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Posts with tag surveillance

US Government May Be Tracking You With Your Cell Phone

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 2nd 2008 at 10:48AMBreaking News



It was disturbing enough when the government was just listening in. Now privacy advocates are afraid the government may be tracking our every move through our cell phones. In November of 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to find out how widespread such tracking is. The DOJ didn't hand over the data, so now the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are taking the DOJ to court to force it to comply with the request.

The ACLU was spurred into action following a blog post in The New York Times in which some courts expressed discomfort with the government's use of cell phone tracking data without probable cause.

How often, and in what situations, the government has utilized this tool is not yet known, but following revelations that the domestic wiretapping was much more widespread than the Bush administration claimed, we simply can't take any chances. [Source: NY Times]
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Britain's Surveillance Cameras Get Ears and Brains

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jun 29th 2008 at 5:15PM

Britain's Surveillance Cameras Get Ears and BrainsIt was less than a year ago that closed circuit television (CCTV) security cameras in the UK were given the ability to hear. Now, in some places, those cameras are getting a major upgrade in the form of an artificial intelligence program that law enforcement officials hope will eventually be able to identify and locate specific sounds. The current generation of software is sophisticated enough for complex image recognition -- it can even identify if a car antenna is up or not.

The next step for the software is to learn to identify the waveforms of sounds, such as a car window being broken. The hope is that the camera will then be able to locate the sound, pivot to spot its origin, and alert the camera's operator. As the software "hears" more it will learn to identify more sounds.

Big Brother isn't just watching anymore, he's listening and learning. [Source: BBC]
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U.S. Army Developing Tiny, Flying Spy-Bat

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 20th 2008 at 5:10PM

Army Developing Tiny Spy-Bat
Sure, Batman is cool, but can he scavenge his environment for energy? Can he recharge his batteries with wind, sunlight, or even vibrations? Didn't think so. Can Batman fly silently through the air for an almost indefinite period of time? Of course not -- he can't even fly.

Okay, so when it comes to tasks like taking out bad guys, Batman still has the edge on "The Bat," a new flying contraption being developed at the Center for Objective Microelectronics and Biomimetic Advanced Technology (COM-BAT) at the University of Michigan (U-M). Still, this six-inch spy-plane has plenty of tricks up its sleeve. The Bat, in addition to scavenging for power, will also come equipped with a bevy of sensors. Stereoscopic cameras and microphones will allow for detailed reconnaissance, while other sensors will detect radiation and airborne poisons.

Currently, the Bat is just a concept, but the U.S. Army has awarded a five year $10 million grant to the College of Engineering at U-M to bring this vision to life. This highly portable and persistent surveillance vehicle will extend soldiers senses and provide a tactical advantage to those in urban environments, where traditional spy-planes are ineffective.

From Engadget

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Camera Can See Through Clothes at 80 Feet

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 10th 2008 at 3:10PM

Camera Can See Through Clothes at 80 FeetWe're sure you remember being eight years old and wishing you had X-ray vision or X-ray glasses so that you could see through peoples clothes. Then you found out that X-rays would just let you see bone, and not breasts. It turns out we were using the wrong rays.

T-rays, or terahertz radiation, are a form of electro-magnetic radiation given off in low levels by all people and objects. The technology behind the ThruVision camera was originally developed for peering through dusts and clouds in space. But researchers soon discovered you could also peek through clothes with the technology, opening up all sorts of security-use possibilities.

But don't get too scared, the camera doesn't reveal anatomic details. Instead, explosives, weapons and drugs will appear as shapes against a person's silhouette. The camera is able to detect T-waves at up to 80 feet away, and doesn't emit harmful radiation like an X-ray camera does.

Expect these devices to become common place in airports, train stations, and at sporting events in the near future.

From The BBC and The Times Online

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National Intelligence Director Wants Access to All Internet Communications

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jan 18th 2008 at 10:09AM

Director of National Intelligence Wants to Access to EVERYTHING on the NetIn this week's issue of the New Yorker, there is a profile of the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell (pictured), that reveals some interesting information about his desires to "listen in" on Internet communications in order to protect America's cyberspace. According to McConnell, in order to properly protect the United State's electronic interests the government needs to be able to read all information crossing the Internet.

The measures will be hard sell to both the Congress and the American people. Following the controversy surrounding the questionably legal NSA wiretaps, citizens and legislators have become far more aware of the government's ability to pry and abuse domestic intelligence gathering, which has also made us more protective of our privacy.

Will McConnell get the broad reaching powers he wants to scan through your E-mails to Aunt Dolly asking for pictures of the new twins? Probably not, but the fact that he would even openly pursue such powers is a somewhat frightening prospect.

From Ars Technica

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FBI Wiretap Shut Off Due to Late Payment of Phone Bill

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jan 14th 2008 at 10:10AM

Late Phone Bills Cost the FBI Evidence
Well, apparently you can put a price on freedom. The same telephone companies that had no problem providing the government with unfettered access to voice and data passing over its networks in a series of questionably legal wiretaps will apparently tell the FBI no when it doesn't pay its bill on time.

An international wiretap was shut off by an unnamed company due to a delinquent bill, and may have resulted in the loss of evidence. This is not the first time the FBI has suffered interruptions in its surveillance due to late payments.

Two things make this story incredibly disturbing. The first is that the FBI, our nation's premier law enforcement organization, is so disorganized that it can't pay it sphone bills on time. And the second is that it took a late phone bill, not something like, say, the Constitution, for a phone company to finally deny the government a wiretap.

From Textually

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Public Audio Surveillance Hits London

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 23rd 2007 at 7:25AM

London Police Love Their Surveillance
Everyday this Big Brother stuff gets scarier and scarier. Pretty soon the only place you'll be safe is in your own home, in your bed room, under the blanket. We posted before about experts declaring that by 2057 there will be roughly one million sensors and recorders for every U.K. resident. It looks like London is wasting no time rushing towards that goal.

We're well aware of the security cameras already all over the city, but it looks like Londoners will also have to brace themselves for audio surveillance, too. In order to break up gangs, London police have begun a program using audio bugs placed in public places.

Currently, the listening devices have only been deployed in Lambeth, in south London, where youth gangs are particularly prevalent, and where gun crime has risen 10 percent in the last six months. The hope is that the intelligence gathered will help authorities identify key figures in the tight-knit, but loosely organized groups, which will better allow police to disrupt their activities.

Public eavesdropping, sans warrants, by law enforcement is sure to rankle some privacy advocates. Authorities are hoping a drop in crime will quell the inevitable uproar. We shall see.

Would you approve of audio eavesdropping if it reduced crime in your area?

From The BBC

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New Technology Detects Terrorists Before They Strike

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 9th 2007 at 8:31AM

Big Brother Wants to Detect Terrorists Before They Strike

All your Big Brother nightmares are about to come true, thanks to an $800,000 award from the Nation Science Foundation. The money is funding computer and behavioral scientists at the University of Buffalo to work on a tracking system that will allow authorities to score an individuals likeliness to commit a terrorist act.

Sound creepy? Well, it gets even better. The system works by monitoring the faces, voices, bodies, and other biometrical data of people while they're being interviewed on video (so make sure you don't get pulled over and interrogated in some special room). Venu Govindaraju, professor of computer science and engineering, says "The goal is to identify the perpetrator in a security setting before he or she has the chance to carry out the attack." We guess innocent until proven guilty is a quaint notion in a post 9/11 world.

The system will also feature the ability to learn over time from interviews with subjects, meaning that having an off day could raise your "malfeasance" score. We're not even sure how to react to this sort of news any more except to remind everyone of Blackstone's formulation, very much at the heart of our legal system -- "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

From Engadget

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Google Gets Woman Out of $600 Tow Fee

by Tom Conlon, posted Sep 27th 2007 at 10:12AM

Google Gets Woman Out of $600 Tow Fee
Consumer advocacy site The Consumerist has spotted a story out of Fort Worth, Texas of a woman using the power of Google to fight an illegal tow. Dottie Kitchen had her ride jacked by a local tow company (for reasons not explained) and was slammed with a stiff $600 fine. After forking over the cash to free up her wheels, Dottie took to Google to do some recon on Preferred Auto Adjusters -- the company that had been holding her car for ransom. As it turns out, the tow shop had had its license revoked during the time Dottie's car had been towed. Though the license was reinstated shortly after, Dottie realized her car had been towed illegally. She got her money back, and now Preferred could be in the hole for as much as $30,000 in fines for illegally towing Dottie and several others during that time it didn't have a license.

Who needs superheroes these days when we've got Google?

From The Consumerist

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Surveillance Cams Don't Reduce Crime, Study Finds

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Sep 21st 2007 at 1:30PM

Surveillance Cameras Not Effective at Solving CrimesStatistics obtained by the British Liberal Democrats Party through the Freedom of Information Act (yes, they have one, too) show that even with over 10,000 cameras in various London boroughs, 80 percent of all crimes still go unsolved. In fact, when broken down by borough, there is no correlation between the number of cameras and the percent of crimes solved.

  • There are now 10,524 CCTV cameras in 32 London boroughs funded with Home Office grants totaling about £200million.
  • Hackney has the most cameras -- 1,484 -- and has a better-than-average "clear up rate" of 22.2 per cent.
  • Wandsworth has 993 cameras, Tower Hamlets, 824, Greenwich, 747 and Lewisham 730, but police in all four boroughs fail to reach the average 21 percent clear-up rate.
  • By contrast, boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea, Sutton and Waltham Forest have fewer than 100 cameras each, yet they still have clear-up rates of around 20 per cent.
  • Police in Sutton have one of the highest clear-ups with 25 per cent.
  • Brent police have the highest clear-up rate, with 25.9 per cent of crimes solved in 2006-07, even though the borough has only 164 cameras.

After 10 years and £200 million of tax payer money, groups like the criminal justice charity Narco are questioning whether the money would have been better spent on more street lights, which can cut crime by up to 20 percent.

Even the scariest of stories about government and police surveillance usually end with the good guys catching the bad guys, which makes the "Big Brother" theories a little less ominous. We don't mean to burst your bubble or anything, but as this story shows, that doesn't always happen.

From thisislondon

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Sneak Peek at Next-Generation Surveillance

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Sep 17th 2007 at 5:27PM

More New Surveillance Technologies on the WayBBC corespondent Humphrey Hawksley recently got up-close and personal with Big Brother, or rather the people developing the next generation of surveillance technology.

Hawksley's first visit was with a team of researchers at Maryland University. They've developed a technology that can pick individuals out of a crowd based on the way they walk. His second visit was with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (the guys who invented the Internet), which is working on projects as widely diverse as instant language translation and an unmanned surveillance plane that could stay up in the air for as long as five years at a clip. Finally, Hawksley gets a sneak peek at some amazing surveillance technology that uses radio signals to see through walls.

While all of this is a glimpse into the, perhaps, scary future, U.S. cities such as Chicago and New York City are already beginning to test systems similar to London's, which allows the 24/7 monitoring of many city streets. Post-9/11, surveillance in one form or another is a necessary evil that, for the most part, the public seems to be OK with. According to recent polls in both the U.S. and Britain, about 75 percent of citizens want more surveillance, not less.

We agree, but only to a point. After all, it's all fun and games until you're awoken out of bed every morning by the giant face on the screen above your cot.

From BBC

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Surveillance Devices to Eventually Record Entire Lives

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 30th 2007 at 4:33PM

Surveillance Devices to Eventually Record Entire LivesTrue Big Brother 24/7, 365 surveillance is not here just yet, but if Martin Sadler, a senior scientist at Hewlett Packard is to be believed, it's not too far off. By 2057, he says there will be roughly one million sensors and recorders for every U.K. resident. Sadler has warned that the amount of information being collected from such a network of devices will lead to important ethical dilemmas.

Though New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg recently suggested a video surveillance program for downtown Manhattan, public surveillance is much more prevalent in the U.K. than it is here in the states. Its effectiveness as an anti-terror tool was most famously demonstrated in 2005 in the wake of the London bus bombings when video of the suspects was immediately made available to the media.

Today, the average Londoner is captured on surveillance at least 300 times a day, a number that's on the rise. Many uses of the technology are "innocent and harmless," but the shear wealth of information being collected may lead to dangers that we're only now beginning to understand. Sadler's eerie vision of the future isn't limited to one in which advertisements are targeted at people based on where they were earlier in the day -- though, that will certainly happen. He envisions a future in which there are sensors so small, they'll be able to permeate our bodies to collect personal data.

Sadler says, "We have some real choices that we can make over the next few years about how much we benefit from all this information ... or how much it presents some sort of dark future for us." As we recently reported, the South Koreans are currently conducting a similar self-audit to determine the future dangers of developing technology, only the Koreans are focused on robots instead of surveillance.

From The BBC

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Caught On Tape: UPS Guy Hurls Package

by Tom Conlon, posted Aug 17th 2007 at 12:06PM


When this video's owner set up surveillance video cameras up around his house, he probably thought he'd catch a couple of kids cutting through his yard, someone stealing his paper or maybe the neighbor's dog using his lawn as a urinal. Instead, he struck gold with tape of a lazy UPS guy hurling a package at the front door from a neighboring yard. Hello, Customer Service complaint! Remember that the next time you send anything that isn't made by NERF.

And for your Friday viewing enjoyment, here are some more videos of employees behaving badly.

Office Drone Freaks Out on Computer (oldie buy a goodie)

Janitor Caught Slacking on the Job

Wendy's Manager Caught Making Out With Employee

RadioShack Employee's Lewd Behavior

Cleaning Dude Steals From Worker's Purse

From Consumerist

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Cell Phone Ban for Terror Suspects?

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 10th 2007 at 12:41PM

Germany's interior minister, Wolfgang Schauble, is taking some heat after he made comments on Sunday suggesting that Germany institute a secret and warrant-less information-gathering program similar to the one President Bush set up in the United States that has become the center of controversy.

Schauble was lambasted further for suggesting that terrorism suspects should be subject to the death penalty. Capital punishment has been abolished in all of Europe, except for Belarus, and it is pretty much political suicide to suggest reinstating it.

He continued to dig himself into a hole by suggesting increased public surveillance similar to the type used in London (and soon, possibly, New York City), as well as declaring that terror suspects should be banned from using cell phones.

The last declaration is particularly confusing. If a person is a serious target in a terrorism case, wouldn't he or she be in jail? Maybe in Germany things are a bit different, but in the U.S., no prisoner is allowed a cell phone. Secondly, it would be all but unenforceable. Prepaid phones that require no contract would easily escape detection.


From Textually.org and Earth Times

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Next-Gen Lip Reading

by Tim Stevens, posted Apr 27th 2007 at 11:30AM

Next-Gen Lip Reading
British researcher Richard Harvey of the University of East Anglia in Norwich is working on new surveillance technology that will use cameras to read lips and turn conversations into readable text. The goal is to have systems in such places as airports that monitor lips for certain keywords like, say, "bomb," and then alert authorities via text message. Though automated lip-reading technologies do currently exist, they can only understand a maximum of 30 words or phrases at best, at an accuracy rate of 50 percent.

If, to civil rights advocates, the installation of government-operated video cameras in public places was already a black eye on the face of privacy, then surely this is a sucker-punch straight to the gut. Despite those concerns, however, we're excited about the potential consumer applications this technology might someday have, like being able to dictate text messages into a camera phone.

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From Textually
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