In WTF News: Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back

According to Kim Zetter of Wired’s Threat Level (published October 7, 2010):

A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do.

It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted its expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday.

The answer came when half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers appeared at Yasir Afifi’s apartment complex in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday demanding he return the device.

Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, cooperated willingly and said he’d done nothing to merit attention from authorities. Comments the agents made during their visit suggested he’d been under FBI surveillance for three to six months.

An FBI spokesman wouldn’t acknowledge that the device belonged to the agency or that agents appeared at Afifi’s house…

Afifi, the son of an Islamic-American community leader who died a year ago in Egypt, is one of only a few people known to have found a government-tracking device on their vehicle.

His discovery comes in the wake of a recent ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying it’s legal for law enforcement to secretly place a tracking device on a suspect’s car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway.

Brian Alseth from the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington state contacted Afifi after seeing pictures of the tracking device posted online and told him the ACLU had been waiting for a case like this to challenge the ruling.

“It seems very frightening that the FBI have placed a surveillance-tracking device on the car of a 20-year-old American citizen who has done nothing more than being half-Egyptian,” Alseth told Wired.com.

Afifi, a business marketing student at Mission College in Santa Clara, discovered the device last Sunday when he took his car to a local garage for an oil change. When a mechanic at Ali’s Auto Care raised his Ford Lincoln LS on hydraulic lifts, Afifi saw a wire sticking out near the right rear wheel and exhaust.

Garage owner Mazher Khan confirmed for Wired.com that he also saw it. A closer inspection showed it connected to a battery pack and transmitter, which were attached to the car with a magnet. Khan asked Afifi if he wanted the device removed and when Afifi said yes, Khan pulled it easily from the car’s chassis.

“I wouldn’t have noticed it if there wasn’t a wire sticking out,” Afifi said.

Later that day, a friend of Afifi’s named Khaled posted pictures of the device at Reddit, asking if anyone knew what it was and if it meant the FBI “is after us.”

A reader quickly identified it as an Orion Guardian ST820 tracking device made by an electronics company called Cobham, which sells the device only to law enforcement…

Afifi considered selling the device on Craigslist before the FBI showed up. He was in his apartment Tuesday afternoon when a roommate told him “two sneaky-looking people” were near his car. Afifi, already heading out for an appointment, encountered a man and woman looking at his vehicle outside. The man asked if Afifi knew his registration tag was expired. When Afifi asked if it bothered him, the man just smiled. Afifi got into his car and headed for the parking lot exit when two SUVs pulled up with flashing lights carrying four police officers in bullet-proof vests.

The agent who initially spoke with Afifi identified himself then as Vincent and told Afifi, “We’re here to recover the device you found on your vehicle. It’s federal property. It’s an expensive piece, and we need it right now.”

Read the full article here

Our two cents: After the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said law enforcement could secretly place a tracking device on a suspect’s car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway, we expected this sort of Orwellian surveillance to happen. But what makes this WTF worthy is the FBI’s less-than flimsy excuse for following an American citizen who has not committed a crime and the sheer incompetence of how they went about doing it. Our only solace is the ACLU will be able to use this incident as a springboard to hopefully overturn the 9th Circuit Court’s terrible decision.

Good Idea: WeWood Watches

I was instantly drawn to WeWood’s watches which is weird because I’ve never owned a watch in my life and generally find them rather boring.  My peaked interest is a testament to WeWood’s alluring selection of natural wood grains, their design aesthetic and underlying philosophy.

From WeWood’s site:
WeWood has emerged out of Italy (but based in LA) as an emblem of eco-luxury and design, committed to the health of our planet. WeWood is the avant-garde approach to sophisticated sustainability. WeWood lets us rediscover nature in its beauty, its simplicity and inspired design. It reminds us of a tree’s powerful way of life; rooted, yet reaching.

Completely absent of artificial and toxic materials, the WeWood Timepiece is as natural as your wrist. It respects your skin as you respect nature by choosing it. Your WeWood Watch breathes the same air that you breathe and may awaken memories from another time and place. Your WeWood Watch records your sensations and shares your experiences as the perfect natural mate, whose story also becomes yours to wear, smell and feel.

A philosophy not implemented is only a dream. Conversely, when you get your WeWood Timepiece, you can feel confident you’re making a difference. One Timepiece plants one tree, and together we help to ensure the health and survival of the natural world.

The WeWood watches sell for $119.

photos via Cool Hunting

Sign This: Stop The Internet Blacklist!

According to Demand Progress:

Just the other day, President Obama urged other countries to stop censoring the Internet. But now the United States Congress is trying to censor the Internet here at home. A new bill (S. 3804) being debated this week would have the Attorney General create an Internet blacklist of sites that US Internet providers would be required to block.

This is the kind of heavy-handed censorship you’d expect from a dictatorship, where one man can decide what web sites you’re not allowed to visit. But the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to pass the bill this week — and Senators say they haven’t heard much in the way of objections! That’s why we need you to sign our urgent petition to Congress demanding they oppose the Internet blacklist.

Sign the petition here
Read more about the bill here

Since Google was so willing to abandon its commitment to an open network in a deal with Verizon, the fight against the internet blacklist can not be lost. Otherwise the free and open internet we have come to know and love will be no more.

On a sidenote:
Just last week a French three-strikes anti-piracy law Hadopi (not to unlike the proposed blacklist law) went live. Copyright holders are currently in the process of sending out tens of thousands of IP-addresses of alleged infringers to Internet service providers, and this will increase to over a million in a few weeks. The ISPs have to hand over the identities of the associated accounts to the authorities within a week, or face a fine of 1500 euros (roughly $2021) per unidentified IP-address. Penalties for those busted range from hefty fines to disconnecting the Internet connection of the infringer altogether.

Youtube Play vs. Vimeo Awards

On September 20, the shortlist for the inaugural YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video (basically an online video contest open to all) was announced. The 125 videos on the shortlist, selected from more than 23,000 submissions from 91 countries, can now be viewed through Youtube’s Play Channel.

The 20 finalists, eventually selected from a jury that includes director Darren Aronofsky, Animal Collective, graphic designer Stefan Sagemeister and visual artist Takashi Murakami will be announced October 21 during a fancy celebration of some kind and put on view at the Guggenheim October 22-24.

We obviously haven’t made it through all 125 videos of the shortlist, let alone any of the 22,ooo and some odd other submissions, because well, we have shit to do.  But we’ve shortlisted the shortlist and left you with links to some of our favorites so far.

Cardboard – a cardboard animation
The Huber Experiments Vol. 1 – slow motion awesomeness
Mother of All Funk Chords – funny and funky video mashup
Kibble Kat – pixar-like animated short
Bathtub IV – time lapse photography creates “fake miniatures”
Luis – stop motion animation with a dark atmosphere
Stindberg and Helium at the Beach – simple approach to funny
Wonderland Mafia – 316 Mafia x Disney’s Alice in Wonderland
Human Mirror - 15 pairs of twins and a subway car
Noteboek – confusing reality
Foods – food cravings documented over a month (Tricia’s pick)

What’s that…you have an insatiable appetite for internet videos and want even more?

Luckily, secondary online video depository Vimeo, which tends to cater more to burgeoning filmmakers because of its high definition player, will host the first annual Vimeo Fesitval & Awards show in New York October 8-9. The judges panel picked from more than 6,500 entries for Vimeo’s shortlist, which is organized nicely into 9 categories (unlike Youtube’s madness) and is also online now. We haven’t had the time to watch many of Vimeo’s shortlist (thanks to the aforementioned Youtube disorganization) so no recommendations from us. Don’t be scared to just click around in there, I promise it will be ok.

Watch: “1945-1998″ by Isao Hashimoto

According to Tree Hugger:

This art project by Isao Hashimoto does a phenomenal job of showing us where and when we started obliterating pieces of the planet with nuclear weapons. In a short video, Hashimoto shows every nuclear bomb explosion on the Earth from 1945 when the US tested nuclear weapons before dropping the infamous bombs on Japan, to 1998 as India and Pakistan began testing their own weapons. It brings a whole new perspective to the debate on the use of nuclear technology.

The artist writes, “This piece of work is a bird’s eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second.  No letters are used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barriers.  The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted.  I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world.”

To learn more about the history of nuclear testing we highly suggest watching Radio Bikini. Nominated for an Academy Award, this documentary tells the eye-opening story of Bikini Atoll — one of the most terrifying tragedies of the nuclear age. The peaceful Pacific island was the unwitting site of atomic bomb tests conducted by the United States in 1946; extraordinary archival footage reveals the stark reality of these tests, which left the island uninhabitable for 40 years and exposed thousands of sailors to heavy doses of radiation.  For those interested Radio Bikini is currently available on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” system.

Learn even more about the sordid history of nuclear bomb testing around the globe, including the American-made Castle Bravo disaster of 1954 via Wikipedia.

My question is why can’t America ever be first in something positive like education or health care?