Disinformation » Surveillance

The Sniper’s Nest At Super Bowl XLVI

JacobSloan — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:07:09 +0000

I suppose this makes sense, so why is it so morbid and shocking? Perhaps because every aspect of the Super Bowl is supposed to symbolize some element of the broader culture? Deadspin stumbled upon some photos of the armed-and-ready-to-shoot man who watches while you watch the big game:

According to Business Insider, the photos were taken by a ranking member of the Indianpolis SWAT team, and obtained by Alamo Four Star, maker of the tripod.

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.

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.

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.”

DARPA Spy Satellite To Track Objects In Real Time

aaroncynic — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:24:54 +0000

Via DARPA website

Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

Now that unmanned surveillance and attack drones hovering over foreign and friendly skies the world over has become almost commonplace, the Pentagon is looking to add another eye in the sky for big brother. The Defense Department’s research arm DARPA, is developing a satellite that would capture real time imagery from space. Project MOIRE (Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploitation) would fit spy satellites with camera lenses nearly 60 feet wide. DARPA argues that because there aren’t enough drones or other aircraft providing real time imagery and current satellites only take still photos, such a project bridges a national security gap.

According to Universe Today, each MOIRE satellite would cost $500 million and would cover an area of more than 100 km by 100 km. DARPA hopes the device would be able to track a vehicle moving up to 60mph, which would require a resolution so fine it would be able to see objects a mere 10 feet long in a single pixel.

Read the full post at Diatribe Media.

Undercover Police Spied On Occupy Los Angeles In Search Of ‘Extremists’

JacobSloan — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:02:39 +0000

No word on how much fun undercover officers did or didn’t have during their infiltration of Occupy Los Angeles in search of terrorists. Reuters reports:

Undercover police officers infiltrated Occupy LA’s tent city last month to spy on people they suspected of stockpiling human waste and crude weapons for resisting an eventual eviction, police and city government sources said.

Authorities also used security cameras mounted outside City Hall, where the camp was located, and monitored publicly available Internet chatter and video on social-networking sites such as Twitter, sources said.

They insisted that covert surveillance of the camp was aimed not at anti-Wall Street activists exercising their constitutional right to freedom of expression but at those they considered anti-government extremists bent on violence. Civil liberties advocates said they were troubled by law enforcement’s infiltration of peaceful demonstrations, although the LAPD’s undercover efforts were not unique.

In the end, nearly 300 Los Angeles demonstrators were arrested the night police raided their encampment, nearly all for defying orders to leave but with little violence.

The City Attorney’s Office has so far filed formal charges against seven people arrested before the raid and accused of violations ranging from weapons possession, battery, assault with a deadly weapon and lewd conduct.

But police said a key concern about the eviction stemmed from some individuals in the camp identified as belonging to or affiliated with radical organizations such as Sovereign Citizens, which the FBI classifies as an “extremist anti-government group,” and the Black Riders Liberation Party, deemed a “domestic terrorist group” by the LAPD.

South Korea Rolls Out Robotic Prison Wardens

JacobSloan — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:43:36 +0000

Incarceration just got a lot more adorable. Via the BBC:

A jail in the eastern city of Pohang plans to run a month-long trial with three of the automatons in March. The machines will monitor inmates for abnormal behaviour.

South Korea aims to be a world leaders in robotics. Business leaders believe the field has the potential to become a major export industry.

The three 5ft-high (1.5m) robots involved in the prison trial have been developed by the Asian Forum for Corrections, a South Korean group of researchers who specialise in criminality and prison policies. It said the robots move on four wheels and are equipped with cameras and other sensors that allow them to detect risky behaviour such as violence and suicide.

Prof Lee Baik-Chu, of Kyonggi University, who led the design process, said the robots would alert human guards if they discovered a problem.

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

Spy Drone Used on Police at Protests in Poland

Good German — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:22:34 +0000

Disinfo.com Note: Some commenters have stated this is not Occupy-related, when you have a movement without hierarchy this can be expected to happen. Disinformation is more concerned about the counter-tech to observe activism, so that is why we posted this story. Spencer Ackerman reports at Wired’s Danger Room:

The proliferation of drones throughout the military — and into civilian law enforcement — can make it feel like we’re living in an airborne panopticon. But flying robots are agnostic about who they train their gaze upon, and can spy on cops as easily as they can spy on civilians.

In the video above, protesters in Warsaw got a drone’s eye view of a phalanx of police in riot gear during a heated Saturday demonstration. The drone — spotted by Wired editor-in-chief and drone-builder Chris Anderson — was a tiny Polish RoboKopter equipped with a videocamera.

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

CIA Tracks Revolt by Tweet and Facebook

HAL9000 — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:57:12 +0000

Didn’t we know this already? Reports Kimberly Dozier on the AP:

McLEAN, VA — In an anonymous industrial park, CIA analysts who jokingly call themselves the “ninja librarians” are mining the mass of information people publish about themselves overseas, tracking everything from common public opinion to revolutions.

The group’s effort gives the White House a daily snapshot of the world built from tweets, newspaper articles and Facebook updates.

The agency’s Open Source Center sometimes looks at 5 million tweets a day. The analysts are also checking out TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that people can access and contribute to openly.

The Associated Press got an apparently unprecedented view of the center’s operations, including a tour of the main facility. The AP agreed not to reveal its exact location and to withhold the identities of some who work there because much of the center’s work is secret.

From Arabic to Mandarin, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in a native tongue. They cross-reference it with a local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House. There might be a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.

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 …

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

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

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]

The Architecture of Control

Jin_TheNinja — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:31:10 +0000

Architecture and design made specifically to control and easily subdue populations is nothing new; architects and urban planners have long recognised the inherent ability of design to affect mood, temperament, and even the physical and social properties of people. Prison design is one such exercise that directly engages the dialogue between space and social control. Via Web Urbanist :

Should architecture be used as a punishment in itself, made as harsh and cruel as possible in a bid to make inmates sorry for what they’ve done, or should it uplift and rehabilitate them, showing them that there’s more to the world than a life of crime?

While some architects boycott prison design altogether so as not to participate in what is often seen as a corrupt and immoral system, others produce (often controversial) designs that revolutionize prisoners’ relationships with their environment, each other and the world at large – for better or worse.

12 Futuristic Prisons here: Web Urbanist

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.

U.S. Federal Court: ‘1984 May Have Come A Bit Later Than Predicted, But It’s Here At Last’

majestic — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:31:20 +0000

What are the chances that the U.S. Supreme Court will restrict the use of GPS tracking devices in police surveillance? We’ll find out soon, reports Adam Liptak in the New York Times:

In a series of rulings on the use of satellites and cellphones to track criminal suspects, judges around the country have been citing George Orwell’s “1984” to sound an alarm. They say the Fourth Amendment’s promise of protection from government invasion of privacy is in danger of being replaced by the futuristic surveillance state Orwell described.

In April, Judge Diane P. Wood of the federal appeals court in Chicago wrote that surveillance using global positioning system devices would “make the system that George Orwell depicted in his famous novel, ‘1984,’ seem clumsy.” In a similar case last year, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the federal appeals court in San Francisco wrote that “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last.”

Last month, Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn turned down a government request for 113 days of location data from cellphone towers, citing “Orwellian intrusion” and saying the courts must “begin to address whether revolutionary changes in technology require changes to existing Fourth Amendment doctrine.”

The Supreme Court is about to do just that. In November, it will hear arguments in United States v. Jones, No. 10-1259, the most important Fourth Amendment case in a decade. The justices will address a question that has divided the lower courts: Do the police need a warrant to attach a GPS device to a suspect’s car and track its movements for weeks at a time?

Their answer will bring Fourth Amendment law into the digital age, addressing how its 18th-century prohibition of “unreasonable searches and seizures” applies to a world in which people’s movements are continuously recorded by devices in their cars, pockets and purses, by toll plazas and by transit systems.

The Jones case will address not only whether the placement of a space-age tracking device on the outside of a vehicle without a warrant qualifies as a search, but also whether the intensive monitoring it allows is different in kind from conventional surveillance by police officers who stake out suspects and tail their cars…

[continues in the New York Times]

1st Circuit Appeals Court Upholds Right To Record Police In Public

JacobSloan — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:46:19 +0000

A resounding victory for the First Amendment. However, outside of the four-state jurisdiction of the First Circuit, the police state lives on. The Citizen Media Law Project gets giddy:

In the case of Glik v. Cunniffe, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has issued a unanimous opinion in support of the First Amendment right to record the actions of police in public.

For those of you not familiar with Simon Glik’s case, Glik was arrested on October 1, 2007, after openly using his cell phone to record three police officers arresting a suspect on Boston Common. In return for his efforts to record what he suspected might be police brutality — in a pattern that is now all too familiar — Glik was charged with criminal violation of the Massachusetts wiretap act, aiding the escape of a prisoner and disturbing the peace.

Unlike most arrestees, Glik, with the assistance of the ACLU, fought back against this treatment. Undeterred, in February 2010, Glik filed suit in federal court against the officers and the City of Boston under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act. Glik alleged that the police officers violated his First Amendment right to record police activity in public and that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him without probable cause to believe a crime had occurred.

The First Circuit ruled that “Glik was exercising clearly-established First Amendment rights in filiming the officers in a public space, and that his clearly-established Fourth Amendment rights were violated by his arrest without probable cause.”

Let’s see if we can find some more excellent quotations.

“[I]s there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.”

“Glik filmed the defendant police officers in the Boston Common, the oldest city park in the United States and the apotheosis of a public forum. In such traditional public spaces, the rights of the state to limit the exercise of First Amendment activity are ’sharply circumscribed.’”

“[A] citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.”

“Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’”

Man Faces 75 Years In Prison For Filming Police In Public

JacobSloan — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:37:23 +0000

Despite no criminal history, Michael Allison may spend the remainder of his life behind bars as punishment for recording his (unexciting) interactions with officers who stopped by his mother’s home, where he repairs old cars. (The concern was that some of the vehicles were unregistered.) After griping to the local police department about selective enforcement and presenting his recordings as evidence, Allison was charged with five counts of eavesdropping, a class one felony. Why jail him? To send the message that documenting the actions of public officials will not be tolerated.

Phone Snooping ‘Prevented Riots’

Pelliciari — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:25:45 +0000

Photo: Riemer Palstra (CC)

To tweet or not tweet where you’re rioting next? One option was to shut down social networks so that rioters couldn’t mass communicate. The other option was to allow them to tweet and text, then read their messages to find out what they’re planning next. The latter was able to prevent attacks on the Olympic site and London’s Oxford Street. BBC reports:

Police say they prevented attacks by rioters on the Olympic site and London’s Oxford Street after picking up intelligence on social networks.

Assistant Met Police Commissioner Lynne Owens told a committee of MPs officers learned of possible trouble via Twitter and Blackberry messenger.

But Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin said he had considered asking authorities to switch off social networks.

He said they provided intelligence but could also be misleading.

A number of politicians, media commentators and members of the police force have suggested that Twitter and Blackberry Messenger (BBM) had a role to play in the riots.

[Continues at BBC News]

NYPD Forms Social Media Unit To Monitor Facebook and Twitter

Join Or DIE — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 20:33:30 +0000

Rocco Parascandola reports in the NY Daily News:

The NYPD has formed a new unit to track troublemakers who announce plans or brag about their crimes on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. Newly named Assistant Commissioner Kevin O’Connor, one of the department’s online and gang gurus, has been put in charge of the new juvenile justice unit. He and his staff will mine social media, looking for info about troublesome house parties, gang showdowns and other potential mayhem, sources said.

The power of social media to empower both criminals and cops has been on full display in London this week, where riots and looting have been spreading dramatically. The rioters have been using Twitter and BlackBerry messages to choose targets for looting or burning – and to alert one another about police positions.

Media Roots Radio: Spying, Fear & Self-Censorship, Building Up Your Community

Abby Martin — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 20:23:36 +0000

Via Media Roots:

This discussion covers U.S. imperialism: wars, costs, media and government propaganda; the culture of fear, self-censorship and the erosion of privacy in the US; information as power and how communication is an important tool to strengthen and build communities.

The above timeline is interactive. Scroll through it to find out more about the show’s music and to resources mentioned during the broadcast. To see a larger version of the timeline with clickable resources go to the soundcloud link below the player. If you would like to directly download the podcast click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display. To hide the comments to enable easier rewind and fast forward, click on the icon on the very bottom right.

For more information go to www.MediaRoots.org

Our Hypocritical Surveillance State

aaroncynic — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:41:09 +0000

David Sirota writes at Salon.com:

With the Obama administration considering federal civil-rights investigations into police brutality, some local police departments have reacted not by cleaning up their act, but instead by intensifying their ongoing efforts to stop citizens from even documenting police misconduct in the first place.

Earlier this summer, Rochester authorities arrested Emily Good for videotaping police while on her own property — and then later used parking tickets to try to punish and intimidate those protesting Good’s arrest. In Las Vegas, it was even worse — the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday reported that a police not only arrested Mitchell Crooks but then beat him to a pulp — all for the “crime” of innocently videotaping them from his own driveway. Importantly, Crooks may have been specifically marked for police revenge after he had made headlines in 2002 by documenting Inglewood, California police beating a 16-year-old boy.

The hypocrisy of police trying to stop citizens from videotaping their public actions should be obvious in this, the Patriot Act Age. From warrantless wiretapping to data mining to the proliferation of red-light cameras, the Surveillance State is clearly on the march. And yet, when citizens occasionally exercise their constitutional rights and turn the camera on the Surveillance State itself, they increasingly face the threat of police retribution.

More: Salon.com

This Vehicle Registration Plate Surveillance System Is a Warning to Us All

Charles Farrier — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 06:11:23 +0000

No CCTV has teamed up with Privacy International and Big Brother Watch to challenge the legality of the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) [also known as ALPR in North America] camera network in the UK. A complaint has been sent to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) against a so-called ANPR “Ring of Steel” that is being constructed around the town of Royston in Hertfordshire — but for Royston read any town in the UK.

Background

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has constructed a network of cameras across the country without any public or parliamentary debate. These cameras record the number plate of each and every vehicle that passes, sometimes taking a photograph of the car and its occupants. The number plate is then compared to a “hotlist” of vehicles of interest, and whether or not the plate is on that list (ie a “hit”), all information gathered is stored for between two and five years. A Hertfordshire Police Authority report reveals the details of the data retention periods:

Currently number plate pictures are held for 2 years. Car pictures are held for 90 days. “Hits” information on text and number pictures are held for 5 years and car pictures are held for 2 years.

['Final report of the Topic Group on Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) Technology use within Hertfordshire Constabulary', p. 9]

The data collected from number plate cameras can be linked to multiple databases such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) database and the Motor Insurance Database Application System (MIDAS) which in turn can be used to identify the owner of the vehicle. The resulting database of vehicle movements can then be data-mined by the police to look for patterns or track individuals. The police are at great pains to state that they do not target law abiding motorists, but the system has the potential to be a mass surveillance tool and if the police are not interested in motorists who are not on hotlists then it begs the question why do they gather this information.

The National Policing Improvement Agency(NPIA)’s ANPR web page states:

At the end of March 2011, the NADC was receiving approximately 15 million reads per day, with over 11 billion vehicle sightings stored. This body of information on vehicle movements is key to the value of ANPR.

Data Mining

The data collected from ANPR cameras is stored in databases at the local police force level, known as Back Office Facility (BOF), and also in a national database called the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC). Up until now many campaign groups have focused their criticisms largely on the national database but the complaint by No CCTV and co also highlights issues with the local databases. It is the local BOF databases that can be used alongside data mining tools such as those developed by Northgate Public Services.

Our complaint quotes Northgate Public Services’ brochure The ANPR Intelligence Dividend, which states:

Northgate’s Advanced Data Miner enhancement for BOF 2.3 allows users (not just analysts) to access the 2% of reads that result in hits, but more importantly, to access the 98% that offer intelligent leads. A senior investigating officer on a major crime will be very interested in that 98% because they will be able to say “don’t tell me what I now, tell me what I don’t know”.

['The ANPR Intelligence Dividend — Northgate BOF 2.3 Advanced Data Miner', p. 1]

The original rhetoric used to sell number plate cameras was that they could “deny criminals the use of the road”, but the involvement of Northgate Public Services shows that the ANPR network is potentially about much more than spotting uninsured drivers and could easily be used as a mass surveillance tool.

More data-mining and data-sharing

The latest ACPO ANPR Strategy document points out that the police have aspirations to move beyond the current National ANPR Infrastructure (NAI), signaling that perhaps data sharing between force Back Office Facility systems may make the national data centre superfluous. The Strategy states:

The capabilities of the analytical tools provided by the current BOF product have been overtaken by the “out-of-the-box” functionality of other software products. For example, 37 forces have purchased i2 which offers considerably better tools and which could be used much more effectively than the BOF Data Miner;
Some forces are looking to be able to process more “reads” than the current BOF system can handle;
The thinking about the potential use and benefits of NADC has moved on and it is now clear that many of the original objectives of the NADC can be achieved more cheaply and effectively by other means (eg BOF to BOF exchange)

ACPO ‘ANPR Strategy for the Police Service — 2010-2013′, Appendix A — ‘Re-evaluation of the scope of the NAI’, p. 15]

Key Complaint Issues

The ICO complaint looks at several issues relating to Royston’s “ring of steel” including the lawfulness of the cameras, the vague and unproven specified purposes of the scheme, the retention of the information collected and whether such a mass surveillance system is acceptable or necessary in a democratic society. The ICO is the UK body responsible for administering the Data Protection Act.

The complaint points out that number plate cameras do not meet the lawfulness requirement that underpins the Data Protection Act on the grounds that:

ANPR has no statutory framework
if a statutory framework were introduced now this could not have the effect of legalising previous use of ANPR as legislation cannot be applied retrospectively
the specified purposes for the Royston ANPR cameras do not meet the “lawful justification or excuse” requirement of lawfulness
even with a statutory framework and/or a “lawful justification or excuse” the use of ANPR would still be unlawful as it constitutes a major assault on our common law foundations and the Rule of Law

['Royston ANPR "ring of steel"' Complaint, p. 4]

No place in a democracy

The national ANPR network is the biggest surveillance network that the public has never heard of. The complaint recounts some of the reasons given for a “ring of steel” around the small town of Royston. For instance Inspector Andy Piper of Hertfordshire Constabulary told a March 2010 North Hertfordshire District Council meeting that:

The cameras were needed for Royston as it was in a location of importance on the borders of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, with people from those counties and from Bedfordshire also travelling through the area.

[Minutes of Wednesday 17th March 2010 Royston and District Committee]

The complaint points out that:

It is hard to see how the fact that people from neighbouring counties might travel through an area would mean that it is necessary in a democratic society to record and store details of all such movements and retain personal data in the form of the car photo for between 90 days and five years and the license plate photo in a centralised database for between two and five years.

In the past totalitarian regimes instituted road blocks to check citizens’ papers at a series of internal borders. The police use of ANPR as a mass surveillance tool to record the movements of all cars and the justification given by Hertfordshire Constabulary for a ring of cameras around Royston such that “no vehicle could enter or leave Royston without being recorded by a camera” because the town is in “a location of importance on the borders of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire” is surely equivalent to an automated checkpoint system that cannot be necessary in a democratic society to meet any of the purposes set out by Hertfordshire Constabulary.

['Royston ANPR "ring of steel"' Complaint, p. 12]

Royston is a town with a warning

The idea of a surveillance “ring of steel” is not new — such systems have appeared in towns and cities from London to Bradford in the last decade. But what is new is the acceptability of the use of a phrase first coined to describe an extreme anti-terrorism measure which now simply constitutes standard police operations.

A casual internet search reveals that these schemes are popping up around the country, with no public debate about the use of such an indiscriminate and unwarranted mass surveillance system.

Last year a network of 169 ANPR cameras was created to encircle the Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook areas of Birmingham as part of “Project Champion, which was funded by the Association of Chief Police Officers Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee (ACPO — TAM). Thankfully a campaign run by Steve Jolly succeeded in getting the cameras removed. And active dissent is growing — in Northern Ireland a campaign Big Brother is Watching has been set up to fight the expanding network of ANPR cameras there, and there are plans to organise a public meeting and form a campaign in Royston.

We must not be complacent – only a well-informed, vigilant and active public can guard against the excesses of state power. The Royston complaint is only the first step — all those concerned by the national ANPR network must take part in the struggle ahead.

The full complaint can be downloaded here.

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