Loss of Privacy

Despite the fact that airports are very busy places, we haven’t seen many terrorist attacks on them. The Total Airport Security System, or TASS, claims that we are under threat and need their system to protect us from the terrorists who aren’t attacking us.

Some major flaws in this video is that a lot of things have to happen for a supposed terrorist attack to happen. What happens when the person dispersing the biological agent is actually authorized to be in that area? Nothing will happen until the person actually releases the gas or powder into the system.

Does TASS even begin to understand how many thousands of vehicles are illegally parked every single day at an airport? Trying to figure out which ones are just regular people and which one is there to pick up a terrorist or set off a car bomb is impossible to do.

Facial recognition is not perfect and there are too many false positives currently in the systems for it to be accurately relied upon. Many terrorists or suspected terrorists aren’t going to go to the airport. They are going to pick someone with no record so they won’t be detected. Also, how is an RFID detector going to keep track of the person? Presumably, they have an RFID chip in the passport, boarding pass, or both. What happens when that person puts their passport and boarding pass in an RFID safe wallet or sleeve? It won’t be detected and the police won’t be able to track them so easily.

While the truck in the cargo area could be a legitimate threat, not all trucks have electronic seals and there would be no way to know if the cargo was actually opened. Even then, TASS only sets up monitoring on the truck, based on a presumed GPS device within the truck. If this were some sort of plot or something dangerous, simply monitoring it isn’t going to stop any kind of explosion.

TASS then assumes that because all of these things are happening at the same time, there must be a multi-targeted attack about to happen. The fact that any or all of these things are easily explained away points to overreaction and paranoia instead of some type of attack. Given the fact that no one has attempted to do any of these things individually, yet alone combined, suggests that TASS is not only not necessary, but a huge waste of money.

When drones were first introduced, Americans were told that they were for military use. As has been seen time and again, what’s good for the military, eventually, becomes good for American law enforcement. In the past few years, drones have seen increased use in the United States, from border patrol to regular street policing. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Texas is no exception.

Beginning next year, the ShadowHawk, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UVA) manufactured by Spring-based Vanguard Defense Industries, will be available for an array of missions. Unlike UVA used by the military, which are used chiefly to gain intelligence, the ShadowHawk will give deputies a “bird’s eye view” of crime scenes, search and rescues and large-scale emergencies, Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel said.

“The sheriff’s office has no air patrol unit,” McDaniel said. “To have an aircraft we can deploy quickly when we need it seems to be an appropriate means of equipment and technology. It’s something that will be able to protect our personnel on the ground and the public.”

McDaniel said there has not been any major opposition since the Sheriff’s Office unveiled the drone in late October.

None of the Montgomery County Commissioners opposed the use of the UVA when the grant application was submitted to the Commissioners Court in December, he said.

Of course the county commissioners are not going to object. They are not the general public that are going to be spied upon. Despite the fact that the police department is trying to reassure the public that they are not going to be spying on citizens, that is exactly what this device is intended to do. Naturally, the police department is stressing that the drone’s missions will be specific, such as finding lost senior citizens and helping firefighters. Mission creep, however, is inevitable and it won’t be long before justifications will be made to expand the use of drones regardless of threats to privacy.

Because they can perch hundreds or thousands of meters in the air, drones literally add a new dimension to the ability to eavesdrop. They can see into backyards and into windows that look out onto enclosed spaces not visible from the street. They can monitor wi-fi signals or masquerade as mobile phone base stations, intercepting phone calls before passing them along. Using a network of drones, it would be possible to follow the movements of every vehicle in a city—a capability that would be invaluable to a police department tracking the getaway car in a bank robbery but invasive if used to track a patient driving to a clinic to get treatment for a confidential medical condition.

Given the fact that these drones have the capability of invading individual’s privacy, is this something Americans should be comfortable in accepting without question?

A new type of photo-radar has been developed by Simicon that can detect up to 32 vehicles at one time. Known as Cordon, it is set to be on the streets and in use in early 2012

Whenever a car enters its range, the Cordon will automatically generate two images: one from wide-angle view and one closeup shot of the vehicle’s license plate. It’s also capable of instantly measuring a car’s speed and mapping its position, and can easily be synced with other databases via WiFi, 3G or WiMAX. Plus, this device is compact and durable enough to be mounted upon a tripod or atop a road sign, making it even harder for drivers to spot.

In the video below, a green dot on a car indicates that they are traveling below the speed limit, a yellow dot are within an acceptable range above the limit, a red dot are those that will likely be stopped by police.

South Carolina will likely be amongst the states who won’t ever see Cordon in action in their state.

From Librarian in Black:

A call to action for librarians about the disturbing side effects to library users of the Amazon Kindle format eBook lending in Overdrive, including the threat to intellectual freedom, lost user privacy, and targeted ads pushed at our library users.

Transcript.

While libraries know who currently has a book checked out, most, if not all, delete the history of the book being checked out. The part of the PATRIOT Act that could force them to keep this information was removed, mainly due to the ALA fighting against it and refusing to cooperate.

Libraries and Amazon.com have two very different missions in life. We’ve seen libraries fight to keep your privacy over and over while Amazon.com monetizes every bit of information about you for their own profit. If you didn’t realize that, you haven’t been paying attention.