8 ms·

How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

65 points by lelf 12y ago

tzs 12y ago
People worried about surveillance should read the story "The Dead Past" by Isaac Asimov. Here is a link to a copy of it [1]. It makes a point, which is probably not apparent until the twist ending, that is often overlooked (although I see a few commentators here have touched on it). [1] http://www.redlibrary.net/ScienceFiction/Asimov41/27323.html http://www.redlibrary.net/ScienceFiction/Asimov41/27323.html
- carapace 12y ago
  Also "The Light of Other Days" by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter.
junto 12y ago
These systems have a side purpose, some might argue a primary purpose, which is to maintain control of the generql population. People who are likely to protest, regardless of what their beliefs are, are a potential dangerous threat to the status quo. They can be used to stop and harass members of the public who have been tagged as trouble makers. Sheeple are the ideal population, not those who question authority and submit FOI requests. Surveillance on the other hand is easy. Everyone volunteers to carry a tracking and bugging device with them at all times and pays a monthly fee for the privilege. It is called a mobile telephone.
MichaelCrawford 12y ago
Well that clinches my decision. I've been getting around on public transit for quite a long time, but have been thinking of getting a car. Now I've decided not to. I'm a generally law-abiding citizen, but I simply do not wish to be tracked. How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? Even if they kept their distance, never spoke to you our overtly harmed you in any way, it would be very disturbing.
- handinmouth 12y ago
  > How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? On the Web, this happens already (try a browser add-on such as RequestPolicy which will show you the numerous sites that track you all over the Web - often 20 or more per page).
  - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
    That I find particularly creepy, so I blackhole many of the analytics servers with my /etc/hosts: 127.0.0.1 hosted-pixel.com 127.0.0.1 cdn.hosted-pixel.com When web bugs first appeared, there was a huge public outcry. Now that they call it "analytics" or "big data" everyone seems cool with it. However I can't block everything with hosts; some of the tracking scripts come from the same hosts as I actually use. I'm planning to write a firefox addon which will do stuff like remove the Facebook "Like" buttons. Even if I don't click the button, Facebook knows that it served me the script.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Ad block rules like this block content except on the home site: ||twitter.$domain=~twitter.com Additional domains can be unblocked: ||twitter.$domain=~twitter.com|~another.com
      - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
        Hey thanks - I owe you one.
    - Panino 12y ago
      > Even if I don't click the button, Facebook knows that it served me the script. You can stop a lot of trackers by minimizing referer leaks. Firefox has the config option network.http.sendRefererHeader which defaults to 2, "always send referer." 1=same FQDN, 0=never send. So by setting it to 0 or 1, a typical tracker that's gotten past your /etc/hosts entries, adblock, etc. will see you requesting their pixel image but never see the sites that initiated those HTTP GETs. There are no silver bullets, just good tools, and reducing the referer footprint is one of them.
jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
Very interesting article. I've been thinking about this more often recently (perhaps it's watching the 31C3 talks that do it) and I find that I'm becoming increasingly conflicted over the whole issue of surveillance. On one level, my gut instinct is "mass surveillance of innocent people is wrong"... But the moment I think of it from the law enforcement point of view, I realise how desperately I'd want that bulk data and how damn useful it would be. I can easily see myself, in another lifetime, being the one who said "Hey, you know if we stick a camera here, I can get a computer to read the number plates and beep if it sees a car we need to stop." - That's nothing other than a great use of technology to do what a human could do, but much more efficiently. A good hack, nothing not to like about it at all. At first it'd seem only reasonable to use that technology ONLY to flag vehicles that were known to be of interest at the time. Keeping dates/times/plates of innocent vehicles might not be right. But then again... How seductive to sling all that data into a database. How powerful, how efficient, how god damned _useful_ it would be to be able to go back in time and, for any given number plate, rule a vehicle's presence in or out of suspicion. OK, clearly a possibility of "wrong place, wrong time" for the unlucky, but an equal chance of such historical information actually verifying an alibi, proving that a person of interest is as innocent as they claim. The extent to which you could get a whole lot of law enforcement done, purely with a big database and some well-written SQL queries... It's seductive. If I were law enforcement, I'd want that /so/ bad. I wasn't a fan of "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" before the Snowden revelations, or after. But today I find myself realising just how useful the results of such surveillance /could/ be. I wonder if I've just given in, taken the cowardly way out and somehow convinced myself to be comfortable with the idea of such intrusion because it's obviously never going to end, or whether my mind on the subject has been genuinely changed. Quite a quandary. Still not sure where I stand on the issue now.
- pgeorgi 12y ago
  In an attempt to help you find out where you stand on the issue (that is, I don't expect a response): 80% of sexual abuse of minors happens within existing social contexts, that is "family and friends". It would be useful to place cameras in every single private room and have them be automatically monitored and the live feed passed to some on-staff LEO when software considers anything suspect. Are you at peace with that? If so, why? If not, why not? (Yes, it's an extreme example. Both in terms of privacy intrusion and in the potential of helping law enforcement with a 'worthy cause'. It's why I think this example is particularly helpful to consider one's position)
conductor 12y ago
Tracking and surveillance is everywhere. Mobile phones: location tracking (they keep the cell IDs your phone is connecting to, with a time-stamp), texts, calls meta-data, calls audio. CCTV: ANPR, face recognition Internet: everything Payments: everything except cash (I'm surprised cash is still legal) The list goes on.. Public transport, hotels reservations, etc.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mahyarm 12y ago
  Cash still covers too many edge cases that electronic devices cannot to be illegal. Also remember less developed countries.
  - terrywhite 12y ago
    "Also remember less developed countries." Don't worry. American corporations are thinking far ahead. "Branding Nigeria: MasterCard-backed I.D. is also a debit card and a passport" [1] [1] http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/25/business/branding-nigeria-mastercard-backed-i-d-/ http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/25/business/branding-nigeria-...
yuvadam 12y ago
Everytime I try to explain why privacy matters, and why dragnet surveillance is one of the worst plagues of our times, I can't help but link to Glenn Greenwald's talk which explains it better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcSlowAhvUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcSlowAhvUk
- teddyh 12y ago
  I find this 2006 column by Bruce Schneier to be most lucid and succinct: The Eternal Value of Privacy http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/05/70886 http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securi...
switch007 12y ago
> ANPR IS A BRITISH INVENTION: created, developed, and tested in the UK. Its first major outing was in 1984, 1984! What a coincidence.
roel_v 12y ago
Meh, it's an inevitable effect of the lowering cost of cameras and image processing. In a few years we will have 'social' data sharing networks (analogous to the blockchain) that will share results of analyses of all sorts of cameras worn by regular people every day and everywhere they go, basically a 'decentralized' pervasive monitoring system, fed by cameras everywhere - shops, car dashboards, phones, on private property, ... Think Facebook tagging is creepy, just wait until you get home from work and find a website with 50 pictures of you during the day in all places you were... Just a few people who contribute footage will be enough to map the vast majority of people. Imagine 10 people walking around in a shopping mall with a Google Glass and a dashcam; with enough processing power, that would be enough to map the locations of thousands of people per day. I used to care, years ago - but there is no escaping it. The real question is how can we deal with such pervasive monitoring? I don't think anyone has a real answer, or has even tried to answer it (note that I'm not talking about pervasive monitoring by just one actor like the state, since what we will experience will be monitoring of all, by all).
- carapace 12y ago
  Well, think about Star Trek --let me finish!-- the computer on the Enterprise always knew where everybody was and it didn't concern anybody unduly. As ubiquitous surveillance becomes pervasive we are confronted with the task of growing into a humane and healthy world polity.
  - krapp 12y ago
    It's also worth remembering, no one on board the Enterprise was a member of the public, per se. The Federation is a quasi-military organization, and I don't think anyone wouldn't expect the military, or even a defense contractor or high-tech lab, to at least make sure they know where personnel are at all times ... and in that light, the surveillance on the Enterprise seemed almost lax. In one episode, crew and officers were being transported while they slept to a pocket dimension and having their organs rearranged by sinister aliens. You would think at the very least, that would set off some alarms. But the computer never seems to keep track of people's whereabouts unless someone asks (for drama's sake, obviously, but still) or even that the first officer apparently was missing a kidney they had only twelve hours ago. I don't remember getting a sense that the computer was actively keeping track on everyone's position, and constantly recording their movements, keystrokes and conversations.

65 points by lelf 12y ago

tzs 12y ago

People worried about surveillance should read the story "The Dead Past" by Isaac Asimov. Here is a link to a copy of it [1]. It makes a point, which is probably not apparent until the twist ending, that is often overlooked (although I see a few commentators here have touched on it). [1] http://www.redlibrary.net/ScienceFiction/Asimov41/27323.html http://www.redlibrary.net/ScienceFiction/Asimov41/27323.html

carapace 12y ago
Also "The Light of Other Days" by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter.

junto 12y ago

These systems have a side purpose, some might argue a primary purpose, which is to maintain control of the generql population. People who are likely to protest, regardless of what their beliefs are, are a potential dangerous threat to the status quo. They can be used to stop and harass members of the public who have been tagged as trouble makers. Sheeple are the ideal population, not those who question authority and submit FOI requests. Surveillance on the other hand is easy. Everyone volunteers to carry a tracking and bugging device with them at all times and pays a monthly fee for the privilege. It is called a mobile telephone.

MichaelCrawford 12y ago

Well that clinches my decision. I've been getting around on public transit for quite a long time, but have been thinking of getting a car. Now I've decided not to. I'm a generally law-abiding citizen, but I simply do not wish to be tracked. How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? Even if they kept their distance, never spoke to you our overtly harmed you in any way, it would be very disturbing.

handinmouth 12y ago
> How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? On the Web, this happens already (try a browser add-on such as RequestPolicy which will show you the numerous sites that track you all over the Web - often 20 or more per page).
- MichaelCrawford 12y ago
  That I find particularly creepy, so I blackhole many of the analytics servers with my /etc/hosts: 127.0.0.1 hosted-pixel.com 127.0.0.1 cdn.hosted-pixel.com When web bugs first appeared, there was a huge public outcry. Now that they call it "analytics" or "big data" everyone seems cool with it. However I can't block everything with hosts; some of the tracking scripts come from the same hosts as I actually use. I'm planning to write a firefox addon which will do stuff like remove the Facebook "Like" buttons. Even if I don't click the button, Facebook knows that it served me the script.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    Ad block rules like this block content except on the home site: ||twitter.$domain=~twitter.com Additional domains can be unblocked: ||twitter.$domain=~twitter.com|~another.com
    - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
      Hey thanks - I owe you one.
  - Panino 12y ago
    > Even if I don't click the button, Facebook knows that it served me the script. You can stop a lot of trackers by minimizing referer leaks. Firefox has the config option network.http.sendRefererHeader which defaults to 2, "always send referer." 1=same FQDN, 0=never send. So by setting it to 0 or 1, a typical tracker that's gotten past your /etc/hosts entries, adblock, etc. will see you requesting their pixel image but never see the sites that initiated those HTTP GETs. There are no silver bullets, just good tools, and reducing the referer footprint is one of them.

jamesbrownuhh 12y ago

Very interesting article. I've been thinking about this more often recently (perhaps it's watching the 31C3 talks that do it) and I find that I'm becoming increasingly conflicted over the whole issue of surveillance. On one level, my gut instinct is "mass surveillance of innocent people is wrong"... But the moment I think of it from the law enforcement point of view, I realise how desperately I'd want that bulk data and how damn useful it would be. I can easily see myself, in another lifetime, being the one who said "Hey, you know if we stick a camera here, I can get a computer to read the number plates and beep if it sees a car we need to stop." - That's nothing other than a great use of technology to do what a human could do, but much more efficiently. A good hack, nothing not to like about it at all. At first it'd seem only reasonable to use that technology ONLY to flag vehicles that were known to be of interest at the time. Keeping dates/times/plates of innocent vehicles might not be right. But then again... How seductive to sling all that data into a database. How powerful, how efficient, how god damned _useful_ it would be to be able to go back in time and, for any given number plate, rule a vehicle's presence in or out of suspicion. OK, clearly a possibility of "wrong place, wrong time" for the unlucky, but an equal chance of such historical information actually verifying an alibi, proving that a person of interest is as innocent as they claim. The extent to which you could get a whole lot of law enforcement done, purely with a big database and some well-written SQL queries... It's seductive. If I were law enforcement, I'd want that /so/ bad. I wasn't a fan of "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" before the Snowden revelations, or after. But today I find myself realising just how useful the results of such surveillance /could/ be. I wonder if I've just given in, taken the cowardly way out and somehow convinced myself to be comfortable with the idea of such intrusion because it's obviously never going to end, or whether my mind on the subject has been genuinely changed. Quite a quandary. Still not sure where I stand on the issue now.

pgeorgi 12y ago
In an attempt to help you find out where you stand on the issue (that is, I don't expect a response): 80% of sexual abuse of minors happens within existing social contexts, that is "family and friends". It would be useful to place cameras in every single private room and have them be automatically monitored and the live feed passed to some on-staff LEO when software considers anything suspect. Are you at peace with that? If so, why? If not, why not? (Yes, it's an extreme example. Both in terms of privacy intrusion and in the potential of helping law enforcement with a 'worthy cause'. It's why I think this example is particularly helpful to consider one's position)

conductor 12y ago

Tracking and surveillance is everywhere. Mobile phones: location tracking (they keep the cell IDs your phone is connecting to, with a time-stamp), texts, calls meta-data, calls audio. CCTV: ANPR, face recognition Internet: everything Payments: everything except cash (I'm surprised cash is still legal) The list goes on.. Public transport, hotels reservations, etc.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mahyarm 12y ago
Cash still covers too many edge cases that electronic devices cannot to be illegal. Also remember less developed countries.
- terrywhite 12y ago
  "Also remember less developed countries." Don't worry. American corporations are thinking far ahead. "Branding Nigeria: MasterCard-backed I.D. is also a debit card and a passport" [1] [1] http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/25/business/branding-nigeria-mastercard-backed-i-d-/ http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/25/business/branding-nigeria-...

yuvadam 12y ago

Everytime I try to explain why privacy matters, and why dragnet surveillance is one of the worst plagues of our times, I can't help but link to Glenn Greenwald's talk which explains it better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcSlowAhvUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcSlowAhvUk

teddyh 12y ago
I find this 2006 column by Bruce Schneier to be most lucid and succinct: The Eternal Value of Privacy http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/05/70886 http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securi...

switch007 12y ago

> ANPR IS A BRITISH INVENTION: created, developed, and tested in the UK. Its first major outing was in 1984, 1984! What a coincidence.

roel_v 12y ago

Meh, it's an inevitable effect of the lowering cost of cameras and image processing. In a few years we will have 'social' data sharing networks (analogous to the blockchain) that will share results of analyses of all sorts of cameras worn by regular people every day and everywhere they go, basically a 'decentralized' pervasive monitoring system, fed by cameras everywhere - shops, car dashboards, phones, on private property, ... Think Facebook tagging is creepy, just wait until you get home from work and find a website with 50 pictures of you during the day in all places you were... Just a few people who contribute footage will be enough to map the vast majority of people. Imagine 10 people walking around in a shopping mall with a Google Glass and a dashcam; with enough processing power, that would be enough to map the locations of thousands of people per day. I used to care, years ago - but there is no escaping it. The real question is how can we deal with such pervasive monitoring? I don't think anyone has a real answer, or has even tried to answer it (note that I'm not talking about pervasive monitoring by just one actor like the state, since what we will experience will be monitoring of all, by all).

carapace 12y ago
Well, think about Star Trek --let me finish!-- the computer on the Enterprise always knew where everybody was and it didn't concern anybody unduly. As ubiquitous surveillance becomes pervasive we are confronted with the task of growing into a humane and healthy world polity.
- krapp 12y ago
  It's also worth remembering, no one on board the Enterprise was a member of the public, per se. The Federation is a quasi-military organization, and I don't think anyone wouldn't expect the military, or even a defense contractor or high-tech lab, to at least make sure they know where personnel are at all times ... and in that light, the surveillance on the Enterprise seemed almost lax. In one episode, crew and officers were being transported while they slept to a pocket dimension and having their organs rearranged by sinister aliens. You would think at the very least, that would set off some alarms. But the computer never seems to keep track of people's whereabouts unless someone asks (for drama's sake, obviously, but still) or even that the first officer apparently was missing a kidney they had only twelve hours ago. I don't remember getting a sense that the computer was actively keeping track on everyone's position, and constantly recording their movements, keystrokes and conversations.