Entries Tagged "surveillance"

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Garbage Cans that Spy on You

From The Guardian:

Though he foresaw many ways in which Big Brother might watch us, even George Orwell never imagined that the authorities would keep a keen eye on your bin.

Residents of Croydon, south London, have been told that the microchips being inserted into their new wheely bins may well be adapted so that the council can judge whether they are producing too much rubbish.

I call this kind of thing “embedded government”: hardware and/or software technology put inside of a device to make sure that we conform to the law.

And there are security risks.

If, for example, computer hackers broke in to the system, they could see sudden reductions in waste in specific households, suggesting the owners were on holiday and the house vacant.

To me, this is just another example of those implementing policy not being the ones who bear the costs. How long would the policy last if it were made clear to those implementing it that they would be held personally liable, even if only via their departmental budgets or careers, for any losses to residents if the database did get hacked?

Posted on March 4, 2005 at 10:32 AM • View Comments

Implanting Chips in People at a Distance

I have no idea if this is real or not. But even if it’s not real, it’s just a matter of time before it becomes real. How long before people can surreptitiously have RFID tags injected into them?

What is the ID SNIPER rifle?

It is used to implant a GPS-microchip in the body of a human being, using a high powered sniper rifle as the long distance injector. The microchip will enter the body and stay there, causing no internal damage, and only a very small amount of physical pain to the target. It will feel like a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second. At the same time a digital camcorder with a zoom-lense fitted within the scope will take a high-resolution picture of the target. This picture will be stored on a memory card for later image-analysis.

Edited to add: This is a hoax.

Posted on February 4, 2005 at 8:00 AM • View Comments

GovCon

There’s a conference in Washington, DC, in March that explores technologies for intelligence and terrorism prevention.

The 4th Annual Government Convention on Emerging Technologies will focus on the impact of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act signed into law by President Bush in December 2004.

The departments and agencies of the National Security Community are currently engaged in the most comprehensive transformation of policy, structure, doctrine, and capabilities since the National Security Act of 1947.

Many of the legal, policy, organizational, and cultural challenges to manage the National Security Community as an enterprise and provide a framework for fielding new capabilities are being addressed. However, there are many emerging technologies and commercial best practices available to help the National Security Community achieve its critical mission of keeping America safe and secure.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff on the agenda, including some classified sessions. I’m especially interested in this track:

Track Two: Attaining Tailored Persistence

Explore the technologies required to attain persistent surveillance and tailored persistence.

What does “persistent surveillance” mean, anyway?

Posted on February 3, 2005 at 9:07 AM • View Comments

FBI Retires Carnivore

According to SecurityFocus:

FBI surveillance experts have put their once-controversial Carnivore Internet surveillance tool out to pasture, preferring instead to use commercial products to eavesdrop on network traffic, according to documents released Friday.

Of course, they’re not giving up on Internet surveillance. They’ve just realized that commercial tools are better, cheaper, or both.

Posted on January 24, 2005 at 8:00 AM • View Comments

RFID Passports

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Bush administration—specifically, the Department of Homeland Security—has wanted the world to agree on a standard for machine-readable passports. Countries whose citizens currently do not have visa requirements to enter the United States will have to issue passports that conform to the standard or risk losing their nonvisa status.

These future passports, currently being tested, will include an embedded computer chip. This chip will allow the passport to contain much more information than a simple machine-readable character font, and will allow passport officials to quickly and easily read that information. That is a reasonable requirement and a good idea for bringing passport technology into the 21st century.

But the Bush administration is advocating radio frequency identification (RFID) chips for both U.S. and foreign passports, and that’s a very bad thing.

These chips are like smart cards, but they can be read from a distance. A receiving device can “talk” to the chip remotely, without any need for physical contact, and get whatever information is on it. Passport officials envision being able to download the information on the chip simply by bringing it within a few centimeters of an electronic reader.

Unfortunately, RFID chips can be read by any reader, not just the ones at passport control. The upshot of this is that travelers carrying around RFID passports are broadcasting their identity.

Think about what that means for a minute. It means that passport holders are continuously broadcasting their name, nationality, age, address and whatever else is on the RFID chip. It means that anyone with a reader can learn that information, without the passport holder’s knowledge or consent. It means that pickpockets, kidnappers and terrorists can easily—and surreptitiously—pick Americans or nationals of other participating countries out of a crowd.

It is a clear threat to both privacy and personal safety, and quite simply, that is why it is bad idea. Proponents of the system claim that the chips can be read only from within a distance of a few centimeters, so there is no potential for abuse. This is a spectacularly naïve claim. All wireless protocols can work at much longer ranges than specified. In tests, RFID chips have been read by receivers 20 meters away. Improvements in technology are inevitable.

Security is always a trade-off. If the benefits of RFID outweighed the risks, then maybe it would be worth it. Certainly, there isn’t a significant benefit when people present their passport to a customs official. If that customs official is going to take the passport and bring it near a reader, why can’t he go those extra few centimeters that a contact chip—one the reader must actually touch—would require?

The Bush administration is deliberately choosing a less secure technology without justification. If there were a good offsetting reason to choose that technology over a contact chip, then the choice might make sense.

Unfortunately, there is only one possible reason: The administration wants surreptitious access themselves. It wants to be able to identify people in crowds. It wants to surreptitiously pick out the Americans, and pick out the foreigners. It wants to do the very thing that it insists, despite demonstrations to the contrary, can’t be done.

Normally I am very careful before I ascribe such sinister motives to a government agency. Incompetence is the norm, and malevolence is much rarer. But this seems like a clear case of the Bush administration putting its own interests above the security and privacy of its citizens, and then lying about it.

This article originally appeared in the 4 October 2004 edition of the International Herald Tribune.

Posted on October 4, 2004 at 7:20 PM • View Comments

Aerial Surveillance to Detect Building Code Violations

The Baltimore housing department has a new tool to find homeowners who have been building rooftop decks without a permit: aerial mapping. Baltimore bought aerial photographs of the entire city and used software to correlate the images with databases of address information and permit records. Inspectors have just begun knocking on doors of residents who built decks without permission.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. Police always have been able to inspect buildings for permit violations. The difference is they would do it manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn’t feasible for the police to automatically document every building code violation in any city. What’s different isn’t the police tactic but the efficiency of the process.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance involved trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the police officer sitting at a computer with a satellite image of an entire neighborhood. It’s the same, but it’s completely different. It’s wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.

Wholesale surveillance is fast becoming the norm. Security cameras are everywhere, even in places satellites can’t see. Automatic toll road devices track cars at tunnels and bridges. We can all be tracked by our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing habits by Web site operators.

Like the satellite images, the electronic footprints we leave everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backward in time.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties is profound, but unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. This is wrong. It’s obvious that we are all safer when the police can use all possible crimefighting techniques. The Fourth Amendment already allows police to perform even the most intrusive searches of your home and person.

What we need are mechanisms to prevent abuse and hold the police accountable and assurances that the new techniques don’t place an unreasonable burden on the innocent. In many cases, the Fourth Amendment already provides for this in its requirement of a warrant.

The warrant process requires that a “neutral and detached magistrate” review the basis for the search and take responsibility for the outcome. The key is independent judicial oversight; the warrant process is itself a security measure that protects us from abuse and makes us more secure.

This works for some searches, but not for most wholesale surveillance. The courts already have ruled that the police cannot use thermal imaging to see through the walls of your home without a warrant, but that it’s OK for them to fly overhead and peer over your fences without a warrant. They need a warrant before opening your paper mail or listening in on your phone calls.

Wholesale surveillance calls for something else: lessening of criminal penalties. The reason criminal punishments are severe is to create a deterrent because it is hard to catch wrongdoers. As they become easier to catch, a realignment is necessary. When the police can automate the detection of a wrongdoing, perhaps there should no longer be any criminal penalty attached. For example, red-light cameras and speed-trap cameras issue citations without any “points” assessed against drivers.

Another obvious protection is notice. Baltimore should send mail to every homeowner announcing the use of aerial photography to document building code violations, urging individuals to come into compliance.

Wholesale surveillance is not simply a more efficient way for the police to do what they’ve always done. It’s a new police power, one made possible with today’s technology and one that will be made easier with tomorrow’s. And with any new police power, we as a society need to take an active role in establishing rules governing its use. To do otherwise is to cede ever more authority to the police.

This article was originally published in the 4 October 2004 edition of the Baltimore Sun.

Posted on October 4, 2004 at 7:18 PM • View Comments

Aerial Surveillance to Detect Building Code Violations

The Baltimore housing department has a new tool to find homeowners who have been building rooftop decks without a permit: aerial mapping. Baltimore bought aerial photographs of the entire city and used software to correlate the images with databases of address information and permit records. Inspectors have just begun knocking on doors of residents who built decks without permission.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. Police always have been able to inspect buildings for permit violations. The difference is they would do it manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn’t feasible for the police to automatically document every building code violation in any city. What’s different isn’t the police tactic but the efficiency of the process.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance involved trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the police officer sitting at a computer with a satellite image of an entire neighborhood. It’s the same, but it’s completely different. It’s wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.

Wholesale surveillance is fast becoming the norm. Security cameras are everywhere, even in places satellites can’t see. Automatic toll road devices track cars at tunnels and bridges. We can all be tracked by our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing habits by Web site operators.

Like the satellite images, the electronic footprints we leave everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backward in time.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties is profound, but unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. This is wrong. It’s obvious that we are all safer when the police can use all possible crimefighting techniques. The Fourth Amendment already allows police to perform even the most intrusive searches of your home and person.

What we need are mechanisms to prevent abuse and hold the police accountable and assurances that the new techniques don’t place an unreasonable burden on the innocent. In many cases, the Fourth Amendment already provides for this in its requirement of a warrant.

The warrant process requires that a “neutral and detached magistrate” review the basis for the search and take responsibility for the outcome. The key is independent judicial oversight; the warrant process is itself a security measure that protects us from abuse and makes us more secure.

This works for some searches, but not for most wholesale surveillance. The courts already have ruled that the police cannot use thermal imaging to see through the walls of your home without a warrant, but that it’s OK for them to fly overhead and peer over your fences without a warrant. They need a warrant before opening your paper mail or listening in on your phone calls.

Wholesale surveillance calls for something else: lessening of criminal penalties. The reason criminal punishments are severe is to create a deterrent because it is hard to catch wrongdoers. As they become easier to catch, a realignment is necessary. When the police can automate the detection of a wrongdoing, perhaps there should no longer be any criminal penalty attached. For example, red-light cameras and speed-trap cameras issue citations without any “points” assessed against drivers.

Another obvious protection is notice. Baltimore should send mail to every homeowner announcing the use of aerial photography to document building code violations, urging individuals to come into compliance.

Wholesale surveillance is not simply a more efficient way for the police to do what they’ve always done. It’s a new police power, one made possible with today’s technology and one that will be made easier with tomorrow’s. And with any new police power, we as a society need to take an active role in establishing rules governing its use. To do otherwise is to cede ever more authority to the police.

This article was originally published in the 4 October 2004 edition of the Baltimore Sun.

Posted on October 4, 2004 at 7:18 PM • View Comments

License Plate "Guns" and Privacy

New Haven police have a new law enforcement tool: a license-plate scanner. Similar to a radar gun, it reads the license plates of moving or parked cars and links with remote police databases, immediately providing information about the car and owner. Right now the police check if there are any taxes owed on the car, if the car or license plate is stolen, and if the car is unregistered or uninsured. A car that comes up positive is towed.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. The police have always been able to run a license plate. The difference is they would do it manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn’t feasible for the police to run the plates of every car in a parking garage, or every car that passed through an intersection. What’s different isn’t the police tactic, but the efficiency of the process.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance meant trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the policeman with a license-plate scanner, or even a remote license-plate scanner mounted on a traffic light and a policeman sitting at a computer in the station. It’s the same, but it’s completely different. It’s wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.

Wholesale surveillance is fast becoming the norm. New York’s E-Z Pass tracks cars at tunnels and bridges with tolls. We can all be tracked by our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing habits by Web site operators. Security cameras are everywhere. If they wanted, the police could take the database of vehicles outfitted with the OnStar tracking system, and immediately locate all of those New Haven cars.

Like the license-plate scanners, the electronic footprints we leave everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backwards in time.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties is profound; but unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. This is wrong. It’s obvious that we are all safer when the police can use all techniques at their disposal. What we need are corresponding mechanisms to prevent abuse, and that don’t place an unreasonable burden on the innocent.

Throughout our nation’s history, we have maintained a balance between the necessary interests of police and the civil rights of the people. The license plate itself is such a balance. Imagine the debate from the early 1900s: The police proposed affixing a plaque to every car with the car owner’s name, so they could better track cars used in crimes. Civil libertarians objected because that would reduce the privacy of every car owner. So a compromise was reached: a random string of letter and numbers that the police could use to determine the car owner. By deliberately designing a more cumbersome system, the needs of law enforcement and the public’s right to privacy were balanced.

The search warrant process, as prescribed in the Fourth Amendment, is another balancing method. So is the minimization requirement for telephone eavesdropping: the police must stop listening to a phone line if the suspect under investigation is not talking.

For license-plate scanners, one obvious protection is to require the police to erase data collected on innocent car owners immediately, and not save it. The police have no legitimate need to collect data on everyone’s driving habits. Another is to allow car owners access to the information about them used in these automated searches, and to allow them to challenge inaccuracies.

We need to go further. Criminal penalties are severe in order to create a deterrent, because it is hard to catch wrongdoers. As they become easier to catch, a realignment is necessary. When the police can automate the detection of a wrongdoing, perhaps there should no longer be any criminal penalty attached. For example, both red light cameras and speed-trap cameras all issue citations without any “points” assessed against the driver.

Wholesale surveillance is not simply a more efficient way for the police to do what they’ve always done. It’s a new police power, one made possible with today’s technology and one that will be made easier with tomorrow’s. And with any new police power, we as a society need to take an active role in establishing rules governing its use. To do otherwise is to cede ever more authority to the police.

This essay was originally published in the New Haven Register.

Posted on October 4, 2004 at 7:05 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.