Loss of Privacy

Project Indect is the culmination of five years of research aimed at developing computer programs that can monitor information from every corner of the internet, including what was once thought very private.  Not only can it process information from websites and forums, but from p2p programs, file servers and individual computers.  Project Indect’s objective is to detect threats as well as abnormal behavior and violence.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a “sinister step” for any country, adding that it was “positively chilling” on a European scale.

Stephen Booth, an Open Europe analyst who has helped compile a dossier on the European justice agenda, said these developments and projects such as Indect sounded “Orwellian” and raised serious questions about individual liberty.

“This is all pretty scary stuff in my book. These projects would involve a huge invasion of privacy and citizens need to ask themselves whether the EU should be spending their taxes on them,” he said.

“The EU lacks sufficient checks and balances and there is no evidence that anyone has ever asked ‘is this actually in the best interests of our citizens?’”

Of course it’s not in the best interests of the citizens.  It’s in the best interest of those who stand to profit and gain from the information collected.

Miss Chakrabarti said: “Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society.

But, it’s okay if we do it “in the name of the children” or to protect the citizens from some, as yet unknown, bad guy.

According to the official website for Project Indect, which began this year, its main objectives include “to develop a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence”.

It talks of the “construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, usenet groups, file servers, p2p [peer-to-peer] networks as well as individual computer systems, building an internet-based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive”.

In plain English, this means, “We are going to watch every single thing you do, put it in a database somewhere, and use it against you at the first opportune moment.”

Several car insurance companies are beginning to offer discounts to parents if they allow the company to place a drive-cam in the car to monitor how teens are driving.  The catch is, it also monitors other adults.  The insurance company claims that it will not use the information from the adult against insurance rates, but we know that they can and, eventually, they will.

The information is recorded as video and then wirelessly transmits the information to a neutral driving coach.  The camera is mounted under the rear view mirror so the entire inside of the car can been seen.

It is also highly likely that other people will have access to all of the data, especially if there has been an accident.

It is possible American Family might request Teen Safe Driver output from customers in some situations involving the claims process, for instance, as part of an accident investigation. The information also is subject to being subpoenaed by other parties in a legal proceeding.

Teen Safe Driver guarantees that parents will have peace of mind after handing over the keys to their children, but if everything is recorded, including adults, will they really be at peace?  It should never be acceptable to spy on anyone.  This program is targeting teens, but the fact that it will record adults as well leads on to believe that the monitoring will eventually be marketed to all drivers.

If you’re concerned about google and other search engines keeping track of your searches and/or your IP address, you can try using black box, ixquick, and scroogle.

PinchMedia, a company that offers a service to iPhone application creators about how their apps are used after installation is gathering more details than is necessary.  Similar to the Palm Pre problem, instead of just reporting how the app is used, the company freely admits that it does much more;

The ID number of your device, the model and operating system version, application name and version, whether the device is jailbroken, whether the app is pirated, how long the app has been used and the user’s co-ordinates (latitude and longitude). If FaceBook is enabled the gender and age of the user is also reported.

Users are unaware that this is happening and there is no opt-out for these apps.  This is, without a doubt, spyware, and violates Apple’s EULA.  Tell Apple that you aren’t going to put up with this type of business model.  Vote with your wallet and tell as many people as you can.

If you can get photographic evidence of your neighbors fly tipping, painting graffiti, littering, and/or letting your dog poop on the sidewalk without cleaning it up, the police will give you cold hard cash.

Councillor Afzal Akram denied the scheme was a “snooper’s charter”.

“If Mrs Jones looks out of her window and sees a white van with the doors open and men dumping a sofa on the street we want her to write down the number plate and tell us,” he said.

“It’s not a snooper’s charter, I think the message is we want our streets clean and we don’t want people coming here and dumping rubbish.”

If council lawyers issues a summons officials will pay out £100, with another £50 on conviction, and £500 if the court imposes the maximum fine.

While it’s a nice idea to keep the streets clean, I don’t like the idea of nosy Mrs. Jones watching every single thing that I do.  I wonder where they ever could have gotten the idea from?

The Conviction Reward Scheme, which launched this weekend, was introduced after residents said they wanted more to be done to tackle environmental crime.

The response to, “make our neighborhood safer,” is, “clean it up yourself and we’ll toss a few coin your way.”