Category: Rights

Global CCTV datamining project revealed

As a result of an annual report on datamining sent to the US Congress by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a research project, Video Analysis and Content Extraction (VACE), has been revealed. The program is aiming to produce an computer system that will be able to search and analyse video images, especially “surveillance-camera data from countries other than the United States” to identify “well-established patterns of clearly suspicious behavior.”

Conducted by the Office of Incisive Analysis, part of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the program has apparently been running since 2001,and is merely one of several post-9/11 research projects aiming to create advanced dataveillance systems to analyse data from global sources. How the USA would obtain the information is not specified…

One could spend a long time listing all the DARPA and IARPA projects that are running, many of which are speculative and come to nothing. The report also mentions the curious Project Reynard that I have mentioned before, which aims to analyse the behaviours of avatars in online gaming environments with the aim of detecting ‘suspicious behaviours’. Reynard is apparently achieving some successful results, but we have no real idea at what stage VACE is, and the report only states that some elements are being tested with real world data. This implies that there is nowhere near a complete system. Nevertheless the mentality behind these projects is worrying. It is hardly the first time that the USA has tried to create what Paul Edwards called a ‘closed world’ and these utopian projects which effectively try to know the whole world in some way (like ECHELON, or the FBI’s proposed Server in the Sky) are an ongoing US state obsession.

It is the particular idea that ‘suspicious patterns of behaviour’ can be identified through constant surveillance and automated analysis, that our behaviour and indeed thoughts are no longer our own business. Because it is thoughts and anticipating action that is the ultimate goal. One can see this, at a finer grain, of programs like Project Hostile Intent, a Department of Homeland Security initiative to analyse ‘microexpressions’, supposedly preconscious facial movements. The EU is not immune from such incredibly intrusive proposals: so-called ‘spy in the cabin’ cameras and microphones in the back of every seat have been proposed by the EU-funded SAFEE project, which is supported by a large consortium of security corporations. The European Commission has already hinted that it might try to ‘require’ airlines to use the system when developed.

No doubt too, because of the close (and largely secret and unaccountable) co-operation of the EU and USA on security issues, all the images and recordings would find their way into these proposes databases and their inhuman agents would check them over to make sure we are all passive, good humans with correct behaviours, expressions and thoughts, whether we are in the real or the virtual world…

EU to EULA if UK is OK

It is a kind of digital enclosure, an attempt to impose on the Internet the same kind of removal of common rights that the British ruling classes imposed on the land from the Seventeenth Century onwards…

I have just completed an article on the UK as a ‘bad example’ to the rest of Europe, and lo and behold another piece of regressive, repressive idiocy by the British government appears. It seems that the UK is trying to amend the proposed EU-wide Telecommunications package to destroy the principle of net neutrality. Their proposals will “remove the principle of users’ rights to access and distribute Internet content and services”, and replace it with “a ‘principle’  that users can be told not only the conditions for access, but also the conditions for the use of applications and services.”

In other words, they want to make the entire Internet work by End-User Licensing Agreements (EULAs) rather than the general principle of end-to-end connectivity. It is a kind of digital enclosure, an attempt to impose on the Internet the same kind of removal of common rights that the British ruling classes imposed on the land from the Seventeenth Century onwards. There is nothing about the Internet Age about this, indeed it is pre-industrial – it is pure justification of the same powerful economic interests that the British state has always represented. And, as the original report points out, this is particularly bitter because both the British (OFCOM-originated) amendments and their duplicate Czech mini-me amendments have a lot of their substantive justitifications cut’n’pasted wholesale from Wikipedia!

Like the thieves who stole our land, they are utterly shameless.

(I think I originally saw this in BoingBoing, and sorry for not linking it, but it keeps crashing my little computer right now…)

The rise of personal surveillance

Personal surveillance is only going to get harder to regulate as things like ‘smart dust’ and micro-UAVs come down in price and are more easily available…

CBS News in the USA is reporting on the rise of stalking and in particular the use of more powerful, smaller and cheaper surveillance devices: embedded hidden cameras, GPS trackers and so on. They discuss in particular the case of Michael Strahan, a sportsman who seems to be obsessed with keeping watch on family and friends. But the bigger pictures is that stalking is something that apparently affects around 3.4 million US citizens. That’s more than one in a hundred, an astonishing figure if it’s anywhere near ‘right’.

Stalking and personal surveillance are an integral part of the culture of any state in which order in ensured through surveillance. We are creating unhealthy societies in which personal relationships between people are increasingly characterised by the same fear and distrust as states have of their people.

Smart Dust chips (Dust Networks)
Smart Dust chips (Dust Networks)

ravenThis is only going to get harder to regulate as things like ‘smart dust’ and micro-UAVs come down in price and are more easily available. And already surveillance equipment like head-mounted cameras for cyclists, is marketed as ‘toys’… regulation is only half the answer. The other half has to be in working out how to shift away from this mistrustful, fearful, risk-obsessed culture. Part of this has to be down to government: the more that surveillance is part of every solution they come up with to any problem, the worse the social malaise will become.

How many cameras are there in Britain? (4)

Despite the fact that it really doesn’t ‘work’, the growth of CCTV is almost out of control in Britain, and it is probably only the recession that is holding this growth back at all…

Here is another episode in the ongoing saga that was sparked off by my discussion with David Aaronovitch about supposedly misleading figures used in our Report on the Surveillance Society, leading to his rather weak comment piece in The Times, my pre-emptive response here, and Paul Lewis’ similar piece in The Guardian.

Aaronovitch’s own newspaper, The Times, has now published a story by one of its reporters, Kaya Burgess, in which she counted the cameras on her commute into work, and found there were a total of 281 cameras on her 3.1 mile route, or one camera every 18 metres on average. 108 of these were state-placed and the rest were installed by private operators (shops,homes etc.). As the article points out, and this is something I have been arguing for years, the growth of private cameras is remarkable and of course, almost completely unregulated.

The figure of 281 is remarkably similar to Clive Norris’ little fictional tale of ‘Thomas Kearns’ of 1999 which sparked the ‘we are watched by 300 cameras a day’ stories in the press, and which was the subject of Aaronovitch’s piece. Perhaps we should feel smug, but that still isn’t the point. There never was an ‘accurate’ figure to be correct about. It was a possibility. Now it seems that the possibility has been bypassed by some distance, at least for London. Because remember, Kaya’s journey was merely the journey into work. It was not even a small portion of the day. It did not count cameras at work, or those she might encounter during her working day, nor those her image might be captured by if she went out for a post-work meal and drinks… her 281 might well end up being double that by the end of the day, and she was not doing any of the more ‘unrealistic’ things that Norris’ ‘busy Londoner’ was.

Of course, this density of cameras is by no means uniform across London or across the country, nor is there one central ‘Big Brother’ behind the cameras, no one guard in the tower. We live not in the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham, made notorious by Michel Foucault’s analysis, but in what contemporary French theorist, Bruno Latour, called, an ‘oligopticon’. In some places we are watched (and even known) intensely and in others hardly at all, and we move through these different zones of varying intensities of surveillance in our days and our lives.

Does that make the huge number and high density of cameras in some places ethically more acceptable? Hardly. Despite the fact that it really doesn’t ‘work’, the growth of CCTV is almost out of control in Britain, and it is probably only the recession that is holding this growth back at all. The Times report also notes that the Local Authority cameras appeared to be placed in clear violation of the existing voluntary CCTV Code of Practice which states that CCTV should be installed in areas of high crime, not just at regular intervals everywhere. Senior police officers I have talked to agree with this. They don’t see the need for cameras on every corner; they want to target crime hot spots effectively and efficiently. And of course, the private cameras aren’t really regulated much, and those on private homes not at all. The important thing, is to have stronger, clearer regulation of CCTV as the House of Lords Constitution Committee recently demanded. This new regulation should control and perhaps even reverse the growth in the number of cameras by specifying much more clearly the circumstances and contexts under which CCTV is appropriate and how it is to be discussed and approved, so that it becomes a possibility to be debated not the normality to be expected.

(thanks to Charles Raab for bringing this piece to my attention and for being fair about The Times!)

Incompetence and Surveillance

There is an opinion piece in The Daily Telegraph (UK) today by Alasdair Palmer, which argues that it is the incompetence and human fallibility of the UK government rather than any lack of desire which prevents an Orwellian surveillance state from emerging in the UK. It is hardly new but it’s an attractive argument, one which I have used before and which we used to a certain extent in our Report on the Surveillance Society, and one which draws on the deep well of cynicism about government which has long characterised British politics.

However there are a number of problems with the argument. The first is whether it is really true. A totalitarian society does not have to be competent in the sense of having correct information, in fact one of the central messages of Nineteen Eight-Four is that ‘truth’ is a product of state control in such societies. This was obvious in the case of Stalin’s purges. The accusations made against individuals did not rely on the accuracy of the accusation but on the very fact of accusation, something brought out very strongly in Orlando Figges’ recent book, The Whisperers. In the UK in recent years we have seen some elements of this. It doesn’t matter for example, whether someone really is a terrorist, the word ‘terrorist’ is just redefined in law and practice to encompass that person. New terms are invented to describe quasi-crimes (like anti-social behaviour) which come to have the force of ‘crime’ and become the focus of state surveillance activity. And I have shown how the recent arguments over photography in public places show a genuine totalitarianism in the attempt to define the limits of the collection and interpretation of visual images. It doesn’t matter how competent the state is at carrying out its desires here. The very fact that it defines what is acceptability in this way can create a new ‘normality’ and a ‘chilling effect’ on protest and resistance – which makes such activity even more essential.

The second problem is the idea that incompetence protects us. It didn’t in Soviet Russia and it doesn’t today. The government’s uselessness in handling data harms people. The loss and leakage of private personal information can lead to real effects on people’s lives: information theft, fraud and so on. The loss of trust in those who control information also has knock-on effects on those organisations that genuinely rely on personal information to provide essential services and care: education, health services, social work etc. A loss of trust caused by failed repression leads to a generalised loss of trust in government and in other people: it damages social trust. It is perhaps because British people have such a low level of social trust anyway that we expect things to fail.

The third problem relies on the first two and is the idea that state incompetence is enough to protect us. Of course it isn’t. Cynicism is no basis for thinking of, and creating, a better society. Do we want to live in a society where our only protection is the fact that state is structurally or contingently unable to create a totalitarian situation even though it continues to try? I certainly don’t. The emergence of surveillance societies, competent or otherwise, requires the imagination of alternatives – including greater democracy, accountability, transparency, and regulation and control of both state and corporate organisations in our favour – and political action to demand and create those alternatives.

A faith in failure is simply a form of nihilism.

UK police spying on activists… again

The Met are unlikely to care. They are not generally known for their respect for the political rights of British citizens…

The Guardian has posted another worrying story (and an interesting video) on the routine police surveillance of environmental activists, most of whom have no connection to any criminal behaviour. The Metropolitan police, who have always been in the forefront of efforts to try to portray political activists as actual or potential criminals, is collecting storing and sharing information, including many private personal details, on activists using Crimint, the national criminal intelligence system. The data includes activists “seen on a regular basis” as well as less frequent activists, regardless of arrests or convictions, their names, political associations and photographs. This information is being shared between police forces to build up more complete portraits of political activity nationwide.

The human rights group, Liberty, is challenging this data collection and sharing on the grounds that it breaches Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. My view is that it almost certainly does, and that the Met are unlikely to care. They are not generally known for their respect for the political rights of British citizens indeed one of their original purposes was to crack down on political dissent back in the Nineteenth Century and they have always maintained this role. They operate the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU) which is also involve in spreading disinformation on political activists and their HQ at New Scotland Yard will apparently host the new privately-run ACPO Confidential Intelligence Unit (CIU).

I have had my own personal experience of the Met’s way of dealing with activists and it is certainly not in any way respectful of anyone’s rights. It urgently needs to be brought under some proper control and accountability, and hopefully being found guilty of breaching Article 8 of the ECHR, if it happens, will be a good start.

‘Blacklisting’ firm shut down by ICO

For some time, I’ve been concerned about the little-discussed practice of ‘blacklisting’, the creation and sale of databases of workers thought to be troublemakers, radicals or union activists. Last year, I noted the failed attempt by the British government to legitimise this activity with the creation of the National Dismissal Register, and connected this to earlier surveillance of workers through the Economic League. See this more recent post where I summarised the story in a slightly different context.

But the Economic League, set up after WW1 and finally closed in 1993, had several offshoots. Now, as reported in most of the British press, one of them has been closed down by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). ‘The Consulting Association’, a firm based in Droitwich, Worcestershire had apparently been operating for 15 years selling confidential information on construction workers to all the major building companies. According to the BBC, 3,213 workers’ names were contained on the list and were categorised by political affiliations and union activity etc.

Not surprisingly the firm was owned and run by one Ian Kerr, who was previously involved in the Economic League and who still seems to think he was doing nothing wrong, despite his past, and despite the fact that he had previously denied even the existence of this database. But he, along with all the clients named by the report, including Amec, Taylor Woodrow, Laing O’Rourke and Balfour Beatty and many others – there is a full list on the Guardian site – were breaking the Data Protection Act by illegally keeping and trading in personal information. We’ll see whether the big building firms get away with it; most likely they will simply claim that that they didn’t know the data was illegally acquired and traded.

Given the recent history of the National Dismissal Register to set up databases of troublesome workers, it is particularly ironic that minister, Peter Mandelson, is quoted as applauding this action by the ICO in the various reports.

Protecting yourself from surveillance

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Open Society Initiative have created the very useful ‘Surveillance Self-Defense’ (SSD) site. Although the SSD is aimed at US citizens and the legal aspects are therefore more relevant to those living in the States, the general advice and information on risk management and defensive technologies is all worth reading for anyone who uses a computer anywhere in the world.

Essentially this is a kind of care and maintenance of your ‘data double’ concept, which is one response to the growth of surveillance. Of course no-one should think that this kind of ‘personal information economy’ approach is enough and the EFF certainly don’t. There is in any case a general effect that could emerge from this kind of action should large numbers of people start taking the advice of EFF: mass surveillance effectively becomes more difficult, more expensive and less worthwhile. However, things like SSD cannot be a substitute for political action to curb the powers of state and private sector to monitor us and reduce individual liberties and dignity.

How many people are being arrested for taking pictures in public in Britain?

It seems that what is going on is a battle to control the power of visibility, the power to make images. The British state, and other ‘responsible’ bodies (generally commercial organisations) are attempting to make us increasingly transparent whilst at the same time reducing the ability of ordinary people to render the state transparent…

I’m seeing more and more local and self-reported stories of ordinary people being harassed and arrested in Britain, for taking photographs in public. Today BoingBoing is reporting on this Manchester man who was arrested because the police thought he might be photographing sewer gratings. I reported last year on the case of an online acquaintance who was arrested and humiliated over several days in London. It is increasingly not even police but the growing multitude of ‘plastic police’ – Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), neighbourhood wardens and private security guards – who are at the forefront of this tendency. But because most of these stories are never taken up by the national – or even local – media, it is difficult to have a good idea of how widespread this has become.

This is even before we have seen the effects of the new Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 which under Section 76, gives power to the police to prevent people from taking pictures. Most of the arrests have come under Section 44 or 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which allow the police to stop and search photographers and in the latter case, to arrest people for possessing material (generally photographs in this case) likely to be of use in the commission of an act of terrorism.

At the same time of course, there has been a huge expansion of CCTV particularly by the state. It seems that what is going on is a battle to control the power of visibility, the power to make images. The British state, and other ‘responsible’ bodies (generally commercial organisations) are attempting to make us increasingly transparent whilst at the same time reducing the ability of ordinary people to render the state transparent, in other words to hold the state accountable. A situation of rowing asymmetry is developing with regards to the visual image. This renders the whole public rationale for CCTV expansion highly questionable. We already know that CCTV operatives are spending more of their time searching for these kinds of social and public order offenses rather than actual crime.

This tends to support the argument that I have been making that several democratic countries, with Britain and Italy at the forefront, are drifting into a kind of ‘soft fascism’, a creeping totalitarianism that is presented as reasoned and reasonable. It allows supporters to claim that opponents are being ‘extreme’ and underestimating the ‘real danger’, that all of these measure are ‘for our own good’. Yet we have arrived at a point where even untrained, ill-educated street-level minions of the state can now decide whether wee are allowed to take pictures in public. When people like ex-MI5 chief, Stella Rimington are saying that we are in danger of heading towards a police state, even the cynics, and the ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’ crowd, should be taking some notice.

How many cameras are there in Britain? (2)

Well, Aaronovitch’s piece came out. It’s not even as interesting as I had thought it would be, and my account yesterday says all that needs to be said in response, except to note that he even managed to get my surname wrong and that of the character in Clive’s book, which is more than ironic for an attack on inaccuracy! Journalists, eh? Gotta love ’em…

To be fair to The Times, it has been getting better recently on this issue, and they carried a very good interview with the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, last week, which was in marked contrast to their sniping at him a few years ago. It also shows a depth of understanding and the political maturity needed to recognise what is important in the debate on surveillance.