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Big Brother Really Is Watching Us All
siddesu writes "The BBC has a nice high-level overview of some technologies for surveillance developed in the US and the UK. 'The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game ... But it [a through-the wall sensing device in development] will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.'"
Boy that surprise birthday present sure landed me in jail quick. I hope I can explain that brand new S&M outfit adequately in court!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
I'll become a millionaire overnight selling my own brand of tin-foil clothing!
CAUTION: May cook organs/skin during warm weather.
Terrorists will simply train themselves to remain calm and lower their heartrate.
* chirp * chirp *
.. I'll just think of tub girl and goatse.cx man all day. take that fuckers.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking."
I call crap on this. We will be able to detect biometric data. We will not be able to tell "what you're thinking."
I grew up in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s. This is the sort of shit we dealt with each day.
The Communists claimed to have devices that could read minds to determine one's intentions. Now, we didn't know if this was true or not. But seeing as many of us wanted to live another day, or at the very least not get tortured, we assumed they did.
It seems that the citizenry of the UK and the US are now in a very similar position....
I'd rather the government not base their decision on whether to come in guns blazing on something as ridiculous as whether my heart rate is increased above some theoretical average at the time.
Big brother has nothing on Ceiling cat
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
So in the end, my question is what can we do about it? It's impossible to get the masses (in the US) to actually get out and do something about this right now, I just don't think they care enough. Mass opinion is that if you don't have anything to worry about the government finding then don't worry about them watching you.
The only credible methods I've seen for avoiding surveilance involve actually destroying the surveilance equipment.
The only way to circumvent them is by RF jamming, wire cutting and creating a bright spot around you at all times to flood the camera view - which involves wearing bright LED's or a laser.
Does this mean that eventually there are going to be rogue groups going around and destroying government surveilance equipment? I think so. When you feel you're cornered you do what you have to.
Does this mean that people who are planning terrorist attacks in the future will develop plans to destroy/jam all of the surveilance equipment if they want to get out alive? Definately.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Big Brother: I've seen many chickens cross many roads. Please specify.
I'd rather the government not base their decision on whether to come in guns blazing on something as ridiculous as whether my heart rate is increased...
They will base the decision on your political expression and activism, the other things will simply justify your murder. The elevated heart rate will come when they ask you if you and your children would like some pancakes. The report will say that they had reason to believe you were armed and dangerous.
Unless the US returns to rule of law, tools used to track individuals will be used to identify, harass, intimidate, disrupt and eliminate opposition. Domestic spying is against the law. Unreasonable search violates the Constitution. It is completely unreasonable for government or industry to keep tables of "gait DNA" and other metrics for people who have not committed crimes. The purpose for this kind of thing is a crime in itself.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Where's the tags "tinfoilhatbait" or "overlordbait"?
The game.
There is already court precedent for this in the U.S.
Through-the-wall IR scanners have been available to some police departments in the US for a while now. There has already been at least one court case about them.
In the United States (yes, still), it is illegal for officers of law enforcement to use electronic means to determine what is going on in your home without first obtaining a judicial warrant. The case I mentioned dealt with police using an through-the-wall scanner to determine where an alleged drug dealer was inside someone else's house, before they raided it. Because they had not obtained a warrant, the evidence was thrown out of court. The judge ruled that it was clearly an electronic device, and thus fell under the Federal Statute preventing its use.
I wish I had a citation at hand for this case, but I do not. I will try to find it.
Interestingly, we, the public, don't seem to mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance.
I think we've just found the next Jason Blair.
I have to call bullshit on this one. In my entire life, I have met atheists and believers, gays and straights, liberals and conservatives, and not once, ever, in my life have I met someone who espoused more surveillance. Now, I live in a large metropolitan area - one with numerous projects involving installing more surveillance cameras, and even the most conservative, cop-loving suburbanites are at best indifferent, and quite often, vehemently opposed. There's a lot of hostility, but absolutely no support. The law of statistics would dictate that if 75% of the population supported more surveillance, I would have - at least once in my life - have heard someone argue in support of it. But I've never heard it from anyone. Not even the most gullible of idiots or stupidest of patriots I've met has ever said they'd like to see more surveillance.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
You would have to have some pretty good filtering technology to filter out someones brain waves from another room with all the other ambient electromagnetic radiation going around. A standard action potential only fluctuates the membrane voltage by about 120 mV. Meanwhile, a CRT, which actually is vulnerable to Van Eck Phreaking, requires a voltage of 32,000 volts to display an image on the screen.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Kyllo v. U.S. is probably what you're looking for. The legal standard has fluctuated a bit in recent years, but right now the Court is sticking with "general public use," for determining whether a particular type of technology constitutes a search.
What?
AFAIK, they do this using fMRI. So they'll need to figure out how to build a MRI machine that is big enough to fit over your house without anyone noticing and a way to keep all the ferrous metal objects in your house from turning it into one big blender, otherwise I doubt they could detect field changes that small anytime soon. I would agree with you about correlating general emotional responses with specific brain activity though.
Now, wait a minute. Are they "sensing" through American walls (cardboard, wood and plaster) or through European walls (bricks or concrete) ? There's quite a bit of difference here, as anyone who tried to set up a WLAN may have found out