Electronic surveiilance

US Secretly Taped Alleged 9/11 Architect Plotting With Co-Conspirators - Reports

More than 17 and a half years after the deadly 9/11 attacks, the five accused terrorists remain in jail and there is still no date for trial proceedings at a US prison in Guanatanamo Bay.

Defence lawyer Jay Connell said on Monday that military prosecutors claimed they had tapes of phone calls between the alleged architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and three of his accused accomplices discussing their plot in code months before it took place, The New York Times reported.

Connell revealed the information in order to show opposition to plans to use the alleged tapes as evidence at the death penalty trial of the suspected perpetrators.

Electronic surveiilance

The Fragmented Surveillance State

In Chicago, every person arrested over the past four years has received an algorithmically generated “threat” score (from 1-500) to determine his or her risk of being a perpetrator or victim of a future crime. Those individuals with the highest scores on the Chicago Police Department “heat list” get extra attention in the form of home visits or increased community surveillance.

In Baltimore, for months Cessna planes equipped with wide-angle video cameras capable of filming entire segments of the city flew overhead. A private security company—Persistent Surveillance Systems—connected its aerial video with ongoing police reports and handed the footage over to the Baltimore Police Department to assist in investigating past crimes. Using the surveillance video, one could literally map the comings and goings of everyone—criminals and innocents alike. The only problem was that no one had informed the Baltimore City Council or the mayor of this arrangement.

Electronic surveiilance

The FBI has quietly been hacking Americans for 20 years

Countless Snowden leaks have detailed the highly sophisticated tools used by the NSA to collect data in bulk from unsuspecting people, including American citizens. But the NSA isn’t the only agency conducting spying operations. The FBI has been spying on US citizens as part of ongoing investigations for two decades, yet many details about its data collection practices are still secret, despite all of the leaks in recent years.

According to Wired, the FBI’s history of hacking goes back for some two decades, but little is known about the types of tools and spying operations it conducts. That’s because search warrants often fail to provide detailed information about wiretapping techniques, and defense attorneys don’t always challenge the FBI.

Electronic surveiilance

Obama: We can't fetishize our phones

While the president said he couldn't comment on the specifics of the case, even his non-specific answers shed light on where he stands.

"If, technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device where there is no key, no door at all, how do we apprehend the child pornographer, how do we disrupt a terrorist plot?" Obama asked onstage in conversation with Texas Tribune editor-in-chief Evan Smith on Friday.

He cited the fact that law enforcement can get a warrant to search your room, "rifle through your underwear," if you are suspected of terrorism, and yet your phone is somehow off limits.

"It's fetishizing our phones above every other value, and that can't be the right answer."