In the past day or two an interesting piece of news has been making the rounds. Earlier this year the police department of the city of Seattle, Washington set up its own wireless mesh network for what many people are saying is for the purpose of keeping people under surveillance. The hardware was purchased from Aruba Networks; it is unknown whether or not the company set up the gear, or if another outfit was contracted for installation and maintenance. Each of the nodes is apparently broadcasting frames containing ESSIDs that reflect its location (such as 4th Avenue and Union Street …

The borders of the United States are monitored carefully by US ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Their stated primary task is to protect the country from crime and terrorism (in no particular order) by policing the borders, preventing anything shady from getting in, and generally trying to make everyone feel safe that they keep Them safely away from US citizens. Last week deputy chief of the local border patrol Joe Giuliano spoke to a group of 200 or so residents of San Juan Island, which is technically part of the state of Washington. It turns out that periodic citizenship checks …

The SWAT team charged with the town of Lake Forest in Washington state was dispatched to the house of a local family after being informed that a heavily armed drug dealer had killed at least one individual and was in possession of a large stock of distributable drugs on the premises. As one would expect, they geared up for a full assault and hit the house like gang busters. There's one important fact which they didn't have at the time, and this fact made all the difference: The original 911 call that alerted police to this house was faked. Computer …