Everyone Who Attended OWS With a Cell Phone Had Their Identity Logged, Says Security Expert

Privacy – A Postmortem

(or Cell Phones, GPS, Drones, Persistent Dataveillance, Big Data, Smart Cameras and Facial Recognition, The Internet of Things, and Government Data Centers Vacuuming Google and Facebook, Oh My!)

With a few keystrokes, it is now possible for an investigator to determine a target’s location, activities, finances, sexual orientation, religion, politics, habits, hobbies, friends, family, their entire personal and professional histories… even accurately predict what they will do and where they will go in the future. Without leaving the office, a government agent can surveil a subject and “watch” their activities 24/7/365: where they drive, when they walk down the street, if they attend a church or synagogue or mosque or a demonstration or visit an abortion clinic or a “known criminal activity location” or meet with a “targeted person” or a disliked political activist. There is no longer any place to hide.

Since the very first HOPE conference, private investigator extraordinaire Steven Rambam’s lectures on privacy have kept attendees ten years ahead of the curve regarding surveillance technologies, investigative techniques, and the assaults upon personal privacy by government’s Big Brothers and private industry’s even bigger Big Sisters. His lectures described cell phone “pinging” eight years before it was used by the FBI and “Google Glasses” four years before they were announced. The past two years have seen the largest expansion of surveillance technologies ever and, in a wide ranging three hour lecture packed as always with dozens of real-world examples and case studies, Steven will provide a terrifying update on our absolute loss of privacy.

His lecture is not for the weak of heart – or for those afraid of drones.

‘One of the biggest changes is the ability to track your physical location. I’m sorry I came in at the end of the previous talk. I heard them talk about surveying cell phones with a drone, in a wide area — this is something that is done routinely now. [Note: Is that what these microwave antennas were used for at Occupy Wall Street in mid September?]

I can tell you that everybody that attended an Occupy Wall Street protest, and didn’t turn their cell phone off, or put it — and sometimes even if they did — the identity of that cell phone has been logged, and everybody who was at that demonstration, whether they were arrested, not arrested, whether their photos were ID’d, whether an informant pointed them out, it’s known they were there anyway. This is routine.’

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