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DoJ Budget Request Details Advanced Surveillance, Biometrics
An anonymous reader writes with a report about programs revealed in the Department of Justice's 2010 budget request, which includes $233.9 million in funding for an "Advanced Electronic Surveillance" project, and $97.6 million to establish the Biometric Technology Center. The surveillance project is designed to help the FBI "deal with changing technology and ways to intercept phone calls such as those used by VOIP phones or technology such as Skype. The program is also conducting research on ways to conduct automated analysis to look for links between subjects of surveillance and other investigative suspects." The Center for Democracy and Technology's Jim Dempsey warns, "It is appropriate for the FBI to develop more and more powerful interception tools, but the privacy laws that are supposed to guide and limit the use of those tools have not kept pace." The biometrics plan lays groundwork for a "vast database of personal data including fingerprints, iris scans and DNA which the FBI calls the Next Generation Identification," a system we have discussed in the past.
Quote (2007):
So far there is no gadget that can actually see inside our houses, but even that's about to change.
Ian Kitajima flew to Washington from his laboratories in Hawaii to show me sense-through-the-wall technology.
"Each individual has a characteristic profile," explained Ian, holding a green rectangular box that looked like a TV remote control.
Using radio waves, you point it a wall and it tells you if anyone is on the other side. His company, Oceanit, is due to test it with the Hawaii National Guard in Iraq next year, and it turns out that the human body gives off such sensitive radio signals, that it can even pick up breathing and heart rates.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
stucco houses have chicken wire in their plaster matrix, and so act as a pretty good Faraday cage.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
conservatism when you need it?
and civil liberties in this country, and if this plan makes you nervous, there is one ray of hope in all this. Federal law enforcement has a dismal record of implementing such sophisticated database systems. The FBI, for example, has spent billions and failed repeatedly. Not just law enforcement, either: the IRS and the FAA have both spent enormous sums on failed systems upgrades and botched implementations. I have the feeling this will be no different ... although that doesn't mean it won't be a real problem, privacy-wise, regardless of its (unfounded, unproven and probably worthless) utility as an antiterrorism tool. Furthermore, given law enforcement's proven inability to maintain accurate and auditable records, its unwillingness to correct any errors, and the effect such errors have on the populace (the TSA's no-fly list comes to mind) it's clear that the Feds should never be allowed to operate such a system.
Terrorism is an evil enterprise, true enough. But this isn't all that far behind.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Face it. They just want to find out who's got a bigger schlong than they do.
Have gnu, will travel.
Put together a slashdot team of contributors, and bid on an open source solution to this, and then, uh, spend the money.
This is my sig.
How hard would it be to setup the equivalent of a phone to phone VPN connection, and then use a VoIP application similar to Skype across it? Of course you'd have to have a mobile data plan, or access to a WiFi connection, but would such a setup provide an eavesdropping resistant communications channel?
I am very doubtful of that. All material used for house construction are AFAIK not transparent to IR. So looking at a wall with a person inside, you would only see the temperature of the wall. I think also window are IR opaque.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
IANAL. And I don't recall if this was federal or Michigan. But...
I understand that using a directional microphone for eavesdropping requires a warrant. The reason: When nobody is within view in a location were nobody would be able to hide within earshot, you have the expectation that your conversation is private. So it requires probable cause and a warrant, rather than just "happening to overhear" with a directional microphone, to satisfy the Fourth Amendment.
Similarly if you throw out your documents intact the police can fish them out of your trash and, if they find anything incriminating, use it against you. But if you shred it they have to get a warrant to seize and reassemble the shreds and use them in an investigation or in court. Again this is because you have a reasonable expectation of privacy if you shred your documents and none if you discard them intact.
While a skilled surveillance operation (or traffic cameras "installed for other reasons") might be able to see where you are without your noticing, it would be hard to do this if you, for instance, traveled an untrafficked route with no security cameras and noticed that there were no cars or people nearby to observe you. In that case you would have a reasonable expectation that your whereabouts were unknown, despite being in a public place where, in principle, someone might happen to notice you. Yet a tracking device would record your whereabouts when police observers could not. So the same principle should apply.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The wild concept of Minority Report aside, I wouldn't terribly mind providing my retinal scan (or possibly iris scan) for identification, because I can know and control when my eye is examined. However, I also believe that people should not have to identify themselves for everything, either.
Fingerprints and DNA are a whole different story. Those can be used to monitor and track people's ID without their knowledge or consent. I don't go around leaving my eyes, but we all leave fingerprints and DNA all over the place. You can be a suspect in a crime, just because you happened to be nearby. People can easily plant DNA and fingerprint "evidence". And DNA can be abused for a LOT more things than just ID'ing someone without their knowledge or consent....
All the laws in the world trying to protect privacy will be meaningless... if the government has access to the data, they are GOING to use it. And it is likely big business will, too.
Time to watch GATTACA again (and their vision of the future is nowhere near as bad as it could be).
We need to fund the Singularity!
Actually I would say:
a) Obama is a liar, sure ... but:
b) Bush is too stupid to be evil. He just had evil people pulling his strings
But more generally, I think you're on the right track. The similarity between Obama's and Bush's policies demonstrates that the US has yet to achieve anything even remotely democratic, and further, that it doesn't appear to matter who becomes president or which party wins government ... the same shit keeps happening.
Time to organise outside the political establishment.