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Gary T. Marx is a sociology professor at MIT, and a frequent writer on privacy issues. I find him both clear and insightful, as well as interesting and entertaining.
This new paper is worth reading: “Soft Surveillance: The Growth of Mandatory Volunteerism in Collecting Personal Information—’Hey Buddy Can You Spare a DNA?’”
You can read a whole bunch of his other articles here.
“…a few hundred meters away….”
Forget RFID. Well, don’t, but National Scientific Corporation has a prototype of a WiFi tagging system that, like RFID, lets you track things in real-time and space. The advantage that the WiFi Tracker system has over passive RFID tracking is that you can keep tabs on objects with WiFi Tracker tags (which can hold up to 256K of data) from as far as a few hundred meters away (the range of passive RFID taggers is just a few meters). While you can do something similar with active RFID tags, with WiFi Tracker companies can use their pre-existing WiFi network to track things rather than having to build a whole new RFID system.
In other news, Apple is adding WiFi to the iPod.
And, of course, you can be tracked from your cellphone:
But the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice have seized on the ability to
locate a cellular customer and are using it to track Americans’ whereabouts
surreptitiously—even when there’s no evidence of wrongdoing.A pair of court decisions in the last few weeks shows that judges are split
on whether this is legal. One federal magistrate judge in Wisconsin on Jan.
17 ruled it was unlawful, but another nine days later in Louisiana decided
that it was perfectly OK.This is an unfortunate outcome, not least because it shows that some judges
are reluctant to hold federal agents and prosecutors to the letter of the
law.It’s also unfortunate because it demonstrates that the FBI swore never to
use a 1994 surveillance law to track cellular phones—but then, secretly,
went ahead and did it, anyway.
Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal ran an article (unfortunately, the link is only for paid subscribers) about how Valentine’s Day is the day when cheating spouses are most likely to trip up:
Valentine’s Day is the biggest single 24-hour period for florists, a huge event for greeting-card companies and a boon for candy makers. But it’s also a major crisis day for anyone who is having an affair. After all, Valentine’s Day is the one holiday when everyone is expected to do something romantic for their spouse or lover—and if someone has both, it’s a serious problem.
So, of course, private detectives work overtime.
“If anything is going on, it will be happening on that day,” says Irene Smith, who says business at her Discreet Investigations detective agency in Golden, Colo., as much as doubles—to as many as 12 cases some years—on Valentine’s Day.
Private detectives are expensive—about $100 per hour, according to the article—and might not be worth it.
The article suggests some surveillance tools you can buy at home: a real-time GPS tracking system you can hide in your spouse’s car, a Home Evidence Collection Kit you can use to analyze stains on “clothing, car seats or elsewhere,” Internet spying software, a telephone recorder, and a really cool buttonhole camera.
But even that stuff may be overkill:
Ruth Houston, author of a book called Is He Cheating on You?—829 Telltale Signs, says she generally recommends against spending money on private detectives to catch cheaters because the indications are so easy to read. (Sign No. 3 under “Gifts”: He tries to convince you he bought expensive chocolates for himself.)
I hope I don’t need to remind you that cheaters should also be reading that book, familiarizing themselves with the 829 telltale signs they should avoid making.
The article has several interesting personal stories, and warns that “planning a ‘business trip’ that falls over Valentine’s Day is a typical mistake cheaters make.”
So now I’m wondering why the RSA Conference is being held over Valentine’s Day.
EDITED TO ADD (2/14): Today’s Washington Post has a similar story.
Here’s an interesting rebuttal of Laszlo Kish’s theoretically secure classical communications scheme.
EDITED TO ADD (2/18): Kish’s response.
Unknowns tapped the mobile phones of about 100 Greek politicians and offices, including the U.S. embassy in Athens and the Greek prime minister.
Details are sketchy, but it seems that a piece of malicious code was discovered by Ericsson technicians in Vodafone’s mobile phone software. The code tapped into the conference call system. It “conference called” phone calls to 14 prepaid mobile phones where the calls were recorded.
Some details are here. See also this news article, and—if you can read Greek—this one.
Interesting white paper from the ACLU: “Eavesdropping 101: What Can The NSA Do?”
See also this map.
EDITED TO ADD (2/4): Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU responds to some criticism.
This Dutch prison is the future of surveillance.
At a high-tech prison opening this week inmates wear electronic wristbands that track their every movement and guards monitor cells using emotion-recognition software.
Remember, new surveillance technologies are first used on populations with limited rights: inmates, children, the mentally ill, military personnel.
Interesting article on how the French utilize domestic spying as a counterterrorism tool:
In the French system, an investigating judge is the equivalent of an empowered U.S. prosecutor. The judge is in charge of a secret probe, through which he or she can file charges, order wiretaps, and issue warrants and subpoenas. The conclusions of the judge are then transmitted to the prosecutor’s office, which decides whether to send the case to trial. The antiterrorist magistrates have even broader powers than their peers. For instance, they can request the assistance of the police and intelligence services, order the preventive detention of suspects for six days without charge, and justify keeping someone behind bars for several years pending an investigation. In addition, they have an international mandate when a French national is involved in a terrorist act, be it as a perpetrator or as a victim. As a result, France today has a pool of specialized judges and investigators adept at dismantling and prosecuting terrorist networks.
All of that extra-legal NSA eavesdropping resulted in a whole lot of dead ends.
In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
Surely this can’t be a surprise to anyone? And as I’ve been arguing for years, programs like this divert resources from real investigations.
President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a “vital tool” against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved “thousands of lives.”
But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.
A lot of this article reads like a turf war between the NSA and the FBI, but the “inside baseball” aspects are interesting.
EDITED TO ADD (1/18): Jennifer Granick has written on the topic.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
