RFID, GPS Technology and Electronic Surveillance

British “Authorities” Seek Access to People’s Private Telephone and Email Records Every 60 Seconds

August 9, 2009

Telegraph - The authorities made more than 500,000 requests for confidential communications data last year, equivalent to spying on one in every 78 adults, leading to claims that Britain had “sleepwalked into a surveillance society.”

An official report also disclosed that hundreds of errors had been made in these “interception” operations, with the wrong phone numbers or emails being monitored.

The figures will fuel concerns over the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act by public bodies. The Act gives authorities – including councils, the police and intelligence agencies – the power to request access to confidential communications data, including lists of telephone numbers dialed and email addresses to which messages have been sent.

Councils have been accused of using the powers, which were originally intended to tackle terrorism and organised crime, for trivial matters such as littering and dog fouling. Only last month, it emerged that councils and other official bodies had used hidden tracking devices to spy on members of the public.

The latest figures were compiled by Sir Paul Kennedy, the interception of communications commissioner, who reviews requests made under the Act. They relate to monitoring communication “traffic” – such as who is contacting whom, when and where and which websites are visited, but not the content of conversations or messages themselves.

Sir Paul found that last year a total of 504,073 such requests were made. The vast majority were made by the police and security services but 123 local councils made a total of 1,553 requests for communications data. Some councils sought lists of the telephone numbers that people had dialled.

Amid growing unease about surveillance powers, ministers issued new guidelines last year about their use. Despite the promised crackdown, the 2008 figure is only slightly lower than 2007’s 519,260 requests.

In April, the Home Office said it would go ahead with plans to track every phone call, email, text message and website visit made by the public, in order to combat terrorists and other criminals...

Socialist Britain Has More Big Brother CCTV Cameras Than Communist China

August 11, 2009

Daily Mail - Britain has one and a half times as many surveillance cameras as communist China, despite having a fraction of its population, shocking figures revealed yesterday. There are 4.2 million closed circuit TV cameras here, one per every 14 people. But in police state China, which has a population of 1.3 billion, there are just 2.75 million cameras, the equivalent of one for every 472,000 of its citizens.

Simon Davies from pressure group Privacy International said the astonishing statistic highlighted Britain’s ‘worrying obsession’ with surveillance.

‘Britain has established itself as the model state that the Chinese authorities would love to have,’ he said.

‘As far as surveillance goes, Britain has created the blueprint for the 21st century non-democratic regime.

‘It was not intended but it has certainly been the consequence.’

It is estimated that Britain has 20 percent of cameras globally and that each person in the country is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

The Chinese Government revealed the number of cameras it has as it announced plans to expand CCTV surveillance. It began widespread installation of cameras in 2003 to bolster its system of extreme state control which hails back to the dark days of Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. The government also deploys millions of security personnel, which include uniformed, official security guards who work along side police, patrolling the streets and others who bug phones, scour the internet for sensitive material and block international TV news bulletins.

China’s Public Security Ministry said in the news release that its cameras are the most visible components of police surveillance and notification systems installed around the country. Most of the cameras are in urban areas, with 265,000 in the capital Beijing alone, but the government said it plans to expand the use of security cameras in the countryside.

It also intends to combine surveillance cameras with new face recognition software, which has raised concerns about how the equipment will be used. It is not clear how many surveillance cameras in China use such software.

Figures released today showed that in Britain the number of Big Brother snooping missions by police, town halls and other public bodies has soared by 44 percent in two years. One request is made every minute for officials to spy on someone’s phone records or email accounts.

Last year there were 504,073 new cases – an average of 1,381 a day. It is the equivalent of one adult in 78 coming under state-sanctioned surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

Amish Lose RFID Battle

August 3, 2009

The Register - Michigan farmers have failed in their attempt to block the introduction of RFID tags for cattle, despite arguments about the cost and the risk of upsetting an otherwise benevolent deity.

The case was bought by the catchily-named Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defence Fund (FTCLDF), representing small farmers in Michigan as well as a group of six Amish farmers: the former concerned about the cost of the tags, while the latter were more worried about eternal damnation brought on by applying numbers to God's own cattle.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) tried to get the case dismissed back in November last year, but only now has it managed to have the case thrown out on the basis that it is a Michigan ruling and thus subject to state laws, rather than part of any agenda being set by the USDA as part of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), against which the plaintiff's case was based.

Even in Michigan the law is intended to be voluntary, but the plaintiffs clearly believe that the voluntary status is just a ruse under which a mandatory ruling can be later implemented, which would threaten their livelihoods, or eternal souls, as appropriate. It's worth noting, as the Judge did, that even Amish cattle already have numbered metal ear studs, so the contention that numbering cattle is against God's law was already in shaky ground.

As for the USDA agenda, RFID Journal covers the case in some detail including quotes from a Michigan representative explaining:

"We implemented this program nearly 10 years ago... This was done pre-NAIS. Michigan is the only state with a mandatory electronic animal-tracking program, but it is also the only state with documented bovine TB cases"

Electronic tracking, in this instance, doesn't necessarily mean RFID tags. The same thing can be, and is, achieved using the existing metal studs, with the data gathered electronically whenever the cattle are moved. But such assurances aren't going to dent a good conspiracy theory about federal control.

Big Brother Really is Watching You

August 3, 2009

todayszaman.com - European nations, alongside the United States of America and now, increasingly, Turkey, rank as some of the countries whose people are the most spied upon in history. In the UK alone, there is now one camera for every 20 people in the land. About 5 million machines and rising. You cannot move unseen.

Professional watchers scrutinize some 1,000 images a minute. Most are logged and lost in archives, but obviously if something is really going down, then the CCTV images are retained, copied and, if necessary, included in evidence in any eventual criminal trial. This is reality TV on a national and increasingly international scale.

Andy Warhol once famously quipped that in the modern era, everyone would have at least 15 minutes of fame. This, he deduced, was the inevitable result of the ubiquity of television in the modern era as radio and pictorial art, even photography, were brushed aside in favor of the now moment of television and video, as the explosion in popularity of YouTube has shown with even mobile phone camera material making its out-of-focus mark on the Internet. Warhol’s statement was indeed a most prescient prophecy, but one which has far outstripped even his most pessimistic projections.

And it is not only CCTV that is surveying and scanning our every move; Internet advertising targets you. Have you not noticed the extraordinary accuracy of the ad inserts that pop up alongside your e-mail sites or tie-in so exclusively with the subject matter that you have typed in Google or other search engines? I have noticed ads that are directed on the basis of certain words I have used in an email and, naturally, in my articles for this newspaper. Someone, somewhere, is most definitely watching you and me. I am not being paranoid, but someone is out to get me… or my money, at any rate.

Not paranoid enough for you? What about your mobile phone, eh? This is the gadget that none of us can do without or be without, for that matter. According to an article in The Guardian by Julian Baggini on July 17:

“ID cards didn’t do it. CCTV cameras didn’t do it. Not even the Terrorism Act could rouse the masses to indignant protest about the erosion of their privacy. But recently we learned something could: news that a company called Connectivity was to launch a new mobile phone directory so appalled the nation that the service’s [Web site] crashed under the weight of people opting out, and the service was suspended. ‘I’d find it quite intrusive actually,’ said one woman stopped on the street by BBC’s Working Lunch, whose report ignited the protests. ‘I think whoever gets my mobile phone [number], I should be giving it to them’.”

“What explains this paradoxical combination of opening up in some respects and clamming up in others? An important part of the answer is that personal information is more ruthlessly commercially exploited than it used to be. You were in the phonebook simply because you had a phone. You’re on Connectivity’s [Web site], however, because someone was paid to hand over your number,” Baggini explained.

In another article which appeared in The Observer on July 19, Ariane Sherine wrote:

“Machines are taking over the country. You may not have realized this yet because they’re doing it by stealth. They’re blinking placidly in the corners of establishments, washing our clothes, vomiting banknotes and spitting out receipts. Do not be fooled. Very soon, they will rule us all...