EU passes Data Retention act SEC(2005) 1131

by hmmm Fri Dec 16, 2005 20:28

1) VOIP (for the non-nerds) is when you use your computre as a telephone, it has developed globally thanks to Skype a Luxembourg company founded by Niklas Zennström who in late 2003 offered free calls on a variety of computer platforms. He had got the credit for organising the "freeware" real world useful application of the same sort of software that allows us to send music around cyberspace (& for you to download it). It was very popular for those who knew about it, and offered 2 computers registered with Skype to talk to each other real time gratis. So much so, that in September this year the Skype company went and got bought for really big numbers and announced it would use that to do things with WIFI, which i believe they are. There are a lot of things you can do with WIFI.
http://skype.com/
2) the New York Times has an interesting spy story today, accusing the Bush administration of spying (via the NSA) on its citizens in the homeland. To most Irish people that probably doesn't seem an issue, but in the USA the right not to be spied on by the federal authorities is one of the most cherished ideas of civil liberty, right up there with the the right to bear arms. Of course the FBI do loads, but thats supposed to be "criminal investigation". The person who would carry responsibility for this is John Negreponte (remember him?) who Bush created a position for when he left Iraq. He has to brief the president on what all 16 US intelligence agencies are doing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4536310.stm
The NSA is very big. Wikipedia tells us they use the 2nd largest amount of electricity in maryland state at their hq and they've oddles of carspaces in the carpark. If you're very very very good at maths they offer you a job, but you get unhappy very quickly. Dan Brown wrote about them if you believe that sort of stuff. If you got the wikipedia page note the shield, the NSA depicts a skeleton key, that means they can open anything. But then again so does Geneva city, most swiss banks and the Vatican ( in fact the pope has 2 keys). Dan Brown didn't write that. I did. IF you want to protect yourself from them, make sure no-one can understand you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency

by Terry Fri Dec 16, 2005 20:44

As far as I know billing records in Ireland at least have to be retained for up to 3 years although I think this is allegedly for the benefit of customers to challenge any questionable charges. I remember seeing reports though that the Data Commissioner believed they should be stored for only 6 months.

Billing records though are NOT the same as what is mentioned here which is "traffic data" because the traffic data would have even more information that is useful and of course the regulations will be different, but worse for the individual in terms of privacy.

As it is, billing records and traffic data in the future -if not already provide a huge source of information for spying on the privacy of citizens.

For example if you consider for a moment that as part of this data retention, the authorities would have access to the name of the person alongside the number, then it is a trivial software task to take say all the phone records of a person and almost instantly generate a relationship tree that they have with others. So for example say you are Joe Bloggs and you are running the Centre for Public Inquiry (CPI) and people and or contacts are phoning you with details of corruption and so on, then a simple trawl of your records would show up those people and then a further iteration of the software against each name in turn could show up what circles they move in. Combined with even a minimum of other data, such as where they work, you would quickly nail down where all the leaks are coming from. In the hands of corrupt officials this would copper fasten that corruption and remove any possibility of the system cleaning itself up.

The range of actions taken against these people could range from harassements, to demotions, loss of job, rumors, blackmail, arbitary arrest and so forth.

The possibilities of what you can do with this data are endless and in the hands of a system where it is not transparent and lacks any checks and balances, it represents a real danger. I might mention of course that such data can be used to solve crime too. One would imagine because of it's 'intelligence' nature it would be ideal for stamping out organised crime, but as we know there is even less progress there than anywhere else and all around the world we know that the huge sums of money from organised crime always have some connections or interfaces to the political world which needs money and allows a sort of symbiotic relationship to thrive thus ensuring that organised crime never gets seriously challenged. One good thing though for organised crime is that it means in some cases they can get access to this data also if they badly need it.

Another more mundane example would be the ability to uncover things like illicit affairs and use this for either financial or political blackmail. Or possibilites would be for those with access, to trawl looking for people who regulary phone important business people, politicians, acedamics and so on. Then you might be able to carefully launch campaigns to influence this people and set them up for introductions. You might want to push a certain agenda or get your own key people into certain situations and so on. It's endless what can be done and much of it is of a corrupt nature.

As we can see then the collection and retention of all this data has enormous and far reaching effects. It goes to the heart of democracy because it allows for the concentration of huge quantities of information that is valuable in so many facets of political life and opportunies for making money. It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that it and other forms of society wide comprehensive data collections represents the creation of a fanastic set of tools for oppression. What is happening is that these tools are being put in the lack of politicans and other government officials and it is completely unrealistic to think they will not use them. Any system that has these tools in any form must have proper transparency and checks and balances and we are nowhere remotely near that. And bland statements made with bland assurances does not consitute those mechanisms either.

In the US nearly all billing records are retained by a telecommunications company that is a majority owned Israeli company. This is a huge asset to the Israeli state, because they can very effective find out who are the key people when people try to raise alternative voices to what is the situation in that part of the world. And as we know, the Israeli lobby in the US runs a very effective campaign of making sure only their voice is heard in the national media and in both the Congress and Senate.

And finally in the case of mobile records especially, you not only have the relationship information, you likely will have some of the location information. Phone cells in city areas are often only a few hundred meters wide and this simply adds a whole new level to what you can do. The software already exists to overlay this information on to maps. All at the click of a mouse.

You can run, but you can't hide from Big Brother.

by redjade Wed Jan 04, 2006 22:01

First, Boing Boing reported on UK plans to track all car movements - keeping the records for two years. At first this seemed a little unlikely - perhaps an overstatement of their policies or plans - but further research showed that this was merely an extension of the application of their ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) system, which draws from the huge number of CCTV cameras in the UK, the largest in the world. From the first of January, i.e. yesterday, the ANPR system is being expanded to put all sightings of number plates into a database, which can later be mined for who-knows-what.

And then, pat on cue it comes, a report in the Irish Times that the Garda Síochána, the Irish police force, are to purchase and install an ANPR system. Or rather, they have a request pending at Garda Headquarters to do so. According to the article, the request is expected - by whom it doesn't say - to be approved shortly. Among the advantages of the system listed in the article are more efficient tracking of cars without insurance or tax, or of stolen vehicles - the system will interact with a fixed set of cameras on 50 Garda traffic unit vehicles.

[....]

I wonder, though, just when proposals will be made public to fully leverage the capabilities of the system by expanding its remit to retaining records of all car movements.

read the rest at...
http://funferal.org/mt-archive/001112.html

by Terry Wed Jan 11, 2006 23:52

Apparently the whistleblower on the NSA spying on USA citizens has come forward and it turns out has said quite a few interesting things:

Firstly he suggests that the number spied on is in the millions rather than thousands:


"President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.

But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used. "



But perhaps more interesting and relating back to my comment above about tracking relationships and who calls who and how easy this would be to do in software, he says:



"I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations."

Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.

"If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing."

According to Tice, intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect's phone number to hundreds or even thousands more.


The full article can be found at:

by redjade Thu Mar 09, 2006 17:10

'ON THE HEELS of Irish Minister for Justice Michael McDowell's continuing reach into your phone records comes SMS 007, a perfectly legal way of encrypting your text messages. CircleTech in the Czech Republic developed the software. The one I saw needs a Series 60 Nokia phone that can run J2ME (Java) software. SMS 007 uses AES symmetric cipher and user-chosen keys to encrypt the SMS messages. The software can also encrypt a contact list that runs separately from your phone's hot key contact list....'

more info at
http://irish.typepad.com/irisheyes/2006/03/encrypt_your....html

by anon Wed Apr 19, 2006 15:36

AT & T are currently up in court in a lawsuit on charges with violating the privacy of its customers by handing over massive amounts of data to the government.

What this case proves not that it really needed any is that phone companies will very willingly hand over data to their respective governments. How do we not that Eircom has not done this here already. One thing about the digital age is that it has become infinitely easier to tap phone calls.

In the AT&T case which was blown up by an employee Mark Klein ......"Klein’s statements confirm that the spying carried out by the NSA is much broader than has been acknowledged by the government, and has been made possible only through the willing participation of a handful of giant corporations in the US."

"Klein’s revelations strongly suggest a criminal conspiracy between a section of corporate America and the US government."

In a statement released by his lawyers, Klein said that the equipment was installed in a secret room in an AT&T facility in San Francisco, where Klein worked for 23 years before leaving in 2004. Ordinary employees at the company were not allowed access to the room, which was adjacent to the “switches” through which data and phone calls are routed. Klein said that cables connected the switches with the room operated at the behest of the NSA, allowing the government free rein to monitor all communications.

“Based on my understanding of the connections and equipment at issue,” Klein said, “it appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the Internet—whether that be people’s e-mail, Web surfing or any other data.”

....."Previous reports have indicated that a number of other companies have participated in a similar way, though details have not emerged of the extent of participation of these companies."