Disinformation » Privacy

LAPD To Crack Down On Use Of Unmanned Drones By Real Estate Agents

JacobSloan — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:55:42 +0000

In a nightmarish scenario from the future, technology ostensibly created to spy on our “enemies” is now being turned against us by the most nefarious of forces — real estate brokers. The Los Angeles Times reveals:

The Los Angeles Police Department is warning real estate agents not to use images of properties taken from unmanned aircraft, saying the flying drones pose a potential safety hazard and could violate federal aviation policy.

The warning was issued this week after officers saw a television news report showing a basketball-sized object with multiple rotors hovering over an expansive Westside residence.

Real estate agents have been posting aerial photos and video of homes for sale in the Los Angeles area, according to the LAPD. The pictures have been taken from several hundred feet off the ground in the city’s crowded airspace — an altitude at which police helicopters often fly.

The Future Of Personal Identification: Buttock Scanners?

JacobSloan — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:00:24 +0000

Apparently everyone has a unique “buttprint”. In the future, the driver’s seat of your car or your spot on the train may be reserved for a butt that the scanner recognizes. Via Yahoo!:

Put your fingerprint scanners away. Stand aside iris measurers. Buttocks are the new way to prove who you are.

A team of Japanese scientists claim their pressure sensor sheet can accurately identify an individual’s backside and when placed on a driver’s seat could be used as a last line of defence to stop someone else driving away your motor.

“The sheet has 360 sensors, which collect data for 39 features to recognise a person, such as pressure patterns and the dimensions of the buttocks,” said Dr. Shigeomi Koshimizu, who led the research.

Koshimizu, an associate professor at Tokyo-based Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, said his device is 98 percent accurate and far less onerous than conventional biometrics as it requires nothing more than someone to sit naturally.

Homeland Security Hires Military Contractor To Monitor Social Media

aaroncynic — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:40:55 +0000

Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

A Freedom of Information Act request has revealed the Department of Homeland Security awarded a contract in 2010 to General Dynamics’ Advanced Information Systems in order to provide constant surveillance of social media, according to The Washington Post.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the request, and according to a training manual that was among the documents they received, DHS engaged in monitoring comments on Facebook, Twitter and blogs to obtain public sentiment on a proposed transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a town in Michigan. The $11 million contract awarded to General Dynamics is expected to produce “reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: positive and negative reports on FEMA, CIA, CBP, ICE, etc. as well as organizations outside the DHS,” according to Computer World.

An unnamed senior DHS official denied any such snooping or out of bounds monitoring and said the training manual is no longer in use. John Cohen, a senior counterterrorism adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Post he hadn’t seen any reports on negative views of a governmental agency and that reports of this nature “would not be the type of reporting I would consider helpful.”

Read the full post at Diatribe Media.

Major Media Outlets Supporting SOPA, Have Not Reported On It

JacobSloan — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:40:27 +0000

The major news networks apparently feel that the controversial proposed Stop Online Piracy Act is an important piece of legislation — the parent companies are all working to ensure its passage. Strange, then, that there has been no on air mention of the bill. Media Matters writes:

Most major television news outlets — MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC — have ignored the bill during their evening broadcasts. One network, CNN, devoted a single evening segment to it.

The parent companies of most of these networks, as well as two of the networks themselves, are listed as official “supporters” of this legislation on the U.S. House of Representatives’ website.

New York Times media columnist David Carr, who described the legislation as “alarming in its reach,” explained in a column earlier this week that “digitally oriented companies see SOPA as dangerous and potentially destructive to the open Web and a step toward the kind of intrusive Internet regulation that has made China a global villain to citizens of the Web.” Google co-founder Sergey Brin has warned that the legislation “would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.”

The Drones Are Coming Home

JacobSloan — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:40:44 +0000

Will baby-sized drones soon be used routinely for tracking residential property lines and other domestic purposes? With our nation’s adventures in Iraq coming to an end, unmanned drones will need to be kept busy doing something…via BLDG BLOG:

A post on sUAS News—a blog tracking the “small unmanned aviation system industry”—we read about the possibility of drone aircraft being used to enforce residential property tax.

Citing a recent court ruling in Arkansas that “has approved the use of aerial imagery to collect data on property sizes,” and making reference to the already-controversial state deployment of aerial surveillance tools, sUAS suggests that drones could someday be used to manage a near-realtime catalog of local property expansions, transfers, and other tax-relevant land alterations.

Whether enforcing local building codes—keeping an eye, for instance, on illegally built structures such as the so-called Achill Henge in Ireland—or reconciling on-the-ground property lines with their administrative representations back in the city land archives, how soon will drones become a state tool for regional landscape management?

“Imagine your local planning officer having access to your back garden at a moment’s notice!” sUAS writes with alarm. “With the pullback from Iraq and other spots under way, this scenario is much easier to imagine. Perhaps it’s already happening.”

‘Anonymous’ Claims to Steal Security Think Tank Stratfor’s Client List

Good German — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:10:05 +0000

The Associated Press reports (via CommonDreams):

The loose-knit hacking movement Anonymous claims to have stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to clients of US-based security thinktank Stratfor. One hacker said the goal was to pilfer funds from individuals’ accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions linked to their credit cards.

Anonymous boasted of stealing Stratfor’s confidential client list – which includes entities including Apple, the US air force and the Miami police department – and mining it for more than 4,000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.

…

“Not so private and secret anymore?” Anonymous taunted in a message on Twitter, promising that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.

Anonymous said the client list it had already posted was a small slice of the 200 gigabytes worth of plunder it stole from Stratfor, and promised more leaks. It said it was able to get the credit card details in part because Stratfor didn’t bother encrypting them – an easy-to-avoid blunder which, if true, would be a major embarrassment for any security-related company.

Life Would Suck If SOPA Passes

JacobSloan — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:00:10 +0000

Comic creator David Rees, known for Get Your War On, has put forth Get Your Censor On, an attempt to convey what life may be like under the much-feared Stop Online Piracy Act. If we don’t band together to work to prevent SOPA from coming to fruition in Congress, you could find yourself having conversations such as these in the near future:

Ron Paul in Saturday’s Republican Debate (Video)

Aaron Dames — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:00:54 +0000

Ron Paul Highlights from Des Moines. He’s got my vote. Does he have yours? (How is this man not ranked number one in the polls yet?)

WikiLeaks Releases Spyware Firm Videos That Show How to Hack Email, Skype, WiFi

HAL9000 — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:54:45 +0000

Kim Zetter writes on WIRED’s Threat Level:

What better way to sell your wares than to produce a marketing video showing exactly how your product works? Even if that product is spyware, marketed to oppressive regimes.

WikiLeaks, as part of its Spy Files trove of documents, released on Thursday a series of videos from Gamma International, a UK-based firm that markets the Finfisher spyware.

The video shows how the company’s product can be used to sniff WiFi networks from a hotel lobby, hack computers and cell phones, or intercept Skype communications and siphon encryption passwords.

High School Teacher Comes Under Fire For Porn Career

BananaFamine — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 06:33:15 +0000

Does the “internet” generation have differing views on porn stars teaching kids? Reports FOX 25 Boston:

BOSTON — Kevin Hogan is an English teacher and crew coach at a top-rated Massachusetts public high school, but he brings some unusual experience to the job: until recently, he was starring in pornographic movies.

Hogan has worked at the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden since September. In addition to his coaching and teaching duties, he also chairs the high school’s English department.

But he can also be found on the Internet and in adult entertainment stores under his screen name: Hytch Cawke …

Carrier IQ: The Rootkit Tracking Everything You Do On Your Phone

JacobSloan — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:06:36 +0000

If you use an Android or Blackberry phone, likely it houses a piece of hidden software which logs the content of your text messages, web searches, and other activities, and transmits the information back to company headquarters. Lifehacker reports on the unfolding Carrier IQ scandal:

Android developer Trevor Eckhart last week released information and started an uproar about a widespread rootkit, called Carrier IQ, that’s capable of logging everything you do and comes preinstalled on a ton of smartphones-including various Androids, Nokia phones, and BlackBerrys.

Last week, 25-year old Eckhart discovered a hidden application on some mobile phones that had the ability to log anything and everything on your device—from location to web searches to the content of your text messages. The program is called Carrier IQ, and unlike the

Malls Track Shoppers’ Cell Phones on Black Friday

Good German — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:26:32 +0000

Annayln Censky reports for CNN:

Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year.

Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year’s Day, two U.S. malls — Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. — will track guests’ movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.

While the data that’s collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers’ paths from store to store.

The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria’s Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren’t being visited?

While U.S. malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this is the first time they’ve used cell phones.

Taxi Surveillance Cameras and The Continuing Decay of Privacy

Charles Farrier — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:44:42 +0000

Where to mate? 1984 please.

“You lookin’ at me?” —Travis Bickle (performed by Robert De Niro), Taxi Driver (1976)

The use of surveillance cameras in taxis that record both sound and images hit the headlines last week, when it emerged that the City Council of the historic English city of Oxford was making them compulsory for all local private hire vehicles [1]. Many commentators were shocked by the depths to which the surveillance society had now stooped but few spotted that this phenomenon has been around for over a decade, and not just in the UK.

CCTV in taxis is a worldwide development. The globalised surveillance industrial complex offers one-solution-fits-all products regardless of regional differences or actual need. Wherever taxi cameras have been introduced the measure has courted controversy and time and time again privacy laws around the world have seemingly been unable to restrain this addition to the surveillance panoply. It is through such incremental steps that societal values have and continue to be eroded.

Driving a taxi undoubtedly has risks, particularly at night with an alcohol fuelled clientèle, but is there actual evidence that cameras can significantly improve driver safety? Even if cameras were effective, are they truly acceptable? Are there not other measures that could be introduced which would have less impact on the freedoms of taxi passengers?

Background

Amazingly the first city to introduce compulsory taxi cameras was not in the UK. That dubious accolade goes to Perth in Australia, where a licensing condition was introduced from mid December 1997, after an 18 month decision making, testing and development process. Other countries with cities that have compulsory taxi cameras include Canada, Norway, China, the United States, Holland and New Zealand.

Bolton’s brave experiment

In the UK cameras were trialled in Bolton in 2001 [2] – cameras, recording images and sound, were fitted to ten taxis for six weeks. The trial was hailed a success because no incidents occurred. No control group was used. No independent study was produced. It was simply hailed a success by Bolton Council, the taxi drivers and the security industry firms behind the trial [3]. One of the reasons given for driver support was the hope that it would lead to cheaper insurance premiums [4].

In 2002 the then MP for Bolton South East, Dr Brian Iddon raised the trial in the House of Commons [5], calling it a “brave experiment” and and asking Home Office Minister John Denham whether he agreed it should be spread throughout the country. And so Bolton became the poster city for taxi CCTV in the UK.

On the back of the Bolton success myth, Chubb, the company whose CabWatch system had been used, touted their wares to Leicester and Cambridge City Councils who ran their own trials. As with Bolton, Chubb’s system relayed sound and images to a remote video response centre. Over the next few years a string of UK councils began considering cameras as a condition of license for taxis and private hire vehicles.

It is now commonplace for taxis to be equipped with CCTV cameras throughout the UK.

Southampton Court Challenge

In the UK Parliament in July 2007 [6] it was reported that the Southampton Safe City Partnership were sponsoring CCTV in taxi cabs.

In November 2010 a driver, Keith May, who runs taxi firm K & K Hire, began legal action in the Southampton Magistrates’ Court against the City Council’s imposition of a condition requiring the installation of a taxi camera in one of his licensed hackney carriages. In April 2011 the court found in May’s favour [7]. Southampton City Council are now appealing that decision [8].

A month after the court decision, taxi drivers held a demo in Southampton [9] to protest against the council’s compulsory camera requirement. But before defenders of passengers’ freedoms get too excited about the Southampton taxi drivers’ stand, it is worth listening to a recent edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘You and Yours’ [10], on which May clarified his position. May said:

I’m not against CCTV, I’m not against CCTV at all. I’m against the conditions that this council, Southampton Council Licensing Office has imposed on us.
[...]
The problem we’ve got in Southampton is that the CCTV operates in a way that it is on 24/7, you can never turn it off, the driver’s got not control of it whatsoever, so every single passenger that gets in a licensed vehicle in Southampton – their conversation’s being recorded no matter whether they’ve done anything wrong or not.
[...]
What about, the taxi drivers in Southampton, private hires and taxis, majority of those vehicles gets used privately as well. The drivers own those vehicles, [?], what happens when they’re taking their children down to the beach with their wife on a weekend. Why should that conversation be getting recorded?

In other words May is saying that in his view surveilling passengers is okay as long as the driver has control over it, but surveilling a taxi driver’s family is wrong. And it is worth mentioning that the court case challenged the cameras as a licensing requirement, not the right or wrong of the cameras themselves. At time of writing the judgment is not publicly available.

It’s all right we won’t look at the footage, honest

The response from Southampton City Council is similar to the response from licensing authorities throughout the UK and across the globe – passengers have nothing to worry about because the sound and images are encrypted and no-one’s going to access them unless there’s an incident. The kit being used is an example of what is often called privacy by design (PbD) or a privacy enhancing technology (PET). Aside from the fact that encryption is not as secure as many would have us believe, surely there is more at stake here? We shall return to privacy by design below.

To understand how we got to this point let’s travel back to the 1990s and look at how the taxi CCTV craze first began.

Perth goes on camera

As stated above it was in Australia that taxi compulsory CCTV was first introduced. In Perth, following a number of attacks on taxi drivers, a safety summit was held in February 1996. According to a report by Dr. Ian Radbone of the University of South Australia [11] a number of solutions were discussed and: “While the installation of a camera was not necessarily considered the most effective option, it was broadly supported because of its immediate feasibility and non-intrusiveness.”

In the 1990s the Perth cameras did not record sound.

Radbone’s February 1998 report states:

The cameras have been compulsory for two months. What’s the evidence of effectiveness so far? The TIB [Taxi Industry Board] data base has recorded a drop in reported incidents but the numbers are too small to be statistically significant at this stage.

A November 2000 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology, entitled ‘Preventing Assaults on Taxi Drivers in Australia’ [12] states:

Solid state digital technology was chosen for Perth taxis where cameras have been mandatory since December 1997; these resulted in a 60 per cent reduction in attacks on drivers within a year after introduction (Pflaum 1999).

Note that the 60 percent reduction figure is cited as coming from one “Pflaum” in 1999. Upon closer investigation it transpires that Pflaum is a taxi driver in Germany who, in 1999, wrote an article [13] for a German Taxi Journal. In this article he gave no source or background to the 60 percent figure. Pflaum wrote:

In Perth, Australia, where camera surveillance was made mandatory for taxicabs, attacks against cab drivers and other major troubles were reduced by 60% one year after the introduction.

If the cameras in Perth really were such a magic bullet one has to wonder why earlier this year it was announced that the Western Australian government is set to upgrade these cameras.

The Upgrade cycle

In January 2011 it was announced that $8 million (Australian dollars) would be spent to upgrade the cameras in Perth’s taxi fleet and for the first time record sound as well as images. In addition four cameras will now be fitted to each taxi, two inside and two outside. The new cameras will record continuously.

The Western Australian Taxi Camera Surveillance Unit (TCSU) standard 2011 [14] states:

The TCSU shall include at least two internally mounted cameras and two externally mounted cameras.

The reason given by the Government of Western Australia Department of Transport [15] for the camera upgrades is that the cameras are “generally technologically outdated” and they state:

As a result, when a crime occurs inside or outside a taxi, these existing models often do not provide the evidence necessary to prosecute the offender. A new standard is urgently needed to help make the taxi industry a safe working environment for taxi drivers and a safe transport service for passengers.

When it is time to upgrade suddenly no mention is made of magical decreases in crime, instead action must be taken, we are told, to make taxis a safe place.

Alternatives to cameras – partitions

One alternative to cameras is the use of a partition between the driver and the passengers. Such partitions have long been a feature of the iconic London black taxi or Hackney Carriage.

One female driver told Taxi Today Monthly in 2009 [16]:

I have always driven a London Taxi because I value the security and safety it provides. The central partition is crucial to the job as it provides both added peace of mind and protection.

(’Safety first for female drivers’, Taxi Today Monthly, January 2009)

Partitions can also be fitted to other vehicle types and are sometimes known as safety screens or safety shields.

A 1999 report ‘The Effectiveness of Taxi Partitions: The Baltimore Case’ [17], prepared for The Southeastern Transportation Center University of Tennessee Knoxville found:

Thus far it has been determined that shields in Baltimore taxis significantly reduce assaults on taxi drivers. Furthermore, shields are the primary reason for reduced assaults compared to other explanations such as reduced crime, drug arrests, and population.

The shield study looked at shield implementation in Baltimore from 1991 to 1997 and included a control study. Compare this study protocol to that of the Bolton camera study mentioned above.

Many studies report that in the United States and other countries there is a perception amongst drivers that safety partitions reduce tips by isolating the driver from the passenger and presenting a physical barrier to communication. In the UK however the partition has been viewed as a welcome addition by drivers and passengers alike. A 1970 Home Office report of the ‘Departmental Committee on the London taxicab trade’ [18] found:

A large proportion of fares appreciate the privacy from the driver and the fact that they cannot be inflicted with his unwanted conversation.

(p197, ‘Report of the Departmental Committee on the London taxicab trade’, Home Office, 1970)

More alternatives to cameras

A January 2007 report of the Taxicab Advisory Group Committee on Driver Safety to the
Mayor of the City of Atlanta, Georgia [19] looked at the various alternatives to cameras. It references the comments of one of the authors of the Baltimore partition study, Dr John R. Stone who gave a speech to a ‘Taxi Driver Security’ conference in Montreal in 1996 [20].

Stone explained that in 1990 following the murder of a taxi driver, the Montreal Taxi Bureau formed a Round Table group which implemented a number of safety measures including: flashing rear emergency lights and priority for 911 taxi calls, driver training and driver reports of community emergencies, media coverage and rewards for identifying taxi driver assailants, spot police inspections of taxis and passengers, a training video on tips for taxi driver safety.

Stone told the conference that:

Between 1990 and 1995 as a result of Round Table efforts, the number of MUC [Montreal Urban Community] taxi robberies fell dramatically by 60% from 187 annual armed robberies to 76. Furthermore, relations between taxi drivers, the police, and the community improved.

Driving force

So why, despite the alternatives that have less impact on the freedoms of passengers and drivers, have so many cities opted for cameras?

A 2009 report of the Canadian ‘Surveillance Camera Awareness Network (SCAN)’ [21] looked at the introduction of cameras in taxis in Ottawa, Canada. The report states:

Cab camera companies are entrepreneurial and in addition to cameras must sell the very idea of surveillance. This may require making claims regarding the deterrent effect of cab cameras, as well as the value of the footage in prosecuting crimes.

(p7 ‘Camera Surveillance in Ottawa Taxicab’, ‘A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada Part Two’, 2009)

The SCAN report points out that independent studies that support camera companies claims are scarce, and that:

Our two reports for the Surveillance Camera Awareness Network demonstrate that cameras and other new surveillance measures tend to be implemented without appropriate consultation or adequate independent evaluation, which is demonstrated by the case of cab camera implementation in Ottawa.

(p93 ‘Conclusion’, ‘A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada Part Two’, 2009)

Surely in the face of the shortage of independent studies supporting the camera companies’ claims and the multitude of alternatives that have less impact on the freedoms of drivers and passengers this is an easy win for privacy and data protection commissioners around the world? Maybe, but only to a point.

Weakness of privacy laws

In New Zealand earlier this year the Transport Agency (NZTA) sought guidance [22] from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) following the introduction of compulsory camera Rule [23] for all taxis in major population areas. The NZTA published a letter which states:

The OPC says it has serious concerns about the privacy implications of audio recording in taxis and plans to keep a watching brief on any moves by taxi organisations to introduce it. In addition the OPC asks that any taxi organisation planning to introduce audio recordings notify the Office of the plans so that it can monitor its use by the industry.

(Audio recording of passengers in taxis (Letter from the NZTA) – 30/6/2011)

In Canada the 2003/4 Annual Report [24] of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) under “issues the OIPC has provided advice or comments on over the past year” states:

The Motor Carrier Commission’s proposal to place digital videocameras in taxi cabs in the Lower Mainland (the Information and Privacy Commissioner stated that he did not support the proposal for privacy reasons)

On 16th November 2011 a statement from the Data Commissioner of Ireland was read on a talk radio show [25] which said they had concerns “about the proportionality and justification for installing CCTV cameras in taxis, taking account of the legitimate privacy expectations of vehicle users”.

Perhaps the strongest response to taxi cameras has come from Nevada in the United States, where in 2004 the Nevada Taxi Cab Authority introduced a regulation requiring cameras in taxis. The Taxi Cab Authority were also considering the activation of the recording systems in the event of a G-force event (a G-force event is that which alters the vehicle’s inertia to such a degree that a trigger is activated) .

When the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the regulation it was not adopted pending review. In October 2005 the Attorney General of Nevada issued an opinion [26] on the constitutional implications of recording images and sound using taxi cameras. The twelve page opinion explores whether taxi cameras that record sound and images are a breach of United States Fourth Amendment. The Attorney General concludes:

The adoption of revised regulations which limit any video and audio recording of the camera to (1) the entry and exit of the passenger, (2) activation, when the equipment is activated by a panic button, and (3) minimal recording in the event of a G-force event, would be a limited governmental intrusion which would likely be found by a court to not violate the passengers Fourth Amendment privacy rights.

In September 2006 a revised regulation [27] was adopted [28] that took into account the Attorney General’s recommendations. The regulation still requires the compulsory introduction of taxi cameras but the camera is only activated as passengers get in or out of the taxi and when a panic button is activated by the driver. When the camera is activated, it can record still images or video and may record sound but not as a compulsory requirement.

In the UK campaign group Big Brother Watch has launched a complaint [29] with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) with regard to the Oxford taxi CCTV scheme. To date the ICO has not taken a strong stand on surveillance issues as the Data Protection Act that supposedly governs camera surveillance in the UK is riddled with exemptions when freedoms are removed for the stated purpose of “crime prevention”, regardless of whether any evidence exists to prove the surveillance works.

The campaign group Justice in their recent report ‘Freedom from Suspicion’ [30] point out that it was an English Common Law principle, laid out in Lord Camden’s speech in the 1705 judgment in Entick v Carrington, upholding the rights of property owners against unlawful searches by the executive that became the basis for the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. The English Common Law still exists but alas no-one seems to remember it.

One confusion for privacy commissioners has been the fact that recordings from taxi cameras are encrypted and only accessed by law enforcement or council officials when an incident occurs. This is the so-called “principle” of privacy by design which some commissioners have positively encouraged.

Privacy by design

In her book ‘Privacy by Design ? take the challenge’ [31] the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada, Dr Ann Cavoukian writes:

The use of this type of privacy-enhancing technology would thus allow for video surveillance to be conducted without the usual concerns associated with this type of surveillance. For the great majority of the surveillance footage, there would be absolutely no access or viewing of any personally identifiable information, and no unauthorized activities, such as viewing out of curiosity or “leering,” would be possible. Therefore, this privacy-enhancing technology would enable both the use of video surveillance cameras and privacy to co-exist, side by side – without forfeiting one for the other: positive-sum, not zero-sum.

Data Protection expert Chris Pounder of Amberhawk Training [32] sums up privacy by design as follows:

Even though the process is protective of privacy one has arrived at a position that can be rewritten in a more familiar guise: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.

Societal values beyond privacy

Taxi cameras are part of a growing “just in case” mentality that treats everyone as suspects. This issue goes beyond privacy laws or the lack thereof. The principle of innocent until proven guilty is an important cornerstone of our society and a healthy society depends on the law-abiding majority being respected and trusted as they go about their daily lives.

All around us the surveillance state is growing almost invisibly – unchecked by politicians and lawmakers who either want control or believe surveillance is universally loved, and driven by a surveillance industrial complex, ready to turn every social ill into a money making scheme. Almost every part of our society is tainted by an obsessive focus on crime and the security industry is all too willing to encourage the development of a crime-based economy.

Those that still cherish freedom must speak out. Just be careful what you say if you’re in the back of a taxi.

Endnotes:

[ 1] – http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/9361537.Taxi_CCTV_breaks__rights_to_privacy_/
[ 2] – http://www.securitypark.co.uk/security_article1846.html
[ 3] – http://web.archive.org/web/20030421022405/http://www.chubb.co.uk/chserver/request/setTemplate:singlecontent/contentTypeA/webdoc/contentId/659/navId/00000200s007
[ 4] – http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/archive/2001/07/14/Lancashire+Archive/6019509.Taxi_driver_hails_spy_in_cab_launch/
[ 5] – http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2002-02-04.587.3#g588.0
[ 6] – http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2007-07-24b.151058.h
[ 7] – http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/8990482.Judge_backs_taxi_boss_in_dispute_over____spy____cameras/
[ 8] – http://www.southampton.gov.uk/Images/Taxi_Cameras_Appeal_SCC_statement_tcm46-291410.pdf
[ 9] – http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/politics/9005853.Drivers____demo_over_cab_cameras/?action=complain&cid=9340182
[10] – http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b016ljx9
[11] – http://www.taxi-library.org/ianb01.htm
[12] – http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/5/B/%7B05B1599A-2511-4D07-9B29-73CD3E8D9FB2%7Dti179.pdf
[13] – http://web.archive.org/web/20010210040244/http://www.ventiltaximagazin.com/Magazin/Beitrag/mag1699_0020799b.htm
[14] – http://www.transport.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/taxis_TCSU_standard2011.pdf
[15] – http://www.transport.wa.gov.au/taxis_FAQ_TCSU_standard2011.pdf
[16] – http://www.taxi-today.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=7TKQjc5Fwos%3D
[17] – http://www.taxi-library.org/stone99.pdf
[18] – Cmnd. 4483, Report of the Departmental Committee on the London taxicab trade, Home Office, 1970
[19] – http://citycouncil.atlantaga.gov/2008/images/proposed/08O0398.pdf
[20] – http://www.taxi-library.org/stone.htm
[21] – http://www.sscqueens.org/sites/default/files/SCAN_Report_Phase2_Dec_18_2009.pdf
[22] – http://nzta.govt.nz/commercial/passenger/docs/audio-recording-passengers-taxis-letter.pdf
[23] – http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/rules/docs/operator-licensing-amendment-2010-2.pdf
[24] – http://www.oipc.bc.ca/publications/annual_reports/Annualreport03-04(FINAL)%20(2).pdf
[25] – http://media.newstalk.ie/listenback/221/wednesday/1/popup
[26] – http://milestonesforlife.com/thetaxistand/CameraRegsAGO.pdf
[27] – http://taxi.state.nv.us/CameraRegulation032405.pdf
[28] – http://taxi.state.nv.us/Meetings/2006/Taxi-Minutes-2006-09-07.pdf
[29] – http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2011/11/big-brother-watching-listening.html
[30] – http://www.justice.org.uk/resources.php/305/freedom-from-suspicion
[31] – http://privacybydesign.ca/publications/pbd-the-book/
[32] – http://amberhawk.typepad.com/amberhawk/2010/01/privacy-by-design-can-accelerate-the-decline-of-privacy.html

For more info see www.no-cctv.org.uk

Incredible Off The Shelf Surveillance Gear

majestic — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 13:28:36 +0000

The Wall Street Journal catalogs the new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001:

The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people’s computers and cellphones, and “massive intercept” gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country.

The documents—the highlights of which are cataloged and searchable here—were obtained from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near Washington, D.C., last month.

The documents fall into five general categories: hacking, intercept, data analysis, web scraping and anonymity…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

Supreme Court Troubled By Warrantless GPS Tracking

ralph — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:37:59 +0000

I guess the justices of the highest court in the land (a.k.a. the Supremes) realized that the U.S. government has the power to watch any of them without any legal action … Mark Sherman reports in the AP:

The Supreme Court invoked visions of an all-seeing Big Brother and satellites watching us from above. Then things got personal Tuesday when the justices were told police could slap GPS devices on their cars and track their movements, without asking a judge for advance approval.

The occasion for all the talk about intrusive police actions was a hearing in a case about whether the police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. The outcome could have implications for other high-tech surveillance methods as well.

The justices expressed deep reservations about warrantless GPS tracking. But there also was no clear view about how or whether to regulate police use of the devices.

The justices were taken aback when the lawyer representing the government said police officers could install GPS devices on the justices’ cars and track their movements without a warrant. To get a warrant, investigators need to convince a judge that there is reason to believe a suspect is involved in criminal activity.

Smile! Get Ready for Tiny Police Uniform Cameras

Join Or DIE — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:39:40 +0000

Via NPR:

The next time you talk to a police officer, you might find yourself staring into a lens. Companies such as Taser and Vievu are making small, durable cameras designed to be worn on police officer’s uniforms. The idea is to capture video from the officer’s point of view, for use as evidence against suspects, as well as to help monitor officers’ behavior toward the public.

The concept is catching on. The cameras have been adopted by big city police departments, such as Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., as well as dozens of smaller cities, such as Bainbridge Island, Wash., where the Vievu camera was initially tested by Officer Ben Sias.

“The only thing that really was different about doing business is that I’d tell the person that we’re being recorded,” Sias says. He sees the camera as a kind of insurance policy.

“In this job, we’re frequently accused of things we haven’t done, or things were kind of embellished, as far as contact,” he says. “And the cameras show a pretty unbiased opinion of what actually did happen.” That makes the cameras particularly appealing in cities where the police have been accused of misconduct.

More: NPR

Is Your Carrier Storing Information On Your Phone Usage?

JacobSloan — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:36:47 +0000

Curious how long your cell phone company holds onto to data regarding what you’ve been doing with your phone? AT&T/Cingular will preserve your text and call detail records for 5-7 years. The ACLU uncovered the below document, created by the Department of Justice for use by law enforcement:

Google Transparency Report Reveals That Governments Are Seeking More About You Than Ever Before

HAL9000 — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 08:15:26 +0000

Elinor Mills reports on CNet News:

A new report from Google shows a rise in government requests for user account data and content removal, including a request by one unnamed law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality — which the company refused.

The latest Google Transparency Report, also shows historic traffic patterns on Google services via graphs with spikes and drops indicating outages that, in some cases, indicate attempts by governments to block access to Google or the Internet. For instance, all Google servers were inaccessible in Libya during the first six months of this year, as was YouTube in China.

But the truly interesting data are the statistics on requests made to the company by governments for either access to user data or to remove content.

Some countries had large amounts of user data requests. The United States leads that pack, with 5,950 such requests pertaining to more than 11,000 users or accounts, and to which Google complied 93 percent of the time. That’s up from about 4,600 requests in the second half of last year. Other countries seeking lots of user data were India (more than 1,700 requests involving more than 2,400 accounts), France, the United Kingdom, and Germany …

Tennessee Becomes First State With TSA Checkpoints On Highway

JacobSloan — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:00:22 +0000

Terrorists can’t afford airline tickets these days, so the TSA is adjusting to stay one step ahead. Tennessee News Press reports:

“People generally associate the TSA with airport security…but now we have moved on to other forms of transportation, such as highways, buses and railways,” said Kevin McCarthy, TSA federal security director for West Tennessee. They are randomly inspecting vehicles on highways in Tennessee.

German Government Spyware Transforms Citizen’s Computers Into ‘Big Brother’-Type Surveillance Devices

HAL9000 — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:50:06 +0000

Discovered by the Chaos Computer Club, reports GlobalPost:

The use of so-called “Trojan horse” software by authorities in a number of German states came to light after the Computer Chaos Club, a hacker group, published details of their examination of spyware planted on a laptop in Bavaria.

It found that the software — developed by a private company called DigiTask for the Bavarian police — was capable of much more than just monitoring internet phone calls. It could take screenshots, remotely add files and control a computer’s microphone or webcam to monitor the person’s home. However, the authorities insist that they did not deploy these functions. Investigations are ongoing.

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with British computer security firm Sophos, which also analyzed the software, said that the spyware could “automatically update itself over the internet, so new functionality can be added. It can be used to install new software onto the computer, so people could actually alter the contents of a suspect’s hard drive.”

The scandal has led politicians and security experts to look at whether the country’s already stringent privacy laws need firming up.

FBI Crime Maps Now ‘Pinpoint’ Average Muslims

bluemana — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:22:20 +0000

Spencer Ackerman reports on WIRED’s Danger Room:

It started out as a crimefighting tool. But over the years, an FBI effort known as “geo-mapping” evolved into something more expansive — a method to track Muslim communities, without any suspicion of a crime being committed.

Last month, Danger Room revealed that the FBI was training its agents that religious Muslims tended to be “violent” and that Islamic charity is merely a “funding mechanism for combat.” In response, both the FBI and the Justice Department promised full reviews of their training materials. But the geo-mapping effort indicates that the FBI may have more than just a training problem: The suspicion of ordinary Muslims promoted in those lectures may be spilling over into its counterterrorism tactics.

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union acquired some of the FBI geo-maps (.pdf), like the one pictured after the jump, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Although many of the maps are heavily redacted, they represent the first public confirmation that the FBI compiles maps of businesses, community centers and religious institutions in ethnic enclaves around the United States…

More: WIRED’s Danger Room

Rare Mutation Leaves People Without Fingerprints

SpaceNeedle — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 07:37:46 +0000

This would be a useful trait for the aspiring supervillian. Natalie Villacorta wrote recently in Science:

In 2007, a Swiss woman in her late 20s had an unusually hard time crossing the U.S. border. Customs agents could not confirm her identity. The woman’s passport picture matched her face just fine, but when the agents scanned her hands, they discovered something shocking: she had no fingerprints.

The woman, it turns out, had an extremely rare condition known as adermatoglyphia. Peter Itin, a dermatologist at the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, has dubbed it the “immigration delay disease” because sufferers have such a hard time entering foreign countries. In addition to smooth fingertips, they also produce less hand sweat than the average person. Yet scientists know very little about what causes the condition.

Since nine members of the woman’s extended family also lacked fingerprints, Itin and his colleagues, including Eli Sprecher, a dermatologist at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel, suspected that the cause might be genetic. So they collected DNA from the family—one of only four ever documented with ADG — and compared the genomes of family members with ADG with those of members who had normal fingerprints. The researchers found differences in 17 regions that were close to genes. Then they sequenced these genes, expecting to identify the culprit …

Will Librarians Revolt Over Amazon’s Kindle Lending Program?

moezilla — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:00:14 +0000

A California librarian is urging librarians to complain to Amazon over issues with privacy and advertising in Amazon’s new Kindle ebook lending program for libraries. “In our greedy attempt to get content into our users’ hands, we have failed to uphold the highest principle of our profession, which is intellectual freedom,” she argues in a 10-minute video. (Read the transcript here):

Kindle has allowed Amazon to harvest all of this borrowing data, so it’s an instant violation of all of our privacy policies … [I]f they’re using a Kindle, Amazon’s keeping friggin’ everything. And we haven’t told people that, and we need to tell people that.

She argues Amazon’s retention of your reading history may violate, for example, California’s Reader Privacy Act, and she also complains that the check-out and renewal process include unacceptable promotional content about Amazon’s for-sale ebooks. Though she owns a Kindle and loves ebooks, she’s urging librarians to speak up.

“How do you tell people, ‘Well this great device that works really well, and it’s the smoothest check-out process of any device or format that we offer here in the library – but it violates your privacy, it jeopardizes your intellectual freedom, and, you know, it might kinda be against state law, but I’m not really sure.’ How do you say that to people? But I think it’s important for us as library staff to figure out a way to say it to people, because it’s our job to stand up for their privacy and their reading rights, even when they don’t know when that they’re in jeopardy.”

What Google And Facebook Get Wrong About Self Expression And Identity

JacobSloan — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:04:41 +0000

Google and Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror, that there is one reflection that you have, this one idea of self. But in fact we’re more like diamonds, you can look at people from any angle and see something totally different.

4chan founder Chris Poole discusses the problem with personal identity as conceived by Facebook and Google. Basically, that they expect us to maintain a single, consistent persona throughout life, which is not how we actually exist:

Now You Can See Through Solid Walls

majestic — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:54:19 +0000

Thanks to some engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology you can forget about holing up in the privacy of your own home (or anywhere else), although the the “picture” isn’t exactly crystal clear. Report from MIT News:

The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.

Much as humans and other animals see via waves of visible light that bounce off objects and then strike our eyes’ retinas, radar “sees” by sending out radio waves that bounce off targets and return to the radar’s receivers. But just as light can’t pass through solid objects in quantities large enough for the eye to detect, it’s hard to build radar that can penetrate walls well enough to show what’s happening behind. Now, Lincoln Lab researchers have built a system that can see through walls from some distance away, giving an instantaneous picture of the activity on the other side.

The researchers’ device is an unassuming array of antenna arranged into two rows — eight receiving elements on top, 13 transmitting ones below — and some computing equipment, all mounted onto a movable cart. But it has powerful implications for military operations, especially “urban combat situations,” says Gregory Charvat, technical staff at Lincoln Lab and the leader of the project…

[continues at MIT News]

Add Muslim College Students to the List The NYPD Has Spied On

imkaan — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:28:27 +0000

Joe Coscarelli writes in New York Magazine’s Daily Intel:

The Associated Press’s series on NYPD spying continues today with the news that Muslim students at colleges in New York were investigated covertly by the secret NYPD and CIA program that also monitored community centers, government allies, and entire neighborhoods in the years after September 11. The new report places NYPD undercover officers at schools including Brooklyn College, Baruch, Hunter, City College, Queens College, La Guardia, and St. John’s, where they sought out student radicalization. But according to experts, their methods “may have broken a 19-year-old pact with the colleges and violated U.S. privacy laws, jeopardizing millions of dollars in federal research money and student aid.”

“The government, through the police department, is working privately to destroy the private lives of Muslim citizens,” said Moustafa Bayoumi, an English professor at Brooklyn College.

“We come to the room, we talk, we chill,” said one 20-year-old student of his Islamic Society group at school. “So if another sister comes into the room and she’s a cop, that’s not cool. I’m really scared about this.”

More on New York Magazine’s Daily Intel

DARPA Tech Invades iPhones Now with Siri

HAL9000 — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 05:19:56 +0000

Tim Stevens on Endgadget said this was happening back in ‘09. For all those who rushed out to get the new iPhone, if you are using Siri, you are giving a hell lot of personal info to Apple:

Microsoft’s little Clippy, the uppity paperclip who just wanted to help, never got a lick of respect in the ten years he graced the Office suite.

He’s long-since gone, but his legacy lives on through a DARPA project called CALO: the Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes. It’s intended for use to streamline tedious activities by military personnel, like scheduling meetings and prioritizing e-mails, but there are a few non-com spin-offs intended as well, like an iPhone app called Siri due to hit the App Store sometime this year. Siri will have more of a consumer angle, helping to find product reviews and make reservations, but we’re hoping a taste of its military upbringing shines through.

FBI Launching National Facial Recognition Program

majestic — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:32:14 +0000

Might be time to invest in one of those Pixelhead masks! Nextgov reports on the FBI’s new Big Brother-eque undertaking:

The FBI by mid-January will activate a nationwide facial recognition service in select states that will allow local police to identify unknown subjects in photos, bureau officials told Nextgov.

The federal government is embarking on a multiyear, $1 billion dollar overhaul of the FBI’s existing fingerprint database to more quickly and accurately identify suspects, partly through applying other biometric markers, such as iris scans and voice recordings.

Often law enforcement authorities will “have a photo of a person and for whatever reason they just don’t know who it is [but they know] this is clearly the missing link to our case,” said Nick Megna, a unit chief at the FBI’s criminal justice information services division. The new facial recognition service can help provide that missing link by retrieving a list of mug shots ranked in order of similarity to the features of the subject in the photo.

Today, an agent would have to already know the name of an individual to pull up the suspect’s mug shot from among the 10 million shots stored in the bureau’s existing Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Using the new Next-Generation Identification system that is under development, law enforcement analysts will be able to upload a photo of an unknown person; choose a desired number of results from two to 50 mug shots; and, within 15 minutes, receive identified mugs to inspect for potential matches…

[continues at Nextgov]

Facebook Tracks You Even After Logging Out

JacobSloan — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:12:52 +0000

Sometimes you’re being followed when you think you’re alone. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

An Australian technologist has caused a global stir after discovering Facebook tracks the websites its users visit even when they are logged out of the social networking site.

In alarming new revelations, Wollongong-based Nik Cubrilovic conducted tests, which revealed that when you log out of Facebook, rather than deleting its tracking cookies, the site merely modifies them, maintaining account information and other unique tokens that can be used to identify you.

Whenever you visit a web page that contains a Facebook button or widget, your browser is still sending details of your movements back to Facebook, Cubrilovic says.

“Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit,” Cubrilovic wrote in a blog post.

He backed up his claims with detailed technical information. His post was picked up by technology news sites around the world but Facebook has yet to provide a response to Fairfax Media and others.

Stephen Collins, spokesman for the online users’ lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said he did not believe Cubrilovic’s revelations would see people turn away from the site in droves but he hoped users became more engaged with the issue.

Enter the FBI’s ‘Stingray’ Phone Tracker, Able to Locate Cell Phones Even When Not In Use

Join Or DIE — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:53:32 +0000

Jennifer Valentino-Devries reports in the Wall Street Journal:

For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply “the Hacker.” Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device — a stingray — were they able to zero in on a California home and make the arrest.

Stingrays are designed to locate a mobile phone even when it’s not being used to make a call. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the devices to be so critical that it has a policy of deleting the data gathered in their use, mainly to keep suspects in the dark about their capabilities, an FBI official told the Wall Street Journal in response to inquiries.

A stingray’s role in nabbing the alleged “Hacker” — Daniel David Rigmaiden — is shaping up as a possible test of the legal standards for using these devices in investigations. The FBI says it obtains appropriate court approval to use the device.

Stingrays are one of several new technologies used by law enforcement to track people’s locations, often without a search warrant. These techniques are driving a constitutional debate about whether the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but which was written before the digital age, is keeping pace with the times.