Facial recognition and GPS tracking: TrapWire company conducting even more surveillance
Source: rt.com
An internationally-spread Orwellian surveillance system uncovered by RT has been linked to a software company that collects the GPS coordinates of cell phone users in over 100 major cities.
The discovery of the TrapWire risk mitigation program last year and its ability to match human faces caught on camera against massive databases of intelligence led to an outcry from privacy advocates around the world. Now once again the burgeoning preponderance of Big Brother is being put into perspective.
In late 2011, members of the loose-knit hacktivist group Anonymous pilfered data from the servers of private intelligence firm Stratfor that were in turn handed over to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks for dissemination. When internal emails alluding to a service called TrapWire surfaced in the leak, an investigation uncovered a program that, according to the company’s founder, “can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition.”
TrapWire developers Abraxas later became the subject of several investigative reports by RT and others, and further analysis revealed that that company was acquired in 2010 by technology giants Cubic Corporation of Southern California. Cubic would eventually deny any affiliation ever existed between their San Diego headquarters and the spy-program discussed by Stratfor execs, but links were nevertheless still evident. A Department of Homeland Security website, in fact, all but affirmed that TrapWire was being sold to government agencies as a product of Abraxas as recently as February 2011.
[...]
Read the full article at: rt.com
