Surveillance (/sərˈveɪ.əns/ or /sərˈveɪləns/)[1] is the monitoring of the behavior,
activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the
purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting them.[2] This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment (such as CCTV cameras), or interception of electronically transmitted information (such as Internet traffic or phone calls); and it can include simple, relatively no- or low-technology methods such as human intelligence agents and postal interception. The word surveillance comes from a French
phrase for "watching over" ("sur" means "from above" and "veiller"
means "to watch"), and is in contrast to more recent developments such
as sousveillance.[3][4][5]
Surveillance is very useful to governments and law enforcement to maintain social control, recognize and monitor threats, and prevent/investigate criminal activity. With the advent of programs such as the Total Information Awareness program and ADVISE, technologies such as high speed surveillance computers and biometrics software, and laws such as the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, governments now possess an unprecedented ability to monitor the activities of their subjects.[6]
However, many civil rights and privacy groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union, have expressed concern that by allowing continual increases in government surveillance of citizens we will end up in a mass surveillance
society, with extremely limited, or non-existent political and/or
personal freedoms. Fears such as this have led to numerous lawsuits such
as Hepting v. AT&T.[6][
Tuesday, 27 May 2014
Types
Computer
Main article: Computer surveillance
The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the Internet.[8] In the United States for example, under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act,
all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic,
instant messaging, etc.) are required to be available for unimpeded
real-time monitoring by Federal law enforcement agencies.[9][10][11]There is far too much data on the Internet for human investigators to manually search through all of it. So automated Internet surveillance computers sift through the vast amount of intercepted Internet traffic and identify and report to human investigators traffic considered interesting by using certain "trigger" words or phrases, visiting certain types of web sites, or communicating via email or chat with suspicious individuals or groups.[12] Billions of dollars per year are spent, by agencies such as the Information Awareness Office, NSA, and the FBI, to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems such as Carnivore, NarusInsight, and ECHELON to intercept and analyze all of this data, and extract only the information which is useful to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.[13]
Computers can be a surveillance target because of the personal data stored on them. If someone is able to install software, such as the FBI's Magic Lantern and CIPAV, on a computer system, they can easily gain unauthorized access to this data. Such software could be installed physically or remotely.[14] Another form of computer surveillance, known as van Eck phreaking, involves reading electromagnetic emanations from computing devices in order to extract data from them at distances of hundreds of meters.[15][16] The NSA runs a database known as "Pinwale", which stores and indexes large numbers of emails of both American citizens and foreigners.[17][18]
Telephones
Main article: Lawful interception
The official and unofficial tapping of telephone lines is widespread. In the United States for instance, the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)
requires that all telephone and VoIP communications be available for
real-time wiretapping by Federal law enforcement and intelligence
agencies.[9][10][11] Two major telecommunications companies in the U.S.—AT&T Inc. and Verizon—have
contracts with the FBI, requiring them to keep their phone call records
easily searchable and accessible for Federal agencies, in return for
$1.8 million per year.[19] Between 2003 and 2005, the FBI sent out more than 140,000 "National Security Letters"
ordering phone companies to hand over information about their
customers' calling and Internet histories. About half of these letters
requested information on U.S. citizens.[20]Human agents are not required to monitor most calls. Speech-to-text software creates machine-readable text from intercepted audio, which is then processed by automated call-analysis programs, such as those developed by agencies such as the Information Awareness Office, or companies such as Verint, and Narus, which search for certain words or phrases, to decide whether to dedicate a human agent to the call.[21]
Law enforcement and intelligence services in the United Kingdom and the United States possess technology to activate the microphones in cell phones remotely, by accessing phones' diagnostic or maintenance features in order to listen to conversations that take place near the person who holds the phone.[22][23][24][25][26][27]
Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. The geographical location of a mobile phone (and thus the person carrying it) can be determined easily even when the phone is not being used, using a technique known as multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone.[28][29] The legality of such techniques has been questioned in the United States, in particular whether a court warrant is required.[30] Records for one carrier alone (Sprint), showed that in a given year federal law enforcement agencies requested customer location data 8 million times.[31]
Cameras
Main article: Closed-circuit television
In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security awards billions of dollars per year in Homeland Security grants for local, state, and federal agencies to install modern video surveillance equipment. For example, the city of Chicago, Illinois, recently used a $5.1 million Homeland Security grant to install an additional 250 surveillance cameras, and connect them to a centralized monitoring center, along with its preexisting network of over 2000 cameras, in a program known as Operation Virtual Shield. Speaking in 2009, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley announced that Chicago would have a surveillance camera on every street corner by the year 2016.[32][33]
As part of China's Golden Shield Project, several U.S. corporations, including IBM, General Electric, and Honeywell, have been working closely with the Chinese government to install millions of surveillance cameras throughout China, along with advanced video analytics and facial recognition software, which will identify and track individuals everywhere they go. They will be connected to a centralized database and monitoring station, which will, upon completion of the project, contain a picture of the face of every person in China: over 1.3 billion people.[34] Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China's "Information Security Technology" office (which is in charge of the project), credits the surveillance systems in the United States and the U.K. as the inspiration for what he is doing with the Golden Shield project.[34]
At Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, police in Tampa, Florida, used Identix’s facial recognition software, FaceIt, to scan the crowd for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event [36] (it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants).[37]
Governments often[citation needed] initially claim that cameras are meant to be used for traffic control, but many of them end up using them for general surveillance. For example, Washington, D.C. had 5,000 "traffic" cameras installed under this premise, and then after they were all in place, networked them all together and then granted access to the Metropolitan Police Department, so they could perform "day-to-day monitoring".[38]
The development of centralized networks of CCTV cameras watching public areas – linked to computer databases of people's pictures and identity (biometric data), able to track people's movements throughout the city, and identify whom they have been with – has been argued by some to present a risk to civil liberties.[39] Trapwire is an example of such a network.
Social network analysis
Many U.S. government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are investing heavily in research involving social network analysis.[45][46] The intelligence community believes that the biggest threat to U.S. power comes from decentralized, leaderless, geographically dispersed groups of terrorists, subversives, extremists, and dissidents. These types of threats are most easily countered by finding important nodes in the network, and removing them. To do this requires a detailed map of the network.[43][44][47][48]
Jason Ethier of Northeastern University, in his study of modern social network analysis, said the following of the Scalable Social Network Analysis Program developed by the Information Awareness Office:
The purpose of the SSNA algorithms program is to extend techniques of social network analysis to assist with distinguishing potential terrorist cells from legitimate groups of people.... In order to be successful SSNA will require information on the social interactions of the majority of people around the globe. Since the Defense Department cannot easily distinguish between peaceful citizens and terrorists, it will be necessary for them to gather data on innocent civilians as well as on potential terrorists.
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