reports – ubisurv

Transparent Lives: Surveillance in Canada

The New Transparency project is coming to an end, and we are launching our major final report, Transparent Lives: Surveillance in Canada / Vivre à nu: La surveillance au Canada, in Ottawa on Thursday 8th May (which is also my birthday!). The report is being published as a book by Athabasca University Press, so it is available in all formats including a free-t0-download PDF. We want as many people in Canada (and elsewhere) to read it as possible.

The launch will be covered by the Canadian press and was already blogged in the Ottawa Citizen a few days ago .

A website with resources and summaries will be here very soon, and there is also a promotional video / trailer here in Youtube.

New Privacy Survey released

Simon Davies, AKA Privacy Surgeon, and the London School of Economics have a great new survey of privacy predictions for 2013 out now. Key quote from the press release:

“More aggressive action by companies to monetise personal information through advertising will inevitably fuel further controversy, while consolidation of markets such as social networking may induce emerging players to engage dangerous privacy practices.”

Whether 2013 is the tipping point in this regard that the survey suggests or not, it is certainly the case that various ‘lines in the sand’ are being crossed on a regular basis at the moment and if the public aren’t as concerned as the experts surveyed for this report, then privacy may even lose even its tactical utility as a way of opposing surveillance, let alone mean the same thing to most people as it used to.

New UK report on the future of identity

There is yet a another major surveillance-related report out, this one from the UK, on Future Identities – Changing identities in the UK: the next 10 years. It is part of the UK government’s Foresight program, and is available from their website. Their other major current project is on the future of manufacturing. Although the cancellation of the last New Labour administration’s ID card scheme is not explicitly mentioned in the background it seems clear that this report was originally commissioned as a ‘what now?’ exercise – to open up a much wider debate. The Foresight project say this about the final report:

“This Report provides an important opportunity for the Government to consider how identities in the UK are changing and the possible implications for policy-making in the next 10 years. It has involved over 100 academics and stakeholders and is supported by 20 published evidence papers.

It shows that the economic downturn, the effects of globalisation, and increasing international migration have all been influential on notions of identity, while the impact of social media and modern communications technology have created a new digital UK. In particular the report discusses an emerging trend of hyper-connectivity and the ubiquity of the internet enables people to be constantly connected across many different platforms. The detailed findings of the report have implications for a wide range of policy areas and will support the design and evaluation of robust, innovative, open policy-making.”

New European Report on Surveillance

There’s a big new European report out on surveillance – I haven’t read it yet, but here’s the Press Release in full, and contact details for those who want it…

EC-funded project calls for greater transparency and accountability re use of surveillance systems

Press release, 17 Jan 2013

The IRISS project, funded by the EC under the 7th Framework Programme, has just published a major 412-page report entitled Surveillance, Fighting Crime and Violence. The report analyses the factors underpinning the development and use of surveillance systems and technologies by both public authorities and private actors, their implications in fighting crime and terrorism, social and economic costs, protection and infringement of civil liberties, fundamental rights and ethical aspects.

The IRISS consortium has identified the following trends: (1) a substantial growth of public sector demand for surveillance bolstered by the adoption of identity schemes and terrorist detection technologies and markets, (2) an increase in the demand for civil and commercial surveillance, (3) the development of a global industry in surveillance, (4) an increase in integrated surveillance solutions, and (5) a rise in the government use of cross-border surveillance solutions.

“The role of surveillance in law enforcement is expanding,” says IRISS project co-ordinator Reinhard Kreissl. “There has been a shift in its use in identifying offenders before they have committed a crime. This has affected the presumption of innocence in a way that citizens are now considered suspects (a shift to a presumption of guilt).” With the growth of encompassing preventive surveillance, the presumption of innocence as an important legal safeguard is gradually hollowed out.

“There are numerous open questions about the usefulness and effectiveness of surveillance technologies and their possible rebound effects, specifically in relation to surveillance measures introduced to fight terrorism and organised crime without knowledge of their effectiveness and consideration of their negative side effects.”

Among the report’s other findings and recommendations are these:

Important social costs of surveillance include the social damage caused by false positives of suspects of criminal and terrorist activities, the categorical suspicion and discrimination of members of certain social or ethnic groups, the marginalising effects and social inequalities caused by invasive monitoring of those of lower social status, the inhibitory effects of surveillance which can undermine social and democratic activities, and the erosion of trust in society.

There are gaps and deficiencies in the law and in jurisprudence as they struggle to keep pace with technological development and institutional practice, perhaps especially in an online environment and in a climate of enhanced law enforcement and counter-terrorist policy.

Data protection authorities as external overseers and regulators typically focus upon the privacy-related implications of surveillance and find it difficult to embrace a wider perspective of values in their regulatory exhortations and enforcement practice. The laws within which they operate do not normally give them a licence to roam across the range of values to invoke when they seek to limit surveillance.

The European surveillance industry is developing at a rapid pace and is expected to continue doing so. However, surveillance companies from Europe face stiff competition from companies from outside the European Union.

Europe requires a multi-level strategy to build resilience in society vis-à-vis surveillance. The consortium recommends that industry associations develop surveillance-related guidelines and codes of ethics, and foster greater corporate social responsibility practices.

Greater transparency and accountability for the surveillance industry might come through the adoption of privacy impact assessments (PIAs) or surveillance impact assessments (SIAs) and through the development of standards and certification requirements for surveillance technologies.

This report is the first of several expected from the IRISS project. Other reports will address the key features raised by social, political and legal perspectives of surveillance and democracy; comparative empirical evidence concerning the impact of surveillance on democratic and open societies based on five case studies; citizen attitudes towards surveillance; the exercise of democratic rights under surveillance regimes; and options for enhancing social, economic and institutional resilience in “democratic” surveillance societies.

The report was produced by a consortium of 16 partners from universities, research institutes and companies from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Slovakia, Spain and the United Kingdom. IRISS is the acronym for “Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies”, a three-year project which began in February 2012. The consortium prepared the report for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research & Innovation.

For more information, including a copy of the report.

Reinhard Kreissl, Project Co-ordinator

David Wright, Work Package 1 leader

Billions wasted on airport ‘security’

A new report from the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) say that the industry is wasting billions on unnecessary and ineffective security procedures which are slowing down travel and damaging the whole sector’s economic prospects, according to The Guardian. This comes only days after the German government decided not to introduce body-scanners after trials showed them to be unreliable.

The argument is not particularly surprising, but there seem to be interesting aspects of the issue (apart from the basic human rights problems which we should never forget). The first is that clearly someone is benefitting economically, even if it is not the air transport sector, and that someone is the security industry – although as it happens, a whole range of people and companies have benefitted from the aftermath of 9/11. The Guardian article mentions that UK-based scanning company, Smiths, has tripled its profits this year to near $1Bn, despite the problems with scanners. However, it isn’t all bad. In European domestic and regional markets, airlines have lost out to railway travel, and this can only be a good thing in terms of environmental concerns.

The second aspect is that IATA is using this to push the revival of integrated ‘trusted traveller’ plans coming out of the USA. Many countries have bilateral schemes, but the idea is for travellers with ‘nothing to hide’ to submit personal information to a central body that would validate them without the need for time-consuming checks on the airport. So far, such schemes have been largely restricted to business-class passengers, raising the strong possibility of confusion between really improved security and simply buying more convenience. However, there is another problem from the point of view of security here too: one of the major concerns for security is so-called ‘clean skins’, terrorist who have never triggered any suspicion because they are either entirely new converts to the cause, or have been deep undercover for years cultivating an unblemished record.

In any case, it appears that the security companies are trying to get past the criticism by producing new seamless and less intrusive scanning technologies that would not require long waits and would be integrated into the architecture of airport corridors etc. Of course, the delays and inconvenience of obvious security and surveillance procedures have a purpose and are not just by-products. There is, theoretically at least, a consciousness-raising effect of what Bruce Schneier calls ‘security theater’. If these new gadgets work, and the German trial suggests that there is often more smoke than heat in claims about effectiveness, this effect would be diminished in favour of speed and convenience for an as yet unknown proportion of travellers and much greater inconvenience for the remainder. It’s an interesting conundrum for the authorities…

New Report on UN ‘Blacklisting’

There is a new report out from the European Centre on Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) on blacklisting practices, particularly the UN’s , after 9/11. The report by Gavin Sullivan and Ben Hayes, suggests that the UN 1267 list of supposed Taliban and Al-Qaeda members and supporters in particular, which I have described as ‘kafkaesque’ in the past here, is:

“beyond the powers of the Security Council. While international terrorism remains an atrocious crime … it does not justify the exercise by the Security Council of supranational sanctioning powers over individuals and entities. “

Border Security Market estimated at $16Bn

A marketing consultancy has estimated that the global border security market, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS), Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) and perimeter surveillance is due to hit $15.8bn in 2010. Without any sense of irony whatsoever, the company calls the border security market “one of the most exciting emerging markets within the global defence and security marketplace.”

They ask questions like:

“Which regional border security marketplaces offer the most significant growth opportunities? What are the prospects for European and North American defence and security companies seeking business opportunities in the Middle East? How is spending on different types of border security technology likely to be affected as government budgets come under intense pressure? What is the status of the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet) or ‘virtual fence’ along the US-Mexico border? To what extent is public opinion driving government policy on border security? What effect is the economic downturn having on illegal immigration?”

To know their answers to these questions though, you’ll have to pay £1499.00 (or $2,418.00 US)! Clearly they believe that the market for reports on border security is also pretty ‘exciting’…

Campaigners uncover UK local government spending on CCTV

Using Freedom of Information requests, Big Brother Watch in the UK has managed to get hold of figures from many British local governments on how much they spend on CCTV surveillance systems.

According to the Press Association, the annual spend by 336 local councils on the installation and operation of CCTV cameras over a three year-period from 2007/08 and 2009/10 totalled £314,835,170.39 (around $400M US). That’s a large amount of money in an ‘age of austerity’… however it is still not complete as there are another 80 local governments who did not respond to the requests. Interestingly there were still some local governments, albeit only 15, who still did not operate public-area CCTV. That’s not to say that the local police forces in those areas did not, however. There are some cities in Britain, the exception rather than the rule, like Newcastle for instance, where police own and operate public CCTV cameras. I am not sure if these are the types of councils making the claims, and I will have to look at all the figures in greater detail.

The top ten spenders on CCTV over the three years were listed as:

the city of Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, and controversial for its special scheme targeted at ‘Muslim’ areas, but also with a massively regenerated and semi-privatised city-centre. £10,476,874.00
Sandwell metropolitan borough, a large urban area to the north-west of Birmingham £5,355,744.00
the city of Leeds, in Yorkshire, whose downtown district is the epitome of the characterless, over-regenerated urban centre. £3,839,675.00,
the city of Edinburgh, capital of Scotland, a wannabe global city, and former G8 meeting host, £3,600,560.00
the borough of Hounslow, on the edge of urban and suburban west London, £3,573,186.45
the borough of Lambeth, a diverse south London district, £3,431,301.00
the city of Manchester, one of the cities we studied in our book on urban resilience, which put a huge amount in to CCTV in the downtown core the wake of a provisional IRA bombing, which has now also been gentrified out of recognition – it also has a signficant suburban gang problem, £3,347,310.00
the borough of Enfield, a leafy north-east London suburb, £3,141,295.00
the borough of Barnet, also in north London, £3,119,020.00
the borough of Barking and Dagenham, in east London, on the borders with Essex, and another area of high racial tensions stoked by a strong local British National Party, £3,090,000.00.

Half of the top ten are London boroughs, outside of the centre of London, showing that CCTV is still diffusing outwards from the heavily surveilled core around the financial centre of the City of London and the government district of Westminster. Not surprisingly, the diffusion is also continuing primarily to the major urban centres beyond London, and the case of Sandwell perhaps shows that the greater Birmingham area is going through a similar process seen in London. In any case, public area video surveillance is not going away in the UK any time soon, and the new government will have to, at some time, demonstrate what it actually meant by introducing greater regulation of CCTV.

UK Media on the New ICO Surveillance Report

There has been some good coverage (and some less good) coverage of the new ICO surveillance update report, to which we (founder-members of the Surveillance Studies Network) contributed the background research.

There are national press stories in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, in regional papers like The Yorkshire Post, and in trade publications like Computer Weekly, The Register, and Public Service.

Although some of the reports get things wrong, and The Daily Mail’s in particular is a masterpiece of selective quotation and context-removal, the response has generally got the main points that we intended to get across. These include the points that the change of government in Britain with its rhetoric of rolling back surveillance doesn’t necessarily affect a great deal of what the state does beyond those headline measures like scrapping ID cards and the National Identity Register; and, even more importantly, both transnational data sharing between states and surveillance by the private sector are intensifying and spreading regardless. We do highlight some particular surveillance technologies and practices but these are largely emblematic in this report – it was not a large survey like the 2006 orignal – so although we talk about drone cameras, Google Latitude and Facebook Places, ubiquitous computing, e-borders and new workplace monitoring practices, we are not trying to say that these are the only games in town.