October 4, 2011

Surveillance 2: Investigate Anyone

How do you do background checks on potential candidates?

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September 23, 2011

Surveillance+Conflict=Drones Killers

Links to latest developments in drone autonomy.

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August 23, 2011

Western software leads to Bahraini torture

“Torture in Bahrain aided by Nokia Siemens,” Bloomberg, link. Interesting reading for those who work in restricted access settings. Will make you want to be very leery of sending SMS messages with a cell phone. Clearly any government with the cash can and does buy and install mass surveillance software, which can be targeted on anyone. And no one will likely know the software exists until someone is pulled in. Companies will sign non disclosure agreements and not reveal the fact of the work done.

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August 12, 2011

Privacy, Secrecy, Transparency, Surveillance

Trends in these four global narratives.

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July 25, 2011

Privacy, Ephemerality and Self, by Quinn Norton

This is an interesting TED Talk by Quinn Norton on the subject of privacy, how it is different from secrecy, how the Internet is impacting that, and what some of the issues are. The issue of privacy, secrecy and surveillance is an important topic for Christians who are attempting to work especially in restricted access areas. It’s not just security in the context of a oppressive government or criminal cartels. It’s also the issue of first-encounter perceptions–which is one reason why Campus Crusade for Christ switched its name to “Cru” and dropped “Christ.” We will all have to grapple with [...]

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July 19, 2011

Airport security: Will you be a “known traveller”? [Voluntary Surveillance]

The Economist reports on a survey by the US Travel Association in which 45% of respondents said they would pay for a background check and verification that would let them “speed through airport security.” Similar in a way to “verified identities” on Twitter or Facebook (or, one day perhaps, Google+), the TSA says they will pilot a program later this year for a “select group of travelers” who are willing to “volunteer more information about themselves.” This is another example of giving up a bit of your privacy for a bit of convenience. Whether the trade-off is worth it will likely vary [...]

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July 18, 2011

Surveillance: using facial recognition to build database of suspects checkable via smartphone

Sheriff’s departments across Massachusetts are using facial recognition technology to build a database of every suspect they book, an electronic lineup that local police could soon tap remotely with a handheld device attached to a smartphone. via Device allows facial recognition data to be tapped remotely – The Boston Globe. Great technology for police work. Worse-case scenarios could envision this being used at immigration stations throughout the world, or by security agents with a cheap smartphone.

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July 16, 2011

FutureTrend: Location Sharing: Voluntary Surveillance (Watch Me!)

While we don’t really like involuntary or forced surveillance or tracking (see Nightmare Scenario in Chongqing), there is an incredible amount of voluntary submission to shared surveillance being adopted by many. There are several classic examples of this: Facebook Places and other “check-in” systems. Crowdflow tracks 880 iPhones across Europe, and wants to track you–if you’ll let them Crowdsourced traffic services The key to these is that they are voluntary, offer a service to the individual, and can be turned off. For example, I might check-in to the Chicago airport–but I might not check into the the Dubai airport, or the [...]

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July 16, 2011

Now India wants access to your Skype, Gmail

Penn Olson has written an article about how India gave RIM a “deadline for handing over interception keys for its Blackberry service” and is now asking Skype and Gmail to provide access to their data. This is a trend to watch, but I’m not overly worried right now. This really wouldn’t be easily possible for Skype to do, since it’s a peer-to-peer service–there is no central service for storing chat messages (unless you’re using the now infamous Chinese wrapper around the software–not recommended unless you want Beijing to know what you’re typing in the Chat window!). And Google told China what they [...]

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July 14, 2011

Living as though you are watched, because you are

Just in case you thought my nightmare scenario of surveillance in Chongqing was farfetched, consider this new post from Slate: Face-recognition software: It’s coming, everyone will use it, and you can’t stop it. The fact is, this software is way too useful (especially in our security conscious world) to not be used. It’s been used before, and the ubiquitous part is simply a derivative of incredible new computing power. We need to live as though we are being watched–because we will be. (And just to make things a little more frightening: here’s a Slashdot article about computers learning based on reading manuals. [...]

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July 8, 2011

Nightmare Scenario: Chongqing: a surveillance society powered by HP

This is likely to make things very “interesting” in China. Engadget is reporting that Cisco and HP have provided over a half million surveillance cameras for the Public Chongqing project, which will “give the government unprecedented views of its citizens.” One might think a half million cameras are far too much to keep up with – will Chongqing hire 500,000 people to watch them? It wouldn’t be the first time when China has tried that kind of manual labor. However, China is not all that far behind the world in technological know-how (or the ability to buy it) – and [...]

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May 24, 2010

Google launches encrypted search

http://bit.ly/c8z0XI – Hiding from Surveillance, or spammers: Google users can now run encrypted searches by going to https://www.google.com.

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May 24, 2010

Self-learning software knows who you are

http://bit.ly/dqsUPh – Promise & Perils of Technology: $2 million DARPA project to develop computers that can teach themselves to spot objects in a picture. (Before humans helped build feature sets–but computers build sets for themselves?)

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March 4, 2010

China’s Cyberposse

NYTimes.com – a swarmish movement where Chinese work together online to track down people who have done something wrong. The “human flesh search engine.”

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March 3, 2010

Live as though you are watched

Schneier on Security: More on the Al-Mabhouh Assassination. I tend to concur with the “other explanation”: they knew they were being watched.

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February 1, 1999

Surveillance in the future

It is becoming easier and easier for governments to keep an eye on the people in their territory, and this has a direct impact on both the growth of the Christian church and the efforts of missionary workers. We noted this in passing in last issue’s chronology scan; in this issue, we will examine the effects in greater detail. The editors of the Atlas of the future (Ian Pearson, ed., Macmillan Books, 1998) predict that by 2003 most industrialized societies will log and analyze the movements of every citizen, using the human body itself for electronic identification. This is known [...]

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