Privacy Matters

• The ACLU of PA is representing university professor Karen Piper in a suit against Pittsburgh police for allegedly damaging her hearing after blaring a crowd-dispersal weapon at protestors outside the 2009 G-20 meeting in that city. The weapon, called a "Long Range Acoustic Device," emits a sound that physically hurts people over long distances. Read more about so-called 'non-lethal' weapons.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that the city of Atlanta is embarking on an ambitious project to blanket the city in surveillance cameras. The Atlanta police are expanding their fleet of cameras, as well as integrating privately controlled cameras owned by major corporations like Coca-Cola into a network equipped with video analytics and real time monitoring capabilities like those you see on cop shows.

• Harding Security Associates of McLean, Va. was awarded a $17,948,020 contract to  "provide for the analysis and forensic service support to the Biometrics Intelligence Program" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Charlottesville, Va..

• Bush may have secretly continued to operate John Poindexter's notorious "Total Information Awareness" program.
• Finger "vein scanners" are about to be rolled out for library workers in suburban Melbourne.