CNET News is reporting that Hawaii's legislature is considering a proposal to require Internet Service Providers to record every web site their customers visit. The measure, H.B. 2288, says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.
The required data is "subscribers information and internet destination history information". That information includes IP address, domain name, or host name.
The effect of this proposal would be for the government to know every website its citizens look at. The refrain from a Police song pops into my mind, "every breath you take, every step you take, I'll be watching you".
Half-baked Homeland Security is spending millions to develop sensors capable of detecting a person's level of 'malintent' as a counterterrorism tool. The program is right out of the supposedly canceled Total Information Awareness program aka big brother incarnate. The idea is to detect (at a distance) physiological cues of malintent, enabling police to arrest people based on malintent before they can act on it. Conceived as a cutting-edge counter-terrorism tool, the FAST program ("Future Attribute Screening Technologies") will ostensibly detect subjects' bad intentions by monitoring their physiological characteristics, particularly those associated with fear and anxiety. FAST includes include "a remote cardiovascular and respiratory sensor" to measure "heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration rate, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia," and other sensory stuff.
When Judges around the country cite the novel, 1984, as legal precedent maybe that's a sign that Big Brother is alive and well and quietly monitoring everything we do. The issue is the GPS features in cell phones, and the Fourth Ammendment's promise of protection against Government invasion of our privacy. A recent NY Times article gives a litany of court cases involving GPS devices, GPS features of cell phones, and the repeated invocation of a novel, 1984, as legal precedent.
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/08/cellsite.pdf: Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn denied a government request for over 3 months of "location data from cellphone towers" calling it an “Orwellian intrusion” and asking whether the courts must “begin to address whether revolutionary changes in technology require changes to existing Fourth Amendment doctrine.”
Today we routinely carry devices that track our every move (cell phones, cars, toll collection passes, etc) and those devices give us valuable information we use in our lives. For example I frequently whip out my iPhone or iPad and use the Map feature to figure out where i am and how to get to a location. That Map feature determines my location using both GPS circuits and interpolated location information from cellphone towers.
This is a fairly old but highly important piece of information about ubiquitous spying being conducted by the United Kingdom upon their residents. It is a system of cameras on the roads connected to computers to automatically recognize license numbers on number plates (what in the U.S.A. we'd call license plates). Of course every car has a visible number where one use is for police to identify vehicles for various reasons. What's new is nifty computer technology advancements have included in improved image recognition capability, in this case automated image recognition is being used to automatically read out the license plate (number plate) numbers of cars passing by. With enough cameras on enough streets the system can track every bit of movement by every vehicle, enabling the government to track movements of everyone.
A pair of reports on The Register web site detail two phases of the system rollout in the UK. Described is a "24x7 national vehicle movement database" to log every trip on the UK's road system. They were building a control center in Hendon capable of processing 50 million number plates PER DAY. In 2005 they already had cameras in strategic locations on every motorway in the UK and intended to have a camera every 400 yards. The initial purpose was traffic speed enforcement, but would be expanded to other crimes later such as the use of untaxed vehicles, stolen vehicles, and generally denying criminals the use of the roads.
Eek! Every 400 yards? Just think of the budget required to build maintain this system.
Today NPR ran a piece on University of Buffalo Computer scientist Rohini Srihari who is developing automated translation software which can be aimed at social networks allowing english speaking folk to read non-english tweets. Maybe this sounds benign, after all Google Chrome has some of this ability built in. In another tab as I write I have a french web-page open which Chrome translated for me into semi-readable text. It's really useful having automated language translation because it can help us connect more readily with each other over the Internet. So why did I put an alarmist title on this post? It's because of the Dept of Defense Total Information Awareness system, and that Dr. Srihari's research is funded by the U.S. Military.
In case you've forgotten what TIA is, this occurred several dozen alarming revelations ago in the months after GW Bush was elected and remained public until some time in 2002. The TIA project was headed by (ret) Admiral Poindexter (the guy convicted of lying to congress during the Iran-Contra period) to apply modern datamining technology to national security intelligence activities. The intent is to create an all-encompassing system of tracking a huge amount of information (total information awareness), look for "patterns" indicating nefarious activities, and nip them in the bud early.
Dr. Rohini's project doesn't fit neatly into the projects cited under the TIA umbrella back in 2002, however many of the projects were associated with language translation. This way the US Intelligence Community could hire anybody, rather than rely on language/social experts, for intelligence analysts.
As the NPR piece said: "One way to follow what's going on in the Middle East and South Asia right now is through social media — Facebook, Twitter and blog posts." This is called "open source intelligence" or intelligence gathering from sources out in the open.
Twitter, Facebook and other social networks are awesome but one side effect is they force global social conversations to be conducted in the open where "anybody" can listen in. While that's kinda cool in the light of creating more connection between everyone on a global scale, it does mean that spies can snoop on everything.
What if, for example, the spies are looking for signs of an impending uprising against a brutal dictator who happens to be friendly to the United States, and receives lots of United States funding and equipment and training which increases the effectiveness of that dictators military forces? The U.S. routinely does this, support government leaders who are brutal to their people. Mubarak, the recently deposed leader of Egypt, was one of those brutal dictators.
What will the U.S. spies do if they notice the impending uprising? Stand back and applaud the revolution? Or do something that will help the brutal dictator stay in power? If the U.S. has invested so much money in maintaining a particular government structure (no matter how brutal) wouldn't they act to protect their investment?
As Dr. Rohini said: "What I want is to determine who are the people, places and things being talked about," she says. "Is there an opinion being expressed? Is it a positive or negative opinion being expressed?" And... "And when you are able to figure out what the topic of the conversation is," she says, "what kind of sentiment is being expressed around that, that's the goal of what we are trying to do." And... "So in Twitter posts and tweets and so on, if there's specific factual information that's being mentioned — they want that extracted," Srihari says. "There's also definitely an interest in sentiment and opinion mining."
Who's to say that foreigners speaking their local languages aren't the only group being targeted by the total information vacuuming project? Perhaps they're also vacuuming up social network conversations by Americans? Don't believe me? See: Twitter Tapping - government agents tracking public information
In a curious ironic twist of history, Amazon's Kindle service has autodeleted copies of the book 1984 from all Kindle's whose owner had "bought" the book. What happened is that for some reason the publisher of both 1984 and Animal Farm (also deleted) made a decision that they no longer wanted those books available on the Kindle platform. As a result Amazon sent out the order to delete copies of those books which had already been purchased, resulting in commands sent to Kindle devices to remove already purchased books. At least they also issued refunds.
The irony here is that in the book, 1984, Big Brother would cause embarrassing news articles to be deleted in the memory hole. By remotely deleting 1984 and Animal Farm Amazon has shown us the Kindle also has a memory hole feature.
Apparently this is causing a bit of a ruckus in certain corners of the Blogosphere, and rightly so. It's not so much the specific instance of deletion but instead that the capability exists in the first place. For that matter, according to a NY Times article, this isn't the first time purchased books have been deleted from the Kindle.
The real concern is about centralized control of society's knowledge. Ironically, that was the subject 1984 warned us about.
The Kindle relies on Internet based cloud services to provide a service through which we can access society's knowledge in the form of books, magazines, newspapers and blogs. The Kindle service allows you to buy books or newspaper subscriptions, which are then delivered electronically to your device. It seems like a very sleek and nice service.
This event shows that Amazon can do more with "your" Kindle than simply deliver content to you. They can send commands to change things in all (or selected) Kindle's. Today it is deletion but clearly their service could potentially do other other things. The content we're talking about is digital and can be easily changed.
As I wrote in an earlier posting:
Suppose all of human knowledge is stored in digitized form on "The Internet". Suppose it's "easy" for a select group of people to control the content of the books and other records that is the record of human knowledge. And, remember that media ownership is consolidating to an ever-smaller circle of companies and that media companies are routinely clamoring to extend the length copyrights are valid, and to extend the powers they hold under copyright law. That's the danger proposed in the book 1984, that the definition of truth contained in those books and other media, if it can be changed repeatedly at whim then society can no longer know what is the truth and can more easily be led astray.
To be fair to Amazon, they do not own the content they're providing. It is the copyright holders who own the content. Amazon is simply providing a delivery service on behalf of the content owners. In this case a content owner wanted the content to be deleted, but suppose some other content owner wants the content to be changed.
The NY Times article makes out several interesting points. Amazon's current service agreement does not give Amazon the right to delete content, instead Amazon grants customers the right to keep a "permanent copy of the applicable digital content." Further retailers of physical goods do not have the right (or ability) to force themselves into homes to change or delete purchases. But Amazon has proved they do have the ability to force themselves into "your" Kindle and do things regardless of the actual rights they may or may not have to do so.
Police in thought pursuit offers a good beginning point for considering the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 20007 (Act). The bill hasn't passed, but "the bill passed the House of Representatives on Oct. 23 by a 404-6 vote under a rule suspension that curtailed debate. To borrow from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, the First Amendment should not distract Congress from doing important business. The Senate companion bill (S. 1959)... has encountered little opposition" and the article describes it as "probably the greatest assault on free speech and association in the United States since the 1938 creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) .. Denuded of euphemisms and code words, the Act aims to identify and stigmatize persons and groups who hold thoughts the government decrees correlate with homegrown terrorism... The Act will inexorably culminate in a government listing of homegrown terrorists or terrorist organizations without due process; a complementary listing of books, videos, or ideas that ostensibly further "violent radicalization;" and a blacklisting of persons who have intersected with either list.". I suspect this web site would become enshrined in their records, right? The article was published, however, in the Washington Times, notoriously owned by the Rev. Moon and therefore a suspect news organ.
The status page (on Thomas.loc.gov) makes it clear this bill passed in the House of Representatives overwhelmingly, but under a suspension of the rules. I'll note three votes in particular. Kucinich voted against this, and both Conyers and Ron Paul did not vote.
It's current status is that it passed in the House of Representatives, overwhelmingly, and was referred to the Senate, where they've sent it to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The sponsor is Sen Collins, Susan M., and sole cosponsor is Sen Coleman, Norm.
The bill defines
Quote:
VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change
HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term `homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives
IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE- The term `ideologically based violence' means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs
Those are interesting definitions. And I noted reading the House 'Debate' (links below) that some Representatives expressed 'shock' that not all 'terrorists' are foreigners. Um, what do you think about those who in the 1990's were murdering abortion doctors? They were publishing lists of abortion doctors, with home addresses, home telephone numbers, etc, and suggesting those people should be murdered in order to stop the murder of children through abortion. What do you think about the protests against 'Fags' or the attacks on Jewish synagogues or the Oklahoma City bombing? What do you think of the episodes over the last years where nooses were placed in ways that would remind the Negro Americans of the Lynchings in the past? And what would you think of ecology activists who torch Hummer dealerships and thereby get labeled as ecoterrorists?
These Congressmen, I suggest, are feigning shock or else have a very poor memory.
Terrorism is a military strategy. There isn't a set group of people who are terrorists. Terrorism is a strategy chosen all around the world by peoples who have no other means to express their rage and desire for change. I suspect that in the 1770's the British who were attacked by, for example, having tea shipments tossed into Boston Harbor, thought that those people were terrorists (the word 'Terrorist' hadn't been invented at the time, and they would have used some other word). The forefathers of the United States of America promoted the use of violence to achieve political change, yet they are extolled as leading lights and essentially freedom fighters.
One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.
In the Findings they state
Quote:
The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens
Hmm, so I suppose that one consequence of this, if it were to become law, would be a clampdown on peoples freedom to publish on the Internet. However the Findings also state
Quote:
Any measure taken to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism in the United States should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents
Pardon me if I don't receive much comfort from that statement. At least they are including in this proposed law guarantees of continued civil rights, but this reminds me of the saying that the cost of living in a Democracy is eternal vigilance against losing the Democracy.
The bill calls for the establishment within the legislative branch of the Government the National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism. It would report on
Quote:
the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States, including United States connections to non-United States persons and networks, violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in prison, individual or `lone wolf' violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence, and other faces of the phenomena of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence that the Commission considers important.
The bill calls for
Quote:
The Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish or designate a university-based Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States (hereinafter referred to as `Center') following the merit-review processes and procedures and other limitations that have been previously established for selecting and supporting University Programs Centers of Excellence.
With the purpose
Quote:
It shall be the purpose of the Center to study the social, criminal, political, psychological, and economic roots of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism in the United States and methods that can be utilized by Federal, State, local, and tribal homeland security officials to mitigate violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism
The bill calls for
Quote:
International Effort- The Secretary shall, in cooperation with the Department of State, the Attorney General, and other Federal Government entities, as appropriate, conduct a survey of methodologies implemented by foreign nations to prevent violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism in their respective nations
Elsewhere in the bill they recognize that other countries, such as Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Israel, all have significant experience with homegrown terrorism, and that the U.S. can learn from them.
Finally, in SEC. 899F. PROTECTING CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES WHILE PREVENTING IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE AND HOMEGROWN TERRORISM the bill calls for auditing to prevent this bill from being abused to target specific racial groups, and that it not be used to degrade existing civil liberties.
In general the legislation does not specify any new crime definitions nor does it specify any new penalties. Instead it calls for the establishment of commissions to study the problem. I suppose though the fear is that these commissions will come up with some kind of expected information, that there are grave dangers to U.S. Society from something or other, and that therefore they will recommend the establishment of a thought police and actually outlaw us from thinking certain things. In other words the threat in this case is a potential future where the government has given itself the right to outlaw our thoughts and enforce somehow that we cannot think about certain things.
The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act Offers an excellent tour through the history, in the United States, of fear-mongering legislation in the United States directed against groups and individuals believed to threaten the established order.
Democracy Now, November 20, 2007; Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act Raises Fears of New Government Crackdown on Dissent is an interview by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now) with Jessica Lee and Kamau Karl Franklin discussing this bill. They raise alarm over the potential uses of this bill given the broad language used in the definitions. While Philip Giraldi (above) thinks the most likely target of this bill are the Muslims, the bill does contain broad definitions that could be applied to anybody. For example ecological protesters often attempt block activities like logging by chaining themselves to trees, or forming human chains that would block logging trucks and crews from entering the forest. These activities could be labeled as promoting violence.
Specifically interesting are these snippets connecting the bill with the Rand Corporation. Especially as the bills sponsor, Rep. Jane Harmon, has in her district the headquarters of the Rand Corporation.
Quote:
I found was a great influence by the Rand Corporation, which is a government affiliated think tank. Twice, Brian Michael Jenkins, who is an expert on terrorism, gave testimony in the House on this bill....the Rand Corporation’s other reports in 2005, they had a report called “Trends in Terrorism”. And they had one chapter called “Homegrown Terrorism Threats”. When you look in that chapter, there’s nothing about political Islamists. In fact, its all about anti- globalization people on the right and left side of the spectrum. The animal rights and the environmental movements; and anarchists....the Rand comment, particularly with Brian Michael Jenkins, supposed terrorist expert who’s mainly known according to Rand as someone who helped the United States in counter-insurgency measures in Vietnam, which is one of his claims to fame. In addition to that, he wrote a book and in his own book... that says “in their international campaign, the Jihadist will seek common ground with leftist, anti-American and anti-globalization forces who will in turn seek radical Islam comrades against a mutual foe.”
On October 23, 2007, the House of Representatives passed the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 by a vote of 404-6. The bill will be referred out of committee this week and will then go to the Senate floor. The National Lawyers Guild and the Society of American Law Teachers strongly oppose this legislation because it will likely lead to the criminalization of beliefs, dissent and protest, and invite more draconian surveillance of Internet communications.
In Congress' "anti-extremist" bill targets online thoughtcrime documents some instances of 'mission creep' related to this area. An actual example from the Alabama Department of Homeland Security states domestic terrorists are those Americans who say the "U.S. government is infringing on their individual rights, and/or that the government's policies are criminal and immoral." He goes on to suggest Al Gore would be labeled this way because he has made several speeches claiming the U.S. Government is following stupid illegal policies. Part of the Civil Liberties we have is the right to criticize the government. Fortunately the proposed law preserves existing civil liberties, but what if the commissions were to recommend that some civil liberties are threats against the government? Hurm.
Jessica Lee posted “Homegrown Terrorism” Bill Update outlining further information and activities related to this bill. It appears there is a growing movement to pressure the Senate committee to kill the bill.
On The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act: A Tutorial in Orwellian Newspeak goes through the bill looking for 'Orwellian' language. For example the bill starts with 'AN ACT - To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes', and that phrase 'other purposes' is more than suspicious.
Quote:
Future “other purposes” will undoubtedly be justified by the Act’s use of the term “violent radicalization,” which it defines as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence . . .” or by the folksy, Lake Wobegonesque “homegrown terrorism,” defined as “the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born [or] raised . . . within the United States . . . to intimidate or coerce the United States, the civilian population . . . or any segment thereof . . . .”... A clue to future “other purposes” may lie in the Act’s parentage. The proud House “mother” of the Patriot Act’s evil twin is Rep. Jane Harmon (D-CA), chair of the Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee. Rep. Harmon has admitted to a long and productive relationship with the RAND Corporation, a California based think-tank with close ties to the military-industrial-intelligence complex. RAND’s 2005 study, “Trends in Terrorism,” contains a chapter titled, “Homegrown Terrorist Threats to the United States.” Is this Act a bastard child?... RAND maintains that “homegrown terrorism” will not be the result of jihadist sleeper cells. Rather, it will result from anti-globalists and radical environmentalists who “challenge the intrinsic qualities of capitalism, charging that in the insatiable quest for growth and profit, the philosophy is serving to destroy the world’s ecology, indigenous cultures, and individual welfare.”
I went through several pages of yahoogling and found basically universal warning "THIS IS HORRIBLE WE MUST STOP IT". However it appears many of those who are yelling DANGER didn't read the bill, or else are assuming this is just the first step to establish a crackdown on thought and freedom of speech and freedom of association. Perhaps it is. The bill clearly is worded very broadly and could be used in many ways.
US intelligence official: You get privacy when your definition matches ours seems somewhat reasonable once I get past my initial shock. The article discusses statements by "Donald Kerr, a top intelligence official with the US government" who suggests most peoples definition of "privacy" is antiquated, and that we need to change our belief about privacy. And my initial reaction was "of course that's what you think, because you want to spy on us".
See... while it's idealistic to think governments have our best interests at heart, that government officials are acting from altruistic notions of service and the betterment of us all, that's not always how it happens. Government officials are also looking for ways to more efficiently do their job and especially it's easy for law enforcement to think everybody's a criminal and they need stronger techniques to catch the criminals that are slipping through the cracks. Which means they need better surveillance, more ubiquitous spying, essentially big brother.
But this guy has an interesting point that's worth pondering. He draws a distinction between privacy and anonymity. As a practical matter anonymity is harder to achieve nowadays. Try going to the corner store to get a snack.. how are you going to pay for it? That credit card transaction gets recorded by who knows how many institutions, and it identifies that someone used your card to buy something, and it might even know what you bought. So you might think it's innocent to buy packets of cigarette rolling papers every week, but some computer might put two and two together, notice that you're also buying a lot of gardening supplies, and then send a note to the police that you might be growing marijuana.
Let's not dance around this... the credit card corporations know a lot about what you're doing. It is so convenient nowadays to buy using credit cards, and that means the majority of your transactions are recorded. They know your travels by watching when and where you use the card(s) and they know your habits by watching what you buy and where you spend.
Can we really trust the assurances of a government agent? Especially when it comes in the context of the government trying to retroactively justify the illegal warrantless wiretapping and other spying that has been perpetrated on U.S. Citizens?
It's worth reading about this project which had been publicly conducted by U.S. Intelligence agencies. Their thought was to apply the sort of data mining that's common in businesses, and utilize it in government spying operations. There was a hullabaloo raised over these programs in 2001-2 but the programs have continued, under different names, under expanded mandates, and under tighter secrecy. DARPA's Information Awareness Office, The Total Information Awareness System; Or, Big Brother in-carnate
It's worth thinking about the idea put forward by Mr. Kerr. Corporations are already knowing waaay too much about us than is reasonable for our past conception of what privacy should be. It is probably too late to put the genie back in the bottle, because what has created this erosion of privacy is the sort of technological revolution which has created the World Wide Web. However what ought to be happening is clear laws and standards of conduct around protection of privacy, and clear and strong penalties for violating such standards.
Gait DNA, for example, is creating an individual code for the way I walk. Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are. In the Total Information Awareness project these elements were covered by the Human ID at a Distance (HumanID) sub-project. The idea is to recognize people even in a crowded place, and to: "As you walk through a crowd, we'll be able to track you," said Professor Challapa. "These are all things that don't need the cooperation of the individual." And there was, a couple years ago, an attempt to use this sort of technology at a pro football game in Florida, ostensibly there was a "terrorist threat" which gave them a reason to deploy this technology to test how well it recognizes people.
The issue may be that facial recognition may not be enough to robustly identify someone. It seems likely they could estimate height and weight through image analysis, and by analyzing enough corroborating factors you should be able to make a good identification.
"Unless we're going to train every American citizen and soldier in 16 different languages we have to develop a technology that allows them to understand - whatever country they are in - what's going on around them. I hope in the future we'll be able to have conversations, if say you're speaking in French and I'm speaking in English, and it will be natural." .. "And the computer will do the translation?" In the Total Information Awareness project this was covered by the Babylon, Communicator, and Effective, Affordable, Reusable Speech-to-Text (EARS) subprojects. Many of the TIA subprojects involved language translation no doubt due to the plethora of human languages.
"And this idea about a total surveillance society," I asked. "Is that science fiction?"..."No, that's not science fiction. We're developing an unmanned airplane - a UAV - which may be able to stay up five years with cameras on it, constantly being cued to look here and there. This is done today to a limited amount in Baghdad. But it's the way to go." This wasn't covered by a TIA project however there has been increasing use of these unmanned aircraft, especially in the Iraq war. As I have covered before: UAV's coming to the U.S. for more spying on U.S. Citizens it is planned that UAV's will be used inside the United States.
The last item mentioned does border on science fiction, but is actual science. Oceanit has developed Sense Through The Wall (STTW) which detects minute radio signals emitted by human beings. It is able to detect these signals through walls, and they believe in the future that the technology will determine heart rate, breathing, etc. In other words, they'll have the makings of a tricorder, literally.
"The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records... The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — the network of people that the target was in contact with.... central to a data-mining technique intelligence officials call link analysis." etc..
The idea is that government spy agencies are applying data-mining techniques which is now possible with new computer technologies. In a way they're being smart and simply applying techniques already used by businesses allowing business activity to be more accurately targeted.
But with any increase in government surveillance it raises fears of intrusive government surveillance such as described by George Orwell in his book 1984. Certainly there is an example of what computer technology can do in the hands of an overzealous government. The extremely primitive not-quite-computer technology of the 1930's and 1940's, developed by IBM, was used by Nazi Germany to enact the Jewish Holocaust.
The exact issue in todays article is tracking the "envelope" information of telephone calls, and to draw a web of connections between people. When you call someone a record is made somewhere of the phone call, the number called from, the target phone number, the time of the call, and its length. This is the "envelope" and is similar to the paper envelope used to send mail through the post office. If you track enough of these phone calls you can see patterns of who is calling whom.
The Total Information Awareness system was an overarching plan for ubiquitous spying upon U.S. citizens and essentially upon "all" commerce and other activity which the U.S. spies might think to call a threat. It was later named the Terrorism Information Awareness system, because Terrorism became a big thing. Either way TIA promised to become the worst of our Big Brother fears. In 2003 the public became aware of the system and a bruhahahaha happened in Congress with a public shutdown of the project, including Admiral Poindexter having to resign from working for DARPA on the project.
The Wired article discusses a version of TIA developed by Singapore. The unveiling ceremony was led by, er, Admiral Poindexter. One of the project leaders had worked in DARPA on the TIA project. Hmm...
The article talks about adjustment to the plan based on the reaction seen in the U.S.A. The Singapore version is concentrating on "open source" intelligence data, which would be all the information published in the open. This would include news articles, blog postings, etc.
Describes the Real ID Act as a the act of a totalitarian dystopia. Since those are $50 words I think he means totalitarian and domineering governments. Think of the movie portrayal of totalitarian governments, and you have a stern police officer demanding "papers, please". Today we have machines that scan our bodies, we have other machines that scan for metals, we have coming machines that scan biometric features of our bodies (such as iris pictures) and more. Taken together the technology has increased to where we can no longer go about our lives in anonymity.
Supposedly there is a right of anonymity we've had all along, which is now being threatened. I wonder, where did that right get written down? It doesn't list this right in the U.S. Bill of Rights, for example.
Hmm...
... to date, the most vocal condemnation has come from the far right. Religious fundamentalists, in particular, claim that it portends the "mark of the Beast" described in Revelation 13:16-17: "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."
Coverage of the Real ID act by Salon.COM. They point to Rep. Sensenbrenner who, at the time of the passage of this act, was railing against illegal immigration. He sees todays system of identity cards, the drivers license, as "chinks" in the armor of national security. He is also a well known anti-immigration bigot. This article characterises the Real ID Act as a matter of portraying fears, e.g. more terrorist attacks or the dangers of illegal immigration, and to pose this security card as the solution.
Montana and other states are considering rejecting the requirements in the Real ID Act. The act places requirements on states which set standards for an identity card. If a given state does not meet those standards then residents of that state cannot partake in the activities for which the Real ID card is required, such as flying on an airplane, using federal services, etc. Meaning that residents of states who reject the requirements become like exiles in their own country.
Maine overwhelmingly rejected federal requirements for national identification cards on Thursday, marking the first formal state opposition to controversial legislation scheduled to go in effect for Americans next year.
Both chambers of the Maine legislature approved a resolution saying the state flatly "refuses" to force its citizens to use driver's licenses that comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real ID Act. It asks the U.S. Congress to repeal the law.
In a curious ironic twist of history, Amazon's Kindle service has autodeleted copies of the book 1984 from all Kindle's whose owner had "bought" the book. What happened is that for some reason the publisher of both 1984 and Animal Farm (also deleted) made a decision that they no longer wanted those books available on the Kindle platform. As a result Amazon sent out the order to delete copies of those books which had already been purchased, resulting in commands sent to Kindle devices to remove already purchased books. At least they also issued refunds.