Loss of Privacy

Despite fears over the erosion of privacy in the United Kingdom, new spy drones have taken to the British skies.  Originally used for military purposes, the small, remote control helicopters are now overhead, beginning in Merseyside.

…senior officers in Merseyside, who are trialling the drone, said they did not believe it was the next phase in creating a Big Brother society.

Assistant chief constable Simon Byrne said: “People clamour for the feeling of safety which cameras give.

CCTV, spy drones, DNA lists, and anything else the British government can think of only make you feel safer.  They really don’t make you safer.  But at least the sheeple feel better and the media has their daily sound bite to make others feel better.

“Obviously there is a point of view that has been expressed but our feedback from the public is anything we can do to fight crime is a good thing.

There is a reason why many people are skeptical.  There is little transparency as to the use of the spy drones [video].  There also appears to be little oversight on their use.  There is also the very real, long-term effect of the police becoming so reliant on the spy drones that they forego the time tested policy of employing the local citizenry in helping to fight crime.

We still know very little from the July 7th bombers.  Sure, their identities were pieced together via one or two cameras in London, but we know virtually nothing about them or their whereabouts before they entered London.  The attempted attackers were able to escape despite the use of so many cameras.  With these two instances, you’d have to be a moron to believe that any of this is evidence that CCTV cameras work as they should.

“There are safeguards in place legally covering the use of CCTV and the higher the level of intrusion, the higher the level of authority needed within the police force to use it. So there is that balance there.”

Oh, okay then.  Since you say there’s a balance and you won’t misuse it, I’ll believe you.  There is still little evidence as to who controls the CCTV cameras or where the video and photographic evidence ends up.  Most do not even know how long the videos and photographs are stored before they are purged.

There is a large question pertaining to morality when implementing such devices as CCTV and spy drones.  People who would normally walk through life without their private lives being scrutinized, will now be forced to behave differently solely because they know that they will be on some sort of video 24/7.

Take, for instance, the shop in Texas, whose employee is going to end up on the sex offenders list because she sold a vibrator.  While some people would think purchasing such an item is morally reprehensible, others do not.  But how many people would now be reluctant to even enter the store, knowing that they will be recorded as doing so and risk being arrested because of an overly strict interpretation of the law?

These spy drones may make the police’s jobs more efficient, but are we really willing to sacrifice our privacy to make the police a little bit more efficient, especially when there is little to no evidence that they work?  And, since the police and the government are supposed to be serving the people, not using their positions to pursue their own private agendas, can we really trust them to do the right thing?  From J. Edgar Hoover, to Nixon, to George Bush, we have seen new technologies abused and used to further some twisted ideas against the very people they were put into place to protect.

At the end of the day, is there anyone who actually believes that these spy drones are being put into place for the betterment of society?  This is more control, added to the numerous controls already in place in the United Kingdom.  Just chalk this up to a nice little addition to the laws that will require British citizens to acts as agents of the government and report people who might be criminals.  At least we aren’t under the illusion that they are there to help us.

The world of going into public and remaining largely anonymous is quickly disappearing.  Not only is the government watching you, your fellow citizens are only far to happy to watch you, as well as law enforcement officials.  We seem to be a planet full of watching others screw up only so we can film them and gain fame from what others do.  While I still believe that foot patrols and an actual police presence, with live humans, is far more effective on crime, I fear that we may never return to the time of the beat cop, forcing us all to get used to being photographed while gardening or hanging out the laundry.

The BBC is reporting that the Home Office is considering forcing local Council staff, doctors and charity workers to report anyone who they think might one day commit a violent crime to the police.  The Home Office believes “possible warning signs could include heavy drinking, mental health problems or a violent family background.”

Civil liberty advocates are concerned that this will encourage spying on customers, resulting in individuals being placed under surveillance when they haven’t committed any crimes.  This proposal is taking a cue from the United States by claiming that this help to protect the children.

They are being viewed as an attempt to close a loophole which allowed Soham murderer Ian Huntley to get a job in a school, despite previous accusations of violence.

Two new agencies are being suggested for the proposal; one on potential offenders and one on potential victims.

Jago Russell, policy officer at campaign group Liberty, said the proposals left many “unanswered questions” about what should be done about someone with a “worrying profile”.

“How far are we willing to go in pursuit of the unrealistic promise of a risk-free society?”

Indeed, why are people continuing to be duped into giving up more freedoms?  This proposal will only add to the spying of British citizens.  It isn’t going to save anyone.  It will only deluge the police in more paperwork of someone who might, one day, become violent.

The leaked document states: “Public bodies will have access to valuable information about people at risk of becoming either perpetrators or victims of serious violence.”

It says when staff become “sufficiently concerned” about an individual, that person should be should “risk assessed” and, if necessary, referred for further attention.

How much is sufficiently concerned?  What public bodies are going to have access to individuals’ personal information and why?  How are they going to decide if a “risk assessed” person should or should not be referred for further attention and who are they going to be referred to?  Is the individual going to have the right to know they are being investigated or will they remain in ignorance of any snooping that public offices, police, and other government are doing?

This proposal is, seemingly, exactly what the British government wants.  They are already criticized as being a surveillance society and have more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world.  Now, they appear to be heading down the Stasi road of canvasing individuals in every aspect of their lives.  British citizens should be worried and very concerned about the ever reaching hand of the government into their lives.  Remember, if you look hard enough, everyone is a criminal.

As soon as I read this new bill, I immediately thought of Gattaca and the scary road we might be heading down. New Scientist is reporting that the House of Representatives has introduced a bill, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), to outlaw genetic discrimination in the United States. Though President Bush has said he would sign the bill into law if it were to reach his desk, it has been stalled in the Senate by Tom Coburn by a congressional hold, due to his anti-abortion stance.

Senator Coburn held up similar legislation from Edward Kennedy over objections in language concerning embryos and fetuses. The House bill closed those loopholes, yet Coburn is still looking for ways to change the bill more to his liking. The new bill was passed overwhelmingly, by a vote of 420 to 3, and Senator Coburn should acknowledge that his concerns have been addressed and allow the Senate to vote on the matter.

Opponents of genetic discrimination laws include some insurers and free-market purists, who have suggested that actual incidents of genetic discrimination — of people being fired because they are thought to carry the gene for Huntington’s, for instance — are few and far between. But the dearth of cases so far gives Congress all the more reason to act now. Promising medical technologies tend to become commonplace. Lawmakers will have an easier time shaping the way insurers and employers use such test results while the technology is still taking hold than when genetic tests become routine.

This is actually a good bill that should be passed into law. We already see that insurance companies can discriminate against some policy holders, such as tobacco users, because the diseases caused by such users could be prevented. This bill would prevent discrimination based genetic predisposition. What this means is that insurance providers would not be allowed to deny or charge higher premiums because you might have a gene that might, one day, surface or might not ever become active.

Now, before you start thinking, “why should I pay for someone who has a genetic predisposition to some awful disease?” remember that you do not even know what your genes might turn up later on in your life.  You, too, could be denied insurance or work.

One large case to consider is sickle-cell anemia. Is it really fair to discriminate against every single black person in America just because they may, at some point in their lives, contract the disease? It is highly unfair to penalize someone for something that they, literally, have no control over.

Who then, will decide if the mentally retarded person or the child who is genetically predisposed to homicide is the greater risk to society? Why should we allow either to be denied insurance or employment based on some arbitrary criteria created by the insurance industry?  Besides the insurances aspect of the law, there is also an employment section.

While some employers can, and do, discriminate on certain diseases, these are most often related to specific jobs. Such a job would be testing individuals to see if they could withstand the rigors of being an astronaut. Another would be an airline pilot being denied a job because of epilepsy. For many years, we banned Americans from driving if they had epilepsy because of the high risk and danger to other Americans. Today, however, many states allow epileptics to drive, providing that they have had a certain period of time with no seizures.

In these cases, the denial of a particular line of work is due solely to the safety of the individual and the potential dangers inherent with the disease.  However, it did not prevent them from doing the many jobs people without the disease performed.

Imagine a world where Stephen Hawking could never have been given a job due to his condition or being forced to live a life in the world of Gattaca.

“Of course, it’s illegal to discriminate, “genoism” it’s called, but no one takes the law seriously. If you refuse to disclose they can always take a sample from a door handle or a handshake, even the saliva on your application form. If in doubt a legal drug test can just as easily become an illegal peek at your future in the company.” – Gattaca

If passed, this law may, ultimately, end up being deemed unconstitutional under the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8). It is yet to be seen if there will be any public or corporate backlash.

Your genetic information should never be released to insurance companies or employers. There are far too many gray areas involved in reading an individual’s genetic makeup. Chance will always interfere with the plans of insurance companies and employers. We should not be forced to give up our genetic makeup on the chance that something might happen.

No one is perfect and no one can predict what genetic predispositions will or will not appear later in life. Once we begin down the slippery slope of allowing genetic discrimination, more and more genetic conditions, such as brown eyes or wearing glasses, could prove to be the reason why you may not get a job or insurance coverage. It may seem like wild speculation now, but we know that companies are always looking for ways to cut costs by kicking you to the curb to save a few dollars and it is not beyond their reach.

President Bush has submitted a new bill via the DOJ that will create large, and dangerous, changes to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. If the bill becomes a law, it will eliminate the need for the government to obtain individual warrants before an American citizen could be spied upon.

For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program.

To heighten the false urgency, the Bush administration will present this issue, as it has before, as a choice between catching terrorists before they act or blinding the intelligence agencies. But the administration has never offered evidence that the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, hampered intelligence gathering after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush simply said the law did not apply to him.

Again, we are told that this sort of law needs to be implemented to help prevent terrorism. We should all know by now that “preventing terrorism” really means “we want to spy on every single American and keep them under our thumbs.”

Mr. Bush’s motivations for submitting this bill now seem obvious. The courts have rejected his claim that 9/11 gave him virtually unchecked powers, and he faces a Democratic majority in Congress that is willing to exercise its oversight responsibilities. That, presumably, is why his bill grants immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in five years of illegal eavesdropping. It also strips the power to hear claims against the spying program from all courts except the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret.

According to the administration, the bill contains “long overdue” FISA modifications to account for changes in technology. The only example it offered was that an e-mail sent from one foreign country to another that happened to go through a computer in the United States might otherwise be missed. But Senator Feinstein had already included this fix in the bill Mr. Bush rejected.

That’s right. Instead of actually creating legislation or modifying existing legislation that might actually help the country, Bush played politics and buried Feinstein’s bill, presumably because she is a democrat and attempted to keep Bush within the law. Bush wants what he has been doing for five years to be made legal. We should be more upset that he’s been subverting the law, and getting away with it, for five years than being shocked that he is even thinking of changing the law.

The FBI already admitted to abusing the powers given them in the Patriot Act. Do you really think that no one is going to abuse any of the newly proposed changes?

The measure would not update FISA; it would gut it. It would allow the government to collect vast amounts of data at will from American citizens’ e-mail and phone calls. The Center for National Security Studies said it might even be read to permit video surveillance without a warrant.

This is a dishonest measure, dishonestly presented, and Congress should reject it. Before making any new laws, Congress has to get to the truth about Mr. Bush’s spying program. (When asked at a Senate hearing yesterday if Mr. Bush still claims to have the power to ignore FISA when he thinks it is necessary, Mr. McConnell refused to answer.)

So, instead of updating and amending the Act again, President Bush has decided to gut it and recreate the law as he sees fit. Americans need to get out from under the, “I’m not doing anything wrong so why should I worry?” mantra. President Bush already has the power to enact Martial Law whenever he sees fit. He also has the power to decide who is a terrorist, while changing what the definition of a terrorist is, depending on the situation. This will, as history has often showed, begin with the legislators, judges, politicians, prosecutors, and political opponents. Once all opponents are out of the way, those in power can continue to do whatever the hell they want to with no opposition to their hair-brained schemes.

This situation doesn’t stop when Bush leaves office. This power has been given to the executive branch, creating an imbalance in the proper checks of our governmental systems. Every single law that has been passed since 9/11 has been touted as “protecting the children” or “to stop terrorists/terrorism.” However, what it really did, is strip individual Americans’ privacy rights. The saddest thing in all this is that the common American has spent more time getting to know the latest American Idol rather than getting to know the bills that are becoming laws and the Acts created to further kill individual rights in this country.

This proposed law from President Bush would create a situation where the government would be allowed to spy on whomever they chose and make it illegal for anyone to know what they are doing. Remember, if we were really fighting terrorists and going after those responsible for the terroristic act of 9/11, we’d be in Afghanistan chasing Bin Laden, looking under every rock for him, until he was captured. Instead, we are told we should accept changes to a law that already works well, so that the President can cover his ass for his past illegal activities.

People are ignoring the fact that Ohio officials are being investigated for tampering with election results, leading one to believe that, again, Bush isn’t a legitimate president. Congress is too busy dealing with their own scandals and thinking of ways to keep their jobs to be bothered with actually caring about their constituents. If the past is any indication, Congress will end up rubber-stamping these idiotic changes.

Most of the so-called terrorist threats against this country for the past five years have come from President Bush pissing off nearly every country in the world, including those that have been our staunchest allies. Not satisfied with that, Bush has moved on to his fellow citizens, to the point that they want him impeached and given a good ass-kicking.

The fact remains that we are not in any more danger now than we were on 9/11. Yes, that was a tragic event and people suffered horrific deaths, but we are in more danger from within than without. If the US government had paid attention to the information they had obtained before 9/11, that crisis could have been avoided. The laws on the books then were, and are, more than adequate in preventing terrible crimes in the United States.

These laws are merely another ploy at grabbing more power to eliminate those pesky people in Congress who might otherwise object. We are not in imminent danger. We should not be living in fear. We should be forcing our Congressmen to get a set of balls and stand up to the President to stop him in changing the United States from a Republic to a Dictatorship.

Mr. Bush, you are the only terrorist threat to this country. Please, for the love of God, stop speaking. Just stay in bed until the 2008 elections and do nothing. The individual citizens of the United States would thank you for it.

The British government is seriously considering adding lipreading technology to its millions of surveillance cameras in order to thwart terrorists, and other criminals, by reading what everyone says.

This is yet another scheme that will not work.  The simplest way to avoid detection is to cover your mouth with your hand or go inside, where there are no cameras to read your lips.  Other, intentionally stealth ways to circumvent this would be by wearing a mask or a burka.  I’m sure a Guy Fawkes mask would be a nice touch in giving the cameras the ol’ F-U!

There is also the problem that lipreading is extremely difficult.

The way other people speak can also affect how well you lipread. Some people don’t speak clearly and lipreading someone with an unfamiliar accent may be tricky. It may also be difficult to lipread someone with a beard or a large moustache.

If a lipreader had time to study surveillance tapes, they could come up with a workable transcript, however, lipreading on the fly is not as easy as Hollywood and the politicians would like you to believe.

Computer-based lip-reading technology would help video surveillance systems spot people planning a crime or terror attack by literally watching suspects’ lips for clues. Once it finds someone speaking certain key words or sentences, the system would automatically send an alert message to a central console, mobile phone, or other communications device. Police or security agents could then be dispatched to the scene to question the individual.

If a human has difficulty telling the differences between t, c, g, and z, then how is a computer going to distinguish which is which and know exactly what a person is saying?  How will it get around facial hair and accents?

Considering that the United Kingdom is already considered a surveillance society, it isn’t surprising that they are interested in this new technology.  They already have 4.2 million cameras watching their citizens, many of which can now shout at you as you walk by.  Body monitoring cameras are already installed in airports and train stations.  They are also investigating the practical use of x-ray cameras that can scan you as you walk by, as well as facial recognition and eavesdropping cameras.  So, it is understandable that they want to add lipreading to their “arsenal” of attempting to prevent terrorism.

If all of these technologies end up being implemented, then British citizens will be living in an society that stretches beyond the imagination of Orwell himself.  What the British government does not understand is that the more you put people under your thumb, the more likely they are going to rebel.  This is not going to stop terrorism, but it will force innocent people underground with their every day conversations.

The net effect of having lipreading cameras would be a self-conscious decision to self-censor oneself.  This is probably what the British government is hoping for.  Free speech will be hurt because people will become afraid to say anything that might be misinterpreted as something else.  For now, it’s a research project.  However, with the government keenly interested, British citizens should take heed to ensure this technology isn’t added to the war on terror or else they may find themselves on the wrong end of this “war.”