Government spies could scan every call, text and email

(Telegraph.co.uk) - The huge eavesdropping programme would involve the creation of a mammoth central computer database to store hundreds of billions of individual pieces of communications traffic.

Supporters say it would become one of the security services’ most comprehensive tools in the fight against terrorism but critics described it as “sinister”.

MI5 currently has to apply to the Home Secretary for warrants to intercept specific email and website traffic but, under the new plan, internet and mobile phone networks could be monitored live by GCHQ, the Government listening post.

The Home Office said no decision had been taken but security officials claim live monitoring is necessary to pick up terrorist plots.

It would allow them to capture records like chat room discussions on password-protected Islamic extremist websites.

The annual number of phone calls and other electronic communications in the UK is predicted to nearly double from 230 billion in 2006 to 450 billion by 2016.

Last year 57 billion text messages, or 1,800 a second, were sent. That rose from one billion in 1999.

The number of broadband internet connections rose from 330,000 in 2001 to 18 million last year. Three billion e-mails are sent every day, or 35,000 every second.

One of the spurs for a central database is a concern over how that electronic communications data is currently stored by hundreds of different internet service providers and private telephone companies.

Records may only be held for limited periods of time and are then lost which makes it impossible for police and the security services to establishing historical links, or so-called “friendship trees”, between terrorists.

If all communications information was centrally stored then links could be made between terrorist cells and other sympathisers could be identified.

The telephone and internet companies are currently required to give records of calls or internet use to law enforcement agencies if a senior officer authorises that it is needed for an inquiry.

Last year there were more than half a million such requests.

The cost of monitoring everything, and keeping it on a central database, has been estimated at £12 billion and would dwarf the proposed cost of the identity cards programme.

Critics also claim it would be virtually impossible to keep such a vast system secure and free from abuse by law enforcement agencies.

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: “It would mark a substantial shift in the powers of the state to obtain information on individuals.

“Given the Government’s poor record on protecting data, and seeing how significant an increase in power this would be, we need to have a national debate and the Government would have to justify its need.”

The Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, has already called for a public debate about Government proposals for the state to retain people’s internet and phone records.

A spokesman for the commissioner said: “He warned that it is likely that such a scheme would be a step too far for the British way of life. Proposals that threaten such intrusion into people’s lives must be properly debated.”

Richard Clayton, a security expert at Cambridge University, said the proposal would mean installing thousands of probes in telephone and computer networks which would re-route data to the central database.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Telegraph.co.uk, Nick Allen, Oct 5, 2008 ]

U.S. agents can seize travelers’ laptops: report

(StopThePropaganda.com) - Careful what you keep on your laptop or even your iPod when travelling to the United States.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. federal agents have been given new powers to seize travelers’ laptops and other electronic devices at the border and hold them for unspecified periods the Washington Post reported on Friday.

 

Under recently disclosed Department of Homeland Security policies, such seizures may be carried out without suspicion of wrongdoing, the newspaper said, quoting policies issued on July 16 by two DHS agencies.

 

Agents are empowered to share the contents of seized computers with other agencies and private entities for data decryption and other reasons, the newspaper said.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Reuters ]

Bush Signs Bill To Take All Newborns’ DNA

(InfoWars.net) - President Bush last week signed into law a bill which will see the federal government begin to screen the DNA of all newborn babies in the U.S. within six months, a move critics have described as the first step towards the establishment of a national DNA database.

Described as a “national contingency plan” the justification for the new law S. 1858, known as The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007, is that it represents preparation for any sort of “public health emergency.”

The bill states that the federal government should “continue to carry out, coordinate, and expand research in newborn screening” and “maintain a central clearinghouse of current information on newborn screening… ensuring that the clearinghouse is available on the Internet and is updated at least quarterly”.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: InfoWars.net, Steve Watson, May 2, 2008 ]

Telemarketers face ‘do-not-call’ axe on Sept. 30

(CBC.ca) - Canadians will be able to give telemarketers the slip as of Sept. 30 when the national do-not-call-list officially begins operating.

Under the new rules, announced Wednesday by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, telemarketers will not be allowed to call anyone who registers either by phone with Bell Canada Inc., which is administering the list on behalf of the CRTC, or online at www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca.

Telemarketers will have a grace period of 31 days to contact people who have registered, but after that will be eligible for fines of $1,500 in the case of an individual or $15,000 for corporations should a registrant complain.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: CBC.ca ]

Privacy breaches on the rise in B.C.

(Vancouver Sun) - The number of privacy breaches in B.C. is on the rise, partly due to a spate of stolen laptops and personal records swiped from employee cars last year, according to the provincial privacy commissioner.

Commissioner David Loukidelis said Tuesday his office investigated 92 privacy breaches last year, up from 86 a year earlier and 34 in 2005-06.

Most of the incidents related to “inadvertent breaches” with laptops and personal records left in cars that were stolen or broken into. One public body alone recorded 10 such incidents, according to Loukidelis’s annual report, released Tuesday.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Vancouver Sun, Kelly Sinoski ]

Viacom agrees to YouTube privacy deal

(vnunet.com) - Google and Viacom have reached an agreement to omit user information from a YouTube log which the search giant has been forced to hand over.

The agreement means that Viacom will not be able to see precisely which videos have been accessed by each viewer, nor will it be able to see a specific user’s viewing history.

Additionally, all users’ IP addresses and visitor ID information will be removed from the list.

The agreement will allay fears that the logs would be used to pursue individual cases against users who had uploaded or shared pirated content.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: vnunet.com, Shaun Nichols ]

Kerr on Privacy Idealism

(Michael Geist Blog) - My colleague Ian Kerr posts a great speech he recently delivered on the importance of privacy "idealism" in advocacy. Excerpt: "On june 19th, i had the good fortune of being invited to give a dinner speech to all of the speakers at UofA’s annual access and privacy conference, performing at the speed of change.  although i fully understood the drill – they wanted a lighthearted and entertaining  20 minute speil – something happened to me on the plane that turned into a jerry mcguire moment. i decided instead to take a more heartfelt look at a difficult and often unaddressed set of issues in privacy advocacy. [...]" READ MORE HERE [ Source: Michael Geist Blog, Ian Kerr ]

Get your hands off my iPod!

Big brother is watching you and your iPod. Think about it. If customs officials can inspect the contents of your laptop and your iPod, they might as well see what else is in there.

(Guardian News and Media Limited ) - An agreement on intellectual property rights to be ratified by the G8 heads of government highlights conflicts between ownership and privacy.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Guardian News and Media Limited, Charles Arthur ]

Senate Approves Telecom Amnesty, Expands Domestic Spying Powers

(Wired Blog Network) - The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant retroactive amnesty to the telecoms that aided the President Bush's five-year secret, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and to expand the government's authority to sift through U.S. communications, handing a key victory to the Bush administration.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Wired Blog Network, Ryan Singel, ryan@ryansingel.net ]

45% of Canadians rebuff retailers’ requests for personal info: survey

Nearly half of Canadians say they have refused to give personal information to a retailer, according to a survey commissioned by the federal privacy commissioner.

The survey also found that one in two Canadians said they have questioned a retailer why they need a name, postal code or address.

Consumers said they were reluctant to provide names, addresses and postal codes to retailers, citing fears of fraud and identity theft. About a quarter of the respondents also said they could see no reason for the retailer to collect the data.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: CBC.ca ]

THE STP RESPONSE: Like many of you, we have noticed a growing trend of companies, corporations, websites, banks, etc. asking us for more and more personal information. ‘Their’ excuse is preventing fraud or providing better customer service.

Do not be fooled by this. Personal information is worth money and it is all about money. In other words, personal information is power and profit. The more ‘they’ have the better for ‘them’ but the worse for you.

In some cases, ‘they’ will take personal information to provide you with the convenience of keeping purchases on records while also using that information to send you promotions that have third party advertising attached.

Note the loophole: Customer databases can still be sold indirectly in Canada by selling ad space through ’their’ own promotion materials (i.e. Flyers, catalogs, email marketing lists, etc.).

STP ADVICE: ALWAYS ask what ’they’ want your personal information for. If they cannot provide valid reasons then do not provide anything. If you want to go the easy route, create a fake persona and always give that information when they ask.  

Viacom Will Know What You’ve Watched on YouTube

Viacom made several other requests that Judge Stanton denied, including access to YouTube video source code, video ID code, and information on Google’s entire advertising procedure.

While it has some programs in place to scan for infringement content, YouTube claimed that there was no automatic way to tell if a video posted to YouTube was copyrighted content. Viacom was not convinced, and argued that the best way to see if YouTube is telling the truth was for YouTube to turn over its source and video ID code.

Judge Stanton disagreed and denied the request.

Viacom also wanted copies of all videos removed from YouTube. Google argued that it would take about five weeks for it to produce every single video pulled from the site, so Stanton ruled that Viacom had to specify the videos to which it wanted access in order to make the process less overwhelming.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: PCMAG.com ]

YouTube ordered to hand over user details

A U.S. federal judge has ordered Google Inc. to hand over to media giant Viacom the records of every video users have watched on the video-sharing site YouTube, records that include users’ names and IP addresses.

Viacom is suing Google for not doing enough to keep its copyrighted videos from television shows such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report off the popular website YouTube.

Viacom, which owns several U.S. television networks including MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and Spike TV, alleged in $1-billion US lawsuit launched in March 2007 that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming are available on YouTube. Those clips have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times, Viacom charged.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: CBC.ca ]

CIRA’s Backdoor Access in New WHOIS Policy

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, Ottawa Citizen version, homepage version) revisits the disappointment with CIRA's implementation of its new whois policy. While dot-ca registrants across the country were being advised of the new policy last April, special interests representing law enforcement and trademark holders were quietly pressuring CIRA to create a backdoor that will enable these two groups to have special access to registrant information.  Just days before the new policy took effect, CIRA caved to the behind-the-scenes pressure and took a major step backward in the implementation of its policy.

CIRA has defended the changes by arguing that the policy will be reviewed in 12 months and that it falls to the government to provide legal protection for whistleblowers. Yet CIRA could just have easily retained the no-exception policy and reviewed its effect one year later. Moreover, it is CIRA's policies - not government law and policy - that leaves online activists stuck between the proverbial "rock and a hard place." The CIRA whois database is one of the largest publicly-accessible databases of personal information in the country.  The agency's last minute about-face represents a significant setback for those registrants who were promised better privacy protection.

READ MORE HERE

Senate Hearing On Laptop Seizures At US Border

suitablegirl writes "As we have discussed, Customs and Border Patrol is allowed to seize and download data from laptops or electronic devices of Americans returning from abroad. At a Senate hearing tomorrow, privacy advocates and industry groups will urge the lawmakers to take action to protect the data and privacy of Americans not guilty of anything besides wanting to go home."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New Surveillance Bill: The Worst of Both Worlds

On fundamental matters of privacy and accountability, the new FISA Amendments Act reduces the separation of powers to a check-the-box exercise.

Months of troubled negotiations over new surveillance legislation ended in the House of Representatives today, with the approval of the so-called FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Hailed in some quarters as a "compromise" after the capitulation of the Protect America Act of 2006, the new surveillance bill is nothing of the kind: on core issues of privacy and accountability, there is no compromise, since little in the measure honors those two values.

Since the New York Times's revelation of massive illegal surveillance by the NSA, electronic privacy has been a battlefield for claims of executive power and civil liberties. In 2006, the Administration used the shadow of midterm Congressional elections to stampede both Houses into temporary authorization of sweeping new powers in the Protect America Act (PAA). The measure's grants of new authority had sunset clauses, which expire either immediately before or after the 2008 elections.

READ MORE HERE

Bush Wants Your Eyeballs

George Bush just issued a directive to expand the acquisition of biometric information from citizens, and may share it with foreign governments.

Big Brother wants your irises.

George Bush just issued a directive to expand the acquisition of biometric information, and to ensure that agencies across the executive branch share it.

And the Bush Administration may give it to foreign governments, too.

READ MORE HERE

Wiretaps “R” Us: Is the FBI Tracking Your Cellphone?

Under broad powers handed the Federal Bureau of Investigation by Congress in 2001 after it passed the Orwellian USA Patriot Act, the rights of ordinary citizens have progressively been stripped away by America’s national security state.

With a history of domestic counterinsurgency operations against the left, and despite bruising attacks after 9/11 on its (undeserved) reputation as the nation’s premier “crime fighting agency,” the FBI nevertheless, remains a formidable organization when it comes to repressing dissent.

READ MORE HERE

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

A short film presentation about the truth of Facebook data mining. A Must See!

CLICK HERE to watch the Facebook film

New Spy Cam Software Blurs Faces of the Innocent

Cities and corporations are stringing up thousands and thousands of surveillance cameras, armed with advanced video intelligence algorithms, to watch out for terrorists and crooks. Too bad the rest of us get caught on tape, while the electronic eyes make their spy sweeps. And no one knows what the spycams are recording.

A strain of new software may have the potential to change that, however, by blurring or encrypting faces in the footage, until there’s an alarm or an investigation. Ironically, some of the same firms that made video surveillance extra Orwellian are now working to make the spy networks a bit more privacy-friendly.

READ MORE HERE