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Watching You
BWJones writes "National Geographic is running a story this month on surveillance. I received my copy today and the article is reasonably extensive (for National Geographic) and well written, covering many issues that get attention here on Slashdot both good and bad. There is coverage of what's good with the technologies (a program called Poseidon that helps ensure folks don't drown in swimming pools) and what's bad (death of privacy). In between are some additional details on backscatter X-ray and a taste of some of the security for the 2002 Winter Olympics here in SLC. I got to see a little bit more than the average person of the security during the winter games as our building was the emergency backup headquarters if anything went wrong and was routinely crawling with FBI and other folks including the Secret Service making for some interesting nights at the lab."
Buffer.Overflow();
Timer1.Interval = 10000;
Private Sub Timer1_Timer()
MsgBox "You're eating too much. You're going to get fat."
End Sub
Instant annorexia.
When is everyone going to figure out that everything in 1984 isn't coming true?
Seriously, wtf?
would be amusing if we slashdotted the FBI's website ;)
"PREZIDANT WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!111"
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
"I received my copy today"
We know.
Imagine devices that monitor the breathing rhythms of infants in cribs, watch toddlers at day care, and track children as they go to and from school; that can keep an eye on our home supply of orange juice and let us know when the milk is sour. Machines might watch our calorie intake and burn-off, monitor air quality in our homes, and look out for mice and bugs.
All these things are currently available, and have been for at least 5 years, it's just they're very expensive at the moment.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Bush: He speaks of small government and personal freedoms, but his administration is one of the largest to date. A large chunk of them are dedicated to stomping on our rights, making sure that you and I are not terrorists.
And American's are laying down and taking it.
It's the end of American democracy. We need help.
Stupid fucks.
What, were some of these FBI agents hot, lonely, gun-toting chicks looking for some geek lovin'? Anything else would not be interesting, but merely another hassle while trying to get your work done. Priorities man!
since only an abbreviated version of this article is available on-line. From what I have seen, though, nothing truly new is learned from the on-line version of this article.
As always, nanotechnology will simultaneously be our savior and damnation.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
One of the government's concern is about security, and this of course can be both good and bad because it has to consider not only the people's safety but it's own too, and that of course can have very bad consequences the moment the government considers you its "enemy".
If you want to avoid the possibility that the government watch stuff it shouldn't, you better think about alternatives to the State because governments will always seek for their own protection just like every other social organization, except that governments have tremendous powers that other organizations can't have.
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
Vote for it in the BBC's Big Read final.
Get used to it. You may keep selected keystrokes perfectly secret if you are willing to do all the work and keep your passphrase secret to the death (assuming no truth serum gets to you first) but everyone already knows what you did on TV and they all really care less and less. Set up a webcam in your bathroom, the hit will approach zero over time.
Yes, the guys at MiniTrue are doing a good job. Chocolate ration increased to 20g again, I hear..
Every move you make and every vow you break
Every smile you fake, every claim you stake
They'll be watchin' you
Ceci n'est pas un post.
They can monitor all they want but they will never be able to stop everything. People adapt, counter technology evolves faster everyday. It is not long (I hope) before they learn their efforts are fruitless.
-Seriv
My mother has saved 2 lifes as a result of Poseiden. She is a life guard at one of the first US sites to have it installed and twice she has had it alert her to a person at the bottom of the pool. She says that neither time could she see the person from her chair. The system is not without problems, for instance the water arobics classes move so little from place to place that Poseiden will often flag people as being immobile, and the initial training was quite agrivating with almost constant false alarms, but overall it is definitly worth the cost and agrevation. Btw those two saves were in about 6 months of operations.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It's for Brits only. Don't harrass other sites just to get a result you want.
You don't get karma for "Funny" moderations.
It's great to save drowning people, but not everyone it catches will be drowning. I remember holding my breath, curling up in a ball, and dropping to the bottom of the pool a number of times. I won't be able to do that anymore. Our freedom is quickly running away.
dd
Earlier today, the article was at the bottom of MSNBC's "Readers' Choice" list. Now it's scrolled off. Alas I suppose that many Americans just don't care about Big Brother...
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Has anyone else noticed lately that slashdot has had some popups? I don't know what they were, but my blocker did notify me that it blocked a efw from slashdot.org.
no comment
...and I think the best checks and balances possible is to let people do it by themselves in their own self-managed communities via direct democracy. The problem with governments is that their reach is total ( i.e. the entire population and things on some territory ) though only some hundred guys take the decisions ( these "representants" being free to do as they please once they're elected ), and only self-determined communities managed directly by its own people can effectively resolve this issue and avoid ambitious men having whole societies under their command.
I'm no libertarian, I'm a left-wing anarchist.
*ducks*
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
I just got one of these, and I was kinda pissed.
But, then I ran Adaware and found that somehow I'd picked up Gator in the last few days. It's possible that one of the links on the main page resulted in many people getting Gator installed recently, and now they are seeing these.
Run Adaware, then see if you get any more.
-R
And are only going to get more accurate
Imagine devices that monitor the breathing rhythms of infants in cribs, watch toddlers at day care, and track children as they go to and from school; that can keep an eye on our home supply of orange juice and let us know when the milk is sour. Machines might watch our calorie intake and burn-off, monitor air quality in our homes, and look out for mice and bugs.
I work for a startup company that does this kind of surveillance development. We have software that will detect bad behavior(someone being clubbed over the head at an ATM for example), objects that are left lying around where they shouldn't be(suitcases in airports or trash bags on the side of the road), and everything is network aware... cameras tell other cameras to look at objects if they have a better view. As well as motion tracking, object detection(the cameras can say 'hey i see a red car')... some very very cool but scary stuff.
on a side note it's all linux based and 100% digital from the photons to mpeg storage
- "Never let a computer tell me shit." - DelTron Zero
Mr. President, our webservers are under attack, what shall we do?
We do as we always do... blame an oil-rich country and invade the suckers.
most people are concerned with such obviously beneficient uses of surveillance... if it saved my child's life I'd kiss the boots of the guys who invented it.
I think we all realize surveillance is going on... there's a huge amount of info out there on virtually everyone; that info exists, as it must in a increasingly computerized world. I think the real issue for most people is simply WHO has access to that information, and WHY they want it.
If the FBI wanted the info from my internet connection for the purposes of catching some terrorist, and they were able to give me a good reason why (and they asked me nicely)... Hell, I'd probably go get them some beers while they were sniffing the datastream. Some surveillance is useful... but I want targeted surveillance, not someone hoovering up terabytes of information for data-mining (and who knows what other potential nefarious purposes).
If someone's looking into my information, I just want the courtesy of knowing WHO and WHY... and I'll make my own decisions at that point.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I have gotten several of these questionmarket popups, and only from Slashdot. Adaware 6.0 didn't find anything.
Haven't yet thought of checking the html on the previous Slashdot page when I get one of these, but will do next time.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Worse, you're a complacent idiot. I can only hope that the first people bit hard by the increasing lack of privacy in the world are all the "BAWK! If you have nothing to hid you have nothing to fear BAWK!" parrot-brains such as yourself.
I quickly threw it away and ran a bug sweep after discovering the 'Os' on the spine and cover were made of glass.
Get A friggin life.
Are you more free under Saddam? or Janet Reno?
Ashcroft and Bush haven't burned down any religious comunes, haven't covered up FBI sniper killings, and haven't condoned forced repatriation of orphaned immigrants.
Or have you forgotten all the jack-booted thugs of the '90s?
I guess living vicariously while slick Willy got a hummer was the sum total of your sexual experiences!
Such as the increasing popularity of Counter-Surveillance technologies.
The more people try to snoop, the more people will try to evade in order to preserve their right to privacy--Brin and his "Transparent Society" ilk be dammed.
In a world of total surveillence, the watchers are themselves watched. Video tape or data records of police/official misconduct ensure that abuse is not tolerated. The more data channels and more oversight that everyone has on everyone, the less the opportunity for abuse. We need only ensure that the public has the same oversight tools as the government to ensure that the watchers don't overstep their bounds.
As for personal privacy, that is an ephermal phenomenon in the scope of human affairs - a byproduct of the industrial revolution and urbanization. Prior to the 1800s nobody had much privacy. Now the world is shrinking again so that everyone, for better or worse, lives in the fishbowl of a little global village. The key will be whether we can develop the tolerance to let people live their lives as they see fit or whether we will be plagued by meddlesome busibodies from both the Left and Right that try to impose narrowminded definitions of _Proper Behavior_.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Being in Salt Lake City myself during the olympics, I noticed the increased security. This resulted in people like me being pulled over by police 17 times during the month of February (with at least one ticket each time). I was pulled off the TRAX light rail system at least a dozen times, and threatened with a search of my backpack and my person on numerous occasions. I had to put up with highway checkpoints and shakedowns, giving the police a blank check to search everyone and haul people in for petty warrants, drunkeness, etc.
Amidst all of this hightened security, I had no problem at all bringing my gun not only into various events around downtown, but also to the closing cerimonies.
In light of the recent testings of the system concerning Southwest airlines; I for one, feel very secure with all of these new surveilance measures.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
After all, I prefer liberty than human control.
I've noted that don't matter how useful technology can be it can be harmful under human hands.
I've being around with a lot of technology supposely made to make our lifes better, but it just needs a human hand to screw it up.
How useful are surveillance devices if there are stupid persons making the (supposed to protect) rules?
And even if it's very directed to my safety (like drownings) if the thechnology is not perfect, which means they don't protect us from who should be protecting, they're bad.
I bet that cameras on the pool will be used by security personal to watch women bikinis, make "funny" or malicious comments about swimmers behaviour, asure that stupid rules are being followed and avoid virtual violation of that rules (or rules they think should exist).
I've a safeguard on my pool, i know how they behave (and i don't blame them, i can't say i would be perfect on their position), i feel bothered with them outside the pool, i don't wan't them secretly spying me from inside the pool.
I don't want people secretly spying me everywhere.
Those 'devices' are called parents and have been around as long as humanity crawled on the surface of Earth...
you'll realize that privacy isn't all it's cracked up to be when no one notices you and you die.
So, no, I didn't read the article.
Someone want to scan it in for us?
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
I subscribed to National Geographic magazine in late 2002 so that I would receive the magazine for the whole of the 2003 year. I was careful to tick the "don't give my details to anyone" boxes, and I used a variant on my name and mailing address that was unique to them.
So far, the National Geographic Society has sold my personal details to 'Readers Digest', 'Doubleday Books' (a large Australian publisher/viral marketer - rough equivalent for Readers Digest here in Oz), and another third party whose name escapes me.
This behaviour has certainly changed my familiy's perception of the Society. We always held them in high regard, considered them to be above the general riff-raff of magazine publishing and book selling. Turns out, they're just more of the same.
Usually the arrival of the latest National Geographic magazine in our house is met with good-natured squabbles, and competition over who gets to read it first. This month, when it arrived (Here in Australia we've just received the issue with the Saudi story on the front cover), it sat unheeded on the junk mail pile for days before anyone bothered to pick it up. Even then, it only migrated to the bathroom, where it sits beside the toilet. The bubble has certainly burst for National Geographic in this household. They're just common spammers to us now.
They have serious quality issues too: Their packaging assures that magazines often arrive damaged, and at best covered with a sticky gum that is designed to keep the ends of the paper envelope sealed, but in practice releases, then drags gum across the covers of the magazing in transit. Some issues just don't arrive too. February, for example, still hasn't arrived here.
No prize for guessing that my 2003 subscription was my first, and my last.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Here in Australia, all local, state, and federal government departments have a mantra that they repeat verbatim every time they feel they're being backed into a corner, or they might in some way be held accountable for their actions.... Here, any time you ask for the name of the person advising you over the counter, or the ID of the Police Officer who just stopped you in the street, or the name of a parking cop who just wrote you a dodgy ticket, or the call-centre rep who just overcharged you on a telephone service, they all bring out their little mantra...
Oh, I can't tell you that, for privacy reasons
That phrase is the Australian Public Servant's Get Out of Jail Free card, and you'd better believe, they use it at every available opportunity. No watching the watcher in this town, for privacy reasons.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
..like a Sting operation..
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Jamie, thanks for the acknowledgement if even it's a denial ;) I clicked the Bugs link. It wants me to sign up for SourceForge to submit a bug, due to abuse of anonymous submissions. Sorry, but I'm not going to register somewhere just so that I can report a bug at your request.
:)
The popup ads I'm getting come from questionmarket.com. They're inviting me to take some sort of survey. I only get these popups when I'm on Slashdot, I'd say 1 in 25 pageloads or so, almost always on page exit. I spend 12+ hours per day in front of a computer loading far too many sites to count, literally thousands of pageviews daily, but I've only received the questionmarket.com popups at Slashdot.
The popups started within the past 2 or 3 days. No new software installs, doubtful that malware is responsible. I ran Ad-Aware with the latest reference file and it found nothing aside from a couple of cookies I picked up somewhere.
When you approach the ad guys on Monday, ask if questionmarket.com is an OSDN advertiser and what sort of ads they've purchased. The culprit ought to be somewhere within the marketdroids' answer.
Thanks
Yankin' on Timothy's crank... They been doin' some salad tossing this afternoon!
So far, the National Geographic Society has sold my personal details to 'Readers Digest', 'Doubleday Books' (a large Australian publisher/viral marketer - rough equivalent for Readers Digest here in Oz), and another third party whose name escapes me.
Some countries have laws against this, e.g. the UK. The Data Protection Act is taken very seriously.
anyone watching me would be bored out of thier skull, gee he likes to compile kernels and other apps in Slackware (a lot) and he has several disk partitions with several different Linux distros installed and got em all running perfictly, whats that? he is picking his nose, now he is scratching his ass, (atleast he got em in the right order) and not picked his nose after scratching his ass, whew!!!
oh no, he just wiped a booger on the camera lens...
I thought the 2002 Winter Olympics were the best thing that happened to the Salt Lake night life, for the short time they were here. I brown-bagged it up and down Main St. like a wino, met some transients that informed me Budweiser was an Acronym for "Because.U.Deserve.What.Every.Individual.Should.Ev er .Receive", went to free concerts, and had a fantastic time. I wasn't searched or hounded once.
17 tickets? Either you're a lying sack of shit, or should get your ass off the road.
Bringing your gun to events? Good job Clint Eastwood.
Is Bush an Ultra-right extremist or is he a(Fascist) Socialist Dictator? One minute you got him on the right next on the left now which is it gonna be?
"Some issues just don't arrive too. February, for example, still hasn't arrived here."
:-)
My dad canceled his subscription almost a year ago and the Geographic continues to arrive monthly to this day. Now we know where those magazines come from
Freedom: "I won't!"
Politicians ALWAYS obscure the notion that there are HARD CHOICES to be made. they want you to think that we can, for example, simply "raise taxes" in order to have all these government goodies. They DON'T tell you that the downside is that people who actually make the economy work--and thus generate the taxable incomes on which government depends--are seriously hobbled by higher taxes.
Same with privacy rights. They want you to think that you can have the "good" (you'll always have an eye on you so you don't drown in the swimming pool) without the "bad" (you'll always have an eye on you...)
Stupid.
You have to MAKE A CHOICE, people! If you choose PRIVACY, then you're going to just have to live (or die) with the notion that you won't have Big Mommy watching out for you all the time. You'll have to realize that bad people can hide their bad deeds from scrutiny in order to make sure that Big Brother doesn't have you under constant surveillance.
Make your choice. But stop swallowing this politicians' bilge about "having it all."
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
He gets mail delivery on Sunday?
You and I as average citizens have pretty well lost ours. But the with on ofr W's first decree, information that all presidents since 1980 can hide whatever they wish to. Hopefully sometime in the future things will be turned back to what our forefathers so wisely thought up. That is that citizens are to have privacy and politicians get little to none.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
-- The WIPO Avenger
The GNAA would most definitely agree. Oh wait, you said "grayness"
Imagine a company that goes the fuck out of business because no one can stand to work at a place so annoying, and those who do, get fired for being unproductive.
Well, that and the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars for all this equipment, which will of course A) work flawlessy, B) never require lots of expensive maintenance and C) CERTAINLY wouldn't trigger an AVALANCHE of expensive wrongful dismissal lawsuits, and the six-or-seven figure settlements that follow.
So, it's a good idea for a sci-fi movie, but financially makes no sense. Worker slackery is like shrinkage at the produce section of the grocery store: it happens.
I worked for a large corporation that set up a new phone center. Everyone in the building was given a prox card to come/go from the building. It also logged you into the terminals.
After a short while, someone decided that they could improve staff utilization if they had people on the phones more, and drinking coffee less... So they put more prox card detectors in the building...
Then when someone was away from their desk, it was a simple matter to find out where they went to, and make a localized page to summon them...
The phone agents weren't too thrilled, but they put up with it. The programmers in the building weren't thrilled, so they took their cards, attached them to a RC truck, and programmed it to drive around the building for as long as possible... Shortly thereafter, the agents started leaving their prox cards on their terminals whenever they left (they took them with at end of shift so they could get in the next day), so the system was rendered pretty much useless and it was disposed of...
Of course, if this corp were a government - they would have put prox controlled locks on the cafeteria and bathrooms, and everything else to enforce the use of the cards...
some surveilance stuff, like for pools and stuff to save people from drowning and watching over the physically weak is a great idea, however, durveilance where there doesnt need to be any is another.
heavy constant surveilance elsewhere is just plain out dictation of peoples' lives. Most of us dont have the brain capacity of toddlers y'know... most of us can do things by ourselves without being watched over, you know? though there are some who dont have the brain capacity of toddlers at all it seems at times, sadly they make up the majority at times.
anyways, this is almsot like the red scare in the 1950's.. where children were asked to report their parents' "communist activities" to the proper authorities. Instead now, machines will report any "strange" activities out... and the term strange is used loosely here since machines cant make decisions on what's really going on, it's the people who recieve the info who make judgements..
So, this is why I'm against competel surveillance, it starts out with innocent safety procedures.. then evolves to the workplace.. then public transportation, then most public places, then your neighborhood, your car, your house, then you.
The reason for this is because of how humans tick. if you do one thing, you gotta step it up another step, see how far you can go before going all the way. This is why we've advanced in technology, we're still trying to find the limits of our being.. and will constantly do so until the end of time.
like Ben Franklin said.
Those who would sacrifice freedom for security dont deserve security nor freedom.
And since the govt has people scared to death of the terrorists (this is what I call the new red scare), people will do whatever they say for the next few years, until someone comes out and says they're completely full of bullshit.
it's like the case where the FBI wants certain VOIP technologies banned because they offer encryptions, so phone lines cant be tapped or recieved.. I mean they came out and said it as well, and no one seemed to have a problem with that... it's scary.
Instead of posting useless links in this article (FBI, Secret Service) how about linking up the Poseidon program (http://www.poseidon-tech.com/us/index.html) or Backscatter X-Ray (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/17/evening news/main563797.shtml)?
Who the hell cares about links to the FBI and Secret Service?
Beyond being able to see your body in all it's glory, it can also see through cars, trucks, etc.
http://www.as-e.com/technology/image_1.html
Seriously - how far from controlling what you can and cannot watch is controlling if your TV is on or off?
You say it'll never happen but if hardware goes in, the only freedom of information left will be on paper again - gives me chills.
These self-advertisements are usually called "house ads". Typically they appear when the ad-serving system can't find a paying ad to put up. Occasionally, the in-house marketing folks will decide to force some number or percentage of house-ads to cross-promote parts of the site that aren't getting the desired level of traffic.
Although I just went through and refreshed a page like 100 times to pull up one of the ads and it turns out you're right - I couldn't tell based on the ad, but they're actually for a mailing list that sends out the Slashdot headlines. (The ad brings you here and I assume the ad was for this. Not what I expected based on the ad, though.)
BTW, the ad I saw says: "Missed Yesterday's News?" and then "Slashdot: News every day, whether you need it or not." I thought it was advertising Slashdot in general.
The another says "Get Your Daily Dose of Slashdot" and "Sign up for daily Slashdot headlines" - which made it a lot clearer what it was advertising.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.