statism watch

This appears to be based on the OpenID platform.

Related: China launches interview requirement, licensing for personal websites | UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, ‘driver’s license’ for Web users | Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned | Security boss calls for end to net anonymity | First it’s ‘For the Children’: Microsoft working to ID you online

Joseph Menn, Financial Times
June 26, 2010

The White House set out a sweeping strategy to make online transactions more secure on Friday. The move is the most ambitious initiative to emerge from a cybersecurity policy intended to blunt the growing menace of online crime.

Howard Schmidt, president Barack Obama’s cybersecurity co-ordinator, who took up his duties in early 2010, released the strategy paper after 12 months of discussions led by the National Security Council and involving scores of private sector groups, critical infrastructure owners and privacy advocates.

The strategy seeks the creation of a system for identity management that would allow citizens to use additional authentication techniques, such as physical tokens or modules on mobile phones, to verify who they are before buying things online or accessing such sensitive information as health or banking records.

A set of standards would let multiple vendors offer authentication services, while people whose identities have been verified would be able to move from website to website without resubmitting information.

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Gotcha. You won’t experience this problem with non-proprietary, open source products. Users stuck with iPhones may wish to disable location services in protest against this move.

Related: Feds push for tracking cell phones | Calgary’s 911 centre to track cellphone callers to within meters | GPS tracking concerns Winnipeg city workers | Surveillance Shocker: Sprint Received 8 MILLION Law Enforcement Requests for GPS Location Data in the Past Year | Regulator will force cellphone companies to adopt GPS tracking system | Mobile phones to track carbon footprint using GPS | Global ‘Intelligent Transport’ initiative comes to your cellphone: Location data used to track traffic flow | Mobile Phone Users Secretly Tracked for Behaviorist Study

John Byrne, The Raw Story
June 22, 2010

The world’s largest technology company by market capitalization may soon rival the National Security Agency in its ability to track Americans using their cell phones.

Apple Inc. is now tracking the “precise,” “real-time geographic location” of iPhones, iPads and Macintosh computers — and has unwittingly gotten its customers to sign off on their being tracked by making a little-noticed modification to the language in its apps store.

The company’s “partners and licensees” will now be able to collect and store data about your location.

Apple’s new privacy policy comes in the wake of a new “Find my iPhone” app the company approved which allows users to recover their lost phones using AT&T’s location services.

Tracking digital consumers by location is nothing new. Websites routinely receive information about their users’ locations in order to serve relevant advertising. For example, Raw Story’s ad providers use information provided by readers’ Internet service providers to serve ads appropriate to the region in which they’re being read — for example, you might get an ad for a political campaign in your area. You can opt-out here.)

But Apple’s new terms and conditions allow it to store information about users’ exact locations, a level of privacy intrusion not heretofore seen. Websites can tell users’ locations down to a zip code, generally speaking, but they neither store nor track exact locations — which Apple and AT&T can do using triangulation down to about ten feet.

(AT&T, if you remember, was a participant in the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, which allows the US government to track the phone numbers called by its citizens abroad. A whistleblower said that AT&T in fact had its own spy room in San Francisco for the government.)

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Wardriving, for those who may not know, is the practice of going around storing Wifi network info for later exploitation – precisely what Google was doing. And the reason they give?

The company says it uses the location of Wi-Fi networks to enhance location-based services on smartphones.

It’s just to help track your cellphone for location-based services. Oh, well, that’s okay then.

Related: Google, NSA may team up to probe cyberattacks | Google Street View goes live in Canadian cities | Google PowerMeter to track home energy usage in Toronto test drive | Britons block Google Street View van | Google Street View comes to Canada | Google Street View could care less about your privacy

Diane Bartz, Reuters
June 21, 2010

WASHINGTON — Connecticut’s attorney general will lead a multi-state probe of whether Google Inc. broke laws when it siphoned personal data off wireless networks around the world, which the Internet search leader has said was inadvertent.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said on Monday more than 30 states participated in a recent conference call on the issue. He said consumers have a right to know what information was collected, and whether U.S. states need to alter procedures to guard against such leaks in future.

Shares in Google slid 1.4% to US$492.81 in a relatively flat market.

In May, Google said its cars photographing streets around the world have for years accidentally collected personal data — which a security expert said at the time could have included email messages and passwords — sent by consumers over wireless networks.

“My office will lead a multi-state investigation — expected to involve a significant number of states — into Google’s deeply disturbing invasion of personal privacy,” Mr. Blumenthal said in a statement.

“Consumers have a right and a need to know what personal information — which could include emails, Web browsing and passwords — Google may have collected, how and why.”

Mr. Blumenthal said Google has cooperated but “its response so far raises as many questions as it answers.”

“Our investigation will consider whether laws may have been broken and whether changes to state and federal statutes may be necessary,” he said.

The revelation marked the latest development in a privacy controversy surrounding Google. The company already faces an informal investigation over the matter by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, a variety of probes overseas, and class action lawsuits.

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Spy blimps – coming soon to a major domestic event near you. Like the Indy race.

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Noah Schactman, Wired.com
June 17, 2010

God smiles when the Army spends a half-billion dollars on spy blimps the size of a football field.

I believe that’s the message Northrop Grumman is trying to convey in this illustration accompanying the company’s announcement of a $517 million, five-year contract to build three combat airships for the military.

The military already employs a fleet of blimps to look for enemies and relay communications. But none of them are as big, as high-flying, or as far-seeing as this Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, or LEMV. It’s supposed to float at 20,000 feet for up to three weeks at a time, snooping on absolutely everything below with a variety of sensors.

“Basically what we see it as is an unblinking eye,” LEMV project manager Marty Sargent tells Inside Defense.

Sargent figures it would take as many as 12 of the military’s advanced Reaper surveillance drones “to do the same mission that the LEMV would do.”

The first airship is supposed to be inflated around 10 months from now. Eight months later, the Army hopes to have the first LEMV flying over Afghanistan. On that day, the clouds will part, the sun will shine, and the cherubs will sing as the unblinking eye begins looking for Taliban.

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What, are they going to try yellow stars next?

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Paul Lewis, The Guardian
June 17, 2010

Bags placed over cameras in two Muslim areas of Birmingham after Guardian revealed scheme was a counterterrorism initiative

A project to place two Muslim areas in Birmingham under surveillance has been dramatically halted after an investigation by the Guardian revealed it was a counterterrorism initiative.

Bags are being placed over hundreds of cameras which were recently installed in the neighbourhoods of Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook, to reassure the community that their movements are not being monitored until a public consultation takes place.

Announcing that the cameras would not be turned on, West Midlands police and Birmingham city council apologised for not being “more explicit” about the funding arrangements of the project, which stipulated they should be used to combat terrorism.

But officials insisted the £3m project could still go ahead if the consultation showed support for the cameras. The programme could also be shelved altogether, which would require police and the council to take down the cameras.

Under the initiative, Project Champion, the suburbs were to be monitored by a network of 169 automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras – three times more than in the entire city centre. The cameras, which include covert cameras secretly installed in the street, form “rings of steel” meaning residents cannot enter or leave the areas without their cars being tracked. Data was to be stored for two years.

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Smart meters – a taxation and control trojan horse without peer. First it’s on a volunteer basis that you have the kill switch for your air conditioner installed. Then, once uptake passes a certain point, it’s mandatory. And the new carbon taxes are based on your minute-to-minute energy consumption, and the state energy company knows when your toaster is on and how many showers you have. It’s disgusting.

Related: Privacy commissioner outlines concerns surrounding Ontario’s Smart Grid plan | UK energy smart meter roll-out is outlined | Google PowerMeter to track home energy usage in Toronto test drive | ‘Smart meters’ set to boost prices, track your power consumption by time of day in Toronto | Google to enter market for energy use tracking

John Spears, Toronto Star
June 16, 2010

Utilities given standards to keep private information from leaking out in unauthorized ways

Picture this:

You sign up for an energy conservation scheme that lets your local utility shut down your air conditioner temporarily if the power grid is overloaded. Shortly afterward, you get a marketing call from an air conditioning company.

Or this:

You buy an electric car that you charge up every Sunday night, but never on Mondays because you always do an overnight trip. One Monday night, your home is burgled.

In fact, this doesn’t happen right now. Privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian wants to keep it that way.

The electricity system is gearing up to gather more and more information about customers and their habits through smart meters and smart appliances, she says.

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Welcome to the New World Order, Australia. But go ahead and rationalize, evade, retreat further into television, we’ll all wake up as slaves one day. Face tracking CCTV? This is precisely what George Orwell warned us about. Absolutely disgusting, WAKE UP. Resistance is mandatory, the alternative is neofuedal serfdom or worse. Maybe we should all review Martin Niemöller’s famous 1946 statement that condensed his feelings about the culpability of the German people as the Nazis seized power. Read it. Think.

“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

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Gemma Jones, The Daily Telegraph
June 3, 2010

THE New South Wales Government is quietly compiling a mathematical map of almost every adult’s face, sharing information that allows law enforcement to track people by CCTV.

Experts said yesterday few people realised their facial features were being recorded in an RTA database of drivers licence photos that the Government has allowed both state and federal police to access, The Daily Telegraph reports.

The federal body CrimTrac has asked NSW for its database so it can be mined nationally by police using the facial recognition information contained in it.

University experts in facial recognition said the correct match rate was as low as 90 per cent, meaning the names of people with faces sharing a similar structure to criminals could be returned in searches.

Dr Carolyn Semmler from the University of Adelaide said police wanted to eventually use facial recognition in smart CCTV cameras allowing people to be tracked anywhere there was a camera.

Some airports, such as Singapore, employ facial recognition technology and the US is considering using it at border crossings.

“Police hope that at some point an individual can be tracked,” Dr Semmler said yesterday.

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Don’t worry about being left out of the exciting new technology, motorists – you’ll be tracked and taxed by the kilometer too.

The Associated Press
May 27, 2010

Obama administration takes major step toward air traffic control system based on satellite technology

The Obama administration is taking a major step toward an air traffic control system based on satellite technology.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood released an order Thursday that requires all aircraft that use the nation’s busiest airports to have equipment by 2020 that continually broadcasts their location to other aircraft and air traffic controllers.

Mr. LaHood said the new system will be safer and more efficient than the radar-based system currently in use. It’s also expected to cut fuel consumption and pollution.

Airlines and small plane owners say they can’t afford the new equipment. They want the government to help pay for it.

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It’s precisely this sort of data-sorting algorithm that could find application in replacing the human operators of wide-area surveillance networks, of automated wiretapping systems, etc. Petabytes of data are being collected – it’s the problem of collation that’s being worked on now.

Related: Precrime: Artificially Intelligent CCTV could prevent crimes before they happen | Report: Massive FBI database set to quadruple in size | EU Plans Massive Surveillance Panopticon That Would Monitor “Abnormal Behavior” | US Police to get access to classified military intelligence | Let’s face it, soon Big Brother will have no trouble recognising you | Military challenge: Make spy data more accessible

Katie Drummond, Wired.com
May 21, 2010

Software systems could one day analyze everything from blurry war-zone footage to the subtle sarcasm in a written paragraph, thanks to two unassuming scientists who are inspired by biology to make revolutionary strides in intelligent computing.

Yann LeCun and Rob Fergus, both computer science professors at New York University, are the brains behind “Deep Learning,” a program sponsored by Darpa, the Pentagon’s blue-sky research agency. The idea, ultimately, is to develop code that can teach itself to spot objects in a picture, actions in a video, or voices in a crowd. LeCun and Fergus have $2 million and four years to make it happen.

Existing software programs rely heavily on human assistance to identify objects. A user extracts key feature sets, like edge statistics (how many edges an object has, and where they are) and then feeds the data into a running algorithm, which uses the feature sets to recognize the visual input.

“People spend huge amounts of time building these feature sets, figuring out which are better or more accurate, and then refining them,” LeCun told Danger Room. “The question we’re asking is whether we can create computers that automatically learn feature sets from data. The brain can do it, so why not machines?”

Watch the video:

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Yes, the police will deign to delete your personal information; since you raised a fuss, you’ll be thrown this bone. Thank goodness for PIPEDA. Meanwhile, you’re still going to be forced to endure domestic internal checkpoints that would have made the STASI blush.

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CBC News
May 20, 2010

The Toronto Police Service has agreed to destroy all of the personal information it collects from people who live and work in the area around the G20 summit.

There were fears the information could be misused.

On Thursday, the Toronto Police Services Board said the information will be destroyed within two days after the meeting wraps up.

The summit, which will host world leaders at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre from June 26-27, has prompted heightened security in the area.

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