Privacy is Not Dead, Just Evolving
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…
Chicago Police Want Covert Cameras
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…
Gordon Brown’s UK Election Pledge – More CCTV!
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.
Obama Signs One-Year Extension of Patriot Act
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…
High School Spied On Students At Home Via Their Laptops
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.
Google And The NSA, Together At Last
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…
UK Airports Commence Mandatory Full Body Scans
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…
CCTV Drones: Policing By Remote Control
The secret development of CCTV UAVs or drones represents yet another example of Administrative Lawlessness now evident the world over as civil liberties are squandered.
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”…
Naked Scanners, Naked CCTV And Barefaced Lies
How digital strip searches got fast tracked…
Back in 2002 when biometric ID cards were first being suggested by UK politicians many of those of us that opposed their introduction pointed out that fingerprinting is associated with criminal suspects and that treating citizens like criminals is unacceptable in a free society. Now the proposed digital strip searching of airline passengers in the UK raises similar concerns. The UK government is suggesting that passengers should stand with their hands up and submit to a scanning technology that reveals their naked body to airport security staff. If the public submits to this demand and accepts this technology then it raises serious concerns about people’s understanding of what privacy and freedom are and will not bode well for the future. It is up to…
UK Police Will Use Spy Drones To Monitor Population
A BAE UAV
Britain moves to solidify its position as the most developed surveillance state in the “free” world, as reported in the Guardian:
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 arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.
Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.
They reveal the partnership intends to begin using…
Recording Police With Your Cellphone Gets You Arrested in Boston
Daniel Rowinski writes in the Boston Globe:
Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.
Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.
“One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,’’ Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, “my phone was seized, and I was arrested.’’
The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.
Jon Surmacz, 34, experienced a similar situation. Thinking that Boston police officers were unnecessarily rough while breaking up a holiday party in Brighton he was attending in December…
One Nation, Under Surveillance
By Michael Hampton for the homeland stupidity blog:
What have you got to hide? The answer may shock you: If you’re like most Americans, you have far more than you realize that you need to be hiding, and not doing so may be putting you and your family in grave danger.
In his new book, Three Felonies a Day, attorney Harvey Silverglate holds that the typical American professional commits an average of three federal crimes a day, just going about their daily business, without even realizing it. And the only thing keeping them out of prison — make that keeping you out of prison — is the fact that federal prosecutors haven’t looked at you yet. “No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch,” reads a statement on the book’s Web site, “and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance.”
[more at the homeland stupidity]
Chicago’s Camera Network Is Everywhere
William Bulkeley reports on yet another city falling victim to a techno-panopticon, in the Wall Street Journal:
A giant web of video-surveillance cameras has spread across Chicago, aiding police in the pursuit of criminals but raising fears that the City of Big Shoulders is becoming the City of Big Brother.
While many police forces are boosting video monitoring, video-surveillance experts believe Chicago has gone further than any other U.S. city in merging computer and video technology to police the streets. The networked system is also unusual because of its scope and the integration of nonpolice cameras.
The city links the 1,500 cameras that police have placed in trouble spots with thousands more—police won’t say how many—that have been installed by other government agencies and the private sector in city buses, businesses, public schools,…
“Fly”ing Advertisements
From animal:
Earlier this week, the US military revealed that’s it’s getting closer to realizing a fully operational squadron of robo-beetles for recon missions. But a couple of weeks ago, German publishing house Eichborn unleashed 200 “fliegenbanners” on startled conventioneers at the Frankfurt book fair. Ad agency Jung von Matt/Nectar says the mini-banners were designed “so that the fly could fly with it, but low and for short distances, constantly landing on visitors.” And I’m sure more than a couple of the winged mediums were then subsequently squished.
Britons Start To Fight Back Against the Surveillance State
Having grown up in Britain, pre-surveillance state, it’s amazing to me that during the last twenty years the British have just meekly accepted the ever-increasing and encroaching surveillance powers used by all levels of government in the U.K. But at long last there’s some resistance, at least at the local level, as reported by the New York Times:
Poole, England — It has become commonplace to call Britain a “surveillance society,” a place where security cameras lurk at every corner, giant databases keep track of intimate personal details and the government has extraordinary powers to intrude into citizens’ lives.
A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore.
But the intrusions visited on…
Who’s in Big Brother’s Database?
James Bamford reviews The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid in The New York Review of Books:
On a remote edge of Utah’s dry and arid high desert, where temperatures often zoom past 100 degrees, hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances are preparing to build what may become America’s equivalent of Jorge Luis Borges’s “Library of Babel,” a place where the collection of information is both infinite and at the same time monstrous, where the entire world’s knowledge is stored, but not a single word is understood. At a million square feet, the mammoth $2 billion structure will be one-third larger than the US Capitol and will use the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined.
Unlike Borges’s “labyrinth of letters,” this library expects few visitors. It’s being built by the ultra-secret National Security Agency—which is primarily responsible for “signals intelligence,” the collection and analysis of various forms of communication—to house trillions of phone calls, e-mail messages, and data trails: Web searches, parking receipts, bookstore visits, and other digital “pocket litter.” Lacking adequate space and power at its city-sized Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters, the NSA is also completing work on another data archive, this one in San Antonio, Texas, which will be nearly the size of the Alamodome.
Just how much information will be stored in these windowless cybertemples? A clue comes from a recent report prepared by the MITRE Corporation, a Pentagon think tank…
Fascism Watch: Police and Military Lining Up Against Obama
Klint Finley writes for Mutate:
To their credit, the “Oath Keepers” acknowledge the Patriot Act’s erosion of civil liberties as well. But where were they during the 8 years that Bush was president? Obama gets 400% more death threats than Bush but still lets people carry assault rifles around him, and the Oathers think that they’re being persecuted? Bush had people hauled away for wearing the wrong t-shirts.
I have little good to say about Obama, but I can’t say that his administration is less tolerant of dissent than Bush’s.
From the Oather’s Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey: “We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects — such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.”
I take this…
