DHS Looks to Spy on Video Game Consoles in Search of Pedophiles, Terrorists
The government’s doing WHAT?
From; Daily Tech.com
The government is more concerned with the platforms rather than the games themselves, mainly because newer systems like Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3 allow users to communicate with one another via messaging and chat systems
Gamers may want to be careful about what they say when jumping onto their consoles for an innocent bout of slaying dragons or killing zombies — the government will be watching.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Navy have launched a new research initiative that will explore ways of allowing the government to hack into gaming consoles like the Xbox 360, Wii, or PlayStation 3 to obtain information on gamers.
In 2008, a project called “Gaming Systems Monitoring and Analysis Project” was executed when law enforcement became worried about pedophiles using game consoles to 
talk to children. Later, law enforcement authorities went to DHS’ Science and Technology Directorate in search of help on an instrument that could observe game console data. DHS then went to the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) to find Simson Garfinkel, a NPS computer science professor, to offer a contract to a company that could conduct the research and offer a product.
The U.S. Navy ended up recently awarding the $177,237 contract to Obscure Technologies, which is a computer forensics company based in San Francisco, California. Obscure Technologies will be expected to create new hardware and software capable of extracting data from video game consoles. DHS wants to be able to extract data from both new and used games systems bought on the secondary market as well.
According to DHS, the reason for tapping into game consoles is to find pedophiles, who are using communication resources on game systems to seek out victims, and even terrorists, which DHS believes are using consoles to communicate.
“Today’s gaming systems are increasingly being used by criminals as a primary tool in exploiting children and, as a result, are being recovered by U.S. law enforcement organizations during court-authorized searches,” said Garfinkel.
The government is more concerned with the platforms rather than the games themselves, mainly because newer systems like Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3 allow users to communicate with one another via messaging and chat systems. This communication is what the government is mainly after.
This new contract has privacy groups wondering if this is just another way that the government can abuse citizens’ privacy.
“You wouldn’t intentionally store sensitive data on a console,” said Parker Higgins, a spokesman for the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), an online privacy group. “But I can think of things like connection logs and conversation logs that are incidentally stored data. And it’s even more alarming because users might not know that the data is created. These consoles are being used as general-purpose computers. And they’re used for all kinds of communications. The Xbox has a very active online community where people communicate. It stands to reason that you could get sensitive and private information stored on the console.”
It’s important to note that DHS doesn’t plan to hack into the game consoles of U.S. citizens because of privacy-related issues. DHS only plans to peek at consoles from overseas.
“This project requires the purchasing of used video game systems outside of the U.S. in a manner that is likely to result in their containing significant and sensitive information from previous users,” said Garfinkel. “We do not wish to work with data regarding U.S. persons due to Privacy Act considerations. If we find data on U.S. citizens in consoles purchased overseas, we remove the data from our corpus.”
The government isn’t the only one who has been problematic when it comes to citizen’s privacy. Earlier this week, it was discovered that law enforcement around the U.S. is using cell phone tracking regularly as a tool for the job — and sometimes the tracking is warrantless.
Welcome…
RE: Welcome…
RE: Welcome…
They take terrorists and pedophiles and make them the most feared thing in society and use them as the justification on virtually everything they do to compromise our natural rights.
It’s not the right of any federal agency to prosecute pedophiles anyway. That right is left to the states.
RE: Welcome…
Speech-less In Seattle
Northbound on I-5 (88 miles south of Seattle )…
The federal government is now petitioning to have these signs removed or Washington state will be denied additional monies for interstate highways.
The State of Washington replied, they will secede from the Union rather than be intimidated.
These are a matter of free speech paid for by a private citizen.
It seems the Obama government uses intimidation and ignores the first amendment when they want to silence someone.
She said What…Sebelius .
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a House panel Thursday that a reduction in the number of human beings born in the United States will compensate employers and insurers for the cost of complying with the new HHS mandate that will require all health-care plans to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.
“The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception,” Sebelius said. She went on to say the estimated cost is “down not up.”
Sebelius took questions from the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health about President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal.
Amnesty, Not Under Your Nose But In Your Face!
Gutierrez: ‘I Want to Thank’ Obama for Bypassing Congress to Cancel Deportation of Illegals’
By Edwin Mora (CNS NEWS )
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) thanked President Obama for circumventing the Legislative branch when it comes to immigration law.
Title 8 Section 1325 of the U.S. Code makes it a federal crime to be in the United States illegally. Nevertheless, the Obama administration in August directed federal immigration officials to use “prosecutorial discretion” in deciding which illegal aliens to detain and deport.
“We had a president of the United States that recently was speaking at National Council of La Raza who said during his speech, ‘There are those who simply wish me to bypass Congress when it comes to immigration,’ and many in the audience clapped, saying, ‘Yup, bypass Congress…’” Gutierrez told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) conference on Monday.
“He (Obama) said, ‘But I can’t bypass Congress,’ and people in the audience said, ‘Yes you can,’ and you want to know something? They were right — he could and he did, and I
want to thank the President of the United States, and I want to thank all of those that work at the White House for issuing new guidance when it comes to deportations,” Gutierrez added.
(Obama in July told the National Council of La Raza that although the idea of bypassing Congress and changing U.S. immigration laws on his own was “very tempting,” his hands were tied because “that is not how our system works.”)
Gutierrez, who has criticized Obama for not taking up immigration reform, said a million people have been deported from the United States during the last 30 months. But under the new policy, those who came to the U.S. as children will not be deported.
“It means that one million young immigrants to this country get to live and survive for another day, and that’s a victory — that they’re not being deported and as a matter of fact that there are cancellations of deportations.”
The DREAM Act, which would have granted young people a pathway to legalization if they went to college or served in the U.S. military, was rejected by Congress in December 2010, but administration’s new “discretion” policy will now allow them to stay in the U.S., Gutierrez said.
In June, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, a component of the Homeland Security Department, issued a memo outlining the new immigration policy.
Unless the illegal alien poses national security concerns, has a serious criminal history, poses a threat to public safety, is a human rights violator or is involved in “significant” immigration fraud, he or she will probably will not be deported.
The memo also directs ICE agents to take into consideration how long an individual has been in the U.S., whether that person has a spouse or children who are U.S. citizens, and whether that person has a serious criminal record. Crimes victims, witnesses to crimes, or people who are charged with minor traffic violations also would avoid deportation under the ICE guidance.
According to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, the new discretion policy will result in a case-by-case review of an estimated 300,000 undocumented immigrants facing deportation in federal immigration courts.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) introduced the HALT Act in June. The bill is intended to prevent the Obama administration from granting de facto amnesty under the guise of prosecutorial discretion.
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