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EU Surveillance Studies Disclosed By Pirate Party
Spliffster writes "The German Pirate Party has disclosed some secret documents on how the EU is planning to monitor citizens. The so called INDECT Documents describe how a seamless surveillance could (or should) be implemented across Europe. The use of CCTV cameras, the Internet (social networks), and even the use of UAVs are mentioned as data sources. Two of the nine documents can be downloaded from the German Pirate Party's website (PDFs in English)."
No thank you to the surveillance state... we have all seen Metropolis, and as cool as it was, we don't want to live there.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Surveillance is fine if theres World War 3 or a Cold War, but this level of surveillance to fight crime will make us all into criminals soon enough.
Devalue life until newborns kill themselves.
... loitering has been classified as a "dangerous activity" in the EU.
I guess we should thank the German pirates for putting it out there so we can have a nice ruckus about it...before we forget about it again in a day or 2.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Those documents aren't secret. They were released to the public by the INDECT project itself, ages ago. Right here!
I wonder if forcing every single human being to read George Orwell's 1984 would prevent this sort of thing from happening.
Perhaps it's just that people don't realize what could go wrong with an Orwellian government in place. Perhaps they just don't see it, they don't think anything can go wrong if the government watches your every step.
Then again, perhaps people just don't care. As long as it's not them (and by "them" i mean the generations that currently live) who suffer it, they just don't give a damn.
I can tell from personal experience that many people don't care about stuff like that even if you tell them the consequences. Perhaps Big Brother is precisely what we, as a civilization, need in order to realize that it's a horrible thing to live like that. After all, experience is a good teacher.
I guess it's inevitable that something like this would pop up sooner or later, but still it just seems absurd. After reading through the document, they are trying to make a kind of an IDS system based on camera feeds... I guess if the camera's are already in place this could make them more useful (if I remember correctly the UK has not found their extensive camera network to be very useful as is?), but still this just feels so wrong.
And I'd tell you what SCORPION STARE is a cover for, but then I'd have to kill you. And myself. In triplicate, with the blue copy to HR and the pink copy to accounting and...
You know what's really depressing? In a day or two (unless they hope the whole thing can just blow over), the other parties will attack this release of secret documents
I gazed at the fancy jargon of "End-User driven enterprise" and resolved this must mean "Really, Make Up Your Minds And Tell Us What You Want Before Letting Us Write This Inconclusive Report, You Bunch Of Sorry Twats!" but without being too specific about it, thus tying oneself down.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
So, of which country are you queen? Or are you merely insane that you refer to yourself in the third person?
If not, stop talking for EVERYONE else. I might or might not agree with you, but have NOT given you permission to speak for me.
Odd that someone protests against a controlling society, yet then assumes control of the opinion of all humanity with a single statement.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/EU_social_network_spy_system_brief,_INDECT_Work_Package_4,_2009
Some deep ip, friend of friend of friend hunting software triggered by phrases, word use and IM connections.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I can forget about it in 2 sec... ooh, Idols is on.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
On the second page of the first document are listed the authors - apparently tied to university in town Kosice in Slovakia. On behalf of other citizens of this country, I apologize. May be we should remind them about events that happened over 60 years ago when Slovak National Uprising happened and become the most significant activity of regular citizens against fascistic German army in Europe. This uprising happened despite the pro-German orientated government and would certainly not be possible with that level of surveillance as is proposed there.
As far as I'm concerned everyone is innocent until proven guilty. And we have too many crimes, not too many criminals. When you make everything that people like to do or have to do illegal you create excuses for surveillance.
People in government do read 1984. They've just confused it from a warning to a guide/how to book.
IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!
The project has a 10-member "ethics board".
This story, Germany-To-Grant-Privacy-At-the-Workplace [slashdot.org] was about how great it was that Germany is making great strides towards banning a private business from monitoring the activities of its employees. Now, that same government seems to think that no amount of monitoring those same people is too much, as long as the benevolent government does the monitoring instead of the evil corporation.
Nice progress they are making over there. /sarcasm
If you still wonder what Indect is all about, take a look at their own information video...
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
> (PDFs in English)
Ha ha, PDFs, nice try. You are not going to catch me out :-)
In Pirate Germany, exposed Plan of Surveillance by EU!
This is silly. The EU isn't "planning" anything. INDECT is an FP7 research project. So it's a bunch of universities and industrial partners that happened to get funding from the EU because the reviewers thought it was a scientifically interesting proposal. That doesn't mean anything the researchers come up with is EU policy. Besides, the EU doesn't have any authority or power whatsoever to impose a police state on its members.
(They have a FAQ, by the way.)
I suspect that the term "secret" is being misused here.
The document is not an EU policy document. It does not describe how the EU wants to monitor its citizens. It is a research project under the seventh framework programme (i.e. a grant program where scientists can apply for Union grants for larger projects). As with all research, it will not necessarily be used by the EU or the member states.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
I know FP7 projects. The EU is definitely interested in the outcome. They cost many millions of euros. It's not just an exercise.
Not all the outcomes of FP7 projects (or FP6 or older ones) will be used, but it shows a trend in which way the EU thinks that Europe should go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Framework_Programme#FP7_Specific_Programmes
Part of the FP7 projects are quite fundamental, and therefore it is unlikely that they include "implementation", but the fact that they don't plan to implement this doesn't make me feel any more comfortable.
And the EU has LOADS of power to impose laws on its members. Already, the majority of laws in Europe come from Brussels... http://www.jcm.org.uk/blog/2009/06/what-percentage-of-laws-come-from-the-eu/
And with the Lisbon "Treaty", the decision making in Brussels was recently streamlined to make it all a little faster.
These documents are "Dissemination: Public" and can be downloaded from INDECT's web site. GIYF.
Big conspiracy. Big deal. *Yawn*
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
Germany has strong privacy protections! They protect you from being photographed on public streets! Only the German can photograph, catalog, and track you, and as we all know, German governments have never abused that power! Certainly not in the last 100 years!
Only those with something to hide have anything to fear...
That's why politicians are more than happy to have webcams in their houses connected directly to the internet for all the world to watch their activities.
Oh... what's that?
They're not happy to have webcams in their houses?
Hmmm... what does that mean I wonder?
surveillance could (or should) be implemented across Europe
So how is it? Could or should? That is a world of a difference. If you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk about it. Otherwise, you're just another troll.
Yeah, you're complaining now, but when CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN comes around, you'll be singing an entirely different tune.
As FDR said, a car in every garage, a chicken in ever pot, and a UAV above for every citizen out and about.
It's so inevitable. Welcome, citizen. Welcome!
The EU government, in its wisdom, is actually interested in pursuing clean energy generation through this very research, to be utilized in as-yet classified high-power Orwell-driven generator.
The single already concluded successful test of this principle generated over 14 TeraOrwells in just under 1.3 seconds. Think of the chil^H^H^H environment!
It's no limited to rioting at Stadiums, it proposing automatic monitoring of all public places for atypical behaviour and equates atypical behaviour as precursors to criminal behaviour. See the list, it covers everywhere:
"A 1. What is dangerous / atypical behaviour in city streets, highways, public transport,
stadiums, airport, etc.? What focus your attention in these places? Please state if that differs
depending on the time of day, season, etc."
"- city streets, sidewalks: a person on the road, running, laying person, falling, fighting?
What type of danger can it suggest? What else in your opinion?"
"- highways: a person on the road, a car pulling over, driving in wrong direction,
stopping abruptly, speeding? What type of danger can it suggest? What else in your
opinion?"
"- public transport: a person sitting for more that one cycle, moving quickly, sitting/laying
on the floor, left luggage? What else in your opinion?
- stadium: a person still sitting after the game, moving quickly, throwing an object, left
object, going outside the stand, entering the field? What type of danger can it
suggest? What else in your opinion?
- airport: a person sitting for too long, running, sitting/laying on the floor, left luggage,
walking in wrong
INDECT seem to be an EU FP7 funded project. All the deliverables [including the quoted "secret" documents] can be reached at: http://www.indect-project.eu/public-deliverables
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
They have always been as invasive as they can be. Yeah, the people had a lot more privacy before than they do now... Because we didn't have the technology to combat that! This isn't some new fad, they're just doing more effectively the things they've always wanted to do.
It also seems that whatever they are doing is working: The crime rates are going down, as you stated. So why stop here.
Practically, the government is doing what they should (investigate crimes, protect citizens who follow the laws, etc.) but just doing it more effectively than before. They'll save a lot of money (=lower taxes, etc.!) when they can just directly look up something that used to take many manhours of investigative work. In essence, they have defined goals and quality, do their best to achieve that and the goals just don't happen to include privacy for the sake of privacy.
There are just two problems here. First:
You might fear that they'll catch you for the "small" crimes you have made. (IE: you think that there are too many laws... Namely, the ones that you don't feel like following should be abolished.) This is however a problem that should be solved separately from this, it should not stop the police from implementing more effective methods to do their work!
The second problem is that if "the government" gains too much power, they can abuse it. I put the government in quotes because "The government" is like "The man" or "They": It doesn't exist as such. There is not one "The government" with access to all the powers and data that the government has, there is not one "The government" who decides what it should do and who to get rid of... There are millions of people who work, are supervised by their superiors and their conscience and limited to the resources that they can justify to other people who control what they're doing... Aside from the most important operations of CIA (Let's face it: If they really need to destroy you, they can. So they are irrelevant here.), "The Government" can abuse large databases like this, etc. only if there is very, very widespread corruption. And not necessarily much even then, as the higher ups with the power will want to keep the exclusive right to themselves, limiting its scope... Anyways: If there would be that widespread corruption and abuse, the street cops robbing you, etc. would be a much more serious concern than the high ups of the government being able to locate you if you are unmasked in a public place.
I might or might not believe everything I wrote in this post myself. Regardless, there should be some valid views.
MPs have approved a fresh parliamentary inquiry into phone hacking allegations, following criticism of the actions of News of the World journalists.
After a debate on the issue, MPs agreed the Standards and Privileges Committee should look into alleged unauthorised activity by the media.
Speaking in the debate, Labour MP Chris Bryant, one of those who claim their phones were targeted, said the Commons felt "angered".
"It is not about one man," Mr Bryant said. "It is about what kind of investigative journalism we want in this country."
He added: "It is about whether this House will be supine when its members' phones are hacked or whether it will take action when the democratic rights of MPs to do their job without illegal hindrance or interception has been traduced."
Full text care of the BBC
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
read it to them over the Tannoy, like a call to prayer
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Huxley thought he was describing a dystopia, and failed. When I read BNW as a nerdy teenager I thought it was a really good idea. In Huxley's world, nerds get to live with other nerds on islands and build their own ideal societies, unbothered by the power mad, conformists and the stupid. Mustapha Mond, the world controller, is practically a Platonic philosopher-king. BNW is only a dystopia if you are conventionally religious, or have inflated ideas of the importance of the human race.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"disclosed some secret documents on how the EU is planning to monitor citizens"
The documents are EU research project reports which just list requirements and potential implementations. An EU research project is only funded by the EU, but conceived and executed by its participants. It's neither secret, nor planned by the EU.
All telecom operators implement lawful intercept technology & a host of other tech you have never heard of, all of which are designed to make YOU very findable.
Governments in the us and eu are elected, this means you can choose ( mostly ) who listens in on your conversations. There is no privacy.
Face it, get over it, deal with it. If you want privacy, move to rural south america, africa or asia & forget using any technology newer than the telegraph.
The reasons of privacy and Freedom from point of view of press, press is not doing its job most of the time and when it does the messenger is attacked
From point of view of economy and tyranny of government through manipulation of economy
Governments everywhere are attacking people through all sorts of means, and for now people are still not on this, there are still enough bread and circuses and wars are fought too far to care.
You can't handle the truth.
These are not actual plans of the EU. This is a research project under the seventh frame work program of the European research council.
That's why there are a few universities involved, besides all the law enforcement agencies. The files describe the proposed research.
That said, one can wonder why such a project should be granted funding which should be going to scientific research.
And of course, they might as well have called the project BigBrother, but I guess it was to hard to find out what that is an acronym for.
Look at the Swift issue, USA demanded access to our banking data. EU Commission defined it as a data protection issue and granted USA and EU rights to that data.
So now that data is Europol activity under the EU Commission.
You use the word 'coordinating' to get around the facts here, the EU is expanding into criminal law, and there's no legal basis for it, but it doesn't stop them.
I live in China. This week, a friend of a friend left a large sum of money in a taxi. My friend's staff went down to the police station and came back with a record of surveillance video, all the stops the taxi made, a route the taxi took in Google Maps style format, the taxi driver's home address, ID card scan, and mobile phone number. This is coming to a nation near you, if it's not already there. It's funny, one of the ways you can tell if street construction is almost finished is when they install the surveillance cameras on poles.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I speak for many... i am so glad that Canada has a wonderful government in power.
Life here is free and controlled by those with our best interests at heart.
Life in Canada is the best.
pleasehelpmethereisamanwithaguntomyheadAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
(Sorry, that should be pleasehelpmethereisaPERSONwithagunto
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
I don't think that standard CCTV cameras are an answer to anything. The resolution is so poor that you can barely make out individual people, much less try to identify them. I think any sort of a surveillance effort would be best served by using regular digital cameras, with as big of an image sensor as you can affordably find, with some decent, run-of-the-mill lens. Those can typically snap pictures at a couple Hz, and would be more than enough to capture what's going on and have enough resolution to identify people.
I used to think that HD cameras would be an answer, but the resolution improvement compared to SD is too small, and there is really no need to have a 25 or 50fps acquisition rate. 3-5Hz is more than enough for surveillance, I now think.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...FUCK YEAH. Too bad that Europe is going the same direction as America. Or rather I should say, Europe is copying every attempt to spy on its citizen from America :-(.
"In the US, you're probably only a little more likely to be abused by a police officer than you are to die in an airplane crash."
No. I think you are either
A. Very frightened of flying (irrationally so)
or B. Very, very white. No black or Hispanic friends, grew up in an all-white town, etc.
You are MUCH more likely to be abused by a police officer than to die in a plane crash. Based on numbers from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incidents
3414 death between 2002 and 2004.
and
http://www.totalinjury.com/news/articles/police-brutality/chicago-police-brutality-roundup.aspx
10,000 complaints during the same time.
(Note that while many cases are found to be without merit, people are generally unlikely to file complaints, so the number of genuine cases is probably still a number very roughly equivalent to the number reported. Also note that the numbers in the second article are just for Chicago, which represents only 2.8 million of the 308 million people in the US, albeit a disproportionately rich sample -- 40% higher than average.)
he could simply be a pot smoker. War on drug yada yada, if they get you, they can make your live a living hell *AND* confiscate your belonging. So. Yes. Indeed for some action which regard only what an adult do in the privacy of his home, better not be in the US but , say, in danemark or similar countries.
But if we do decide to leave, we can do so safely in a plane. If we can get past the TSA...
"If I were black and lived in Detriot no doubt my perspective would be different, and I'd be the first to argue that this should not be the case."
You are a gentleman and a scholar.
It's time for a World Revolution or ALL FREEDOM will be lost to insane controlling sociopaths.
When the state seeks to monitor all individuals all of the time
Funny, but most of the surveillance I see in the US seems to be Bandanna Republic trying to keep 16 year old girls from stealing tank tops and the rest is dedicated to keeping soccer moms from running red lights.
Help, help! I'm bein' oppressed!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If you go out in public, chances are you will end up in the background of some teenager's Facebook photos.
What we need is OPEN circuit surveillance: citizens can then effectively provide neighborhood watch services on their own.
Society+:
1) Open surveillance in public areas
2) No organized enforcement against unorganized crime:
Obviously you and I can't keep down the mob, but if a camera were around, I could track down that meth head who took my bike wheel and get it back! Same thing goes for any other interpersonal crime, as well as crimes involving reckless endangerment (i.e., if you drive drunk, the community will know).
Even in college it is available, at best, as an ELECTIVE -- which next to nobody takes as it is commonly in the philosophy department. As a result, even most highly educated people can't adequately question authority nor counter political and pseudo-scientific nonsense in an effective, timely manner. It's almost as though the government wants compliance -- at almost any cost. I see this, very much, as connected to the surveillance society model which is under heavy construction.
the most significant activity of regular citizens against fascistic German army in Europe
Not trying to downplay the Slovak uprising, but both of my late grandfathers would probably have something to say about the statement above.
As in, that being the most significant uprising in Europe only for VERY SPECIFIC definitions of terms "most significant" and "Europe".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
These are not secret documents. They are clearly marked "PUBLIC"...
Two things we Americans and Mexicans have in common is that we both had an independence war and a civil war later after.
Both of these and the independence wars more clearly illustrate what happens when a group of people rise against the government. Progress.
So much discussion about whether protests are peaceful or violent completely sidesteps the fact that violent revolutions are becoming unattainable.
The possibility of violent revolutions is important. Even if they don't happen, the mere fact that they could happen keeps the government in check.
What motive do they have to obey the population when the worst thing they are allowed to do is complain?
In a way that's why terrorism exists. Right now the only way to threat a government is after the fact. You can't say that you'll beat the president if he doesn't behave, you have to blow up something and *then* say why you did it.
So while discussing about whether I have to request permission from the government before I gather a peaceful protest, let just not lose sight of the big picture, that power difference between the government and the people is more abysmal than ever.
It is my opinion that a government should always be a little afraid of it's people, and I'm extending that to the secret government, the robber baron bankers and the multi-billion dollar CEOs, they shouldn't be able to wreck a country's economy destroy the environment and have a good nights sleep.
But... the future refused to change.
However, you miss a vital point. In BNW the lower classes were not poor and downtrodden. Quite the reverse. They were well treated and society was arranged to reinforce their own feelings of self worth. It's made clear that they exist because the human need for social order means an alpha-only society would fight itself to death - but the gammas and deltas are happy gammas and deltas, conditioned to enjoy their routine of light work and entertainment. Alphas do not validate their lives by oppressing gammas. BNW does not describe a society that complete nutter Ayn Rand would approve.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You seem to be forgetting one thing in your analysis: In the U.S., the government is supposed to be owned by the people, the public (I'm not saying it is, mind you), so public lands are supposed to be owned by the people, to be used by the people.
Having to to ask permission to exercise your right of peaceful assembly on public lands, of which you are part owner, seems to me to be a violation of the Constitution, as it is intended.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
Huxley's world (and maybe Orwell's to a lesser extent) does seem to ask if ignorance is really bliss.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Most of my countrymen risk highway carnage and exhibit less than civil behavior on their way home to watch Dancing with the Stars and The Bachelor/Bachelorette. They immerse themselves in Survivor and Big Brother, never realizing that the real Big Brother is numbing their minds with digital morphine. I've developed the rather jaded opinion that most American's are self-indulged morons that would rather live vicariously through some TV image than pay attention to what is really going on around them. Oh crap I gotta go...Burn Notice is on.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All additional information you would need is available at official INDECT portal:
http://www.indect-project.eu/
There you can find all deliverables - in the "Public Deliverables" section.
As you can see Piraten Party obtaining some "internal" documents of INDECT was no real news, because all these are officially available.