Disinformation » Privacy

Privacy is Not Dead, Just Evolving

majestic — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:40:45 +0000

Tony Bradley reports on the future of privacy (or lack thereof) from SXSW, for PC World:

It’s a brave new world. Unfortunately–continuing the literary allusion–Big Brother is watching. As technology makes more information more accessible, it also threatens to expose information that is not intended to be shared. Privacy is a concept that is caught in the middle of the struggle.

Danah Boyd, a social media expert for Microsoft Research, presented a keynote speech at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin spotlighting the fate of privacy. Boyd was clear that she does not feel privacy is dead. Contrary to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claim, people do still care about privacy.

As one blog summed up her speech “Boyd says that privacy is not dead, but that a big part of our notion of privacy relates to maintaining control over our content, and that when we don’t have control, we feel that our privacy has been violated.”

So, where is the line, exactly? If the Google Street View cameras happen to catch you standing naked in your living room window and post it online for the world to see, does that violate your privacy? Some say yes.

However, others are quick to point out that Google is capturing its images from public roads, therefore whatever Google captures would also be viewable by anyone walking or driving down the street. The bottom line being, if you don’t want the general public to see you in all your naked glory, perhaps you shouldn’t be standing naked in the living room window.

Fair enough. What about employee monitoring? Is it OK for an employer to play Big Brother and monitor employee actions and communications? Established legal precedent suggests that the organization’s right to monitor its own hardware and network resources trump the Fourth Amendment rights of employees. Some compliance requirements actually mandate monitoring and retention of communications for businesses obligated to follow them.

The Supreme Court of the United States is hearing a case that challenges that legal precedent, though. If the established policies of the organization allow for shared personal and business use of company-issued computers or other devices, the company may inadvertently be implying an expectation of privacy and surrendering its right to monitor. The decision in this case could have wide-ranging implications for compliance, and for corporate acceptable use policies.

Schools fall under an obligation to monitor activity as well…

[continues at PC World]

Why Google Is A Hungry Beast (Video)

Ralph Bernardo — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:10:20 +0000

Wow, if Google was making its money in the defense industry (could be) instead of advertising, it would be Skynet. Don’t be evil, right guys?

Great video from the Hungry Beast. If you’re in Oz you can watch here, otherwise see below:

Chicago Police Want Covert Cameras

aaroncynic — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:07:45 +0000

From Aaron Cynic at Chicagoist::

The familiar blinking blue light cameras that dot many city streets could get smaller soon, according to an article by the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune reported yesterday that the Chicago Police are considering employing smaller, covert cameras in the hope of further combating crime. According to the article, these cameras could be as small as a thimble. Last month, Police Superintendent Jody Weis said in an interview with WLS, “These can be secreted in locations that nobody would ever detect. It’s amazing where we’re going with technology.” While some may marvel at the applications of such cloak and dagger spy technology, the idea of both overt and covert cameras blanketing the city raises some very serious privacy concerns. Spokesperson for the Illinois ACLU Ed Yohnka said “…there’s a heightened sensibility and concern on the part of citizens when you start talking about things like covert cameras.”

Read the full post at Chicagoist

Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest

Raymond — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:13:05 +0000

From Wired’s Threat Level:

Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties knight in shining armor many were expecting.Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.

When it comes to civil liberties, the Obama administration has come under fire for often mirroring his predecessor’s practices surrounding state secrets, the Patriot Act and domestic spying. There’s also Gitmo, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told Walsh he supported the federal government, as well as the 18 states that have varying laws requiring compulsory DNA sampling of individuals upon an arrest for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. The data is lodged in state and federal databases, and has fostered as many as 200 arrests nationwide, Walsh said.

[Read more at Wired's Threat Level]

U.S. National Biometric ID Cards Coming Soon

majestic — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:24:23 +0000

A dream of governments worldwide has long been to make people carry identification papers or cards, but the United States has always rejected direct attempts to institute such a program. That may be about to change, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

“It’s the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. “If you say they can’t get a job when they come here, you’ll stop it.”

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens…

Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention

Raymond — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:14:18 +0000

From Worldchanging.com:

Secretary Clinton’s recent speech on Internet Freedom has signaled a strong interest from the US State Department in promoting the use of the internet to promote political reforms in closed societies. It makes sense that the State Department would look to support existing projects to circumvent internet censorship. The New York Times reports that a group of senators is urging the Secretary to apply existing funding to support the development and expansion of censorship circumvention programs, including Tor, Psiphon and Freegate.

I’ve spent a good part of the last couple of years studying internet circumvention systems. My colleagues Hal Roberts, John Palfrey and I released a study last year that compared the strengths and weaknesses of different circumvention tools. Some of my work at Berkman is funded by a US state department grant that focuses on continuing to study and evaluate these sorts of tools and I spend a lot of time trying to coordinate efforts between tool developers and people who need access to circumvention tools to publish sensitive content.

I strongly believe that we need strong, anonymized and useable censorship circumvention tools. But I also believe that we need lots more than censorship circumvention tools, and I fear that both funders and technologists may overfocus on this one particular aspect of internet freedom at the expense of other avenues. I wonder whether we’re looking closely enough at the fundamental limitations of circumvention as a strategy and asking ourselves what we’re hoping internet freedom will do for users in closed societies.

So here’s a provocation: We can’t circumvent our way around internet censorship.

[Read more at Worldchanging.com]

ACLU to Obama: ‘Change or More of the Same?’

Raymond — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:50:05 +0000

From The Raw Story:

The American Civil Liberties Union has never treated the Obama administration with kid gloves, but with their latest ad buy it’s become increasingly clear that their patience for the continuance of some Bush-era policies has run quite thin.”What will it be Mr. President?” the ACLU asks in a full-page New York Times advertisement published Sunday. “Change or more of the Same?” The ad also features a portrait of Obama that morphs into Bush.

The ACLU’s images of the subtle transition between presidents is filtered and lacking in detail, and spans just four frames. However, it appears to be a take-off of a protest image that circulated Facebook and some progressive blogs late last year, showing a similar transition in eerie detail.

The ACLU’s full-size advertisement is below this text.

The ad specifically pressured the administration to hold fast to their decision to try the alleged 9/11 plotters in the judicial system and not by military tribunal as many Obama opponents have called for.

[Read more at The Raw Story]

Gordon Brown’s UK Election Pledge – More CCTV!

Charles Farrier — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:27:11 +0000

This week the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, made it clear that he sees the expansion of the UK surveillance camera network as a vote winner in the coming general election [1]. Brown was in Reading delivering a speech on ‘crime and anti-social behaviour’, he said [2]:

CCTV and DNA are crucial.

There are of course some who think CCTV is “excessive”, but they probably don’t have to walk home or take the night bus on their own at the end of a night out. For the rest of us, for ordinary hard working, decent people, the evidence is clear: CCTV reduces the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour.

That is why this government has funded CCTV in nearly 700 town centre schemes over the last decade — and why in the coming months we are bringing in a new power for people to petition their local authority for more CCTV, with the authority having a duty to respond.

Now the opposition parties have campaigned against CCTV — our support for CCTV will be on the ballet paper at any coming election.

This section of his speech is so filled with inaccuracies and lies that it is worth breaking down line by line, but first it is worth mentioning that Brown was restating proposals laid out last June as part of the government’s ‘Building Britain’s Future’ (BBF) action plan [3] (see the No CCTV article on BBF — ‘Proposed bill contains CCTV expansion in disguise’ [4]). In fact his speech was an even more authoritarian reworking of the text on page 79 of the Building Britain’s Future report [5] which stated:

CCTV will continue to play an important role, deterring and detecting crime and helping secure convictions. Having spent almost £170 million funding nearly 700 CCTV schemes earlier this decade, we are now focused on improving their effectiveness through operator training, and giving local people more of a say on where they want to see additional CCTV coverage, but also giving them clearer ways to complain on the rare occasions where they feel it is excessive.

Let us now look a little closer at Brown’s Reading speech.

“CCTV and DNA are crucial” …

In one simple phrase Brown casts aside research commissioned into the effectiveness of surveillance cameras and DNA, ignores the costs, ignores the civil liberties concerns and claims that these technologies are “crucial”. What he also does rather sneakily is link CCTV to DNA – part of the move towards presenting CCTV as a “forensic science”. In December the government appointed Andrew Rennison (the Forensic Science Regulator) to the post of ‘Interim CCTV Regulator’ [6] – tasked with pushing ahead with the National CCTV Strategy [7] which lays out the path to the creation of this new “forensic discipline”. CCTV is not a science, it is nothing more than an eye-witness and open to interpretation. Shoehorning CCTV into the field of forensics is likely to lead to longer retention periods for CCTV images and an even greater misplaced faith in the value of surveillance cameras.

Brown is of course, like all politicians, well aware of the misplaced faith in cameras and is quite happy to exploit it to win votes.

“There are of course some who think CCTV is ‘excessive’” …

Brown next turns his attention to those of us opposed to the massive surveillance network that has been created and is ever expanding in the UK. He fends us off not with facts, not with studies that show the value or cameras, not even with reassurances that our privacy will be safeguarded. No, Brown uses an emotive fear based argument to brush aside our concerns, after all those against surveillance cameras “probably don’t have to walk home or take the night bus on their own at the end of a night out”. It is unclear how Brown imagines we do get home, perhaps he presumes we don’t go out. He certainly seems to think that walking home or taking a night bus are dangerous acts that only the watchful eye of Big Brother can protect us from.

Back in the Building Britain’s Future document released last June the government talked of giving people “clearer ways to complain on the rare occasions where they feel it [CCTV] is excessive”. This is now replaced with a suggestion that only those who don’t go out at night or don’t use night buses are against surveillance cameras. A thought that when deconstructed does not make any sense at all but which is designed to press the fear button and encourage dependence on the state.

“the evidence is clear” …

Having masterfully cast aside the loonie, stay at home, night bus averse, anti-cctv mentalists, Brown now turns his attention to “the rest of us, for ordinary hard working, decent people”. So now he is adding to the growing list of attributes that describe people against surveillance cameras – they are also lazy, work shy and immoral. Everyone else is like our glorious leader a decent person and that is why they can see that “the evidence is clear: CCTV reduces the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour”.

Note that Brown has backed away from earlier claims in the Building Britain’s Future report that CCTV can deter, detect and solve crimes and now focuses on the suggestion that CCTV reduces the fear of crime. Presumably Brown makes this switch because it is once again an emotive claim and one that has not been addressed directly in mainstrean coverage of the surveillance state. In fact research into CCTV suggests that it increases the fear of crime. In 2008 the Joseph Rowntree Foundation produced a report entitled ‘Why are fear and distrust spiralling in twenty-first century Britain?’ [8]. The report states:

mounting evidence shows that private security and CCTV does not reduce fear of crime or actual crime and might in fact increase crime. According to a study funded by the Scottish Office in Glasgow, there was no improvement in feelings of safety after CCTV was introduced, while the area studied actually showed an increase in crime. The author concluded that the “electronic eye on the street” threatens to erode the “natural surveillance” of “mutual policing” by individuals and represents a retreat from “collective and individual responsibility to self interest and a culture of fear”.

The author of the Joseph Rowntree report, Anna Minton went on to produce a book ‘Ground Countrol – Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City’ [9] which expands on the issue of fear in the UK today. In a recent Guardian article [10] (’Expect the drones to swarm on Britain in time for 2012′, The Guardian 22nd Febuary 2010) Minton wrote:

There is no evidence that CCTV reduces crime, but there is research, including a study commissioned by the government, which reveals that it increases distrust between people and promotes fear of crime.

An article in the Local Government Studies journal [11] (’Towns on Television: Closed Circuit TV Systems in British Towns and Cities’, Vol.22, No.3, pp.1-77, 1996) also points out that CCTV does not in fact reduce the fear of crime.

CCTV may actually undermine the natural surveillance in towns and communities [...] the result may be a further spiral of social fragmentation and atomization, which leads to more alienation and even more crime.

A 2005 Home Office study, ‘Assessing the impact of CCTV’ [12] (Home Office Research Study 292), which like many many other studies found that CCTV is not an effective crime fighting measure stated:

the majority of the schemes evaluated did not reduce crime and even where there was a reduction this was mostly not due to CCTV; nor did CCTV schemes make people feel safer, much less change their behaviour.

But Brown skillfully ignores all of this, after all only work shy, immoral, stay at home, night bus averse, anti-cctv mentalists believe any of these reports. Honest decent people don’t let facts get in the way of emotions.

“this government has funded CCTV in nearly 700 town centre schemes” …

Having shown that CCTV is the best thing since night buses, Brown is now ready to show just how much money his government has wasted – oops, sorry invested into surveillance cameras. Last June in the Building Britain’s Future report it was claimed that the 700 schemes the government has funded over the last 10 years cost “almost £170 million”, but this only tells half the story. Data Protection experts at Amberhawk Training have done some back of the envelope calculations on the costs of CCTV in the UK [13]. Starting from the December 2009 Scottish Parliament report ‘Public Space CCTV In Scotland’ [14] which states that: “Over the period 2008 to 2010, the total cost of operating public space CCTV systems in Scotland can be expected to exceed £40 million”. Amberhawk go on:

If we assume that CCTV surveillance in the UK is the same as in Scotland (and scale the Scottish survey results in proportion to the whole UK population using the approximately 12:1 ratio of populations – we are in effect assuming there is an average “CCTV surveillance per unit of population”), then we can gain an estimate of the public space spending on CCTV and the number of public space cameras run by local authorities.

Multiplying by twelve, we find that, in total, there is an estimated £480 million spent by mainly local authorities (every three years), employing 4,200 largely untrained staff who monitor 26,400 CCTV cameras that are not assessed for effectiveness and where any data sharing is haphazard at best.

So in fact many more hundreds of millions of pounds of public money have been sunk into cameras that don’t fight crime or even reduce the fear of crime – sorry that smacks of night bus hating again – the government has invested hundreds of millions that would only have been wasted on frivolities were it not for their wisdom to invest in CCTV.

“a new power for people to petition their local authority for more CCTV” …

So now Brown wants the “ordinary hard working, decent people” (who aren’t troubled by the facts about CCTV) to have a mechanism for getting more CCTV. As we pointed out last time Brown announced this “power”, people already have it – it’s called local democracy. People can attend local council meetings or lobby local councillors (as No CCTV and other groups around the UK have done). Council meetings are open to the public and the minutes are publicly available. Brown says that along with the power to request more cameras the local authority will have “a duty to respond”. Surely they already do have a duty to respond to the local tax payers, so why is Brown codifying something that already exists?

Maybe Brown is worried that as budgets get tight local authorities will start to realise that CCTV is a waste of money and may use what money they have to do something that might actually help their local communities. With this “new power”, if Brown can get the ill informed “ordinary hard working, decent people” to cry out for more cameras then local authorities will have to obey regardless of whether it’s a good idea or not.

This very issue was raised in a House of Lords debate last year [15]. Lord Peston, who as a member of the Constitution Committee considered the evidence presented to the ‘Surveillance: Citizens and the State’ inquiry [16], pointed out that:

if the public want these CCTV cameras—and my ad hoc experience is that that is true—what is the correct response that those of us in public life, not least the Government, should give? Should we say, “If it is what they want, then it is what they ought to have even though it is not backed by any evidence at all”? Or is it our duty to educate them and tell them that they are wrong? [...] I certainly believe that if all CCTV cameras do is reassure you when you should not regard them as doing so, then someone ought to say to you, “Why don’t you think about it a little bit and realise that you are mistaken?”.

Brown clearly wants to ensure that decision makers cannot educate the public and tell them they are wrong when it comes to CCTV. If the public has bought the lie then the lie must be followed and no-one must be able to stop the lie.

“opposition parties have campaigned against CCTV” … !

Next Brown raises the evil spectre that he suggests could stop the lie – the opposition parties! This is quite the most ridiculous statement in Brown’s pro CCTV outburst. The suggestion that opposition parties are bent on stopping the CCTV lie is itself a lie.

At a local level where most decisions are made about the installation of CCTV politicians of all parties seem to think that surveillance cameras are a vote winner. By installing cameras they can be seen to appear to be doing something.

At the national level: in September 2009 the Conservative party published a report entitled ‘Reversing the rise of the Surveillance State’ [17] which made no mention of surveillance cameras despite the fact that they are the cornerstone of the surveillance state; whilst the Liberal Democratic party last year published a ‘Freedom Bill’ [18] which they say would restore civil liberties lost over the last two decades – one of the proposals in the Bill was for a Royal Commission on the use and regulation of CCTV. But calling for regulation of CCTV is simply the consesus view. Regulation does not address the core issues of removal of personal freedom, anonymity and other rights. All regulation does is to endorse acceptance of CCTV by formalising its “proper use” and leaving no room for the rejection of such technology.

There is effectively no political opposition to surveillance cameras in the UK. But that does not mean that the surveillance state cannot be reversed – as things stand decisions are still made at a local level and so it is up to the people of the UK to get educated and start demanding action from their local councillors. It’s all about numbers – if enough people demand the removal of CCTV they will have to get removing it.

Brown is so convinced that CCTV is a vote winner that he is willing to paint the opposition parties as some sort of evil defenders of civil liberties – when in fact they are nothing of the sort. The rabbit hole is deep in Brown’s warped world.

Stoking the fear of crime?

Much of the rest of Brown’s speech focussed on the fear of crime which he said was out of step with reality: “So these are the facts: crime down; anti-social behaviour down; but fear of crime and anti-social behaviour not down as much”. He even warned of: “those who spread fear with fiction”. He went on to say:

Because sometimes as damaging as the fear of crime is the crime of fear.

And I will play no part in that.

Yet wasn’t it Brown himself that suggested walking home or taking a night bus were dangerous acts? Brown also said:

So even as we halve the deficit I’m protecting frontline policing.

Because I know that the hard working majority will never be able to afford to live in a gated community or hire a private security firm, I am committed to a strong, modern police service for all – more visible in your community and more responsive to your needs and concerns.

Why would the hard working majority need to live in a gated community? Isn’t Brown pressing the fear buttons again?

Lost in translation?

So to summarise, Gordon Brown has launched the New Labour party’s general election CCTV agenda with the following speech (roughly translated):

We in the Labour party really love CCTV, only lazy night bus haters have a problem with the surveillance state but all obedient citizens know that the non-existant evidence clearly shows that covering the entire country with the paraphernalia of a dystopian lawless state reduces the fear of descending into dystopian lawlessness. That is why this government, like all others, has and will continue to use public money to remove freedoms from the public and we’re even going to give you all a new power – the power to demand that the state does what the state wants. Long live democracy! Vote for CCTV!

Rest assured, the battle against the surveillance state will not be fought at this coming election.

[ Note: This is not the first time Gordon Brown has been caught sexing up surveillance cameras, see 'Brown sexes up CCTV evaluations' at http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/blog/brown_sexes_up_cctv_evaluations.htm. ]

End notes:

Obama Signs One-Year Extension of Patriot Act

Aaron Dames — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:44:04 +0000

From the AP:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation’s main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act.

Provisions in the measure would have expired on Sunday without Obama’s signature Saturday.

The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government’s ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security.

Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will:

Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.

Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.

Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group…

Resist ‘1984′ in 2010: Facebook Mass Deactivation Attempt on March 7th

cit.zen — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:30:13 +0000

This is a call to all readers,

I represent a small group of people who have chosen to permanently deactivate from Facebook on March 7th.

Although we are all aware of the website’s convenience, we are abandoning Facebook for the Promised Land that was once known as life. In order to demonstrate our acknowledgement of the website’s obvious capabilities, we created an event page using Facebook. You can find it here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=308145337480&ref=ts

On behalf of dwindling humanity in the face of population overload, we cordially invite you to check out the page, and hope that you will consider participating in deactivation on March 7. By gathering many participants in a show of solidarity, we hope to create some awareness and generate mainstream discussion on the true implications of web 2.0.

On the page you’ll find a heated and sometimes hilarious wall-debate outlining many different reasons why one may or may not choose to take up the cause.

Although Facebook is a convenient means to communicate with other people, it does not represent a substitute for human interaction.

Let’s de-clutter our lives and do away with this uselessness together.

Time is running out.

De-complicate, Communicate , Deactivate.

03.07.2010

Hope to see you there.

With No Modification and Little Debate, Democrats Send Patriot Act Extension to Obama

Raymond — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:30:32 +0000

Even though I didn’t expect any better, this story really breaks my heart. As long as this law is in effect, 9/11 never ends. Whether you believe it is the government or the terrorists who were behind the attack, it’s obvious that someone was trying to really screw you over nine years ago, and this story is a little reminder of that. Kudos to Dennis Kucinich for holding his ground on this and other civil liberties issues that other Democrats won’t touch for fear of being soft on terrorism. Personally, I’d rather be hard on human rights.

From The Raw Story:

Kucinich jeers: Congress is ‘complicit’ in violating Americans’ constitutional rights. In the wake of congressional Democrats’ reauthorization and extension of the USA Patriot Act, few elected Democrats have been as vocal about the post-9/11 security measures as they were during the Bush administration.

Leave it to stalwart House progressive Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to raise a rallying cry against what he called America’s love of its fears.

“This legislation extends three problematic provisions of the PATRIOT Act and, at the same time, leaves some of the most egregious provisions in place, absent any meaningful reform and debate,” he declared in a media advisory.

The specific provisions he cited are the Patriot Act’s powers to conduct roving wiretaps, conduct surveillance of people not thought to have any association with terrorism and tap into your personal records, such as library accounts.

[Read more at The Raw Story]

School Administrator Boasts to PBS About His Laptop Spying

Ralph Bernardo — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:20:20 +0000

From Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing:

Scott sez,

A few weeks ago, Frontline premiered a documentary called “Digital Nation”. In one segment, the vice-principle of Intermediate School 339, Bronx, NY, Dan Ackerman, demonstrates how he “remotely monitors” the students’ laptops for “inappropriate use”. (his demonstration begins at 4:36)

He says “They don’t even realize we are watching,” “I always like to mess with them and take a picture,” and “9 times out of 10, THEY DUCK OUT OF THE WAY.”

He says the students “use it like it’s a mirror” and he watches. He says 6th and 7th graders have their cameras activated. It looks like the same software used by the Pennsylvania school that is being investigated for covertly spying on students through their webcams.

The shocking thing about this is that the privacy concerns were not even mentioned in the Frontline documentary!

Using Facebook or Twitter ‘Could Raise Your Insurance Premiums’

phunkychic666 — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:58:30 +0000

Richard Evans writes in the Telegraph:

Services such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Buzz can alert criminals when users are not home, according to Confused.com, the price comparison service. Foursquare, for example, shows that people are in a specific spot and, more importantly, that the user is definitely not at home, Confused.com added.It predicted that the new wave in social media could eventually lead to big rises in home insurance premiums.

Darren Black, the head of home insurance at Confused.com, said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if, as social media grow in popularity and more location-based applications come to fore, insurance providers consider these in their pricing of an individual’s risk. We could see rises of up to 10pc for people who use these sites.

“Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their information gathering, even using Google Earth and Streetview to plan their burglaries with military precision. Insurance providers are starting to take this into account when they are assessing claims and we may in future see insurers declining claims if they believe the customer was negligent.”

The Digital Dictatorship

Raymond — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:13:03 +0000

From WSJ:

It’s fashionable to hold up the Internet as the road to democracy and liberty in countries like Iran, but it can also be a very effective tool for quashing freedom. Evgeny Morozov on the myth of the techno-utopia.

A storm of protest hit Google last week over Buzz, its new social networking service, because of user concerns about the inadvertent exposure of their data. Internet users in Iran, however, were spared such trouble. It’s not because Google took extra care in protecting their identities—they didn’t—but because the Iranian authorities decided to ban Gmail, Google’s popular email service, and replace it with a national email system that would be run by the government.

Such paradoxes abound in the Islamic Republic’s complex relationship with the Internet. As the Iranian police were cracking down on anti-government protesters by posting their photos online and soliciting tips from the public about their identities, a technology company linked to the government was launching the first online supermarket in the country. Only a few days later, Iran’s state-controlled telecommunications company confirmed it had struck an important deal with its peers in Azerbaijan and Russia, boosting the country’s communications capacity and lessening its dependence on Internet cables that pass through the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

Most of these paradoxes are lost on Western observers of the Internet and its role in the politics of Iran and other authoritarian states. Since the publication of John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” in 1996, they have been led to believe that cyberspace is conducive to democracy and liberty, and no government would be able to crush that libertarian spirit (why, then, Mr. Barlow felt the need to write such a declaration remains unknown to this day). The belief that free and unfettered access to information, combined with new tools of mobilization afforded by blogs and social networks, leads to the opening up of authoritarian societies and their eventual democratization now forms one of the pillars of “techno-utopianism.”

[Read more at WSJ]

Google Buzz Draws Class-Action Suit From Harvard Student

Raymond — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:08:45 +0000

Ironically, this is a good time to mention that Disinformation has a new Buzz account. Here’s a link to our profile. From ABC News:

Love it or loathe it, Google Buzz has dominated tech headlines since its launch last week.

The latest product unveiled by the Mountain View tech giant, Google Buzz, is a social networking service that plugs right into a Gmail user’s e-mail account.

Like Facebook or Twitter, the new tool lets users post status updates, YouTube videos and photos, connecting users in an ongoing online conversation.

While some people have hailed Google Buzz as a potential “Facebook killer,” others have lambasted the service for publicizing users’ private information.

One law school student decided this week to take the Google Buzz backlash to a whole new level.

Complaint Cites Electronic Communications Privacy Act

Law firms in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., Wednesday filed a class-action complaint in San Jose, Calif., federal court against Google Buzz on behalf of Eva Hibnick, a 24-year-old Harvard Law School student.

The complaint alleges that Google Buzz, which automatically opted-in all Gmail users upon its launch, unlawfully shared personal data without users’ permission. The document cites the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Federal Stored Communications Act and California common and statutory law.

“I feel like they did something wrong,” said Hibnick, an active Gmail user and second-year law student. “They opted me into this social network and I didn’t want it.”

[Read more at ABC News]

FBI Probes US School Webcam ‘Spy’ Case

Raymond — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:04:53 +0000

An update to this story. From MSN:

The FBI is investigating a Pennsylvania school district officials accused of secretly activating webcams inside students’ homes, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press.

The FBI will explore whether Lower Merion School District officials broke any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Days after a student filed a suit over the practice, Lower Merion officials acknowledged on Friday that they remotely activated webcams 42 times in the past 14 months, but only to find missing student laptops. They insist they never did so to spy on students, as the student’s family claimed in the federal lawsuit.

Families were not informed of the possibility the webcams might be activated in their homes without their permission in the paperwork students sign when they get the computers, district spokesman Doug Young said.

“It’s clear what was in place was insufficient, and that’s unacceptable,” Young said.

The district has suspended the practice amid the lawsuit and the accompanying uproar from students, the community and privacy advocates.

[Read more at MSN]

High School Spied On Students At Home Via Their Laptops

JacobSloan — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:31:07 +0000

Wow, can this be true? Truly a situation in which “Big Brother” comparisons are no exaggeration. It’s being reported that the Lower Merion School District, in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia, is being sued for spying on its students at home, after issuing the students laptops with webcams that could be covertly activated by school administrators for surveillance, writes Boing Boing:

The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

Update: The school district admits that student laptops were shipped with software for covertly activating their webcams, but denies wrongdoing.

(Image: IMG_6395, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from bionicteaching’s photostream)

Feds Push for Tracking Cell Phones

Raymond — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:57:18 +0000

From CNET News:

Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the “Scarecrow Bandits” that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.

FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists, and that those phones belonged to men named Tony Hewitt and Corey Duffey. A jury eventually convicted the duo of multiple bank robbery and weapons charges.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their–or at least their cell phones’–whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records” that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department’s request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans’ privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.

“This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century,” says Kevin Bankston, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing on Friday. “If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment.”

[Read more at CNET News]

Virginia Delegates Pass Bill That Bans Chip Implants as ‘Mark of the Beast’

Ralph Bernardo — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:56:56 +0000

Daniel Tencer reports in the always interesting RAW Story:

Concerns over privacy have aligned with apocalyptic Biblical prophecy in a proposed Virginia law that limits the use of microchip implants on humans because of a lawmaker’s concern that the chips will prove to be the Antichrist’s “mark of the beast.”

On Wednesday, Virginia’s House of Delegates passed a bill that forbids companies from forcing their employees to be implanted with tracking devices, a move likely to be applauded by civil libertarians. But Virginia state Delegate Mark Cole’s reasons for proposing the law have as much to do with the Book of Revelation as they do with concerns over privacy in the digital age.

Cole says he is concerned that the implants will turn out to be the “mark of the beast” worn by Satan’s minions. “My understanding — I’m not a theologian — but there’s a prophecy in the Bible that says you’ll have to receive a mark, or you can neither buy nor sell things in end times,” Cole said, as quoted at the Washington Post. “Some people think these computer chips might be that mark.”

TSA Detains Student for Arabic Study Cards; Asked By Agent ‘Do You Know Who Did 9/11?’

Ralph Bernardo — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:26:33 +0000

RAW Story is reporting today the ACLU is filing a lawsuit on behalf of the student. Here’s the original report from Dave Davies in the Philadelphia Daily News:

EIGHT YEARS after 9/11, we’re used to changes in our routines. We show ID to get into office buildings, and take off our shoes at airports. But should a college student flying back to school be handcuffed and held for five hours because he has Arabic flash cards in his backpack?

That’s the way Nick George, a senior at Pomona College, in California, sees what happened to him at the Philadelphia airport two Saturdays ago. George, of Wyncote, Montgomery County, was about to catch a Southwest flight back to school when stereo speakers in his backpack caught the eye of screeners at the metal detector.

When they looked though his bag, George said, they found his Arabic/English flash cards, and escorted him to a side screening area. He figures it didn’t help that his passport had stamps from Jordan, where he’d studied a semester, and Egypt and Sudan, where he’d gone backpacking.

And among his 200 flash cards were words like “terrorist” and “explosion.” He was learning to translate the Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera.

Read More: RAW Story and Philadelphia Daily News

The FBI Wants To Log Everything You Do Online

Ralph Bernardo — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:58:09 +0000

Samuel Axon writes on Mashable:

FBI Director Robert Mueller wants ISPs to track “origin and destination information” about their customers’ browsing habits and store them for authorities’ use for two years, according to a CNET report.

That would mean monitoring the IP addresses, domains and exact websites users visit, and then storing that information for months. If officials who support this measure get their way, federal, state and local law enforcement would be able to access the information via search warrant or subpoena.

Access to exact URLs would require deep-packet inspection, which could be a violation of the Wiretap Act. The courts would end up having to make a ruling one way or the other if authorities try it.

The argument in favor is that the FBI has long been able to do this with telephone call information, but since so much telephone communication has been replaced by web activity, this would just be a preservation of existing powers. And those in favor insist that no actual content would be released to authorities — only points of contact. For example, authorities can see that a phone call was made from one number to another, but they don’t know what was said unless they wiretap.

U.S. Airport Security Plan Calls For 500 Body Scanners In 2011

Aaron Dames — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:42:41 +0000

“No wonder you’re having nightmares. You’re always watching the news.” – Lori in Total Recall

By Thomas Frank at USA Today:

Body scanners that look under airline passengers’ clothing for hidden weapons could be in nearly half the nation’s airport checkpoints by late 2011, according to an Obama administration plan announced Monday.

The $215 million proposal to acquire 500 scanners next year, combined with the 450 to be bought this year, marks the largest addition of airport-security equipment since immediately after the 9/11 attacks. There are only 40 body scanners in a total of 19 airports now.

“It’s a move in the right direction,” aviation-security consultant Douglas Laird said. “We need to scan all passengers.”

The push for more scanners accelerated after the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner near Detroit. Suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Flight 253 in Amsterdam after walking through a metal detector with powder explosives hidden in his underwear, authorities say. Police allege he tried to trigger an explosion by igniting the powder, which caught fire but did not cause any serious damage before Abdulmutallab was subdued by the crew and passengers.

Privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg called the scanners “a deeply invasive intrusion” that would inconvenience millions of innocent travelers with screening that takes longer than metal detectors. “We’ll have another Homeland Security Department program for the war on terror used almost exclusively on Americans,” said Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Laird said the administration should emphasize installing body scanners in major European airports “because that’s where the threats come out of.” European countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are adding the scanners. Countries such as Germany and Italy are considering the technology, which creates black-and-white images of passengers under their clothing…

[continues at USA Today]

Google And The NSA, Together At Last

majestic — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:25:04 +0000

Those on the lookout for Orwellian developments, start your engines: dominant Internet search company Google is teaming up with the NSA (a/k/a No Such Agency), according to the Washington Post:

The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.

Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.

The partnership strikes at the core of one of the most sensitive issues for the government and private industry in the evolving world of cybersecurity: how to balance privacy and national security interests. On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair called the Google attacks, which the company acknowledged in January, a “wake-up call.” Cyberspace cannot be protected, he said, without a “collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners.”

But achieving collaboration is not easy, in part because private companies do not trust the government to keep their secrets and in part because of concerns that collaboration can lead to continuous government monitoring of private communications. Privacy advocates, concerned about a repeat of the NSA’s warrantless interception of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, say information-sharing must be limited and closely overseen.

“The critical question is: At what level will the American public be comfortable with Google sharing information with NSA?” said Ellen McCarthy, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an organization of current and former intelligence and national security officials that seeks ways to foster greater sharing of information between government and industry…

[continues in the Washington Post]

UK Airports Commence Mandatory Full Body Scans

majestic — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:14:31 +0000

While I don’t have strong privacy concerns, I do worry about the effects of the scans on the human body, particularly on frequent travelers who undergo multiple scans. So are these mandatory “accept the scan or don’t fly” policies in the first world’s most developed surveillance state, Great Britain, a reasonable response to the underpants bomber? This report is from the Daily Mail:

Air passengers who refuse to submit to controversial full body scans will be barred from boarding their flights.

The technology – which has been strongly condemned by civil liberties campaigners – began operating at Heathrow and Manchester airports yesterday. Birmingham will follow suit later this month before the anti-terror devices are rolled out nationally.

The move – strongly criticised by civil liberties campaigners who say the scanners are an invasion of privacy – follows the attempted Detroit bomb attack on Christmas Day. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to detonate a bomb on a flight as it was about to land in the U.S. city.

Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said: ‘In the immediate future, only a small proportion of airline passengers will be selected for scanning. If a passenger is selected for scanning and declines, they will not be permitted to fly.’

He said a code of conduct would govern how images were used and which passengers were checked. Campaigners say the scanners, which act like a mini radar device ’seeing’ beneath ordinary clothing, are an invasion of privacy. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has warned that the scanners breach privacy rules under the Human Rights Act for their naked images. The exemption of under 18s from being scanned, which was in place during the trial of the machines in Manchester, has also been removed…

[continues in the Daily Mail]

CCTV Drones: Policing By Remote Control

Charles Farrier — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:19:14 +0000

All we have of freedom, all we use or know -
this our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

- Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue

A recent Guardian newspaper article (’CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones’, 23rd January 2010[1]) reveals plans to use surveillance drones/Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to spy on UK citizens. The project, called the South Coast Partnership, sees arms manufacturer BAE Systems teaming up with a “consortium of government agencies led by Kent police”.

The Guardian report states that:

Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

The Home Office’s ‘Science and Innovation Strategy 2009–12′ [2], published last year, confirms that the UK government has been exploring the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a policing “tool”, it states:

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are likely to become an increasingly useful tool for the police in the future, potentially reducing the number of dangerous situations the police may have to enter and also providing evidence for prosecutions. However, we will need to investigate how such vehicles could be used, and their ability to provide high quality evidence for convictions and to support police operations in ‘real time’.

Secrecy of UAV development

Obtaining information about plans for civilian UAV deployment is not easy – the South Coast Partnership has no public website, appears to publish no documents and has not been discussed or debated in parliament – it operates below the radar of the public that it is the intention to surveil. As a result this article has been pulled together from a variety of disparate sources including many mainstream newspaper articles rather than original source documents. It is hoped that this patchwork of information will at least serve as a preliminary overview of this expanding field.

How it all started?

The South Coast Partnership project was launched at the Police Aviation Conference 2007 in the Hague, Netherlands and was sold primarily as a coastal/border patrol project. However rather tellingly a BAE Systems Press release of the launch [3] quotes Andrew Mellors, Head of Civil Autonomous Systems at BAE Systems, who said:

From 2012 fully autonomous unmanned air systems could be routinely used by border agencies, the police and other government bodies. These systems will be fully autonomous so that operators task the vehicles and receive the relevant imagery and intelligence direct to the ground control station in real time.

A December 2007 Sunday Times article [4] (’Spy drone to patrol coast in hunt for people smugglers’, Sunday Times 2nd December 2007) whilst focusing primarily on the coastal patrol application of UAVs by Essex police also pointed out that:

It is understood the police have expressed interest in using the £5m drone to monitor crowds during demonstrations and events such as football matches.

The Sunday Times article also revealed that one of the UAVs being adapted by BAE Systems for the South Coast Partnership is the High Endurance Rapid Technology Insertion (Herti) which will fly above 20,000ft, with cameras powerful enough to see humans on boats as if they were a few feet away and capable of taking pictures in darkness using night vision lenses.

A November 2009 Essex local newspaper article [5] (’Essex Police may use unmanned planes for surveillance’, 30th November 2009) reported that within two years UAVs could be flying in the skies over Essex supposedly to “help combat illegal immigration and drug smugglers”. The article revealed a few more of the players in the South Coast Partnership project: the UK Border Agency, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and the Marine and Fisheries Agency. It was further noted that “the drones could also fly over major events, such as the V Festival, or major incidents”, with the ability to “read a number plate from 20,000ft and criminals will not know they are under surveillance.”

The civilian use of the Herti UAV was first mooted shortly after it was declassified from BAE’s “black” projects in July 2006. A BBC News Online article [6] that same month (’BAE spyplane eyes commercial sector’, BBC News Online 20th July 2006) said:

Until now they have largely been the preserve of the generals. The US military routinely uses them over Iraq and Afghanistan. But now the world’s aerospace companies reckon they can make money by selling them to civilians too, for a wide range of tasks such as traffic control, border patrols, or crop and drought monitoring.

Drone, UAV, UAS?

The drone/UAVs being described here should not be confused with those already controversially in use by Police in the UK [7], as pointed out in a recent NeoConOpticon blog post [8]:

there are actually two types of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs): (i) the armed and unarmed ‘drone’ planes’ to which the Guardian report refers, and (ii) much smaller miniature spy planes. The latter are basically remote-controlled aircraft fitted with cameras

The US Department Of Defence Dictionary of Military Terms [9] defines the term Unmanned aerial vehicle as:

A powered, aerial vehicle that does not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or nonlethal payload. Ballistic or semiballistic vehicles, cruise missiles, and artillery projectiles are not considered unmanned aerial vehicles. Also called UAV.

It defines the term drone as:

A land, sea, or air vehicle that is remotely or automatically controlled. See also remotely piloted vehicle; unmanned aerial vehicle.

And it defines unmanned aircraft system as:

That system whose components include the necessary equipment, network, and personnel to control an unmanned aircraft. Also called UAS.

Militarisation of the Police

The UAVs being developed by BAE are adapted from military hardware used in war zones to allow military personnel to kill people from the comfort of an office chair, often thousands of miles away from the “zone of fire”. Their use has been extremely controversial because of civilian casualties. A recent UK Home Office report on Pakistan [10] for instance points out that: “The limited tactical results achieved by these drone attacks have been overshadowed by the negative impact they have had on public opinion as a result of civilian casualties”. A BBC Radio 4 documentary ‘Robo Wars’ [11] to be aired 1st February asks a pilot, who from the UK remotely flies UAV missions over Afghanistan, whether knowing he has killed people he can let it go at the end of the working day, the pilot answers:

You’ve got to. Yeah okay, it’s gonna weigh on your mind and then I’ve got a 45 minute drive home, so I just stick the radio on, listen to a podcast, whatever – just drive home and then by the time I’m home I’m kind of straight into family life.

The proposed use of adapted versions of this controversial military hardware by government agencies and the police to monitor their own citizens clearly goes further to blur the distinction between the military and civilian law enforcement; the police are being equipped as a de facto army against the people. It is an obscene abuse of power – the replacement of policing by consent with policing by remote control. In his 1929 book ‘The New Despotism’ then Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Hewart coined the phrase “Administrative Lawlessness” to describe a worrying trend in English politics at that time – the exercise of arbitrary power, where decisions are made in secret, not based on evidence and without proper debate. The secret development of CCTV UAVs or drones by bodies such as those in the Home Office backed South Coast partnership represents yet another step towards completing the forewarned Administrative Lawlessness now evident the world over as civil liberties are squandered.

It is not just in the UK that the use of surveillance drones has been secretly developed. In the United States in 2007, Houston police set up a UAV test site consisting of black trucks, satellite dishes and whirling radar in a remote area approximately 45 miles west of Houston [12]. A local television crew was alerted to the test and Executive Assistant Police Chief Martha Montalvo was forced to go public. Whilst the UAV tested in this case was a smaller variety than those being developed by BAE, the KPRC Local 2 website article [13] reveals that the stated aims of proponents are pretty much the same:

Montalvo told reporters the unmanned aircraft would be used for “mobility” or traffic issues, evacuations during storms, homeland security, search and rescue, and also “tactical.” She admitted that could include covert police actions and she said she was not ruling out someday using the drones for writing traffic tickets.

Modern cities like war zones

Professor Stephen Graham of Durham University [14] (”Cities and the ‘war on terror’”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2006) describes how the US administration has securitized the everyday urban spaces where “all-pervasive discourses of ‘homeland security,’ emphasizing endless threats from an almost infinite range of people, places and technologies, are being used to justify a massive process of state building”.

This process involves deepening state surveillance, repression and violence against those seen to harbour ‘terrorist threats’, combined with radically increased efforts to ensure the effective filtering power of starkly reinscribed national, infrastructural and urban borders. After decades where the business press and politicians endlessly celebrated the supposed collapse of boundaries (at least for mobile capital) through neoliberal globalization, ‘in both political debates and policy practice, borders are very much back in style’.

Graham goes on to explore the similarities of measures adopted in ‘homeland’ and ‘target’ cities:

Since 2002, for the first time, fleets of apparently identical US unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have indeed patrolled both the increasingly militarized border of the Southern United States and the cities and frontier lands of the war zones of the Middle East. Identical, that is, except in one crucial respect. Tellingly, in the former case, however, worries have been expressed about the dangers of accidental crashes from unarmed drones flying over the US’s civilian population by Federal aviation safety officers.

Back in the UK the civil use of UAVs is being developed in Wales, two miles south of Aberporth at a technology park called ParcAberporth. ParcAberporth was developed by the Welsh Assembly Government on the site of a former RAF airfield. The Welsh Assembly has spent over £13 million on the establishment and running of ParcAberporth [15]; last year they ran a consultation on ‘An Airspace Change to Establish Segregated Airspace for The Wales Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Environment’ [16], the consultation document says:

The Welsh Assembly Government has identified the UAS [unmanned aircraft system] sector as an area with potential for significant economic impact for West Wales. To that end ParcAberporth was developed by the Welsh Assembly Government in 2003/04 as a Centre of Excellence for leading aerospace companies involved in the research and development of UAS.

Aberporth is in Ceredigion which received European Union ‘Objective 1′ funding (awarded to those areas in the European Union whose GDP is less than 75% of the EU average). Part of this funding was used to develop ParcAbeporth on the pretence that it had the potential to create over 200 jobs near Cardigan. A 2006 EU Ceridigion press release (’Objective 1 helps boost Ceredigion with Unmanned Flying Vehicles’) [17] states:

Andrew Davies, Minister for Economic Development and Transport described ParcAberporth as a unique centre within the UK, which had tremendous potential, “Development of ParcAberporth means we have an opportunity to play a lead role in the rapidly growing UAV sector and are working to ensure it becomes a significant centre in the UK for the research and development of new technologies and new civil applications.”

According to the 2009/2010 UAS Yearbook [18] a partnership has been set up with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) Aberporth, West Wales Airport and the West Wales UAS centre to create the Wales UAS Environment and “West Wales Airport is the only site in the UK able to undertake routine operations of civil and military UAS operations and the only UK airport to have a UAS Operations Manual accepted by a civil regulatory authority”.

Thankfully there is some opposition the the UAV centre in Wales. Bro Emlyn – for Peace and Justice (BEPJ) [19], a group who campaign on peace and justice issues in the Newcastle Emlyn area of West Wales, are calling for action against drone testing at ParcAberporth. Amongst BEPJ’s concerns are:

50,000 people live under the new 650 sq mile UAV testing zone. Two drones have crashed in the first months of flying out of Parc Aberporth so there are great concerns about safety.
Operators will have to abide by a “code of practice” on privacy, but the MOD will be the main user and they are unlikely to be accountable in the same way.
Military drones attacks are calculated to kill 50 civilians for every combatant killed
The expected hundreds of jobs have not materialised. Only 18 people are currently employed at Parc Aberporth

There has also been some opposition to the use of UAVs within the UK police force itself. A report, in the Police Aviation News (PAN) journal [20], of the 2007 event at which the South Coast Partnership project was launched says:

Much of the good humoured banter generated in and outside the hall related to the inexorable approach of the UAV. Everyone was agreed that, industry aside, this spectre is still sufficiently distant to be largely discounted but here as everywhere it intruded into most conversations and finally became the object of humour. As is becoming increasingly clear in the day to day information gathering for PAN the subject simply will not just go away. There was evident hostility from the pilots to the newcomer – although most were agreed that the chances of such craft actually replacing air support as we know it were very slender. As has been proven recently the biggest danger appears to lie in potential air unit operators ‘making do’ with unmanned vehicles in the mistaken belief that a UAV can replace manned craft. They are aircraft but in reality those seeking to operate them are not of the current aviation fraternity. [...] There were certainly few real UAV fans in the Congress Centre.

Civilian UAVs – a multi-billion pound industry

A 2005 Welsh Assembly press release stated that: “The UAV sector is worth around £1 billion a year worldwide but this is expected to increase significantly with the predicted growth of civil applications” [21]. A more recent article on the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) website [22] predicts that Civilian UAV use is set to rise and reports that the “Virginia-based Teal Group estimates will be worth $62bn over the next decade”. The UK group CorporateWatch, in an article about ParcAberporth [23], outline the companies driving the UAV agenda:

The rapid expansion of drone technologies is being pushed for by a veritable super consortium of arms companies, UK government agencies and universities, under the name Astraea (Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation & Assessment). These include: BAE Systems, Thales, Rolls Royce, Agent Oriented Software and QinetiQ; the South West of England Regional Development Agency, South East Economic Development Agency, Scottish Enterprise and the North West Regional Development Agency; and the universities of Loughborough, Sheffield, Lancaster and Aberystwyth, among others. State involvement in Astraea is ‘led’ by the Welsh Assembly and, as such, Astraea receives half its funding from the public sector, constituting £16million in total.

Further evidence of the financial rewards expected by members of the UAV industry is the scale of events, conferences and exhibitions staged around the world. Events in the UK such as the Bristol International Remotely Piloted Vehicle (RPV) Conference [24] and the ParcAberporth Unmanned Systems demonstration and exhibition [25]; and in the United States – the Kansas UAV Symposium [26] and ‘AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America’ [27] described as “the World’s Largest Unmanned System Conference and Exhibition”, which this year will take place in Denver, Colorado.

Despite the enormous profits the UAV corporations can generate from their hugely expensive toys these events it seems think nothing of taking tax payers money. The 2007 ParcAberporth Unmanned Systems demonstration and exhibition event received £181,145 from the Welsh Assembly government for “Showplace Hospitality Suites”, “consultancy service” and “provision of services for the direction and management of the flying/ground demonstrations and associated rehearsals” [28].

The Olympics as pretext for a surveillance arms race

In the UK one of the pretexts being used for surveillance drones is the 2012 Olympics, indeed the South Coast Partnership intends to begin using the drones in time for the games. The CCTV industry as a whole is rubbing its hands with glee at the expected growth of the UK CCTV, particularly in London. And of course the surveillance technologies are likely to stay after the Olympics unless robustly contested. In a June 2008 Guardian podcast [29], author Naomi Klein described the “kind of surveillance arms race going on” from one Olympic games to the next. In Athens $1.25m was spent, and in China somewhere in the realm of $12.5m, Klein warned:

What Londoners need to be aware of is the pressure that’s being exerted behind the scenes by companies which have gotten a taste of the super profits in China, in the name of Olympic security, and they’re going to be selling the same model now to any city that hosts the games.

The Panopticon

The Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) proposed a model prison called the Panopticon (”all-seeing”) [30] which functioned as a round-the-clock surveillance machine. French philosopher Michel Foucault describes the implications of the Panopticon: “So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action”. Drones that fly at 20,000 feet, that cannot be seen or heard from the ground would constitute another brick in the Panopticon prison that is being steadily built around us – unless we speak out and start taking the bricks down.

The problems of our society require more human interaction, not less. Silent, invisible CCTV drones should remain the stuff of science fiction novels – they have no place in a free country. Better community reduces crime, technology does not.

[The 23rd January Guardian drone article was based on documents obtained from Kent Police under the Freedom of Information Act. A request for the documents was sent to Kent Police on 27th January via the WhatDoTheyKnow website [31] but Kent Police have not yet made the information available to the wider public.]

Endnotes:

[ 1] – http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/23/cctv-sky-police-plan-drones
[ 2] – http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/science-strategy2835.pdf?view=Binary
[ 3] – http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2007/autoGen_107107111943.html
[ 4] – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2983877.ece
[ 5] – http://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/4764733.Spies_in_the_skies_may_nab_drug_and_people_smugglers/
[ 6] – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5198364.stm
[ 7] – http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:29_8ehy1B8IJ:hmic.homeoffice.gov.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Merseyside/Merseyside_HMIC_Major_Crime12835.pdf+%22force+makes+use+of+a+drone+for+covert+and+overt+intelligence%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
[ 8] – http://neoconopticon.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/uk-police-plan-to-use-military-style-spy-drones-hits-front-pages
the NeoConOpticon blog is a follow-up to a report on the EU Security Industrial Complex published by the Transnational Institute and Statewatch in September 2009
[ 9] – http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary
[10] – http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/pakistan-180110.doc
[11] – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qbxv5
[12] – http://www.insitu.com/pdf.cfm?cid=2114
[13] – http://www.click2houston.com/investigates/14659066/detail.html#story
[14] – http://www.geography.dur.ac.uk/information/staff/personal/graham/graham_documents/DOC%207.pdf
[15] – http://wales.gov.uk/publications/accessinfo/disclosurelogs/dl2300/disclog2394/?lang=en
[16] – http://wales.gov.uk/consultations/businessandeconomy/090505uas/%3bjsessionid=mqGJLYTQgTyDvQHnvMGyQGHswXqVgz2QJ1yJjvRVxcnmLTcVwL6G!-704087660?cr=2&lang=en&status=closed
[17] – http://www.euceredigion.co.uk/Press%20Releases/pressrelease-UAV.doc
[18] – http://www.uvs-international.org/uvs-info/Yearbook2009/index.htm
[19] – http://www.bepj.org.uk
[20] – http://www.policeaviationnews.com/Acrobat/PANConferences07.pdf
[21] – http://wales.gov.uk/news/archivepress/officefirstminspress/firstminpress2006/1087999/?lang=en
[22] – http://kn.theiet.org/news/aug09/uav-uvsi.cfm
[23] – http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3470
[24] – http://www.bris.ac.uk/uavs/history/
[25] – http://www.ibwales.com/business-sectors/aerospace-and-defence/news/parcaberporth-2008
[26] – http://www.uavsymposiums.com/#schedule
[27] – http://symposium.auvsi.org/auvsi10/public/enter.aspx
[28] – http://wales.gov.uk/topics/improvingservices/bettervfm/smartpurchasing/wob/contracts/?searchQuery=ParcAberporth&view=Search+results&lang=en
[29] – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2008/jun/03/guardian.weekly
[30] – http://ucdwyer.xanga.com/62434760/item/
[31] – http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/south_coast_partnership_drone_do

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