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  1. #1
    Council Member bourbon's Avatar
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    Council Member bourbon's Avatar
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    The Cloud Panopticon: Google, Cloud Computing and the Surveillance-Industrial Complex, by Christopher Ketcham and Travis Kelly. CounterPunch Magazine, April 1-15, 2010; vol. 17, no. 7. (PDF)
    Kevin Bankston, a privacy expert and attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group engaged in questions of privacy, free speech, and intellectual property in the digital age, warns of the possibilities. “In all of human history,” he says, “few if any single entities, other than the National Security Agency, have ever possessed such a hoard of sensitive data about so many people.” This is the sort of thing that should make the intelligence agencies, says Bankston, “drool with anticipation.” And drooling they are. Stephen Arnold, an IT expert who formerly worked at the defense and intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. and who once consulted for Google, addressed this in a speech before a conference of current and former intelligence officials in Washington, D.C., in January 2006. According to an audio recording in our possession, he reported Google was increasingly sought out by the U.S. intelligence services because click-stream data – and everything else Google archives – “is a tremendous opportunity for the intelligence community.” Google, he said, “has figured out everything there is to know about data-collection.” The relationship with the government had become intimate enough, Arnold said, that at least three officers from “an unnamed intelligence agency” had been posted at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. What they are doing there, Arnold did not reveal.

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    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Confronting the 'interception gap'

    Currently the UK government has proposed a bill to extensively update the law on law enforcement and security agencies access to communications data. This is a controversial piece of legislation, partly for political reasons as when in opposition the current government opposed similar proposals.

    Hat tip to a privacy advocacy group:http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/ho...companies.html

    Parliament has a committee taking evidence on the bill, which has led to some very strange exchanges between them and the industry (Google, yahoo, Skype, Tor and others). Try this passage:
    It is in the background brief. The Home Office states, “The Government is introducing legislation to ensure that communications data will continue to be available in the future as it has been in the past”. Another part says, “CEOP is already experiencing significant problems because of the difficulty of obtaining the same level of subscriber information for internet communications as is currently available for traditional telephony”. There is the problem. The key point is that our services cannot be made to look like telephony
    Link:http://www.parliament.uk/documents/j...nel%201%29.pdf

    Or the use by the Home Office (equiv. Dept. Interior & parts of DoJ) of
    ...this elusive 25%. If representatives from the Home Office were here today—and we asked them—they might say that telephony was not all on landlines or even on mobile phones but is now over the internet, and they might point at Skype or Tor as developments that have reduced their capability to capture and retain information
    It is rare to see a comparison like this, from an industry speaker:
    criminals already have the capability to prevent law enforcement making useful use of communications data. Criminals have shown the capability, but human rights workers do not have the same capabilities that criminals have, so they will be put at risk by deep packet inspection and similar things that this Bill could introduce.
    From:http://www.parliament.uk/documents/j...nel%202%29.pdf

    This blogsite also comments on such matters:http://www.spyblog.org.uk/
    davidbfpo

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    One photo = 1k word Soliloquy

    A scrimmage in a Border Station
    A canter down some dark defile
    Two thousand pounds of education
    Drops to a ten-rupee jezail


    http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg

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    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Updates and views

    As the UK chattering politicians post-Woolwich push for the "snooper's charter" bill to be reintroduced Denmark reports data collection is not that useful:
    ...five years of extensive Internet surveillance have proven to be of almost no use to the police. Session logging has caused serious practical problems....The implementation of session logging proved to be unusable to the police; this became clear the first time they tried to use [the data] as part of a criminal investigation
    Link:http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/...igital-privacy

    Back to the UK debate. An IT expert's thoughts:http://www.eradar.eu/2013/05/communi...t-opportunism/

    'Naked Citizens' is a short twenty-five minute film on surveillance; it is not obsessed with:
    ..With one camera for every 14 people in London...
    It starts with a good explanation of 'smart' CCTV identifying aberrant behaviour, but then becomes more strident. Anyway some interesting concepts are explained, notably suspicion, anonymity and privacy.

    Link:http://www.journey.webbler.co.uk/?lid=65226&bid=2
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    Default How a filmmaker accidentally gave up his sources to Syrian spooks

    An example of vulnerability and in Syria, so no surprises that many sources have disappeared into the regime's care:http://www.cjr.org/feature/the_spy_w...c.php?page=all
    davidbfpo

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    A perfect example of how militay surveillance technology the Stingray which had it's first appearance in Iraq has made it into the law enforcement and that is not a good move as it opens a number of serious privacy issues with monitoring that if not known by the person being monitored the police in theory would not have to have a judicial search warrant for the monitoring....

    Example for NSA to conduct such monitoring of US citizens they require a FISA Warrant...local police evidently feel they are allowed to do it without the same judicial review....
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    Last edited by davidbfpo; 03-18-2017 at 11:22 AM. Reason: Moved to a better thread

  8. #8
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default We trust the state with liberty and security

    Maybe there has been polling on these issues before, but I don't recall such a comprehensive report in the UK following a YouGov poll.

    A couple of passages:
    suggests a majority of British voters are neither overly moved nor concerned by the surveillance question, and tend to err on the more hawkish side of debate. (See end of post for methodology)In a list of online issues including cybercrime, cyber attacks, surveillance, trolling, propaganda and fake news, only 21% of respondents listed UK government surveillance of its own citizens among their main concerns, compared with 66% citing cybercrime, 46% citing cyber attacks and 45% citing access to inappropriate content by children.

    (Later) levels of public trust in key institutions of establishment seem relatively high, with clear majorities saying they trust judges and senior policy officers to act in the country’s best interests, and trust the police and intelligence services to behave responsibly with information obtained from online surveillance.
    In short, where Britain stands on surveillance could be more about where it sits on a scale of institutional, rather than political, trust.
    Link:https://rusi.org/commentary/security...r-surveillance
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 07-10-2017 at 08:44 PM. Reason: 73,183v
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    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Facial recognition technology in real life fails

    A puzzling academic article 'DNA techniques could transform facial recognition technology', added here as it opens with some facts and the states there is an answer - genomics.

    It opens with:
    When police in London recently trialled a new facial recognition system, they made a worrying and embarrassing mistake. At the Notting Hill Carnival, the technology made roughly 35 false matches between known suspects and members of the crowd, with one person “erroneously” arrested. Camera-based visual surveillance systems were supposed to deliver a safer and more secure society. But despite decades of development, they are generally not able to handle real-life situations. During the 2011 London riots, for example, facial recognition software contributed to just one arrest out of the 4,962 that took place.
    Link:https://theconversation.com/dna-tech...omment_1434283
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 10-23-2017 at 07:13 AM. Reason: 86,754v 13.5k up since last post
    davidbfpo

  10. #10
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Weapons Of Mass Surveillance

    I missed this BBC Arabic Service report (55 mins podcast), in July 2017, and it fits here well. Their summary:
    Middle Eastern governments are using high tech mass surveillance tools to monitor their citizens. Western companies, including Britain's largest weapons manufacturer, BAE, are among those selling surveillance technology to these governments.
    The trade is attracting criticism from human rights organisations who question whether a British company should be selling such equipment, much of it classified, to repressive regimes in the Arab world.
    Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-m...s-surveillance
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 12-10-2017 at 04:45 PM. Reason: 92,139v
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  11. #11
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Palantir Knows Everything About You

    This IT company Palantir arouses controversy and this latest article is no exception. I did not realize that commercially it is less than successful.
    Link:https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2...?terminal=true
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-23-2018 at 08:49 PM. Reason: 100,872v
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    Default In Your Face: China’s all-seeing state

    A BBC World Service report from Guiyang, a Chinese city in the south-west, with a population of over 4m and noted for its investment in big data and computing. Background and map:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiyang

    The BBC reports (5mins podcast) states:
    China has been building what it calls "the world's biggest camera surveillance network". Across the country, 170 million CCTV cameras are already in place and an estimated 400 million new ones will be installed in the next three years. Many of the cameras are fitted with artificial intelligence, including facial recognition technology. The BBC's John Sudworth has been given rare access to one of the new hi-tech police control rooms.
    It is a rather curious piece, complete with interviews - all reassuring, bar one - and is aimed at everyone.
    Link:www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-42248056/in-your-face-china-s-all-seeing-state

    Last edited by davidbfpo; 12-10-2017 at 04:46 PM. Reason: Copied from a thread on China
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