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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)."
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.
No, it hasn't proved useful in the UK. they became so ubiquitous that people don't care, the feed quality is bad enough that the recorded video is useless to the police or the courts, there are far too many feeds for anyone to be watching half of them and...
Well, it's that sort of a thing. I guess a lot of these could be 'remedied' by deploying modern CCD based cameras and using some sort of magical computer vision thing. But the main issue here is that it's been found that they jut don't reduce crime.
They may make it easier to catch people afterwards, but they don't actually prevent anything.
The project has a 10-member "ethics board".
Those documents aren't secret. They were released to the public by the INDECT project itself, ages ago. Right here!
Look again. The "D1.1 Report on the collection and analysis of user requirements" is not public available though the link you posted.
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 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.
The royal family don't really have anything to do with government. They're more of a tourist attraction. I prefer the zoo, myself.
In 1970 there was a massive, peaceful protest against the Vietnam war at Kent State University. The government reacted by killing protesters.
I was a senior in high school when it happened, about a month before graduation. It was a relly big deal at the time, all over the news.
Free Martian Whores!
i totally agree with you on this, i don't think CCTV or however you want to call it will solve anything, on the contrary... it gives governments and police a very powerful tool to dominate the masses ("we have proof you know!") while at the same time it leaves "them" (authorities, cops,...) in a position where they can cover up their own actions. This reminds me of David Brin's masterpiece "Earth", in which the "right to privacy" was swapped around into a "right to knowledge". If police/politicians demand cameras on every streetcorner to monitor the people, then we as people should "arm" ourselves with cameras as well and make sure we have footage of their actions as well, so we can provide "proof against proof" if need be! it's about time we demand transparancy from our ruling elites! (and yup, that also means ending the secrecy of banks) Freedom is not free, it requires a continuous struggle against those who seek to take it from us by force or deception!