NYPD TRACKED CITIZENS’ CELLPHONES 1,000 TIMES SINCE 2008 WITHOUT WARRANTS

Ciara McCarthy | The Guardian - FEBRUARY 11, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: FLICKR, 49770271@N08.

New York City police have tracked citizens’ cellphones over 1,000 times since 2008 without using warrants, according to public records obtained by the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The organization announced on Thursday that the NYPD has typically used “stingrays” after obtaining lower-level court orders, but not warrants, before using the devices. The department also does not have a policy guiding how police can use the controversial devices. This is the first time that the scope of stingray use by the nation’s largest police agency has been confirmed.

The devices, generically known as stingrays, work by mimicking cell towers and tracking a cellphone’s location at a specific time. Law enforcement agencies can use the technology to track people’s movements through their cellphone use. Stingrays can also detect the phone numbers that a person has been communicating with, according to the NYCLU. The devices allow law enforcement to bypass cellphone carriers, who have provided information to police in the past, and can track data about bystanders in close proximity to the intended target.

Mariko Hirose, the NYCLU attorney who filed the records request, said the records reveal knowledge about NYPD’s stingray use that should have been divulged before police decided to start using them.

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Google To Censor US Search Site For European Users

Forbes | Emma Woollacott | February 10, 2016

(Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images)

Google is removing the loophole allowing European users to sidestep the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling that censors their search results.

After the European Court of Justice ruled two years ago that people could ask for search results to be removed if they contained inaccurate or ‘outdated’ information, Google attempted to strike a compromise.

It complied with the order – but only for European versions of its website. This meant that European users wanting to see uncensored results have only to log on to Google.com to get the unedited version; and plenty do.


This state of affairs, as you might imagine, isn’t good enough for the European authorities, and in September last year the French data protection authority, CNIL, ordered the company to start removing offending content from its sites worldwide.

And while the initial fine was set at just €300,000 – a drop in the ocean for a company with annual revenues of about $66 billion – Google was told this could rise to an extraordinary 5% of global operating costs under new data protection legislation set to come in next year.

And now, says Reuters, the company’s come up with another compromise: to censor non-European domains, but only when they’re being accessed from the country where the right to be forgotten request has been made.

For example, if a British citizen made a successful removal request, nobody accessing Google search from the UK would be able to see the removed item, whichever national version of Google they used. Anybody searching the same domain from outside the EU, meanwhile, would see the full list of results.

Twitter announces 'trust and safety' panel to police content

Washington Examiner | By RUDY TAKALA | 2/9/16 5:28 PM

Twitter on Tuesday announced the formation of a new “Trust and Safety Council,” which will work to develop policies censoring speech on the site. The group will be comprised of more than 40 organizations from 13 regions around the world.

“With hundreds of millions of tweets sent per day, the volume of content on Twitter is massive, which makes it extraordinarily complex to strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power,” Twitter said in a statement.

"It requires a multi-layered approach where each of our 320 million users has a part to play, as do the community of experts working for safety and free expression,” the statement added.

The announcement is the latest by Twitter in a string of moves aimed at improving its public image. Both the Obama administration and members of Congress have been calling on social media sites, and particularly Twitter, to do more to assist in the fight against terrorism. A California woman filed suit against Twitter in December, claiming that propaganda spread by the Islamic State on the site contributed to her husband’s shooting death in Jordan.

The latest move will contribute to combating violent speech on the site, but will likely expand Twitter’s effort to police content far beyond that as well. Groups involved with the council include the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Feminist Frequency, European Schoolnet, and the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism.

Twitter said it intended for the group to be comprised of “safety advocates, academics and researchers focused on minors, media literacy, digital citizenship, and efforts around greater compassion and empathy on the Internet,” and that it would provide input on the site’s “safety products, policies, and programs.”

“In developing the Council, we are taking a global and inclusive approach so that we can hear a diversity of voices,” Twitter explained. “As we develop products, policies, and programs, our Trust and Safety Council will help us tap into the expertise and input of organizations at the intersection of these issues more efficiently and quickly.”

Last week, the site also announced that it had silently removed as many as 125,000 accounts belonging to members of the Islamic State since the middle of 2015. And in December, Twitter amended its terms of service to more expressly prohibit abusive language.

US intelligence chief: we might use the internet of things to spy on you

The Guardian | Spencer Ackerman and Sam Thielman | 9 February 2016 16.51 EST

The US intelligence chief has acknowledged for the first time that agencies might use a new generation of smart household devices to increase their surveillance capabilities.

As increasing numbers of devices connect to the internet and to one another, the so-called internet of things promises consumers increased convenience – the remotely operated thermostat from Google-owned Nest is a leading example. But as home computing migrates away from the laptop, the tablet and the smartphone, experts warn that the security features on the coming wave of automobiles, dishwashers and alarm systems lag far behind.

The government just admitted it will use smart home devices for spying.

In an appearance at a Washington thinktank last month, the director of the National Security Agency, Adm Michael Rogers, said that it was time to consider making the home devices “more defensible”, but did not address the opportunities that increased numbers and even categories of connected devices provide to his surveillance agency.

However, James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, was more direct in testimony submitted to the Senate on Tuesday as part of an assessment of threats facing the United States.

“In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper said.

Clapper did not specifically name any intelligence agency as involved in household-device surveillance. But security experts examining the internet of things take as a given that the US and other surveillance services will intercept the signals the newly networked devices emit, much as they do with those from cellphones. Amateurs are already interested in easily compromised hardware; computer programmer John Matherly’s search engine Shodan indexes thousands of completely unsecured web-connected devices.

Online threats again topped the intelligence chief’s list of “worldwide threats” the US faces, with the mutating threat of low-intensity terrorism quickly following. While Clapper has for years used the equivocal term “evolving” when asked about the scope of the threat, he said Tuesday that Sunni violent extremism “has more groups, members, and safe havens than at any other point in history”.


The Islamic State topped the threat index, but Clapper also warned that the US-backed Saudi war in Yemen was redounding to the benefit of al-Qaida’s local affiliate.

Domestically, “homegrown extremists” are the greatest terrorist threat, rather than Islamic State or al-Qaida attacks planned from overseas. Clapper cited the San Bernardino and Chattanooga shootings as examples of lethal operations emanating from self-starting extremists “without direct guidance from [Isis] leadership”.

US intelligence officials did not foresee Isis suffering significant setbacks in 2016 despite a war in Syria and Iraq that the Pentagon has pledged to escalate. The chief of defense intelligence, Marine Lt Gen Vincent Stewart, said the jihadist army would “probably retain Sunni Arab urban centers” in 2016, even as military leaders pledged to wrest the key cities of Raqqa and Mosul from it.

Contradicting the US defense secretary, Ashton Carter, Stewart said he was “less optimistic in the near term about Mosul”, saying the US and Iraqi government would “certainly not” retake it in 2016.

The negative outlook comes as Carter traveled on Tuesday to meet with his fellow defense chiefs in Brussels for a discussion on increasing their contributions against Isis.

On the Iran nuclear deal, Clapper said intelligence agencies were in a “distrust and verify mode”, but added: “We have no evidence thus far that they’re moving toward violation.”

Clapper’s admission about the surveillance potential for networked home devices is rare for a US official. But in an overlooked 2012 speech, the then CIA director David Petraeus called the surveillance implications of the internet of things “transformational … particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft”.

During testimony to both the Senate armed services committee and the intelligence panel, Clapper cited Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and the Islamic State as bolstering their online espionage, disinformation, theft, propaganda and data-destruction capabilities. He warned that the US’s ability to correctly attribute the culprits of those actions would probably diminish with “improving offensive tradecraft, the use of proxies, and the creation of cover organizations”.

Clapper suggested that US adversaries had overtaken its online capabilities: “Russia and China continue to have the most sophisticated cyber programs.”

The White House’s new cybersecurity initiative, unveiled on Tuesday, pledged increased security for nontraditional networked home devices. It tasked the Department of Homeland Security to “test and certify networked devices within the ‘Internet of Things’.” It did not discuss any tension between the US’s twin cybersecurity and surveillance priorities.

Connected household devices are a potential treasure trove to intelligence agencies seeking unobtrusive ways to listen and watch a target, according to a study that Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society released last week. The study found that the signals explosion represented by the internet of things would overwhelm any privacy benefits by users of commercial encryption – even as Clapper in his testimony again alleged that the growth of encryption was having a “negative effect on intelligence gathering”.

The report’s authors cited a 2001 case in which the FBI had sought to compel a company that makes emergency communications hardware for automobiles – similar by description to OnStar, though the company was not named – to assist agents in Nevada in listening in on conversations in a client’s car.

In February 2015, news reports revealed that microphones on Samsung “smart” televisions were “always on” so as to receive any audio that it could interpret as an instruction.

“Law enforcement or intelligence agencies may start to seek orders compelling Samsung, Google, Mattel, Nest or vendors of other networked devices to push an update or flip a digital switch to intercept the ambient communications of a target,” the authors wrote.

Robots will force experts to find other routes to the top

FT | Andrew Hill | February 8, 2016

There is a point in any talk about the automated future of the professions when the audience visibly relaxes.

It comes when futurists concede that a few expert lawyers, consultants or accountants will still be needed, even after cheaper, more efficient computer systems have taken over many of their juniors’ tasks.

It happened last week at a lecture by Richard and Daniel Susskind, which the organisers claimed was the largest ever gathering of senior managers in UK professional services firms.

The father-and-son authors of The Future of the Professions predicted radical change in the sector. But the tense scepticism in the room dissipated as each senior partner or director quietly acknowledged he or she would be a survivor, even if algorithms and artificial intelligence swept away the consultant or solicitor in the next seat.

This cohort may well reach retirement unscathed — and without much incentive to alter how they work. As Richard Susskind told me afterwards, “it’s hard to convince a room full of millionaires that they have got their model wrong”. But change is coming. The main difference of opinion is over its pace and extent.

You can already ask Kim, a legal “virtual assistant” launched by Riverview Law, for help managing your caseload, or get Ross, IBM Watson’s “super intelligent attorney”, to research the entire body of law in seconds. But a crystal-ball-gazing report by The Law Society, the trade body for solicitors in England and Wales, expects the impact of this type of automation to level off by 2020.

The society’s Stephen Denyer told last week’s gathering that clients were not only looking for practical counsel, but for “negotiating skills, judgment, ethical standards, and reassurance about the direction they’re taking”.

Fine. But how will the senior partners of the future achieve that level of wisdom when machines are doing the tasks that allow them to build and hone their expertise?

Take financial journalism. I spent three years as a trainee building confidence and skill by churning out news about corporate earnings. This is precisely the type of report that, quite rightly, Associated Press now produces automatically, in partnership with a company called — ominously for all columnists — Automated Insights.

Another parallel is aviation, where crashes often trigger fears that autopilots are undermining human skills. Interviewed last year about the 2009 Air France crash, Delmar Fadden, Boeing’s former chief of cockpit technology, told Vanity Fair that, having automated 98 per cent of pilots’ routine work, “we really worry about the tasks we ask them to do just occasionally”.

The answer is not to halt the march of the robots. Indeed, technology is part of the solution. Novice astronauts are not trained by sending them on repeated costly moonshots. They practise the tasks and challenges they will face in carefully designed simulations, until they are finally ready for the launch pad.

As Prof Susskind points out, law students at the University of Strathclyde play out real-world legal problems in a fictional virtual community called “Ardcalloch”.

In the real world, professionals must recognise much of the work they hand to juniors is repetitive servitude, often imposed on the tacit assumption that, if they had to do it, so should the new generation. Clients may still prefer dealing with human experts but they do not much like paying for their juniors’ billable training.

Knowledge can be imparted in other ways, including simply by working closely, apprentice-style, with senior colleagues. I still value the guidance I received as a beginner from experienced editors and writers but I am not sure I needed to write five similar corporate earnings stories a day to achieve mastery. Newbies can acquire specific skills through working, under close supervision, on a sample of the basic tasks they once spent years slogging through.

Meanwhile, new roles will evolve. The Susskinds suggest that one could be the “empathiser”. A sympathetic human may eventually act as assistant to Kim or Ross or their more cognitively capable descendants.

This prospect causes conniptions among some consultants and accountants. It may not happen at the top for years — or ever, in complex lawsuits or tax audits. But aspiring partners should start honing their listening skills, just in case.

These four-foot-tall robots could change the way warehouse workers do their jobs

Tech Insider | Leanna Garfield | Feb 2, 2016

Locus Robotics

The Locus robot can zip around a clothing warehouse larger than the size of six football fields. It can also work for 24 hours, without a break for lunch or a salary.

The new bot, created by Locus Robotics, just launched in its first warehouse: a Devens, Massachusetts space owned by Quiet Logistics, a warehousing company that fills online orders for both small startups and megabrands like Zara and Bonobos. The robots transport items that have been picked off the shelves by humans, and bring them to the front of the warehouse to be sealed and delivered.

"We developed a system where the robots do all the walking," Locus Robotics CEO Bruce Welty tells Tech Insider. "As retailers continue to exceed expectation around next-day shipping, they're going to look to technology to help them provide an even faster turn-around."

The bots work alongside humans and do all the normal grunt work. Warehouse workers usually walk 12 to 16 miles each day. With the robots, they don't have to.

The robots now meet the human workers in the middle of the warehouse. As soon as someone completes an order online, the bot's system knows exactly where to go in the 275,000-square-foot warehouse.

Each bot (which doesn't look anything like a human) has a platform for arms and a two-foot-diameter base with wheels for feet. It zips around at about 4.5 mph, or the equivalent of a fast walk. If stray boxes or wires stand in its path, its vision technology can "see" in real-time to avoid them.

Locus Robotics

Since the robots are able to move faster than humans without tiring, Welty says the system will boost warehouse productivity by up to 800%. The bots will also not be subject to human error, which means that they can get the order right nearly every time.

As a way to increase productivity and speed, many online retailers have been using robots, conveyor belts, and cranes to fulfill orders for the past decade. Amazon has exclusive rightsto Kiva Systems' robots, but Welty says Locus' robots are smaller, and more lightweight and versatile.

Unlike Kiva's bots, the Locus robots can be incorporated into the warehouses' existing infrastructure. The warehouse doesn't need to move any shelves or aisles. Locus can program the robot to navigate the warehouse exactly how it is.

Locus Robotics

"The robots are less industrial and easier to work side-by-side with humans," Welty says.

The robots won't replace any human jobs in Quiet Logistics' warehouse, at least for the time being. It will change the nature of many of their responsibilities, however. Since they don't need to roam the warehouse's aisles looking for the items, they can use that time for other parts of the distribution process. They can now do what they do best: add a personal touch.

As more retailers shift online and promise greater shipping speeds, there's a growing need to make sure that the orders are not only delivered on-time but also feel personalized. This can be as simple as stuffing boxes with pretty tissue paper or even handwritten notes from the brands — a job fit best for humans.

Is technology causing us to 'evolve' into a new SPECIES? Expert believes super humans called Homo optimus will talk to machines and be 'digitally immortal' by 2050

Daily Mail | By SARAH GRIFFITHS | PUBLISHED: 06:14 EST, 1 February 2016

If you're under the age of 40, there is a good chance you will achieve 'electronic immortality' during your lifetime.

This is the idea that all of your thoughts and experiences will be uploaded and stored online for future generations.

That's according to a futurologist who not only believes technology will let humans merge with computers, that this will create an entirely new species called Homo optimus.

And, he claims this could occur as soon as 2050.

The predictions were made by Dr Ian Pearson as part of the lead up to The Big Bang Fair 2016.

He believes that within the next 35 years, humans will 'live' online, and our pets could even 'talk' to us, like real-life Furbies.

He also claims transhumanism – the idea we can make people technologically better – will be the norm by 2050.

'With optimised genomes and bodies enhanced by links to external technology, people could be more beautiful...more intelligent, more emotionally sophisticated, more physically able, more socially connected, generally healthier and happier all round.'

As humans embrace technological advances and gradually become androids, we could gradually see Homo sapiens being replaced by Homo optimus.

'We can expect our evolutionary process to change in response to technology.

'What's exciting is that it is no longer nature which is forcing changes on us but our own breakthroughs enabling changes we want, ' Dr Pearson explained.

 

Futurologist Dr Ian Pearson claims that in the next 35 years, humans will be able to communicate with computers to evolve better senses, memory and even intelligence. Electronic gold skin and tiny implants between cells could enable a direct link with devices, while we could 'wear' muscle too (illustrated above)

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As humans embrace technological advances and gradually become androids, we could gradually see Homo sapiens being replaced by Homo optimus. This conceptual image shows four stages of human evolution (left to right) showing Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens

WE MAY TURN INTO 'FAIRIES' TO EXPLORE SPACE 

Biotech and nanotech developments will make it possible to develop small brains with far greater capabilities, so the rest of the body could be scaled down accordingly.

There are big advantages in being tiny for space travel, Dr Pearson explained, because it is a lot easier to accommodate and transport tiny people.

'It is not frivolous to suggest that most space travellers will be rather like fairies, and wings would make it easy to get around in zero gravity too,' he said.

'This could give rise to some weird and wonderful future forms and creations – from changing video displays on our faces to controlling our own dreams - our (evolving) imaginations are the only limit.'

Dr Pearson believes that with a full link between the human brain and a computer, people could move their mind into an improved android body.

'This would allow people to have multiple expistences and identities, or to carry on living long after their biological death,' he wrote in the 'Future Human Report.'

While this technology could be available as soon as in 2050, it may become cheap enough to be widespread by 2070.

Plus, by the end of the century, there will likely be several types of humans, including human-machine hybrids, and people living in android bodies, as well as 'smart creatures'.

Dr Pearson continued that anyone under the age of 40 today will have a good chance of electronic immortality, meaning they could essentially 'upload' their personality so it can continue posting after their death. In the film Transcendence (pictured) the character played by Johnny Depp uploads his consciousness onto a computer

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Research from academics and experts, collated by Dr Pearson for The Big Bang Fair, suggests humans will be able to directly communicate with electronics and we could clone teeth, fix surfaces and edit genes to make them self-replace (illustrated above)

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WHAT THE FUTURE COULD LOOK LIKE - FROM SKIN TO MUSCLE TIGHTS

Research from academics and experts collated by Dr Pearson for The Big Bang Fair suggests:

• We will be able to connect directly with technology through 'electronic skin' or tiny implants between our skin cells.
• Electronic 'support tights' will boost leg strength with wearable polymer gel muscles 1cm thick.
• Smudged make-up will be a thing of the past with smart make-up applied on top of a membrane on the skin surface to give a flawless, changeable look.
• Nanotechnology will monitor and repair our bodies from the inside, making self-replacing teeth a possibility.
• Technology will be used to enhance pets and wildlife, with the potential to hear our pets talk or to increase their IQ, and to create real versions of kids-craze Furbies. 

'We will certainly technologically advance some of our pets and even wildlife too and we might create entirely new species such as real Furbies,' Dr Pearson continued.

The predictions mean futuristic characters such as Dug the talking dog in Pixar's Up and the human-robot hybrids popular in hit TV shows like Humans could be a reality.

The Big Bang Fair – the UK's largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) for young people - will give access to technologies shaping these developments, from a sensor placed on the skin that allows people to hear music using bone conduction, to robot orchestras.

'We will certainly technologically advance some of our pets and even wildlife too and we might create entirely new species such as real Furbies,' Dr Pearson continued

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'It's the young people who come to the fair who will help drive through the innovations our experts are predicting,' said Paul Jackson, chief executive of EngineeringUK, organisers of The Big Bang Fair.

'Today's young people will not only get to experience 'wearing' muscles or owning smart-pets, they will decide what these look like.'

The Big Bang Fair is free and runs from 16 to 19 March at the Birmingham NEC.

Company Developing ‘Tech Tattoos’ So People Can Track Their Medical, Financial Info

CBS | January 29, 2016 11:18 PM





NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Could we soon be carrying all of our medical and financial information on a tattoo?

Software company Chaotic Moon has developed a “tech tattoo” that gets embedded into a person’s arm and can track a person’s financial and medical information.

Eric Schneider, the company’s hardware creative technologist, explained the tattoo can monitor if a person is about to get sick.

“Rather than going to the doctor once a year for your physical, this tech tattoo can be something you put on your body once a year and it monitors everything that they would do in a physical and it sends that to your doctor, and if there’s an issue they can call you,” Schneider said. “So the tech tattoos can really tie in everything into one package. It can look at early signs of fever, your vital signs, heart rate, everything it needs to look at to notify you that you’re getting sick or your child is getting sick.”

The tattoo will transmit this information wirelessly to a mobile app or computer being monitored by their health professionals.

Schneider also said that people would be able to carry their financial information through this tattoo.

“We carry wallets around and they are so vulnerable. With the tech tattoo you can carry all your information on your skin and when you want your credit card information or your ID, you can pull that up automatically through the system,” he said.

The tattoos are made with “electro conductive ink” that contain various sensors, and in some cases tiny microchips. The makers say they will last for up to a year.

Tim Moynihan of Wired Magazine thinks there could be a future with these tech tattoos.

“Twenty percent of Americans, I think, have tattoos so there is a potential market there.” Moynihan told CBS2.

Lance Ulanoff of Mashable called it a “fascinating idea” that could potentially be used to help track missing children or checking up on soldiers in combat.

“Right now they wear suits to try and keep track of all their vitals, and if something goes wrong with the suit then maybe there’s a problem, but if it’s on your skin, they know all the time,” Ulanoff told CBS2.

Cosmetic company L’Oreal is also getting in on the action with a temporary tattoo that can track UV exposure and alert people if they’re in danger of burning.

DHS WANTS BETTER SOCIAL MEDIA SCREENING TECHNOLOGY

Nextgov | By Mohana Ravindranath | January 26, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: Pixelkult

The Department of Homeland Security wants businesses to present their cutting-edge social media analytics services next month -- especially technology that could enhance criminal investigations, traveler screenings and situational awareness.

In a new request for information, DHS said it is looking for open source analytics tools that can make internal operations more efficient and reduce costs through "advanced analytic automation,” across the department, all while using “privacy, civil rights and civil liberties-protecting analytic methods.”

Respondents have until Feb. 9 to submit descriptions of their analytics capabilities, including geospatial processing, foreign and spoken language processing, and keyword, image and video analysis, among other elements.

DHS plans to ask 30 “exemplars of social media analytics capabilities in the market place” to present technology that could help analysts find patterns “in the context of homeland security investigative, screening and/or homeland security mission related situation awareness missions.”

Those groups will be asked to present on Feb. 26, the RFI said.

The solicitation also asked respondents to describe the way they “protect the privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of individuals involved in open source and social media communications,” including factors such as data removal methods, “role based access to information, user audit, system logging, policy enforcing mechanisms, encryption, etc.”

The announcement comes weeks after federal social media screening policies came under fire, especially in light of the San Bernardino shootings, when it was widely reported that one of the shooters had posted public pro-ISIS messages on Facebook. (Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey subsequently said those were private, direct communications.)

DHS policies in particular were criticized last month when Congress blasted the department for not examining immigrants' social media accounts closely and routinely when granting visas, The Hill reported.

DHS officials said they do occasionally look at social media accounts, according to The Hill. But a DHS memo obtained by MSNBC last month found that the department had rejected a policy to screen foreign visa applicants’ social media accounts in 2011, after a year of revisions.

According to a spokesperson, DHS does not comment on open solicitations and declined Nextgov's request for comment.

Terrifying IoT Search Engine Lets You Spy On Strangers' Webcams

Vocativ | By Jennings Brown and Adi Cohen on Jan 25, 2016 at 3:27 PM

PSA: Create strong passwords (Not actual footage from a web cam) (Getty Images)

Think of the millions of devices with video feeds—maybe the baby monitor perched over your kid’s crib or a security camera looking out over your back porch. A new feature on the most popular search engine for the Internet of Things just made it a lot easier to find such feeds. And it’s even creepier than you can imagine.

Shodan is a website that scans the internet for publicly accessible devices and captures their IP addresses—creating a searchable index that includes everything from in-home surveillance cameras to traffic lights to fetal heart monitors to power switches for hospitals. Essentially any of the so-called Internet of Things that doesn’t have a password is up for grabs, and that’s more devices than you’d think.

Programmer John Matherly developed the site in 2009 when he was a teenager, and he originally thought his pet project would help large tech companies see who was using their devices. But now the site is mostly used by hackers and researchers. Until recently, Shodan was used almost exclusively within the cybersecurity community, because searches require a general understanding of technical language. But a new feature has made it easier for anyone to peek people’s home surveillance devices. The new channel includes screen grabs of security camera feeds along with their location.

As Ars Technica reports, these webcams show feeds from sensitive locations like schools, banks, marijuana plantations, labs and babies’ rooms. Shodan members who pay the $49 monthly fee can search the full feed at images.shodan.io. A Vocativ search of some of the most recently added images shows offices, school, porches and the interior of people’s homes. Accompanying each of these grabs is a pinned map that shows the location of the device capturing that footage.

The site also offers free memberships that allow anyone to search through thousands of webcams. Most of these devices require a password to view the feed (Shodan users have written a few articles about the most-used passwords so that others can easily hack feeds), but unfortunately many people don’t set up password authentication on their devices. Such cameras are easily accessed through Shodan, and many of them can even be controlled by Shodan users.

Moments after setting up a free account, we were able to access and maneuver several security cameras, moving them from left to right and up to down within homes, businesses and a room holding adorable Pomeranian puppies. Shodan also provided the general location where each of these live feeds were coming from, which means it would not be difficult to track down those puppies and figure out when their owner is away.

So, if you value your puppies or personal privacy, set up a password on all your connected devices.