Chinese mega-city building huge security system

The UK's Telegraph has a post about the Chinese mega-city of Chongqing which plans to build a $2.6 billion (£1.6 billion) security system that will be one of the world's largest with 500,000 surveillance cameras:

The system would dwarf a network of 40,000 security cameras installed in the capital of China's far-western Xinjiang region last year, following deadly July 2009 clashes between Muslim Uighurs and members of the majority Han group.

Chongqing's more than 500,000 cameras, which are due to be installed by 2012, will mainly be used for crime prevention, emergency controls and rescue operations, a police spokesman told the Global Times.

The computerised cameras will be managed under one network, allowing authorities and emergency services in the province-sized area of more than 30 million people to share the video feeds, the paper said.

A crackdown on organised crime two years ago in the sprawling municipality led to numerous high-level prosecutions for corruption and mafia crime that have shocked the nation as it revealed Chongqing's underworld.

See original post - 'Chinese mega-city building huge security system'

-

GPS Trackers Secretly Placed in Unilever Laundry Detergent Boxes

We are now seeing the shift of GPS tracking devices from larger commercial objects to marketing objects...which mirrors WalMarts move into RFID chipping its products:

The household cleaning product giant Unilever has secretly placed GPS tracker transmitters in laundry detergent boxes to track consumers to their homes. With an array of electronic sensors, team of Unilever agents can now pinpoint the exact location of the GPS trackers and walk right up to your front door. They can even remotely set off a beeper inside the box using radio electronics.

The point of all this? It's part of Unilever's new marketing campaign to convince consumers in Brazil to purchase more boxes of Omo laundry detergent.

The GPS trackers, you see, are only embedded in "prize winning" boxes of Omo detergent. If you happen to buy one of these GPS tracked boxes, you're a "winner" and Unilever agents then show up at your door with a video camera crew and a prize. This new detergent marketing contest was detailed in an Ad Age article called Is Your Detergent Stalking You? (http://adage.com/globalnews/article...)

That article explains that Unilever "...has teams in 35 Brazilian cities ready to leap into action when a box is activated. The nearest team can reach the shopper's home 'within hours or days,' and if they're really close by, 'they may get to your house as soon as you do.'"

This creepy "Big Brother" marketing idea is apparently exactly the kind of thing the Unilever company approves of: Spying on your customers. Unilever, by the way, is the parent company that brings you brands like Lipton tea, Skippy peanut butter, Axe cologne, and the infamous Slim-Fast sugar drink that's somehow positioned as a "weight loss" product.

Read more at - 'GPS Trackers Secretly Placed in Unilever Laundry Detergent Boxes'

-

Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring

The Danger Room blog has more information on the 'predicted future' software that Google and Pentagon interests are investing in:

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.

“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.

Which naturally makes the 16-person Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm attractive to Google Ventures, the search giant’s investment division, and to In-Q-Tel, which handles similar duties for the CIA and the wider intelligence community. 

It’s not the very first time Google has done business with America’s spy agencies. Long before it reportedly enlisted the help of the National Security Agency to secure its networks, Google sold equipment to the secret signals-intelligence group. In-Q-Tel backed the mapping firm Keyhole, which was bought by Google in 2004 — and then became the backbone for Google Earth.

Read more at - 'Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring'

-

Mind-reading marketers have ways of making you buy

New Scientist has an intriguing post on the power of neuromarketing....which is coming to a magazine cover near you!

TAKE A look at the cover of this week's New Scientist magazine (right). Notice anything unusual? Thought not, but behind the scenes your brain is working overtime, focusing your attention on the words and images and cranking up your emotions and memory. How do we know? Because we tested it with a brain scanner.

In what we suspect is a world first, this week's cover was created with the help of a technique called neuromarketing, a marriage of market research and neuroscience that uses brain-imaging technology to peek into people's heads and discover what they really want. You may find that sinister. What right does anyone have to try to read your mind? Or perhaps you are sceptical and consider the idea laughable. But ...

Read more at - 'Mind-reading marketers have ways of making you buy'

-

On the Web's Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only

Websites are now gaining the ability to decide whether or not you'd be a good customer, before you tell them a single thing about yourself. And this technology reaches beyond the personalization we are presently familiar with:

You may not know a company called [x+1] Inc., but it may well know a lot about you.

From a single click on a web site, [x+1] correctly identified Carrie Isaac as a young Colorado Springs parent who lives on about $50,000 a year, shops at Wal-Mart and rents kids' videos. The company deduced that Paul Boulifard, a Nashville architect, is childless, likes to travel and buys used cars. And [x+1] determined that Thomas Burney, a Colorado building contractor, is a skier with a college degree and looks like he has good credit.

The company didn't get every detail correct. But its ability to make snap assessments of individuals is accurate enough that Capital One Financial Corp. uses [x+1]'s calculations to instantly decide which credit cards to show first-time visitors to its website.

Read more at - 'On the Web's Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only'

-

A hidden world, growing beyond control

An extensive investigative report over at The Washington Post has done a terrific job of highlighting the faults of an over-extensive surveillance world that has come into being in the last decade. A worthy read indeed!

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work. These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

Read the full article at - 'A hidden world, growing beyond control'

-

Emails and phones snooped on by authorities every minute

Yet more proof of our UK surveillance nation...now we see that political and corporate bodies are racing after our private information:

Councils, police and other public bodies are demanding access to people's private telephone and email records at a rate of once a minute after a rise in snooping applications.

Public authorities asked for confidential communications data on more than 525,000 occasions last year including a 13 per cent increase in requests by town halls.There were also errors in hundreds of applications leading to wrong phone numbers, emails or innocent people being monitored, according to the surveillance watchdog. 

Sir Paul Kennedy, the interception of communications commissioner, also warned children and other members of the public could be at risk because of "very serious weaknesses and failing" in the way communications in prisons are monitored.He said flaws or attempts to monitor too much could place the public, as well as other prisoners and staff, in harm's way. 

The figures will fuel concerns over the use of interception powers by some public bodies under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which are mainly aimed at tackling terrorism and serious crime.The Act gives authorities – including councils, the police and intelligence agencies – the power to request access to confidential communications data, including lists of telephone numbers dialled and email addresses to which messages have been sent but not their content.

Read original post - 'Emails and phones snooped on by authorities every minute'

- 

Now Scientists Read Your Mind Better Than You Can

Here we are again - back at the brain-reading mode of technology: the advertisers just can't wait to get further into our heads!!

Brain scans may be able to predict what you will do better than you can yourself, and might offer a powerful tool for advertisers or health officials seeking to motivate consumers, researchers said on Tuesday. They found a way to interpret "real time" brain images to show whether people who viewed messages about using sunscreen would actually use sunscreen during the following week. The scans were more accurate than the volunteers were, Emily Falk and colleagues at UCLA reported. People were right about themselves just half the time; based on brain scans, the researchers predicted 75% of behavior correctly.

Read more over at - 'Now Scientists Read Your Mind Better Than You Can'

-

Surveillance system monitors conversations

An intrusive surveiilance system has been trialled in the UK without, until now, the public knowing of it - nothing new there...except that this system has a way of intruding into your street conversations:

The technology, called Sigard, monitors movements and speech to detect signs of threatening behaviour.

Its designers claim the system can anticipate anti-social behaviour and violence by analysing the information picked up its sensors.

 

They say alerts are then sent to police, nightclub bouncers or shop security staff, which allow them to nip trouble in the bud before arguments spiral into violence.The devices are designed to distinguish between distress calls, threatening behaviour and general shouting. The system, produced by Sound Intelligence, is being used in Dutch prisons, city centres and Amsterdam's Central Rail Station. 

Coventry City Council is funding a pilot project which has for six months and has installed seven devices in the nightlife area on the High Street. Dylan Sharpe, from Big Brother Watch, said: "There can be no justification for giving councils or the police the capability to listen in on private conversations."There is enormous potential for abuse, or a misheard word, causing unnecessary harm with this sort of intrusive and overbearing surveillance."

Read more at - 'Surveillance system monitors conversations'

-

Radiation risks cited in full-body airport scans

More controversy surrounding the use of full-body airport security scanners. This recent post explains how

Full-body airport security scanners manufactured by Rapiscan Inc. expose the skin to high radiation levels that may lead to cancer and other health problems, according to researchers from the University of California, San Francisco. Particularly at risk, the researchers said, are travelers who are pregnant, elderly or have weakened immune systems. The machines emit X-ray energy levels that would be safe if they were distributed throughout the body, but a majority of that energy is delivered to the skin and underlying tissue at levels that "may be dangerously high," the researchers wrote last month to the White House Office of Science and Technology. Officials with the Department of Homeland Security defended the use of Rapiscan's backscatter machines. The amount of energy emitted from the machines is equal to two minutes in flight at cruising altitude, said Dr. Alex Garza, chief medical officer for the Department of Homeland Security.

Read original post - 'Radiation risks cited in full-body airport scans'

-

Secret Service Investigating Twitter Accounts Calling for Assassination

Twitter is back in the news; yet this time it is for assassination rumours... not only does this tell us that posting on Twitter is not going to be private (duh) but also that there are many alphabet agencies peeping in...

The Secret Service is investigating two Twitter account users who made threatening comments about President Obama following the House of Representatives vote on health care legislation.
  
 @Solly_Forell, who says he is an “authentic African American” on his Twitter page, allegedly posted comments about assassinating President Obama over the weekend. And he’s not the only one.

Another Twitter user with the account name @THHEE_JAY also tweeted about assassinating the President.
Secret Service Spokesman Malcolm Wiley tells Fox News that Secret Service does not have the luxury of discounting threats against the President and the agency is aware of the postings and is currently investigating.

Original source - 'Secret Service Investigating Twitter Accounts Calling for Assassination'

-

The Secret Government Surveillance Document Microsoft Doesn't Want You To See

Now here's a heads-up on data privacy - a leak about a Microsoft 22-page document which outlines how they store all your private data in their online servers. The document also tells government agencies how they can get it. Of course, they don't want you to see it:

The document was unearthed by Cryptome, the site who previously unveiled similar papers by Facebook, Skype, and other online giants. When Microsoft learned about it, they sent their rabid law dogs to tear Cryptome apart, Digital Millennium Copyright Act in one hand, iron bar in the other. So far they have managed to coerce Cryptome's host company to take down the site the pages aren't taken down. Network Solutions complied with Microsoft's barking, passing along the message to Cryptome that, if they don't take down the "secret" material, they would take down the whole site.

In order to read an online copy of this document (via Scribd) visit this Gizmodo page at - 'The Secret Government Surveillance Document Microsoft Doesn't Want You To See'

-

Net-surveillance figures

More CNet news about Net surveillance figures, which all comes on the top of recent news about privacy and police powers; security and surveillance, etc.....

A forthcoming survey of computer crime investigators suggests that electronic surveillance is a bit more commonplace than most people might expect.

Even a relatively small group of 100 police working on online investigations reports submitting as many as 22,800 legal requests for information a year to Internet and e-mail providers, a category that includes both subpoenas and search warrants.

CNET has reviewed a presentation scheduled to be given at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, which says that the survey respondents said they submitted a total of anywhere from 2,868 to 22,800 requests for information a year. (See one excerpt and another.)

"Most Internet users do not realize how often the government is demanding personal information from companies, often without judicial oversight, and how often companies turn it over," says Nicole Ozer, technology director for the ACLU of Northern California. "Companies are refusing to disclose to the public how many demands they get. It appears that the government is demanding that Internet companies turn over so much personal information about users, so often, that companies can't keep up."

No law requires that the number of subpoenas and search warrants sent to Internet and e-mail providers be made public. Federal law does require the disclosure of certain types of wiretaps--in 2004, for instance, there were 1,442 nonterrorism-related wiretaps, and only 4 percent targeted computers and electronic devices.

Read more - 'Net-surveillance figures'

-

CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones

Oh dear, things seem to be going from bad to worse in the UK in terms of state surveillance. Here's some of the latest news (from The Guardian):

Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ­"routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, ­protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.

Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

They reveal the partnership intends to begin using the drones in time for the 2012 Olympics.

Read more - 'CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones'

-

Secret CCTV cameras fitted INSIDE people's homes to spy on neighbours outside

Another step on the road to a complete surveillance state... as civil surveillance takes its test:

Town halls are installing cameras inside suburban homes to spy on the neighbourhood.The Big Brother tactic - which is allowed under the anti-terrorist Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - is being used by Croydon council in South London to catch those suspected of 'anti-social behaviour'.The CCTV cameras are placed inside the house of a willing resident, but trained on the street.If deemed successful, the £1,000 cameras could be installed across the country to catch low-level offenders...

...Charles Farrier, of the campaign group No-CCTV, said: 'There is no evidence they act as a deterrent and we should be concentrating on the root problem anyway and working to gel our communities.'

Simon Davies, of Privacy International, said: 'Unless the public are aware of where these cameras are, I believe this council should be taken to court for a breach of human rights.'

The cameras are used to look for anti-social behaviour (file picture)

Critics say the scheme has echoes of the East German Stasi secret police, which recruited members of the public as spies.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1228876/Secret-CCTV-cameras-fitted-INSIDE-peoples-homes-spy-neighbours.html#ixzz0XIIUOJKe

-






Read article - 'Secret CCTV cameras fitted INSIDE people's homes to spy on neighbours outside'

Dutch drivers to pay tax on road time, not on car

This new scheme to track drivers and cost them for their travel rather than paying standard car tax was always on the cards... now its on paper:

The Dutch government plans to bring the polluter-pays principle into the home garage.

Rather than an annual road tax for their cars, drivers will soon pay a few cents for every kilometer (mile) on the road, in a plan aimed at breaking chronic traffic jams and cutting carbon emissions, the Cabinet decided Friday.

The GPS monitoring system could be a test case for other countries weighing options for easing crowded roads. Some cities like London have created congestion charges to control traffic in downtown areas, but only Singapore has a similar scheme for charging according to the amount of travel.

When the plan takes effect in 2012, new car prices will drop as much as 25 percent with the abolition of a purchase tax and the road tax, which now totals more than euro600 ($900) per year for a mid-sized car.

Instead, an average passenger car will pay euro0.03 per 1 kilometer ($0.07 per mile), with higher charges levied during rush hour and for traveling on congested roads. Trucks, commercial vehicles and bigger cars emitting more carbon dioxide will be assessed at a higher rate, the Transport Ministry said.

The GPS devices installed in cars will track the time, hour and place each car moves and send the data to a billing agency.

Of course, they will need to install GPS devices in every car in order to track and bill you... but I'm sure it was coincidental...



Read more at 'Dutch drivers to pay tax on road time, not on car'

-

The pocket spy: Will your smartphone rat you out?

NewScientist Tech has an article on how firms are able to extract personal information from mobile phones... sometimes at the behest of jealous partners.... a new trend! The post states that:

THERE are certain things you do not want to share with strangers. In my case it was a stream of highly personal text messages from my husband, sent during the early days of our relationship. Etched on my phone's SIM card - but invisible on my current handset and thus forgotten - here they now are, displayed in all their brazen glory on a stranger's computer screen.

I've just walked into a windowless room on an industrial estate in Tamworth, UK, where three cellphone analysts in blue shirts sit at their terminals, scrutinising the contents of my phone and smirking. "If it's any consolation, we would have found them even if you had deleted them," says one.

Worse, it seems embarrassing text messages aren't the only thing I have to worry about: "Is this a photo of your office?" another asks (the answer is yes). "And did you enjoy your pizza on Monday night? And why did you divert from your normal route to work to visit this address in Camberwell, London, on Saturday?"

I'm at DiskLabs, a company that handles cellphone forensic analysis for UK police forces, but also for private companies and individuals snooping on suspect employees or wayward spouses. Armed with four cellphones, which I have begged, borrowed and bought off friends and strangers, I'm curious to know just how much personal information can be gleaned from our used handsets and SIM cards.

Read article at - 'The pocket spy: Will your smartphone rat you out?'

-

U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets

Wired's Danger Room has a post on how America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon!

Read on... but you may be tracked...

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

Read more at - 'U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets'

-

Camera grid to log number plates

A national network of cameras and computers automatically logging car number plates will be in place within months, according to this BBC post:

Thousands of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras are already operating on Britain's roads.Police forces across England, Wales and Scotland will soon be able to share the information on one central computer.

Officers say it is a useful tool in fighting crime, but critics say the network is secretive and unregulated.Kent's Chief Constable, Michael Fuller, commented: "We've seen an increase of some 40% of arrests since we've been using this technology.

"I'm very confident that we're using it properly and responsibly, and that innocent people have nothing to fear from the way we use it."

A number of local councils are signing up their Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems to the ANPR network. As long as the cameras are technically good enough, they can be adapted to take the software.

Well, not a complete surprise... just another rung on the ladder towards Total Awareness (similar to the US program); yet using the issue of personal mobility as the 'vehicle'.


Read more at - 'Camera grid to log number plates'

-

Police using Google Street View-style cars to spy on motorists

Well, the controversy just keeps growing: the issue of mobile surveillance. Now 'google-style' cars are being trialled for spying on motorists bad habits:

A Google Street View car

Officers are trialling new cars with cameras fitted to telescopic poles on their roofs to film drivers using mobile phones, eating or applying make-up while behind the wheel.

The Smart cars, which bear similarity to those used by Google to map the country's streets, are intended to cut the number of fatalities on Britain's roads, police say.

However, the pilot scheme has come under fire from motoring groups who claim that the tactics are an "infringement" of drivers' liberty.

Nigel Humphries, from the Association of British Drivers, said: "They might as well put something in cars to test what drivers are thinking.

"Apart from that it's going to be counterproductive. While the camera is looking into cars, other motorists could be driving erratically and causing a danger on the roads."

The scheme is being pioneered with two of the vehicles in Manchester, where distracted motorists have reportedly been involved in 406 accidents in the past two years.

Read original post - 'Police using Google Street View-style cars to spy on motorists'

-