UK To Require Service Providers Monitor And Store Info On Users

from the more-data-isn't-good-data dept

Despite lots of criticism over the plan, UK politicians are moving forward with demands that online service providers store and monitor certain types of internet communications. While the government will be compensating service providers for some of this (your tax dollars at work), it's still a rather large burden on these service providers, and raises all sorts of privacy questions. Oh, and on top of all of that, we've already seen that law enforcement in the UK is struggling to cope with the fact that they're already inundated with too much data. They don't want more data, they need better data. Making service providers hang onto even more data doesn't help the situation, it just opens up the potential for serious privacy invasion.

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Convicted Stalker Was Approved By Lancaster To Manage Surveillance Cameras

from the oops dept

A few months back, we wrote about how the town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, not only had installed more surveillance cameras than many large cities, but was also allowing resident volunteers to control the cameras, which seemed to raise quite a few questions about the potential for abuse. The town insisted it was fine, because even though the screening process was "informal" it planned to "weed out voyeurs and anyone who might use the tapes for blackmail or other illegal activity." Apparently that weeding process needs a bit of work. Someone who prefers to be anonymous notes that it took a third party to notice that one of the residents approved to control the cameras had been convicted of stalking and harassment, as well as impersonating a public official, in the past. Oddly, the newspaper that wrote up the report still claims that the effort to screen the camera operators has been "a success." Oh really? The anonymous tipster also notes that the newspaper in which that article appeared just happens to have donated over $200,000 to the surveillance program while also giving the program a $2 million interest-free loan (and you thought all newspapers were broke), so perhaps it isn't the best judge of how well the program is going.

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The Return Of Cable Boxes That Spy On You

from the wave-to-the-camera dept

Remember the outcry last year when a Comcast exec mentioned in passing the idea of a set-top box that would have a built in camera to monitor who and how many people were actually watching the TV? The outcry over that forced Comcast to say that it wasn't really going to do that, but Broadband Reports points out that the technology behind such a plan is still moving forward -- and apparently cable companies are, indeed, interested in it. The idea is that it can show personalized ads and better target content. It's worth noting that the company behind the system, Prime Sense, seems to be trying to position it for less "scary" apps, such as being able to do "virtual touch" interfaces, so users could interact with menus on the screen without a remote (features found in some video games these days). Still, unless the end user is given total control over what info is recorded and where it's being sent, this technology seems like a non-starter.

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UK Wants Surveillance Cameras To Watch 20,000 Worst Families?

from the yikes dept

Slashdot points us to a story that sounds like it has to be a joke/satire, concerning a plan by the UK's Children's Secretary, Ed Balls, to spend £400 million to put 20,000 families (the worst families) under constant surveillance including 24-hour CCTV cameras in their homes, and private security guards checking on them from time to time. The cameras will supposedly be used to make sure kids go to bed on time and eat proper meals. Even in the UK, where surveillance cameras are even more popular than in the US, this seems quite extreme. Balls apparently explained:

"This is pretty tough and non-negotiable support for families to get to the root of the problem. There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need support."

I'm hopeful that someone in the UK can let us know if this is somehow an exaggeration of what's going on or if this is accurate, because it honestly seems difficult to believe.

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Tiburon Wants To Photograph Every Car Entering And Leaving... But Don't Worry About Your Privacy

from the well,-phew... dept

Tiburon is a nice little wealthy coastal town a little ways north from where I happen to live. It's a cozy place to go for a nice meal out or something -- usually somewhere I'll take visiting friends or relatives. It's certainly not a place where you'd expect there to be a big crime problem, and, indeed, the facts seem to bear that out. But, apparently, that's not stopping the local gov't from deciding to set up cameras to photograph and record every car entering and leaving the town. It will also record and use the license plate info. If that sounds like a bit of an invasion of privacy, well, the town's Manager, Peggy Curran, insists you're just paranoid:

"As long as you don't arrive in a stolen vehicle or go on a crime spree while you're here, your anonymity will be preserved. We don't care who you are and we don't know who you are."

Actually, if you didn't care, you wouldn't be recording the info, now would you?

This is really just a variation on the "if you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about" sort of claim. It's a fallacy that privacy is only about if you're doing something wrong. So, for folks up in Tiburon, who wants to follow Peggy Curran with a camera when she's walking around? As long as she doesn't do anything illegal, her anonymity will be preserved. No one cares who she is. They would just be making sure she doesn't go on a crime spree or steal a car. By her own logic, that's perfectly reasonable, right?

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Will France's Three Strikes Law Also Allow Gov't Email Surveillance?

from the that-doesn't-seem-good dept

With the effort underway to have Sarkozy's new "three strikes" law approved in France, much of the focus has been on the slightly ridiculous five minute rule it gives to judges reviewing charges of copyright infringement online. An anonymous reader points us to a much more worrisome issue: that the law appears to sneak in provisions that allow for email surveillance by the government. The Senator pushing the law seems to see no problem at all with this, suggesting that it's fine to read through the emails of anyone "stealing intellectual property." Privacy rights apparently mean little to some in France.

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Town Outsources Video Camera Surveillance To Resident Volunteers?

from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept

Talk about a bad idea in action. We've seen plenty of stories about the growing "surveillance" society that we live in these days -- with cc cameras showing up pretty much everywhere in large cities. But who watches the cameras? Well, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, apparently the answer is anyone who volunteers to do so. First, the city decided to install a ton of cameras -- more than either San Francisco or Boston, despite a massive difference in size. Then, recognizing how difficult it is to monitor everything, the city turned over the managing of the cameras to a private entity who is employing an army of volunteers to not just watch, but control the cameras, and having them "report" any suspicious activities. The article notes that studies have shown such cameras may be limited in their effectiveness (there's no evidence of a decrease in violent crime from them, but some evidence of a decrease in "property" crime).

Still what's really bizarre is allowing unpaid volunteers to man the cameras -- with even the officials from the city admitting that training for the camera operators has been "informal," but that they try to "weed out voyeurs and anyone who might use the tapes for blackmail or other illegal activity." Well, phew. Doesn't that make you feel more comfortable? And then there's this lovely quote from a local business owner who likes the program: "There's nothing wrong with instilling fear." Er... actually, there are lots of things wrong with it...

This actually reminds me a bit of Jay Walker's (of Priceline fame) old idea of allowing individuals at home to monitor secure locations via video streams to their desktop. The idea there was quite a bit different though. It wasn't to watch over people wandering around a downtown area, but to put the cameras on secure areas where no one should ever be -- and the idea was that multiple people would all have the same boring screens up at the same time, and if suddenly someone did show up, hopefully people would notice it and hit the "someone's there" button, to alert security. That idea didn't go very far, but at least it was limited to areas where there weren't any privacy issues. The Lancaster plan, on the other hand, is just scary.

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Canadian Politicians Want To Pass Internet Snooping Legislation

from the privacy-has-no-meaning dept

Well, it appears Canada is the latest country to propose overly broad internet snooping legislation. The proposed legislation would require ISPs to hand over all sorts of info to the police on request (without any court oversight -- think that won't get abused?). More importantly, it would require ISPs to install monitoring and surveillance equipment on their network, such that police could "tap" into any form of internet communication, including text, voice and video. This part is a little unclear, actually. The article linked above says that it would require the ability to tap such real-time communications, but Michael Geist notes that the government says it won't cover the actual content of the communication, but just the data about it (who is communicating with whom and how). That's similar to laws that have been passed elsewhere, though no less troubling. If this actually gets anywhere (a big question), it should probably boost the market for encryption technologies, yet again.

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British Cops Creating Nationwide License-Plate Surveillance System

from the orwellian dept

Britain is working hard to maintain its place as a leading surveillance society. Building on the massive "success" of its widespread use of CCTV cameras, police are now installing a system that will use the cameras to track and log car journeys. CCTV cameras across the UK are being added to the system, which automatically recognizes and stores license plate numbers, then adds them, and the location in which they were spotted, to a central database. Police, of course, say the system's great at reducing and solving crime, and one police bigwig says that arrests are up 40% in his area since cops started using the system. But just because arrests have increased, it doesn't necessarily mean crime has been reduced. He further defends the system by saying "innocent people have nothing to fear from the way we use it" -- which all too often is used as an attempt to justify pretty nasty governmental intrusions on privacy and liberty. This system sounds like another part of Britain's attempt to record the lives of its subjects in databases, alongside its database of info on every child in the country, and details of all the internet and phone traffic there. Will people there get up in arms over all this government surveillance, or are they saving their ire only for the likes of Google Street View?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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UK Police Learn That More Surveillance Data Doesn't Mean Better Surveillance Data

from the swamped-by-data dept

Way back in 2002, we wrote that with all the efforts (mostly in the UK) to try to allow law enforcement officials to collect more and more surveillance data that more data doesn't mean better data, and in fact, all that data often makes it harder to find the right or necessary data. The trick is to be smarter about surveillance, not just focus on getting more. It appears that police in the UK are finally learning this lesson. Last month, we saw how all that data was leading to mistakes as patterns were being spotted that weren't there. And, now, UK police are discovering that they're missing important information and clues because they're just overwhelmed by garbage data. Of course, this won't stop the increasing collection of data, because no one seems to want to admit that too much data helps bury the needles deeper in the haystack.

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Another Court Says Police Don't Violate The Law In Putting A GPS Device On Your Car

from the tracking-you-in-public? dept

We first discussed this issue way back in 2003, wondering whether it was really a violation of privacy for police to put a GPS tracking device on a suspect's car. In 2005, a court said it was perfectly legal, though there were concerns about what this meant. We're seeing the same concerns as another court has ruled the same way. The reasoning and the logic is effectively the same: if you are traveling on public roads, anyone could (theoretically) drive behind you and see where you are going -- even without a warrant. So is it really a violation of privacy if that tracking is done by a little black box attached to your car instead of a big black box with four wheels?

Of course, the flipside to that, is that if you are driving you can also see (for the most part) if there is another car following you and that other car cannot follow you onto private property that you own. A hidden GPS device is quite different on those points. So while the courts seem to be coming down on the side of this not being a violation of privacy, I can definitely see where privacy advocates are troubled by these rulings. The fact that they effectively suggest the police can simply put a hidden GPS device on any car for no reason at all raises plenty of questions -- especially in an era when information can and is regularly abused.

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No Surprise Here: NSA Abused Surveillance Powers

from the but-of-course-they-did dept

This will comes as little surprise to most people, but it turns out that the NSA has been abusing its surveillance powers, collecting significantly more information than they are allowed to by Congress. Of course, we got a hint of this last year when an NSA whistleblower revealed how the NSA regularly tracked information it wasn't supposed to be tracking. And, of course, we've yet to see a secretive gov't program yet that hasn't been abused in some way. National Security Letters? FBI abused it. Warrantless wiretapping? Abused. So we should certainly be questioning why the administration is claiming that there shouldn't be oversight over any such programs, when history has shown that they have been, and will continue to be, abused.

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How To Make CCTV Cameras Even More Awesome: Put 'Em On Wheels

from the we're-watching-you dept

The UK has taken great strides towards being one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, and cops in Manchester are doing their part by attaching CCTV cameras to Smart cars (via Boing Boing). They deploy the vehicles at intersections to catch distracted drivers, they claim, filming cars as they pass by, then reviewing the footage later to determine if drivers are talking on mobile phones, putting on makeup, or performing other distracting activities. Offending drivers then get a letter in the mail, usually with a fine. Police say the measures "are reasonable, proportionate and fair in light of the fact that we are trying to save lives." Is it that likely the cameras will actually save lives? The safety argument when applied to traffic cameras generally seems suspect, and so if that goal's out of reach, how reasonable is the surveillance?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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British Goverment Wants To Know Who Your Facebook Friends Are

from the big-brother-would-like-to-add-you dept

Law enforcement and security bodies around the world are on a massive push to expand data-retention laws, trying to force ISPs and lots of other companies to track and store data on their customers' behavior in the name of public safety, crime prevention and investigation. While in some places, like Germany, there's been some pushback, other places, like the UK are moving full speed ahead. Earlier this year, rules went into place forcing ISPs to keep records on all their users' email, and now, the government wants to maintain a database of social networking site users' contacts. As if that's not bad enough, the BBC says it's part of a plan to keep a central database of "of all phone calls, e-mails and websites visited." As a spokesperson for a privacy group notes, it's fine for law enforcement to monitor the online activity of criminal suspects, but keeping tabs on an entire country's communications in a government database would, in effect, consider the entire British population suspects, and undermine some fairly fundamental freedoms of its society -- and not to mention it's probably illegal, like an estimated 25 percent of all British government databases. What's particularly galling about these sorts of plans isn't just that they're anathema to the idea of freedom, but that if they're put into place, they really won't do any good. Law-enforcement types act as if having this data will be a magic bullet, but simply increasing the volume of retained data -- then having to mine through it -- will only make their jobs more difficult.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Does 'Cyber-Security' Mean More NSA Dragnet Surveillance?

from the fox-guarding-the-henhouse dept

As network infrastructure has become an increasingly important part of our economy, there's been growing concern about the problems of cybersecurity. So far, the key debate is over whether the government should be involved in helping the private sector secure its networks or should focus on government networks. But another important question is which part of the government should be in charge of cyber-security. We're in the midst of a bureaucratic turf war between the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency over who will be in charge of government cybersecurity policy. The NSA's head, Keith Alexander, is pushing the theory that cyber-security is a "national security issue," and that therefore an intelligence agency like the NSA ought to be in charge of it.

The problem with this is that the NSA has a peculiar definition of cyber-security. When most of us talk about cyber-security, we mean securing our communications against intrusion by third parties, including the government. Yet the NSA has made no secret of its belief that "cyber security" means being able to spy on people more easily. Moreover, as Amit Yoran, former head of the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division, points out, the NSA's penchant for secrecy, and concomitant lack of transparency, will be counterproductive in the effort to secure ordinary commercial networks. Therefore, the fight between DHS and the NSA is more than just a bureaucratic squabble. There's plenty to criticize about the Department of Homeland Security, and reasons to doubt whether they should be helping to secure private sector networks at all. But at least DHS is relatively transparent, and (as far as we know) doesn't engage in the kind of indiscriminate, warrantless wiretapping for which the NSA has become notorious.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Chicago Rushes Head First Into 'Limitless' Surveillance

from the but-will-they-be-able-to-spot-political-corruption? dept

Governments around the world are finding reasons to install surveillance cameras, but few are keeping account of the costs and benefits that come from those CCTV systems. Chicago, in its bid to follow in China's steps as host of the Olympics, is the most recent one to do so. By spending millions of dollars, Chicago aims to have a camera "on every corner" in preparation for the 2016 Summer Games that it hopes to host. But they are doing so without thoughtful implementation or an understanding of the realities of around-the-clock government surveillance.

Under the auspices of fighting crime and preventing terrorism, Chicago's Police Superintendent Jody Weis is hyping CCTV as having "limitless" crime-fighting potential. The reality, as is evident to anyone who has actually researched this type of thing, is that studies have shown municipal surveillance cameras to have little to no positive effect on crime. Further, London is widely known to have the most extensive CCTV network in the world, but that served as little deterrent to the terrorists of July 2005. But instead of bringing this up, the Sun-Times and Chicago officials point to a test in which "live video was used to catch a petty thief in the act of sticking his hand in a Salvation Army kettle outside Macy's State Street." Given the cost in both dollars and civil liberties, it is hard to justify catching petty criminals stealing some coins from charity.

But according to another city official, "civil libertarians have nothing to fear" from the blanket surveillance system because police operating the pan-and-tilt CCTV cameras see only what you would see if you were sitting on a park bench in front of that building." The difference, of course, is that by extending government power to all facets of public life, you extend the asymmetry of power between citizens and government (especially the corrupt ones for which Illinois is known). Indeed, we have already seen examples of "park bench" type cameras being abused by government.

What Chicago needs is an honest assessment of surveillance and a commitment to real police work, not hyped technology. If they want to follow in China's footsteps, it would be best to avoid the Big Brother ones.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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British Cops Try To Force CCTV On Pub Owner

from the surveillance-society dept

The use of CCTV continues to grow in the UK as police and intelligence agencies seek to cover ever-larger areas of the country with security cameras in an attempt to prevent and solve crime. In many cases, the cameras are covering public areas, but one pub owner in London says that police are trying to force him to install CCTV cameras in his business -- and turn footage over to them upon demand -- as a condition of his operating license. The man bought an existing pub, and the change of ownership required him to apply for a new license. He alleges local police said they wouldn't oppose the new license, as long as he installed a CCTV system that captured images of every person that came into his pub, and made that footage freely available to them as part of a new blanket policy covering particular parts of London. The office of the British Information Commissioner took exception to the plan, saying this sort of blanket policy for new license holders raised serious privacy concerns, and could fall foul of data protection rules. It finally looks like there's some significant pushback against the UK's growing surveillance society, both from the Information Commissioner, but also in the form of a recent report from the House of Lords, saying the country's 4 million and counting CCTV cameras were undermining personal freedom and privacy, which are vital to democracy.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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'Smart' CCTV Supposedly Recognizes Crime

from the don't-look-suspicious-in-public dept

A city in England has installed a "smart CCTV" system, which is claimed to be able to detect certain behavior or incidents (via The Register) and to alert camera operators to follow up. The system is supposed to give operators the ability to monitor large numbers of cameras at once, more than they can do just by watching TV screens. This type of technology has been around for a little while, but doesn't seem to have set the world alight just yet. It's doubtful that these devices will actually make any significant reduction in crime (perhaps predicting and preventing crime comes in version 2.0), and will serve merely as an excuse to blanket more and more areas with CCTV coverage, putting wider and wider swathes of people's lives under surveillance.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Toronto Removes Surveillance Cameras Due To Human Respect... Plans To Disrespect Humans Somewhere Else

from the r-e-s-p-e-c-t dept

These days, it's become quite common to see surveillance cameras pretty much all over in any major downtown metropolitan area. There have been plenty of protests against such cameras, but it hasn't done much to stop them from spreading. However, Rob Hyndman points us to the news that Toronto has agreed to remove some controversial surveillance cameras that were placed at an intersection with a high crime rate. People protested over the potential for their privacy to be violated, and worried that all it would do is shift crime to neighboring streets. Six months of such protests have convinced the police to remove the cameras, noting that the decision was partly due to "human respect." Of course, that doesn't explain the next statement: "The supervisor also indicated that the cameras will be used elsewhere in the city." So, apparently, they feel perfectly fine disrespecting humans elsewhere.

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UK Phone Buyers: Must Show Passport & Register In National Database

from the surveillance-state dept

It appears that the UK is really moving towards a total surveillance state. Along with plans that we've already discussed to monitor all communications, it appears that you may not be able to buy a mobile phone without a passport and without registering your information in a national database. The reasoning, not surprisingly, is to try to keep tabs on terrorists who have been using prepaid phones that can't be traced easily back to their owners. Of course, what this really will do is create a much bigger nuisance for most (non-terrorist) residents, opening up potential privacy breaches all while doing almost nothing to slow down terrorist activity. That's because it won't be that difficult for terrorists to find other means of communication that don't require registration. It's really a shame to see countries give up the freedoms that made them great.

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