Reporters Without Borders has published their 2014 Enemies of the Internet report. The report names 31 specific national agencies and the US National Security Agency (NSA) and UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are on the list.
The report considers surveillance, censorship, imprisonment and disinformation in characterizing a nation as an Internet enemy. The NSA was cited for surveillance and imprisonment and the GCHQ for surveillance.
There are reports on each offending nation. Here are quotes from the UK and US reports:
United Kingdom: World champion of surveillance
“They are worse that the U.S.” – Edward Snowden
The widespread surveillance practices of the British and U.S. governments, unveiled by Edward Snowden in June last year, put Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and its U.S. equivalent, the National Security Agency (NSA), at the centre of a worldwide scandal. As part of its project “Mastering the Internet”, GCHQ has developed the world’s biggest data monitoring system. Supported by the NSA and with the prospect of sharing data, the British agency brushed aside all legal obstacles and embarked on mass surveillance of nearly a quarter of the world’s communications.
NSA symbolises intelligence services’ abuses
In June 2013, computer specialist Edward Snowden disclosed the extent of the surveillance practices of the U.S. and British intelligence services. Snowden, who worked for a government sub-contractor and had access to confidential documents, later exposed more targeted surveillance, focusing on the telecommunications of world leaders and diplomats of allied countries. Activists, governments and international bodies have taken issue with the Obama administration, as the newspapers The Guardian and The Washington Post have revealed the extent of the surveillance. The main player in this vast surveillance operation is the highly secretive National Security Agency (NSA) which, in the light of Snowden’s revelations, has come to symbolize the abuses by the world’s intelligence agencies. Against this background, those involved in reporting on security issues have found their sources under increasing pressure.
I figured everyone else was publishing information about NSA spying, so I had nothing to add, but I came across a PBS Frontline report "Top Secret America – 9/11 to the Boston Bombings," which provides context for the action of Edward Snowden. It aired on April 30, 2013.
PBS describes the report as follows: "In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, Frontline investigates the vast maze of clandestine government efforts created after 9/11 for the purpose of hunting terrorists and preventing future attacks."
Here are a couple of quotes from the transcript:
NARRATOR: Ten years after September 11th--Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dana Priest investigates the creation of Top Secret America.
RICHARD IMMERMAN, Asst. Dpty. Director, DNI, 2007-08: What happens after 9/11 is this tremendous ramping up.
DANA PRIEST, The Washington Post: The money just came out of Congress- it was flying out.
ALLISON STANGER, Rohatyn Center for International Affairs: It’s shrouded in secrecy.
GARY SCHROEN, CIA, 1970-02: We weren’t going to play by the old set of rules.
...
NARRATOR: But finding the exact needle would take manpower, lots of it, and in a hurry. The NSA turned to a new force in the covert war, private contractors. (LP: one of which, Booz Allen Hamilton, employed Edward Snowden).
DANA PRIEST: You had this boom in the corporate intelligence world, as well, companies like CACI, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics. Just all the old-fashioned industrial, “We’re building ships and submarines”-type corporations quickly moved into the intelligence and information space.
NARRATOR: The NSA spent billions of dollars on more than 480 private companies. Gen. Michael Hayden led the effort in the days right after 9/11.
I have not posted anything on Edward Snowden or the activity of the NSA, because so many others are doing so; however, I have found a relatively concise summary of the NSA surveillance activity with links to many supporting resources. It is a good way to catch up with the story.
Note that it was published by the American Civil Liberties Union, so focuses on violation of privacy guarantees. I would love to see a similar summary with supporting resources that is focused on positive outcomes as a result of NSA surveillance.
NSA email and phone surveillance has been big news the last couple of weeks, but they caught the Boston bombers with photos and we have no right of privacy in public.
These photos were made several years ago. A few turns of the Moore's Law crank and what will we (They) be able to do?
It turns out that facial recognition software has a hard time with sun glasses and hats. Do you want to stay anonymous in a crowd? Here is one possible solution:
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Update 7/8.2013
The examples given above are based on facial recognition in public, but the new Microsoft Xbox One will bring a Kinect 2, with an always on camera, into your home and Rolling Stone wonders about the privacy implications. Rolling Stone notes that Microsoft has filed for a patent that would use the Kinect camera to monitor the number of viewers in a room. That sounds good in a pitch to an advertiser, but how about recognizing the people in the room? Who needs Big Brother?
The controls in the image viewer allow one to pan, tilt and zoom and the bubbles are associated with people whose faces have been recognized by crowd sourcing
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Update 8/24/2013
The New York Times reports (http://nyti.ms/179TFpy) on a Department of Homeland Security research project on surveillance in large crowds, the Biometric Optimal Surveillance System (BOSS). They say the technology is not ready for prime time, but they are making gains:
The federal government is making progress on developing a surveillance system that would pair computers with video cameras to scan crowds and automatically identify people by their faces, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with researchers working on the project....
The video and a transcript are online and the segment tag line, "say goodbye to anonymity," reveals the editorial slant.
Think of all the people you have identified and who have identified you in Facebook or Google Plus photographs. They are a database against which to run a facial recognition algorithm and once they have recognized a face, they can match it to the profile of interests, demographic data, likes and dislikes of that person.
Sixty Minutes emphasized commercial applications -- receiving a discount coupon for your favorite beverage seconds after you walk into a restaurant or seeing personalized ads at the mall.
They also mentioned the database of photographs of criminals the FBI is amassing. By next year they expect to be able to search by face as well as fingerprint and DNA.
The FBI representative says all the right things, but these days government credibility is not all that high. As Bruce Schneier points out in this Atlantic Monthly article, the government is relying on industry to do its surveillance.
Does any of this worry you? How long until Google or Facebook start getting warrants to turn over the names of the people walking through your hometown mall?
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Update 8/29/2013
Facebook may add profile photos to their facial recognition database. They are only considering it and would allow users to opt out if they implement it. (I imagine they will be clever enough to ignore cartoons or non-face photographs).
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Update 11/7/2013
Investigators sifted through surveillance video after the Boston Marathon bombing. They found pictures of the suspected bombers, but were unable to identify them given these images. With higher resolution cameras and improved software, would it have been possible to identify them using an Internet image search tool like Google Image Search? Would it be possible to automate the entire sifting and identification process?
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Update 11/7/2013
The New York Police Department deployed helicopters, police boats, scuba divers, bomb-sniffing dogs and hundreds of cameras, as well as hundreds of officers, at the November 3 New York City Marathon.
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Update 10/13/2014
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Chongqing Institute have developed a facial recognition system which they say "can reach 99.5% accuracy." (I'm not sure how to interpret that statement). It is being used at border crossings.
