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Big Brother or peeping tom? UK installs CCTV in school bathrooms, changing rooms
AFP Photo / Jacques Demarthon
Over 200 UK state schools have installed cameras in bathrooms and changing rooms to monitor students, a recent surveillance survey reported. British parents will likely be shocked by the study’s findings.
The survey is based on a freedom of information request conducted by Big Brother Watch, an anti-surveillance activist group. The group said they were shaken by the results, which was much higher and more extensive than expected.
The report “will come as a shock to many parents”, Nick Pickles, Director of Big Brother Watch said. “Schools need to come clean about why they are using these cameras and what is happening to the footage”.
– 47,806 cameras used in 2,107 schools
– 207 schools have 825 cameras in changing rooms and bathrooms
– 90% of schools use CCTV cameras
– 54 UK schools have 1 camera or more per 15 pupils
– 106,710 CCTV cameras estimated in high schools and academies in England, Scotland and Wales
A total of 825 cameras were installed in Read more…
Biometric IDs A Step Toward EU – Ukraine Visa Simplicity
Biometric IDs in Ukraine appear to be on the way in. A draft law there providing for the creation of a unified state register of every Ukrainian citizen has passed fist scrutiny there. Reportedly a measure to beef up border security between Ukraine and the EU, citizens traveling abroad may feel a bit like Big Brother is watching via a built-in proximity chip keeping tabs on each citizen.
Officials in favor of the new Biometric IDs claim this document standard will go a long way toward preventing IS fraud, helping out the border control end of travel in the country. Claiming accessibility for all relevant European services and institutions, proponents say the action plan for visa liberalization is the central reason for the new initiative.
With the EU planning to Read more…
EMP attack on power grid could take down DOD systems, experts warn
Defense systems that depend on the commercial electric grid are vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse attacks and solar storms that could seriously damage the nation’s infrastructure, experts from the Homeland Security and Defense departments told a House Homeland Security subcommittee.
The likelihood and the effects of such an event have been the subject of debate, and legislation that would require defenses against them is stalled in the House.
Major military weapons systems and nuclear assets are hardened against EMP events, but “DOD is heavily dependent on the commercial electric grid,” Michael Aimone, director of DOD Business Enterprise Integration, told the subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies.
Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who testified as a witness at the Sept. 12 hearing, said Russia and several other countries are developing an offensive EMP capability, but there is little protection against such attacks on the commercial grid. He called for installing hardware protection for the most critical elements.
”The major vulnerability we have right now is damage to our major transformers,” which could put parts of the Read more…
Secret body scanners with 50 times more radiation than airport x-ray scanners to be rolled out
(NaturalNews) A growing number of Americans are already outraged over the government’s use of high-powered, ultra-revealing and potentially dangerous backscatter x-ray machines at a growing number of the nation’s airports, and as bad as that problem is, it’s about to get a whole lot worse unless Congress intervenes to stop the madness.
In the late 1990s, travel experts doubted the government would ever employ such machines in a security checkpoint role at airports or other locations. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 dramatically reversed that mentality to the point that now, no doubt afraid of being accused of doing “too little” to enhance security, lawmakers and select government agencies have done a complete reversal, permitting the use of high-powered x-ray machines to “scan” airline travelers (and perhaps, we near bus, train and other modes of travel in the future).
The all-knowing Transportation Security Administration insists the machines it is currently using – some 250 of them – are safe, but the agency relies primarily on its own in-house and government experts to support their claims.
The non-governmental experts speak
But other private-sector experts, including a bevy of health and radiation scientists cited by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, disagree. They include Read more…
Scientists discover planetary system orbiting Kepler-47
This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-47, a double-star system containing two planets, one orbiting in the so-called “habitable zone.” This is the sweet spot in a planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
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