Slashdot Mirror
The Beast of Brussels
'No nickname' Ian writes "If you live in Europe you should definitely read this story about a government supercomputer. It's written by Andy McCue from silicon.com and entitled: IT Myths: Does the 'Beast of Brussels' know everything about us?
Basically, in Europe there are rumours of an EU-owned super-computer which stores and process information on every European citizen.
The piece debunks the rumour and finds out its roots are actually in a work of fiction - but there is some interesting comment from privacy activists who suggest it may not be too wide of the mark. Simon Davis of Privacy International goes so far as to suggest such computer may have existed - if perhaps not on the same 'three storey-high' magnitude."
I thought it said the *breast* of Brussels... how disappointing...
I've done a lot of work with the EC over the last 10 years or so... the existence of the "beast of Brussels" would be a surprise for many reasons, not least of which several people would have had to have reached consensus to build the thing.
Totally impossible.
and most people - including me - think nothing of it. in Belgium it is mandatory for us to carry an official ID card (no library card or drivers license. a real ID card).
we need to show that to open a bank account, a library card, a rent-a-video store,... well basically everywhere.
for health care we have a unique number in a national database, and since a few months everyone who has a mortgage is in another database.
We don't care. i mean why should't the governement know where you live, or which bank accounts i have.
the only reason i can come up with is if you are a fraudster.
for example tracking people with a mortgage on a national level is done so that not-so-bright people do not get a second mortgage if they already are at their financial limit with the first one.
the most important reason i don't mind is that we have a law that applies to any place where personal information is stored about you.
basically the law says that you have to get total access to all information about you, and that if it is incorrect the keeper of that information needs to change it.
i know from several examples that this law is used and that is works ok.
at least we can review and cghange information about ourselves.
kind regards,
Interfacer.
You ask why the government shouldn't have access to this info. I ask why they should.
When designing a secure system, you try to minimize priviledges - if someone doesn't need access, then it is denied to them.
Likewise we need to be ever vigilant in protecting our freedom. If someone (e.g. the government) doesn't need knowledge or power, then we shouldn't let them have it.
In your example, you mention that the government now can decide when someone has exceed their financial limits. Why is that a good thing? Let the lenders sort it out and take the hit if a borrower defaults.
The more information others have about you, the more subtly they can manipulate you. Detailed information is usually used to take advantage of someone. That's why stalking is illegal in many countries. You'd find it creepy if your neighbor knew this information; why doesn't it bother you that hundreds of government beaurocrats know this for an entire country?
Oh, shut up. You're so full of it... Those little Belgian War Heroes managed to keep the German army (from a country 10 times bigger) from capturing all of Belgium in the first World War, and in the second World War, they managed to resist the German Blitzkrieg for all of 18 days, where the Germans had expected to be at the North-Sea coast in only two or three days...
In both cases, you 'mericans only showed up a couple of years later...
By the way, have they found any WMD's yet in Iraq? Didn't think so...
This sounds like great material for every conspiracy theorist to work with..
/.
It's perfectly possible, and concievable, but the question is, does it really exist?
I saw a few comments on here. So what if someone sees your license plate? Lets go through an easy path for the feds to follow. I'm basing this off of the US. I'm sure similiar stuff applies in Europe.
Your car is spotted in a particular area..
1) Run the plate. Now they have your name, address, SS#, age, height, weight, hair and eye color, and your history of driving.
2) Check the credit bureau's and Chex Systems. Now they know all your bank accounts, credit cards, etc, etc.. Even if your bank doesn't exactly report that you have an account, you'll show up when they checked your credit (or with Chex).
3) Have you ever bought groceries or gas with your ATM/Debit card or credit cards? Do you use the grocery store's "discount" cards? Even if you bought your groceries with cash, if you used your discount card it's easy enough to track your purchases.
So, was the driver of the car you? Sure. You bought gas a few miles away on your credit card.
*IF* (that's a big if) they have a tracking system put together to keep all this information in the same place, it'd be easy to track any single person. Even if the police were interested in tracking an individual, it wouldn't be very hard.
Think about what you did today. Using the simple outline I gave today, they know just about everything you did.
I'm out of town. So, they know when I bought my plane tickets online from what IP, which is tracable back to my home. My home Internet provider would give up my info in a heart beat, including what checking account I pay my bill with. They know when I got on the plane, who I was with, and were I got off. Checking either with the rental car places at the airport or my credit cards, they know what car I'm driving. They know I went to a department store and bought kid toys and party supplies(for a kids birthday), a grocery store and bought a good bit of beer (for myself).
Based on that, they could easily know where I am. I didn't get a hotel, and I haven't purchased gas yet, I'm probably still in the area, so who do I know in the area (phone records, previous contacts). They could go as far as to ask my cell phone provider what tower is my closest contact. That'll narrow me down to 4 miles.
Based on that, they probably know what house or apartment I'm in, and it wouldn't take much creativity to figure out what's here (phones, Internet).
So (oh my goodness), the big brother system knows what house I'm in, that I'm drinking beer and reading/writing on Slashdot. If they're really good, they can see two SSH connections back to one of my servers too.
4:30am, he's drinking beer, working on servers, and on
But you have to ask yourself, why would they track me? They wouldn't. I'm rather boring. No warrants, not a suspect in anything (right now).
If the big brother system was this good, it may actually be a good thing. Got someone with a warrant? Wait til they show up anywhere, and voila, send the cops to pick them up. *AND* if say something happens in my home city (where I'm not at right now), it would be obvious that it wasn't me.
Ybor City, in Tampa Florida, put together a more difficult system. It was facial recognition, where it would check against NCIC and try to guess pedestrians with warrants. From what I've read in the press, it failed miserably. Why hope that someone will walk past a camera and hope to get a cop there before he gets away? You could wait for him to go grocery shopping, and have a patrol car show up while he's still loading the car.
Would a big brother system be good? Probably not. The detectives now are overworked, underpaid, and don't have the time to make a few phone calls (outlines in the first few steps) to track dow
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
. . . but it was built by some hyperintelligent pandimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pandimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own). Downside, is it's busy calculating 'The Answer', whatever that is . .
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
In Denmark we've had a civil registration system for hundreds of years, and in the 1960's it became centralized. A wide range of information about births, deaths, marriages, divorces, jobs, education, and other information that the government collects is referenced by the CPR number, which is a national ID number for all Danish residents.
These databases are controlled by a fairly strong Data Protection Act which prohibits cross-referencing different databases using the CPR number, except in special circumstances, and any such special permit is always made public.
There is, however, one exception: the Statistical Bureau. They have access to most public databases and are allowed to cross-reference them in order to compile statistics. We don't have a census in Denmark because all the information is already available.
This is a very powerful tool for researchers. They can ask a question like "How many males who graduated from this particular primary school subsequently went on to be convicted of a serious crime?", and have it answered by the Statistical Bureau within a couple of weeks. They simply have to type in an SQL query. It's also much easier to find relationships between schools, workplaces and illnesses like cancer. They can also ask questions such as "How many people whose parents were divorced will go on to have a divorce?" with a simple SQL query, instead of the extensive surveys that are required in other countries.
The RISKS, on the other hand, are obvious.
Well, with today's technology the government/EU certainly could collect a lot of information about it's citizens.
;-)
I had a funny experience with a Dutch central government agency that is supposed to do all wiretapping for the police. They contacted me because they wanted to tap one of our customer's e-mail domains on tax fraud suspicions.
It took them two weeks to figure out who was handling the mail for the suspicious company's domain (us). Then they wanted us to forward all mail to a mailbox at a free mail provider. This mailbox almost immediately filled up and started sending 'mailbox full' messages to the original senders.
Big brother has a lot to learn...
X.
(BTW: I changed the sender addresses as a precaution