem.

    They’re choosing to build walls, not bridges.

    This manufactured crime wave is worsened by policies that specifically target families. We all know about the two-child benefit cap, a cruel political choice that means struggling families miss out on about £3,455 per year. This disproportionately affects single-parent households, with approximately 71% of benefit-capped families being lone parents, half of whom have a child under five.

    Coupled with horrifically stagnating wages, inflation consistently outstripping pay growth, Sainsbury’s is effectively installing biometric software tools not to catch “organised gangs” but to catch struggling single mothers who need to feed their babies.

    Corporate bias and the police state

    Corporate integration of LFR into retail isn’t a minor security upgrade. It is an unethical and terrifying sprint towards a corporate police state.

    By entering that Sainsbury’s store, every single shopper is now subject to a real-time biometric check. This is the privatisation of social control. This technology violates our fundamental right to privacy by turning a simple top-up shop into a mandatory, uncensored biometric scan.

    LFR is far more insidious than regular CCTV. It will remember your face and scan your every move. Its very presence can have a chilling effect on everyday life, creating a cloud of fear in which people are scared to exist in their own communities.

    The increased danger comes with this technology’s flaws. The facial recognition algorithms are prone to racial and gender bias. LRF performs a lot worse when identifying people of colour and women, and that should scare all of you. This means that the people who are most affected by austerity, such as the working poor, single mothers, those suffering with addiction, and minoritised communities, are the most likely to be misidentified, flagged, and excluded by untrained security staff.

    The unaccountable police state

    It weaponises technology to further existing institutional discrimination. Back in the day, if that LFR camera had caught me, the consequences would have been so damaging. It would have been a short prison sentence, ripping away the tenuous grip I had on recovery. For those of us who have walked the dark and lonely path of addiction and homelessness, this would do nothing but continue the spiral into despair. The only thing that would work is empathy, secure housing, and accessible treatment.

    When Sainsbury’s, our own police, and the government align on initiatives like this, they are creating a private surveillance infrastructure that can be quickly integrated into public policing.

    This isn’t a sudden, military takeover; this is a slow, maddening descent into a surveillance police state that will affect all aspects of our daily lives.

    By allowing LFR, these supermarkets are acting as an unaccountable, pre-emptive policing arm of the establishment. This will enable corporations, driven by profit, to dole out their own form of exclusion. And this is entirely without the democratic safeguards of our court system.

    Sainsbury’s: corporate leeches

    Sainsbury’s and the other corporate leeches have chosen to criminalise our most vulnerable. They have chosen not to invest in life, but to invest in a police state. This slow descent into a Big Brother state is accelerating rapidly, and we should be terrified of it.

    Facial recognition is not a solution to crime; it is a politicised statement which draws a final, unforgiving line in the sand drawn by unregulated capitalist dogs, and it screams:

    We know you’re poor, we deliberately made you this way, and now we are going to watch your every move to make sure you never take back anything we stole from you.

    We need to stand up to this.

    We need to stand up for every mother who needs to feed her newborn child milk.

    For every homeless teenager who hasn’t eaten in days and wants nothing but to find a safe place to sleep.

    For the lost addict, drowning their sorrows in narcotics when all they need is stability and someone to help them.

    Enough is enough.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Nick Loggie

    By Antifabot

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Interview With Katya Schwenk On AI Surveillance Pricing

    ou go to buy a ticket for a flight; you think the price is the price, but, in fact, the airline is using lots of available information about you to present the highest price they think you will pay. Yes, airlines have always tweaked prices based on status or frequency of flying, but this is different. This is companies using information you didn’t share with them, determining what they, openly among themselves, call your “pain point,” the maximum you will spend before you say, “OK, I just won’t see my mother this year.”

    Some insist this is just the market at work, but what can we do if we decide it’s actually an instance of using technology to do something because it can, without adequate consideration of whether it should?

    The post Interview With Katya Schwenk On AI Surveillance Pricing appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Mass Opposition To Flock Surveillance Grows In Denver

    Hundreds packed a conference room in Denver, Colorado on the evening of Wednesday, October 22, after the city’s Mayor Mike Johnston renewed a contract with surveillance company Flock without a public process or City Council vote, according to activists.

    Just weeks after Denver’s City Council unanimously voted down a two-year, USD 666,000 extension with Flock in May, Johnston’s office approved a shorter-term deal worth USD 498,500, which is narrowly under the USD 500,000 threshold that would have triggered council oversight.

    “Instead of joining us here at this town hall tonight, the mayor announced this morning that he is again unilaterally extending the city’s contract with Flock,” Katie Leonard, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, told the crowd.

    The post Mass Opposition To Flock Surveillance Grows In Denver appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • This Isn’t the First Time Chicago’s Been Used as a Laboratory for Policing

    As the Trump administration turbocharges the growth of a nonstop dragnet, turning daily life into a data trail ready to be weaponized, Chicago is serving as one of its most visible targets. The city has long been a flashpoint for the oppressive expansion of digital surveillance. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), universities, and local police have all deployed powerful new technologies to…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A remote spy base and a ‘criminal’ blockade raise questions about Australia’s complicity in Gaza war

    A protest over Pine Gap’s claimed role in genocide has refocused attention on the secretive US satellite base near Alice Springs

    Straight and bare, Hatt Road runs south-west from Mparntwe-Alice Springs before it suddenly swings north through a narrow gap in the MacDonnell Ranges.

    It is what lies beyond that draws protesters here time and time again.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.