News: Video Analytics to be Used by British Army to Spot 'Suspicious Activity'

From BBC News: Video analytics programmes are being developed at military research laboratories at Porton Down in Wiltshire. They are emphasising the use of the technology for tackling the use of improvised explosive devices. By automatically highlighting footage of unusual behaviour, such as going off road, captured by plane and helicopter mounted cameras, they hope to make the tracking of enemies more effective:

Andrew Seedhouse, from the Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), said: "Think of it as the ultimate CCTV system.

"An incident occurs, perhaps an IED goes off, and we can use this host of data to back track over time.

"Who was near the scene and where were they before the incident? What buildings or vehicles can we now associate with the incident?"

He said the research could help scientists to look for anomalies in behaviour and environment and alert appropriate forces before an incident occurred.

The video analytics are being combined with other methods for sophisticated modelling of the surveyed terrain, as you can see in the 'British Forces News' video below.

Also interesting is the same scientist Andrew Seedhouse's comment that the only way to tell insurgents from everybody else is "by what they do -so the whole experiment is about tracking people, finding what they're up to each day, who they're meeting, what they take with them, what they do, where they place things, and then hopefully we'll be able to track back through all that stuff and find out where they are now":

DETECTER: Survey of Counter-Terrorism Datamining and Related Programmes

D08.1 was written by Daniel Moeckli and James Thurman as part of Work Package 6. You can read the whole thing here.

Executive Summary

1. The survey reflects a broad definition of data mining and also includes coverage of related programmes relating to data collection and database construction.
2. In the West, collection activities have increased dramatically in the name of countering terrorism. In addition to data collection involving air passengers, this survey also describes general law enforcement collection activities as well as those specifically targeting terrorist activity.
3. Air passenger information: in the United States, data mining in this area was proposed in order to identify terrorist suspects who might not otherwise raise suspicions. In the European Union, too, there seems to be interest in analyzing a passenger’s travel activities in order to identify suspicious patterns which might indicate criminal activity.
4. Private companies and non-law enforcement databases: in the US there has been concern about the incorporation of data from these sources into general law enforcement data bases.
5. Data analysis programmes that have been proposed and in some cases implemented for counter-terrorism purposes are also considered. These include not only data mining programmes but also a discernable trend of providing tools which guide users in their analysis and decision-making.

DETECTER: The Human Rights Risks of Selected Detection Technologies

DETECTER Deliverable 17.1 was written by Rozemarijn van der Hilst as part of Work Package 9. You can read the whole thing here:

Executive Summary

1. Intelligence is a vital element in successful counter-terrorism. There is rapid development in detection technologies that aid in the gathering of information. However, there are concerns over the privacy intrusion these detection technologies cause.
2. Privacy is important for individual well-being, as well as the proper functioning of a democratic society. The right to privacy is vested in different national, European and International laws, which prescribe that the right to privacy may only be limited by measures that have a sound legal basis and are necessary in a democratic society for the protection of national security.
3. From the legal and moral framework around privacy it emerges that detection technologies used in counter-terrorism should take account of: legitimacy, proportionality, necessity, transparency, factors concerning the person targeted, the sensitivity of the data sought, the effectiveness, the possibility of function creep and the extent to which PET’s are implemented.
4. Privacy concerns arise with the widespread and indiscriminate use of communication surveillance; the covert use of CCTV technology; the sensitivity of biometric data; and the ineffectiveness (and therefore disproportionateness) of data mining and analysis and decision support technologies.
5. There are also risks inherent to the use of detection technologies in general. The use of detection technologies can have a ‘chilling effect’ and can be ineffective due to the huge amount of gathered data. However, positive effects of the use of detection technologies are the ability to detect and therefore prevent terrorist attacks and the deterrent effect they have.
6. Detection technologies should be used, provided that their authorization is based on legislation that protects against abuse and presents fair consideration to the proportionality and necessity of the aim pursued. The ultimate assessment of the threat detection technologies pose to privacy depends on the actual usage of the technologies.

DETECTER: The Moral Risks of Preventive Policing in Counter-terrorism

I'm going to start listing details of publications of the DETECTER project here on the blog. D05.1 has been written by Tom Sorell as part of Work Package 3. You can read the whole thing here.

Executive Summary

1. Preventive policing is any action carried out by police with the intention of identifying and preventing a specific crime or a type of crime. Preventive policing can include “special investigation techniques”, including secret surveillance. These carry obvious moral risks.

2. Recommendaton Rec (2005) 10 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe outlines possible restrictions on the use of special investigation techniques. It suggests that the least intrusive special investigation measures should be used, if at all, only when the prevention or prosecution of serious crime requires it, and not in a way that conflicts with the right of anyone arrested to a fair trial. The principles reflect legal privacy protections under European Convention on Human Rights, Article 8, and Convention 108.

3. Liberal theory supports the approach of Rec (2005) 10. It permits the use of special investigative techniques in preventive policing if the crime that these techniques are intended to prevent is very serious, e.g. a terrorist attack. In particular, liberal theory permits the use of secret surveillance, if the choice of targets for the surveillance is evidence-based.

4. The form of liberal theory that best reconciles the demands of privacy and counterterrorism with those of liberty is a modified Kantian theory, which is less utopian in its assumptions about human beings than a Lockean theory, but which excludes the total concentration of power, as in a Hobbesian theory.

5. Liberal theory condemns terrorist acts not just because of the injury and death they cause, but because of the contempt for impartiality that terrorist groups display. Impartiality is central to the liberal design of government institutions.

6. Privacy in Kantian theory is primarily the scope agents have for deliberating and choosing life plans free from other people’s interference. In liberal theory generally, privacy is also the scope people have for forming intimate relationships without scrutiny and adopting harmless life plans (harmless means of pursuing happiness) without being subject to outside criticism.

7. Kantian theory does not justify restrictions on thought or expression of thought about terrorism or in favour of terrorism, but it does justify restrictions on actions that contribute to terrorist acts.

8. Expression of thought about terrorism, even expression of thought sympathetic to
terrorism, should not be criminalized from the point of view of liberal theory. This counts against e.g. the “glorification” of terrorism provisions in the UK Terrorism Act (2006).

9. Kantian theory implies that preventive policing can fairly employ “profiling” techniques for identifying suspects in counter-terrorism, so long as these are evidence-based.

10. “Profiling techniques” cannot justifiably be used alongside detention and trial procedures that are revised ad hoc for counter-terrorism purposes.

News: Negotiations Reopen on US Access to SWIFT Bank Data

From the Lift: The EU and US have begun talks on a new agreement to enable transfers of European bank transfer information held on the SWIFT database to US authorities. Talks are taking place between the European Commission and United States Treasury and it is hoped an agreement can be reached by the end of June:

A Commission source told Euractiv.Com that “in the coming months little will be known about the substance of the actual negotiations”

The agreement will be concluded only after the adoption by the member states of the EU at qualified majority voting and the approval of the European Parliament. The Parliament introduced two weeks ago theconditions on the content of a future agreement, including for bulk transfers of personal data to the USA to be avoided, if necessary by processing them within the EU, and for Europe’s citizens to be guaranteed the right of appeal to the US authorities.

News: More European Anger at Google Invasions of Privacy

From Privacy Digest: Google have admitted gathering private data on internet use in the course of the taking photographs for the Google Street View programme.

Google acknowledged on Friday that it had collected snippets of private data around the world. In a blog post on its Web site, the company said information had been recorded as it was sent over unencrypted residential wireless networks as Google’s Street View cars with mounted recording equipment passed by.

The data collection, which Google said was inadvertent and the result of a programming error, took place in all the countries where Street View has been catalogued, including the United States and parts of Europe. Google apologized and said it had not used the information, which it plans to delete in conjunction with regulators.

The Register reports that both Germany prosecutors and the Czech Republic data protection agency have launched investigations:

In effect, Mountain View may have hoovered up emails and other private information if the Google cars travelled over Wi-Fi networks while one of its vehicles was in range. The firm had previously claimed that no payload data was ever intercepted.

Hamburg prosecutors said they had received a complaint against unnamed Google workers over the “unauthorised interception of data”, and confirmed that an investigation - that could take about a fortnight to determine if the allegations warrant a full-blown probe - was underway.

Comment: John Rentoul Attacks Chakrabarti's 'Shameless' Endorsement of Surveillance

Regular Independent columnist John Rentoul blogs about Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti’s appearance on last night’s Newsnight programme. He writes under the headline ‘Shameless: I Want a Surveillance Society’ - he likes to call her ‘Shameless Chakrabarti’ you see, which I presume is an attempt to imply she’s a hypocrite: ‘Oh so now you’re in favour of surveillance’ this line goes – ‘I thought you civil liberties people were against it’. This is already puzzling, as Liberty have consistently defended the principle that the security services ought to be able to use targeted surveillance against people about whom there is specific evidence to imply involvement in serious crime, though they campaign vigorously against arbitrary and unjustified use of surveillance. Rentoul’s attack focuses on her continued criticism of control orders:

What would she do instead of control orders, she was asked by Alex Carlile, the Liberal Democrat peer and independent reviewer of anti-terrorist law. After trying to hide behind trying them in court - what if there is not enough evidence for a conviction yet enough to warrant concern? - and the use of intercept evidence - not relevant in this case - she was eventually embarrassed into mumbling an answer: "Put them under surveillance."

Presumably she wants more CCTV, especially around the homes of terrorist suspects, and monitoring of their telephones and internet use.

Surveillance would either be prohibitively expensive, or intensely intrusive (thereby reinventing control orders in another form), or ineffective. Several suspects subject to control orders have already legged it to who knows where; any weakening of the controls would make it easier for them to abscond.

Given how small the numbers of people are who have been put under control orders (about 12 as of February this year) I think his argument about cost is of marginal importance, even if his assessment of the relative expense is accurate.

It also seems highly disputable that even intrusive surveillance would ‘reinvent’ control orders in another form – control orders primarily involve restrictions on people’s freedom, by imposing restrictions on who suspects can and can’t associate with, or imposing curfews and various degrees of house arrest, rather than intrusions into their privacy (though certainly the practice of 'tagging' is invasive). Now you could maybe argue that the additional invasions of privacy would always be worse than the restrictions of freedom. That would be a interesting position to take, and might even be coherent (though I suspect most would find it unpersuasive). But Rentoul’s not coming out and saying that. Instead he seems to want to have it both ways: control orders aren’t effective enough as they are, anything weaker will let the bad guys get away, but using surveillance beyond what is in place now will be just as bad. He’s painting Liberty as an organisation that is indifferent to the needs of effective policing and intelligence gathering. On the contrary their criticism of the use of control orders specifically takes aim at the claims of efficacy - take their earlier response to Lord Carlile’s previous announcement that there was no alternative to the control order regime or for that matter Shami Chakrabarti's piece in today's Times:

These orders were dreamt up by officials in 2005 and allow terror suspects to be placed under house arrest for ever without any semblance of criminal charge or trial. Apart from being profoundly unfair and un-British (the term “control order” comes from apartheid South Africa), this scheme is profoundly unsafe. A number of its targets have disappeared, and one former “controlee” had a habit of turning up, complete with plastic tag, at large public meetings attended by members of the present and past Cabinets.

And, as I said, they've consistently defended the use of targetted surveillance when the evidence supports it:

We take no issue with the use of intrusive surveillance powers per se. While intrusive surveillance will always engage Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA)1 (right to privacy) such intrusion can be justified if it falls within the legitimate purposes set out under Article 8 (e.g. if done to prevent crime and threats to national security) and if it can be shown to be necessary and proportionate in all the circumstances.

What's shameless about that?

News: Internet Browsers' Record of Your Web Habits Available to Other Websites

From the Sydney Morning Herald: The Electronic Freedom Foundation have been researching how easy it is to access information about a user’s internet activity. Commonly it is thought that disabling ‘cookies’ is enough to prevent one’s web browser collecting information on what websites are being visited. The EFF’s research implies that even with this safeguard the browser leaves ‘a virtual fingerprint’ which nearly uniquely identifies the user and enables websites to access information on the users browsing habits:

To conduct the research, the website anonymously logged information that most websites would normally access when users visit, the EFF said.

After comparing a database collected from almost a million visitors, the EFF discovered that 84 per cent of the configuration combinations were unique and identifiable, and where browsers had Adobe Flash or Java plug-ins installed they were 94 per cent identifiable.

"Browser fingerprinting is a powerful technique, and fingerprints must be considered alongside cookies and IP addresses when we discuss web privacy and user trackability,"

Israeli Security Expert Decries Body Scanners Before Canadian Parliament

The Vancouver Sun has reported that an Israeli security expert who assisted in the design of the security system at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport suggested in parliamentary hearings that the deployment of body scanners is a “useless” waste of money.

“I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” he is quoted as saying, “That's why we haven't put them in our airport.”

According to the story, a Canadian transport minister has defended the installation of body scanners at Canadian airports. Political scientist Mark Salter also reportedly testified that he viewed body scanners as a “genuine leap forward” in airline security. (Hat tip to unwatched.org)