Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange joins Alex Wagner to discuss society “heading towards surveillance totalitarianism,” his exile, censorship and why Edward Snowden “has become a symbol.”
Browsing Posts tagged surveillance society
The city of Milwaukee will be giving away 2,000 security cameras to south side businesses. A grant has been provided to the city and they are eager to get started.
These cameras will come with facial recognition and subsequently will track your behaviors. They will also be able to collect meta data on your habits, cell phone conversations, what you buy and who you associate with. This information will be collaborated with your cell phone id and facial recognition software provided by these cameras to monitor your voyage around town and record your trends.
Great. Everyone “feels safer” without really doing anything. These cameras are not going to prevent crime. They will only catch them after the crime has been committed.
The appeal is obvious, especially for cash-strapped, high-crime cities such as Oakland, Calif. City leaders there say they simply don’t have the tax base to pay for the number of police officers they need, so they’ve looked toward “domain awareness” as a kind of force multiplier.
For the past couple of years, the city of Oakland has worked with the Port of Oakland to build its own version of the system. It’s called the Domain Awareness Center, or DAC. The federal government is paying for it with Homeland Security grants. But as the project grew, so did opposition.
After last summer’s revelations of domestic spying by the National Security Agency, protesters started showing up en masse at Oakland City Council meetings. One signed in for the public comment period as “Edward Snowden”; another stood up to videorecord the council while supporters cheered and jeered. In November, protesters became so raucous, they forced the council to clear the hall.
The Black Hornet is a small, flying object, weighing just over half an ounce. It may look cute, but it’s not a toy. It’s a drone. The Black Hornet was unveiled last week at the Association of the United States Army Expo in Washington, DC.
The drone is marketed as a tool that soldiers can carry with them. While the US Army hasn’t used the hummingbird-sized drone yet, the British Army has used them in Afghanistan. RT’s Ameera David takes a closer look at the miniscule flying object.
