Still more proof NYPD spying program focused on Muslims who were not suspected of any crimes —

The AP has published more documents today which offer further evidence that the The New York Police Department "kept secret files on businesses owned by second- and third-generation Americans specifically because they were Muslims." The NYPD monitored these people based solely on their religion. — Xeni •

More on the Supreme Court ruling forcing FBI to turn off 3,000 GPS trackers —

At ABC News, a thorough "explainer" by Ariane de Vogue on the January Supreme Court ruling that requires the FBI to immediately stop using GPS tracking devices to spy on suspects. Today, FBI Director Bob Mueller said the Bureau will cooperate, but not without complaint: “Trackers enabled us to utilize resources elsewhere, so it is going have an impact on the work that we do but of course we will comply with the ruling.”  — Xeni •

Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation profiled FinFisher and Amesys, two of the companies that had been caught selling network spying tools to despotic regimes around the world, including Hosni Mubarak's Egypt and Muammar Qaddafi's Libya. This week, EFF continues the series with profiles of Italy's Area SpA (which sells electronic tracking software to Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria) and Germany's Trovicor (which sells spyware to a dozen countries in the Middle East and North Africa).

In 2011, at the same time that news of Syria’s violent crackdown on democratic protests graced the pages of the world’s newspapers, an Italian company called Area SpA was busy helping the Syrian’s dictator Bashar al-Assad electronically track the dissidents his army was firing upon in the streets. Area SpA had begun installing “monitoring centers” that would give the Syrian government the ability “to intercept, scan and catalog virtually every e-mail that flows through the country” as well as “follow targets on flat-screen workstations that display communications and Web use in near-real time alongside graphics that map citizens’ networks of electronic contacts.”

Worse, as the violence in Syria escalated in mid-2011, “Area employees [were] flown into Damascus in shifts” in the government’s push to finish the project, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

Spy Tech Companies & Their Authoritarian Customers, Part II: Trovicor and Area SpA

On the always-excellent Search Engine podcast from TVOntario, host Jesse Brown interviews Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Borovoy in one of Canada's most respected free speech and privacy activists, and he describes the state of Canada on the eve of the introduction of a sweeping spy-bill that will require ISPs to log and retain enormous amounts of our private communications, and then give police access to that material without a warrant. This is a stirring call-to-arms and an important historical context to understand the history of free speech and privacy in Canada.

Audio Podcast #124: Alan Borovoy | Search Engine (MP3)

Canadian comedy hero Rick Mercer nails the new Canadian spying bill and the political tactics that gave rise to it. Bravo!

Rick Mercer: Rant: Be Afraid (Thanks, James!)

Canadian MP: if you oppose warrantless snooping, you "stand with child pornographers" —

Vic Toews, the Canadian Tory MP pushing for the new spying bill says that people who oppose him are "standing with child pornographers." Mr Toews's bill will require ISPs to record all your online activity and give police access to those logs without a warrant. Ontario police recently busted a huge child-porn ring without needing any further spying power. In fact, no one can find any police investigation that has failed for lack of snooping powers. A leaked memo from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police shows that Canada's law enforcement has been scouring its records for evidence supporting the need for this bill, without luck. (Thanks, Wild Rumpus!) — Cory •

So I'm going to be charitable here and presume that whoever compiled that internet monitoring watchlist at the Department of Homeland Security thought that "Miss Thirteen," at www.msthirteen.com, was a site about the ultraviolent Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 gang, which originated in El Salvador and now operates in a number of US cities.

It's not.

Quote, mangle-translated from the original German by Google: "Change in our lives, accompanying us from our childhood into adult life. The hormones go crazy and actually everything is always much too confusing."

Perhaps this was the source for the bad link. And perhaps the fact that this site was included in the watchlist tells us something about how the watchlist was compiled, or how reliable its contents are as a disclosure of what the agency's monitoring.

(thanks, Elizabeth Gettelman!)

Previously: Homeland Security Internet Watch List leaked; Boing Boing sadly omitted from list of must-read sites for domestic spying

Update: Probably a more simple explanation -- the content of the site changed over time. The version of the document at Cryptome was published in 2011. The Reuters article that made the rounds today appears to be based on a new version of the document for 2012, which we haven't seen. BB reader Todd Towles says, "According to DNS Stuff, the current msthirteen.com domain was created in Sep 2011. According to the WayBackMachine, the site was about MS-13 on Feb 2010.

I am outraged that our blog once again failed to make it on to the list of websites the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors. The grandfather of all rogue leak sites, Cryptome, published a copy of the 2011 edition of the government document (PDF link to document copy). Apparently, there's a new 2012 version some have seen, on which a current round of news coverage is based.

There's a Reuters article summarizing its significance here:

A "privacy compliance review" issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a "Social Networking/Media Capability" which involves regular monitoring of "publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards." The purpose of the monitoring, says the government document, is to "collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture."

The document adds, using more plain language, that such monitoring is designed to help DHS and its numerous agencies, which include the U.S. Secret Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency, to manage government responses to such events as the 2010 earthquake and aftermath in Haiti and security and border control related to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

"This is a representative list of sites that the NOC will start to monitor in order to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture under this Initiative," the document reads.

Oh fine, so, the imminent Yeti invasion isn't something that needs to be monitored? The anal probe menace posed by illegal Martian invaders? No concerns about the toxicity of homemade sauerkraut as a biological weapon?

I mean, fucking MySpace and Hulu are on the list! Really? I'm surprised Friendster was omitted. And they're watching Flickr and YouTube and Huffpo! But our hard-hitting coverage of steampunk watches and DIY spaceships doesn't merit a click? Whatever, DHS. We don't want those ill-gotten clicks.

But there's still hope. "Initial sites listed may link to other sites not listed. The NOC may also monitor those sites if they are within the scope of this Initiative."

UPDATE: Leaked DHS internet watchlist "mistakes" msthirteen.com, skeevy German site about 13yo girls for MS-13 gang news.

As you already suspected, the CIA is reading your tweets and Facebook status updates —

According to this Associated Press story, the tinfoil beanie hat crowd was right all along: "In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day. At the agency's Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the 'vengeful librarians' also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly." — Xeni •

Governments turn to hacking techniques for surveillance of citizens —

"It's an open market. You cannot stop the flow of surveillance equipment."—Jerry Lucas, head of the Intelligence Support Systems conference showcasing technology that corrupt regimes around the world use to spy on, and censor, their citizens. Article by Ryan Gallagher in the Guardian. — Xeni •

The New York Times reported this weekend that the FBI will grant "significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents"—powers that allow them them greater freedom to "search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention." The FBI's general counsel describes the changes as "more like fine-tuning than major changes." The ACLU isn't buying it.