Datacasting often provides news, weather forecasting, traffic reporting, stock market, and other information which may or may not relate to the carried programs. It may also be interactive, such as gaming, shopping, or education. An electronic program guide
is usually included, although it somewhat stretches the definition, as
this is often considered inherent to the digital broadcast standard.
The ATSC, DVB and ISDB standards allow for broadband datacasting via DTT, though they do not necessarily define how. The overscan and VBI are used for analog TV, for moderate and low bandwidths (including closed captioning in the VBI) respectively. DirectBand and RDS/RBDS are medium and narrow subcarriers used for analog FM radio. The EUREKA 147 and HD Radio standards both allow for datacasting on digital radio, defining a few basics but also allowing for later expansion.
The term IP Datacasting (IPDC) is used in DVB-H for the technical elements required to send IP packets over DVB-H broadband downstream channel combined with a return channel over a mobile communications network such as GPRS or UMTS. The set of specifications for IP Datacast (phase1) was approved by the DVB project in October 2005.
Datacasting services around the world
North America
Ambient Information Network
Ambient Information Network, a datacasting network owned by Ambient Devices
presently hosted by U.S.A. Mobility, a U.S. paging service which
focuses on information of interest to the local (or larger) area, such
as weather and stock indices, and personalized information will be
provided with a paid ambient subscription on that particular device.
DirectBand, owned by Microsoft, uses the 67.65 kHz subcarrier leased from FM radio stations. This subcarrier delivers about 12 kbit/s (net after error correction)
of data per station, for over 100 MB per day per city. Data includes
traffic, sports, weather, stocks, news, movie times, calendar
appointments, and local time.
ATSC-M/H is yet another mobile TV standard, although it is transmitted and controlled by the broadcasters instead of a third party, and is therefore mostly free-to-air (although it can also be subscription-based). From a technical standpoint, it is an IP-encapsulated datacast of MPEG-4streaming video, alongside the ATSCMPEG transport stream used for terrestrial television
broadcasting. Heavy error correction, separate from that native to
ATSC, compensates for ATSC's poor mobile (and often fixed) reception.
Australian broadcast infrastructure company Broadcast Australia undertook a three-year trial in Sydney of a datacasting service using the DVB-T system for use in Australia.
The trial consisted of a number of services on one standard 7 MHz multiplex, collectively known as Digital Forty Four.
The collection included:
A combined program guide for the free-to-air broadcasters (Channel 4)
ABC news, sport, and weather items (Channel 41)
Channel NSW (link) Government and Public Information, including real time traffic information and life surf webcam images (Channel 45)
More recently a near-Australia wide broadcast of a datacasting channel called MyTalk commenced on April 13, 2007. Broadcasting as part of the multiplex on Southern Cross and Southern Cross Ten
stations, it provided news, weather and other information, available
free to anyone able to tune in. The stream consisted of text applicable
to the viewer's location and a 4:3 video window of terrestrial TV from
the relevant Southern Cross/Southern Cross Ten station.
On February 25, 2008, MyTalk ceased broadcasting. Digital Forty
Four was shut down at exactly midnight on the night of April 30, 2010.
Malaysia
Malaysian multi-channel pay-TV operator, MiTV Corporation Sdn Bhd
launched its IP-over-UHF service in September 2005. The full digital
broadcast capacity was used to deliver IP services which such as
multicast streaming and datacasting.
Middle East
Toosheh,
or "Knapsack" in Persian is a datacasting technology that uses existing
set-top-boxes for reception of files without requiring an Internet
connection. No special equipment is required, the transmission is in the
form of a standard video stream containing embedded data that is
'recorded' to a USB stick and then viewed using special software on a
PC.
South Africa
Mindset Network
has developed an IP satellite datacast platform for the distribution of
educational and health content, to sites around South Africa and the
rest of Africa as well. The model is a forward and store model, allowing
users of the platform to view content in an on-demand fashion. Content
distributed in this way includes video content, print-based content (in
the form of PDF files), and interactive computer-based multimedia content.
Significantly, the model also includes access to a GPRS network
that allows the receiving sites to communicate back to the Mindset
central server. Communications include statistics about the physical
health of the machine (e.g. power status, disk drive usage), as well as
usage statistics indicating what content has been viewed.
The model also includes a distributed deployment of the Moodle LMS, allowing users to take assessments and have the results transmitted via GPRS to the Mindset server for accreditation.
United Kingdom
Teletext was used extensively on analogue channels; a type of datacasting using the overscan
on analogue transmissions. Teletext Limited and Ceefax were the main
providers. Within digital terrestrial television, the Digital Teletext
name is used extensively although the technology used to provide this
service is unrelated and uses the MHEG-5 UK profile.
Worldwide
Blockstream Satellite
Blockstream Satellite broadcasts the Bitcoin blockchain via a global network[2] of broadcast satellites. It also gives everyone the ability to transmit arbitrary files at low cost[3] which can be received in total anonymity worldwide by anyone with a standard DVB-S2 receiver card or USB adapter.
Outernet
Outernet's
goal is to provide free access to content from the web through
geostationary and Low Earth orbit satellites, made available effectively
to all parts of the world. The project uses datacasting and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) through both small satellites, such as CubeSats, and larger, more conventional geostationary communications satellites in a satellite constellation network. Wi-Fi enabled devices would communicate with the satellite hotspots, which receive data broadcasts from satellites.
Advantages over Internet transmission
Datacasting
has certain advantages over using the Internet, specifically concerning
privacy and censorship resistance, which can be considered important in
an era of mass surveillance.
Both satellite and terrestrial broadcast multiplexes can carry multicast IP data. This can be forwarded onto a LAN with a suitable receiver,
such as a low-cost set-top-box running custom firmware. The software to
transmit web pages over multicast is fairly easy to implement; some of
the technology has been already developed.
Content received can be stored automatically on the set-top box's built
in hard drive, served to users over Wi-Fi or Ethernet. A fractional
broadcast multiplex can transmit up to hundreds of gigabytes of content
each day.
Privacy
Because
the data stream is receive only, nobody can tell what a user is
receiving. Thus the government cannot round up citizens for reading
forbidden material in oppressive regimes. In extreme cases the receiver
can be physically disconnected
from the Internet to ensure maximum security, thus providing a system
much more secure than Internet-based anonymity networks such as Tor. This could ultimately put a complete stop to law enforcement attempts to censor material on the darknet
and making many censorship laws virtually impossible to enforce; thus
restoring some of the 'anarchic freedom' of the early days of the
Internet.
Censorship
It
is much more difficult, on a technical and political level to jam a
satellite signal compared to blocking a website. Data streams can be
transmitted alongside television channels. An attempt to jam the data
stream will end up jamming the TV stations as well.
Efficiency
Despite the very high cost of satellite bandwidth,
broadcasting to hundreds of thousands or millions of receivers may well
be cheaper than using the Internet. No build-out and maintenance of
costly physical infrastructure (e.g. fiber optic cables) is required for
the end-user, only a satellite dish or TV antenna is necessary,
allowing services such as educational materials to be delivered to
underserved communities.
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), or interception of electronically transmitted information like Internet traffic. It can also include simple technical methods, such as human intelligence gathering and postal interception.
Surveillance is used by citizens, for instance for protecting their neighborhoods. It is widely used by governments
for intelligence gathering, including espionage, prevention of crime,
the protection of a process, person, group or object, or the
investigation of crime. It is also used by criminal organizations to
plan and commit crimes, and by businesses to gather intelligence on criminals, their competitors, suppliers or customers. Religious organizations charged with detecting heresy and heterodoxy may also carry out surveillance.
Auditors carry out a form of surveillance.
A byproduct of surveillance is that it can unjustifiably violate people's privacy and is often criticized by civil liberties activists. Democracies may have laws that seek to restrict governmental and private use of surveillance, whereas authoritarian governments seldom have any domestic restrictions.
Espionage
is by definition covert and typically illegal according to the rules of
the observed party, whereas most types of surveillance are overt and
are considered legal or legitimate by state authorities. International espionage seems to be common among all types of countries.
The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the Internet. 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.
There is far too much data on the Internet for human
investigators to manually search through all of it. Therefore, automated
Internet surveillance computers sift through the vast amount of
intercepted Internet traffic to identify and report to human
investigators the traffic that is considered interesting or suspicious.
This process is regulated by targeting certain "trigger" words or
phrases, visiting certain types of web sites, or communicating via email
or online chat with suspicious individuals or groups. Billions of dollars per year are spent by agencies, such as the NSA, the FBI and the now-defunct Information Awareness Office, to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems such as Carnivore, NarusInsight, and ECHELON
to intercept and analyze all of this data to extract only the
information which is useful to law enforcement and intelligence
agencies.
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. 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. The NSA runs a database known as "Pinwale", which stores and indexes large numbers of emails of both American citizens and foreigners.Additionally, the NSA runs a program known as PRISM,
which is a data mining system that gives the United States government
direct access to information from technology companies. Through
accessing this information, the government is able to obtain search
history, emails, stored information, live chats, file transfers, and
more. This program generated huge controversies in regards to
surveillance and privacy, especially from U.S. citizens.
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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
The StingRay
tracker is an example of one of these tools used to monitor cell phone
usage in the United States and the United Kingdom. Originally developed
for counterterrorism purposes by the military, they work by broadcasting
powerful signals that cause nearby cell phones to transmit their IMSI number,
just as they would to normal cell phone towers. Once the phone is
connected to the device, there is no way for the user to know that they
are being tracked. The operator of the stingray is able to extract
information such as location, phone calls, and text messages, but it is
widely believed that the capabilities of the StingRay extend much
further. A lot of controversy surrounds the StingRay because of its
powerful capabilities and the secrecy that surrounds it.
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. The legality of such techniques has been questioned in the United States, in particular whether a court warrant is required. Records for one
carrier alone (Sprint), showed that in a given year federal law
enforcement agencies requested customer location data 8 million times.
In response to customers' privacy concerns in the post Edward Snowden era, Apple's iPhone 6 has been designed to disrupt investigative wiretapping
efforts. The phone encrypts e-mails, contacts, and photos with a code
generated by a complex mathematical algorithm that is unique to an
individual phone, and is inaccessible to Apple. The encryption
feature on the iPhone 6 has drawn criticism from FBI director James B.
Comey and other law enforcement officials since even lawful requests to
access user content on the iPhone 6 will result in Apple supplying
"gibberish" data that requires law enforcement personnel to either break
the code themselves or to get the code from the phone's owner.
Because the Snowden leaks demonstrated that American agencies can
access phones anywhere in the world, privacy concerns in countries with
growing markets for smart phones have intensified, providing a strong
incentive for companies like Apple to address those concerns in order to secure their position in the global market.
Apple
has made several moves to emphasize their concern for privacy, in order
to appeal to more consumers. In 2011, Apple stopped the use of
permanent device identifiers, and in 2019, they banned the ability of
third parties to track on children’s apps.
Although the CALEA requires telecommunication
companies to build into their systems the ability to carry out a lawful
wiretap, the law has not been updated to address the issue of smart
phones and requests for access to e-mails and metadata. The Snowden leaks show that the NSA
has been taking advantage of this ambiguity in the law by collecting
metadata on "at least hundreds of millions" of "incidental" targets from
around the world.
The NSA uses an analytic tool known as CO-TRAVELER in order to track
people whose movements intersect and to find any hidden connections with
persons of interest.
The Snowden leaks have also revealed that the British Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) can access information collected by the NSA on American
citizens. Once the data has been collected, the GCHQ can hold on to it
for up to two years. The deadline can be extended with the permission of
a "senior UK official".
A surveillance camera in Cairns, QueenslandSurveillance
cameras such as these are installed by the millions in many countries,
and are nowadays monitored by automated computer programs instead of
humans.
Surveillance cameras, or security cameras, are video cameras used for
the purpose of observing an area. They are often connected to a
recording device or IP network, and may be watched by a security guard or law enforcement officer.
Cameras and recording equipment used to be relatively expensive and
required human personnel to monitor camera footage, but analysis of
footage has been made easier by automated software that organizes
digital video footage into a searchable database, and by video analysis software (such as VIRAT and HumanID).
The amount of footage is also drastically reduced by motion sensors
which record only when motion is detected. With cheaper production
techniques, surveillance cameras are simple and inexpensive enough to be
used in home security systems, and for everyday surveillance. Video
cameras are one of the most common methods of surveillance.
As of 2016, there are about 350 million surveillance cameras
worldwide. About 65% of these cameras are installed in Asia. The growth
of CCTV has been slowing in recent years. In 2018, China was reported
to have a huge surveillance network of over 170 million CCTV cameras
with 400 million new cameras expected to be installed in the next three
years, many of which use facial recognition technology.
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 2016. New York City received a $350 million grant towards the development of the Domain Awareness System, which is an interconnected system of sensors including 18,000 CCTV cameras used for continual surveillance of the city by both police officers and artificial intelligence systems.
In the United Kingdom,
the vast majority of video surveillance cameras are not operated by
government bodies, but by private individuals or companies, especially
to monitor the interiors of shops and businesses. According to 2011 Freedom of Information Act requests, the total number of local government operated CCTV cameras was around 52,000 over the entirety of the UK. The prevalence of video surveillance in the UK is often overstated due to unreliable estimates being requoted;
for example one report in 2002 extrapolated from a very small sample to
estimate the number of cameras in the UK at 4.2 million (of which
500,000 were in Greater London).
More reliable estimates put the number of private and local government
operated cameras in the United Kingdom at around 1.85 million in 2011.
In the Netherlands, one example city where there are cameras is
The Hague. There, cameras are placed in city districts in which the most
illegal activity is concentrated. Examples are the red-light districts and the train stations.
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.
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.
A payload surveillance camera manufactured by Controp and distributed to the U.S. government by ADI Technologies
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a research project called Combat Zones That See
that will link up cameras across a city to a centralized monitoring
station, identify and track individuals and vehicles as they move
through the city, and report "suspicious" activity (such as waving arms,
looking side-to-side, standing in a group, etc.).
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 (it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants).
Governments often 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".
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. Trapwire is an example of such a network.
Social network analysis
A graph of the relationships between users on the social networking site Facebook. Social network analysis
enables governments to gather detailed information about peoples'
friends, family, and other contacts. Since much of this information is
voluntarily made public by the users themselves, it is often considered
to be a form of open-source intelligence
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.
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.
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.
— Jason Ethier
AT&T developed a programming language called "Hancock", which is
able to sift through enormous databases of phone call and Internet
traffic records, such as the NSA call database,
and extract "communities of interest"—groups of people who call each
other regularly, or groups that regularly visit certain sites on the
Internet. AT&T originally built the system to develop "marketing
leads", but the FBI has regularly requested such information from phone companies such as AT&T without a warrant,
and, after using the data, stores all information received in its own
databases, regardless of whether or not the information was ever useful
in an investigation.
Some people believe that the use of social networking sites is a
form of "participatory surveillance", where users of these sites are
essentially performing surveillance on themselves, putting detailed
personal information on public websites where it can be viewed by
corporations and governments.
In 2008, about 20% of employers reported using social networking sites
to collect personal data on prospective or current employees.
Biometric
Fingerprints being scanned as part of the US-VISIT program
Biometric surveillance is a technology that measures and analyzes
human physical and/or behavioral characteristics for authentication,
identification, or screening purposes.
Examples of physical characteristics include fingerprints, DNA, and
facial patterns. Examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include
gait (a person's manner of walking) or voice.
Facial recognition
is the use of the unique configuration of a person's facial features to
accurately identify them, usually from surveillance video. Both the
Department of Homeland Security and DARPA are heavily funding research into facial recognition systems. The Information Processing Technology Office ran a program known as Human Identification at a Distance which developed technologies that are capable of identifying a person at up to 500 ft (150 m) by their facial features.
Another form of behavioral biometrics, based on affective computing,
involves computers recognizing a person's emotional state based on an
analysis of their facial expressions, how fast they are talking, the
tone and pitch of their voice, their posture, and other behavioral
traits. This might be used for instance to see if a person's behavior is
suspect (looking around furtively, "tense" or "angry" facial
expressions, waving arms, etc.).
A more recent development is DNA profiling,
which looks at some of the major markers in the body's DNA to produce a
match. The FBI is spending $1 billion to build a new biometric
database, which will store DNA, facial recognition data, iris/retina
(eye) data, fingerprints, palm prints, and other biometric data of
people living in the United States. The computers running the database
are contained in an underground facility about the size of two American football fields.
The Los Angeles Police Department is installing automated facial recognition and license plate recognition devices in its squad cars, and providing handheld face scanners, which officers will use to identify people while on patrol.
Facial thermographs
are in development, which allow machines to identify certain emotions
in people such as fear or stress, by measuring the temperature generated
by blood flow to different parts of the face.
Law enforcement officers believe that this has potential for them to
identify when a suspect is nervous, which might indicate that they are
hiding something, lying, or worried about something.
In his paper in Ethics and Information Technology,
Avi Marciano maps the harms caused by biometric surveillance, traces
their theoretical origins, and brings these harms together in one
integrative framework to elucidate their cumulative power. Marciano
proposes four types of harms: Unauthorized use of bodily information,
denial or limitation of access to physical spaces, bodily social
sorting, and symbolic ineligibility through construction of marginality
and otherness. Biometrics' social power, according to Marciano, derives
from three main features: their complexity as "enigmatic technologies",
their objective-scientific image, and their increasing agency,
particularly in the context of automatic decision-making.
Micro Air Vehicle with attached surveillance camera
Aerial surveillance is the gathering of surveillance, usually visual imagery or video, from an airborne vehicle—such as an unmanned aerial vehicle, helicopter, or spy plane. Military surveillance aircraft use a range of sensors (e.g. radar) to monitor the battlefield.
Digital imaging technology, miniaturized computers, and numerous
other technological advances over the past decade have contributed to
rapid advances in aerial surveillance hardware such as micro-aerial vehicles, forward-looking infrared, and high-resolution imagery capable of identifying objects at extremely long distances. For instance, the MQ-9 Reaper, a U.S. drone plane used for domestic operations by the Department of Homeland Security,
carries cameras that are capable of identifying an object the size of a
milk carton from altitudes of 30,000 feet (9.1 km), and has forward-looking infrared devices that can detect the heat from a human body at distances of up to 60 kilometers (37 mi). In an earlier instance of commercial aerial surveillance, the Killington Mountain
ski resort hired 'eye in the sky' aerial photography of its
competitors' parking lots to judge the success of its marketing
initiatives as it developed starting in the 1950s.
HART program concept drawing from official IPTO (DARPA) official website
The United StatesDepartment of Homeland Security is in the process of testing UAVs to patrol the skies over the United States for the purposes of critical infrastructure protection, border patrol, "transit monitoring", and general surveillance of the U.S. population. Miami-Dade police department ran tests with a vertical take-off and landing UAV from Honeywell, which is planned to be used in SWAT operations. Houston's police department has been testing fixed-wing UAVs for use in "traffic control".
The United Kingdom, as well, is working on plans to build up a fleet of surveillance UAVs ranging from micro-aerial vehicles to full-size drones, to be used by police forces throughout the U.K.
In addition to their surveillance capabilities, MAVs are capable of carrying tasers for "crowd control", or weapons for killing enemy combatants.
Programs such as the Heterogeneous Aerial Reconnaissance Team program developed by DARPA
have automated much of the aerial surveillance process. They have
developed systems consisting of large teams drone planes that pilot
themselves, automatically decide who is "suspicious" and how to go about
monitoring them, coordinate their activities with other drones nearby,
and notify human operators if something suspicious is occurring. This
greatly increases the amount of area that can be continuously monitored,
while reducing the number of human operators required. Thus a swarm of
automated, self-directing drones can automatically patrol a city and
track suspicious individuals, reporting their activities back to a
centralized monitoring station.
In addition, researchers also investigate possibilities of autonomous
surveillance by large groups of micro aerial vehicles stabilized by
decentralized bio-inspired swarming rules.
Corporate surveillance is the monitoring of a person or group's
behavior by a corporation. The data collected is most often used for
marketing purposes or sold to other corporations, but is also regularly
shared with government agencies. It can be used as a form of business intelligence,
which enables the corporation to better tailor their products and/or
services to be desirable by their customers. Although there is a common
belief that monitoring can increase productivity, it can also create
consequences such as increasing chances of deviant behavior and creating
punishments that are not equitable to their actions. Additionally,
monitoring can cause resistance and backlash because it insinuates an
employer's suspicion and lack of trust.
Data mining and profiling
Data mining
is the application of statistical techniques and programmatic
algorithms to discover previously unnoticed relationships within the
data. Data profiling
in this context is the process of assembling information about a
particular individual or group in order to generate a profile — that is,
a picture of their patterns and behavior. Data profiling can be an
extremely powerful tool for psychological and social network analysis. A skilled analyst can discover facts about a person that they might not even be consciously aware of themselves.
Economic (such as credit card purchases) and social (such as
telephone calls and emails) transactions in modern society create large
amounts of stored data and records. In the past, this data was documented in paper records, leaving a "paper trail",
or was simply not documented at all. Correlation of paper-based records
was a laborious process—it required human intelligence operators to
manually dig through documents, which was time-consuming and incomplete,
at best.
But today many of these records are electronic, resulting in an "electronic trail".
Every use of a bank machine, payment by credit card, use of a phone
card, call from home, checked out library book, rented video, or
otherwise complete recorded transaction generates an electronic record.
Public records—such as birth, court, tax and other records—are
increasingly being digitized and made available online. In addition, due
to laws like CALEA,
web traffic and online purchases are also available for profiling.
Electronic record-keeping makes data easily collectable, storable, and
accessible—so that high-volume, efficient aggregation and analysis is
possible at significantly lower costs.
Information relating to many of these individual transactions is
often easily available because it is generally not guarded in isolation,
since the information, such as the title of a movie a person has
rented, might not seem sensitive. However, when many such transactions
are aggregated they can be used to assemble a detailed profile revealing the actions, habits, beliefs, locations frequented, social connections, and preferences of the individual. This profile is then used, by programs such as ADVISE and TALON, to determine whether the person is a military, criminal, or political threat.
In addition to its own aggregation and profiling tools, the
government is able to access information from third parties — for
example, banks, credit companies or employers, etc. — by requesting
access informally, by compelling access through the use of subpoenas or
other procedures,
or by purchasing data from commercial data aggregators or data brokers.
The United States has spent $370 million on its 43 planned fusion centers,
which are national network of surveillance centers that are located in
over 30 states. The centers will collect and analyze vast amounts of
data on U.S. citizens. It will get this data by consolidating personal
information from sources such as state driver's licensing agencies,
hospital records, criminal records, school records, credit bureaus,
banks, etc. – and placing this information in a centralized database
that can be accessed from all of the centers, as well as other federal
law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
A tail
may surreptitiously track and report on the movements and contacts of a
person of interest. Such following by one or more people may provide
useful in formation in relatively densely populated urban environments.
Organizations that have enemies who wish to gather information
about the groups' members or activities face the issue of potential
infiltration.
In addition to operatives' infiltrating an organization, the
surveilling party may exert pressure on certain members of the target
organization to act as informants (i.e., to disclose the information they hold on the organization and its members).
Fielding operatives is very expensive, and governments with wide-reaching electronic surveillance tools
at their disposal, rather than gathering the sort of information which
operatives can provide, may use less problematic forms of surveillance -
such as those mentioned above. Nevertheless, the use of human
infiltrators remains common. For instance, in 2007 documents surfaced
showing that the FBI
planned to field a total of 15,000 undercover agents and informants in
response to an anti-terrorism directive (issued by President George W. Bush in 2004) that ordered intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to increase their HUMINT capabilities.
One of the simplest forms of identification is the carrying of credentials. Some nations have an identity card system to aid identification, whilst others are considering it but face public opposition. Other documents, such as passports, driver's licenses, library cards, banking or credit cards are also used to verify identity.
If the form of the identity card is "machine-readable", usually
using an encoded magnetic stripe or identification number (such as a Social Security number),
it corroborates the subject's identifying data. In this case it may
create an electronic trail when it is checked and scanned, which can be
used in profiling, as mentioned above.
Wireless Tracking
This section refers to methods that involve the monitoring of tracking devices through the aid of wireless signals.
Mobile phones
Mobile
carrier antennas are also commonly used to collect geolocation data on
mobile phones. The geographical location of a powered mobile phone (and
thus the person carrying it) can be determined easily (whether it is
being used or not), 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. Dr. Victor Kappeler
of Eastern Kentucky University indicates that police surveillance is a
strong concern, stating the following statistics from 2013:
Of the 321,545 law enforcement
requests made to Verizon, 54,200 of these requests were for "content" or
"location" information—not just cell phone numbers or IP addresses.
Content information included the actual text of messages, emails and the
wiretapping of voice or messaging content in real-time.
A comparatively new off-the-shelf surveillance device is an IMSI-catcher, a telephone eavesdropping device used to intercept mobile phone traffic and track the movement of mobile phone users. Essentially a "fake" mobile tower acting between the target mobile phone and the service provider's real towers, it is considered a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack. IMSI-catchers are used in some countries by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, but their use has raised significant civil liberty and privacy concerns and is strictly regulated in some countries.
In March 2020, British daily The Guardian, based on the claims of a whistleblower, accused the government of Saudi Arabia of exploiting global mobile telecom network weaknesses to spy on its citizens traveling around the United States. The data shared by the whistleblower in support of the claims, showed that a systematic spying campaign was being run by the kingdom exploiting the flaws of SS7,
a global messaging system. The data showed that millions of secret
tracking commands originated from Saudi in a duration of four-months,
starting from November 2019.
RFID tagging
RFID chip pulled from a new credit card
Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) tagging is the use of very small electronic devices (called
"RFID tags") which are applied to or incorporated into a product,
animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using
radio waves. The tags can be read from several meters away. They are
extremely inexpensive, costing a few cents per piece, so they can be
inserted into many types of everyday products without significantly
increasing the price, and can be used to track and identify these
objects for a variety of purposes.
Some companies appear to be "tagging" their workers by
incorporating RFID tags in employee ID badges. Workers in U.K.
considered strike action in protest of having themselves tagged; they felt that it was dehumanizing to have all of their movements tracked with RFID chips. Some critics have expressed fears that people will soon be tracked and scanned everywhere they go. On the other hand, RFID tags in newborn baby ID bracelets put on by hospitals have foiled kidnappings.
In a 2003 editorial, CNET News.com's chief political
correspondent, Declan McCullagh, speculated that, soon, every object
that is purchased, and perhaps ID cards, will have RFID devices in them,
which would respond with information about people as they walk past
scanners (what type of phone they have, what type of shoes they have on,
which books they are carrying, what credit cards or membership cards
they have, etc.). This information could be used for identification,
tracking, or targeted marketing. As of 2021, this has largely not come to pass.
Hand with planned insertion point for Verichip device
A human microchip implant is an identifying integrated circuit device or RFID transponder encased in silicate glass and implanted in the body of a human being. A subdermal implant
typically contains a unique ID number that can be linked to information
contained in an external database, such as personal identification,
medical history, medications, allergies, and contact information.
Several types of microchips have been developed in order to
control and monitor certain types of people, such as criminals,
political figures and spies, a "killer" tracking chip patent was filed at the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) around May 2009.
Verichip
is an RFID device produced by a company called Applied Digital
Solutions (ADS). Verichip is slightly larger than a grain of rice, and
is injected under the skin. The injection reportedly feels similar to
receiving a shot.
The chip is encased in glass, and stores a "VeriChip Subscriber Number"
which the scanner uses to access their personal information, via the
Internet, from Verichip Inc.'s database, the "Global VeriChip Subscriber
Registry". Thousands of people have already had them inserted.
In Mexico, for example, 160 workers at the Attorney General's office
were required to have the chip injected for identity verification and access control purposes.
Implantable microchips have also been used in healthcare
settings, but ethnographic researchers have identified a number of
ethical problems with such uses; these problems include unequal
treatment, diminished trust, and possible endangerment of patients.
Radar
Perimeter surveillance radar (PSR) is a class of radar sensors that monitor activity surrounding or on critical infrastructure areas such as airports,
seaports, military installations, national borders, refineries and
other critical industry and the like. Such radars are characterized by
their ability to detect movement at ground level of targets such as an
individual walking or crawling towards a facility. Such radars
typically have ranges of several hundred metres to over 10 kilometres.
Alternate technologies include laser-based systems. These have the
potential for very high target position accuracy, however they are less
effective in the presence of fog and other obscurants.
In the U.S., police have planted hidden GPS tracking devices in people's vehicles to monitor their movements, without a warrant. In early 2009, they were arguing in court that they have the right to do this.
Several cities are running pilot projects to require parolees to
wear GPS devices to track their movements when they get out of prison.
Covert listening devices
and video devices, or "bugs", are hidden electronic devices which are
used to capture, record, and/or transmit data to a receiving party such
as a law enforcement agency.
The U.S. has run numerous domestic intelligence operations, such as COINTELPRO, which have bugged the homes, offices, and vehicles of thousands of U.S. citizens, usually political activists, subversives, and criminals.
Law enforcement and intelligence services in the U.K. and the
United States possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in
cell phones, by accessing the phone's diagnostic/maintenance features,
in order to listen to conversations that take place nearby the person
who holds the phone.
Postal services
As
more people use faxes and e-mail the significance of surveilling the
postal system is decreasing, in favor of Internet and telephone
surveillance. But interception of post is still an available option for
law enforcement and intelligence agencies, in certain circumstances. This is not a common practice, however, and entities like the US Army require high levels of approval to conduct.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation
have performed twelve separate mail-opening campaigns targeted towards
U.S. citizens. In one of these programs, more than 215,000
communications were intercepted, opened, and photographed.
A stakeout is the coordinated surveillance of a location or
person. Stakeouts are generally performed covertly and for the purpose
of gathering evidence related to criminal activity. The term derives from the practice by land surveyors of using survey stakes to measure out an area before the main building project begins.
Internet of things
The Internet of Things
(IoT) is a term that refers to the future of technology in which data
can be collected without human and computer interaction. IoTs can be
used for identification, monitoring, location tracking, and health
tracking.
While IoTs have the benefit of being a time-saving tool that makes
activities simpler, they raise the concern of government surveillance
and privacy regarding how data will be used.
Controversy
Graffiti expressing concern about the proliferation of video surveillance
Support
Supporters of surveillance systems believe that these tools can help protect society from terrorists and criminals.
They argue that surveillance can reduce crime by three means: by
deterrence, by observation, and by reconstruction. Surveillance can
deter by increasing the chance of being caught, and by revealing the modus operandi. This requires a minimal level of invasiveness.
Another method on how surveillance can be used to fight criminal
activity is by linking the information stream obtained from them to a
recognition system (for instance, a camera system that has its feed run
through a facial recognition system). This can for instance
auto-recognize fugitives and direct police to their location.
A distinction here has to be made however on the type of
surveillance employed. Some people that support video surveillance in
city streets may not support indiscriminate telephone taps and vice
versa. Besides the types, the way in which this surveillance is done
also matters a lot; i.e. indiscriminate telephone taps are supported by
much fewer people than say telephone taps done only to people suspected
of engaging in illegal activities.
Surveillance can also be used to give human operatives a tactical
advantage through improved situational awareness, or through the use of
automated processes, i.e. video analytics.
Surveillance can help reconstruct an incident and prove guilt through
the availability of footage for forensics experts. Surveillance can also
influence subjective security if surveillance resources are visible or
if the consequences of surveillance can be felt.
Some of the surveillance systems (such as the camera system that
has its feed run through a facial recognition system mentioned above)
can also have other uses besides countering criminal activity. For
instance, it can help in retrieving runaway children, abducted or
missing adults and mentally disabled people.
Other supporters simply believe that there is nothing that can be done
about the loss of privacy, and that people must become accustomed to
having no privacy. As Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy said: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
Another common argument is: "If you aren't doing something wrong then you don't have anything to fear."
That is, one does not have a right to privacy regarding illegal
activities, while those following the law suffer no harm from
surveillance and so have no standing to object to it. Beyond the
heroically self-serving identification of what is wrong with what is
illegal, the ethical fly in this ointment is the tacit premise that the
individual has no duty to preserve the health of the state--the
antithesis of the principle that only the consent of the governed can
adequately serve as the moral foundation of a (just) state and warrant
the vast gulf between its power (and agency) and that of the individual.
Opposition
Surveillance lamppost brought down in Hong Kong by citizens fearing state surveillanceAn elaborate graffito in Columbus, Ohio, depicting state surveillance of telecommunications
Some critics state that the claim made by supporters should be
modified to read: "As long as we do what we're told, we have nothing to
fear.". For instance, a person who is part of a political group which
opposes the policies of the national government, might not want the
government to know their names and what they have been reading, so that
the government cannot easily subvert their organization, arrest, or kill
them. Other critics state that while a person might not have anything
to hide right now, the government might later implement policies that
they do wish to oppose, and that opposition might then be impossible due
to mass surveillance enabling the government to identify and remove
political threats. Further, other critics point to the fact that most
people do have things to hide. For example, if a person is
looking for a new job, they might not want their current employer to
know this. Also if an employer wishes total privacy to watch over their
own employee and secure their financial information it may become
impossible, and they may not wish to hire those under surveillance.
In December 2017, the Government of China took steps to oppose
widespread surveillance by security-company cameras, webcams, and IP cameras after tens-of-thousands were made accessible for internet viewing by IT company Qihoo
Totalitarianism
A traffic camera atop a high pole oversees a road in the Canadian city of Toronto
Kate Martin, of the Center For National Security Studies said of
the use of military spy satellites being used to monitor the activities
of U.S. citizens: "They are laying the bricks one at a time for a police
state."
Some point to the blurring of lines between public and private
places, and the privatization of places traditionally seen as public
(such as shopping malls and industrial parks) as illustrating the
increasing legality of collecting personal information.
Traveling through many public places such as government offices is
hardly optional for most people, yet consumers have little choice but to
submit to companies' surveillance practices. Surveillance techniques are not created equal; among the many biometric identification technologies, for instance, face recognition
requires the least cooperation. Unlike automatic fingerprint reading,
which requires an individual to press a finger against a machine, this
technique is subtle and requires little to no consent.
Some critics, such as Michel Foucault,
believe that in addition to its obvious function of identifying and
capturing individuals who are committing undesirable acts, surveillance
also functions to create in everyone a feeling of always being watched,
so that they become self-policing. This allows the State to control the
populace without having to resort to physical force, which is expensive
and otherwise problematic.
With the development of digital technology, individuals have
become increasingly perceptible to one another, as surveillance becomes
virtual. Online surveillance is the utilization of the internet to
observe one's activity.
Corporations, citizens, and governments participate in tracking others'
behaviours for motivations that arise out of business relations, to
curiosity, to legality. In her book Superconnected, Mary Chayko differentiates between two types of surveillance: vertical and horizontal.
Vertical surveillance occurs when there is a dominant force, such as
the government that is attempting to control or regulate the actions of a
given society. Such powerful authorities often justify their incursions
as a means to protect society from threats of violence or terrorism.
Some individuals question when this becomes an infringement on civil
rights.
Horizontal diverges from vertical surveillance as the tracking
shifts from an authoritative source to an everyday figure, such as a
friend, coworker, or stranger that is interested in one's mundane
activities.
Individuals leave traces of information when they are online that
reveal their interests and desires of which others observe. While this
can allow people to become interconnected and develop social connections
online, it can also increase potential risk to harm, such as cyberbullying or censoring/stalking by strangers, reducing privacy.
In addition, Simone Browne
argues that surveillance wields an immense racializing quality such
that it operates as "racializing surveillance." Browne uses racializing
surveillance to refer to moments when enactments of surveillance are
used to reify boundaries, borders, and bodies along racial lines and
where the outcome is discriminatory treatment of those who are
negatively racialized by such surveillance. Browne argues racializing
surveillance pertains to policing what is "in or out of place."
Legislative proceedings such as those that took place during the Church Committee, which investigated domestic intelligence programs such as COINTELPRO, have also weighed the pros and cons of surveillance.
Court cases
People vs. Diaz (2011)
was a court case in the realm of cell phone privacy, even though the
decision was later overturned. In this case, Gregory Diaz was arrested
during a sting operation for attempting to sell ecstasy. During his
arrest, police searched Diaz's phone and found more incriminating
evidence including SMS text messages and photographs depicting illicit
activities. During his trial, Diaz attempted to have the information
from his cell phone removed from evidence, but the courts deemed it as
lawful and Diaz's appeal was denied on the California State Court level
and, later, the Supreme Court level. Just three short years after, this
decision was overturned in the case Riley vs. California (2014).
Riley vs. California (2014) was a U.S. Supreme Court
case in which a man was arrested for his involvement in a drive-by
shooting. A few days after the shooting the police made an arrest of
the suspect (Riley), and, during the arrest, the police searched him.
However, this search was not only of Riley's person, but also the police
opened and searched his cell phone, finding pictures of other weapons,
drugs, and of Riley showing gang signs. In court, the question arose
whether searching the phone was lawful or if the search was protected by
the 4th amendment of the constitution. The decision held that the
search of Riley's cell phone during the arrest was illegal, and that it
was protected by the 4th Amendment.
Countersurveillance
is the practice of avoiding surveillance or making surveillance
difficult. Developments in the late twentieth century have caused
counter surveillance to dramatically grow in both scope and complexity,
such as the Internet, increasing prevalence of electronic security systems, high-altitude (and possibly armed) UAVs, and large corporate and government computer databases. Other examples include encrypted messenger apps such as Signal and privacy cryptocurrencies such as Monero and ZCash.
Inverse surveillance
is the practice of the reversal of surveillance on other individuals or
groups (e.g., citizens photographing police). Well-known examples
include George Holliday's recording of the Rodney King beating and the organization Copwatch, which attempts to monitor police officers to prevent police brutality.
Counter-surveillance can be also used in applications to prevent
corporate spying, or to track other criminals by certain criminal
entities. It can also be used to deter stalking methods used by various
entities and organizations.
Sousveillance is inverse surveillance, involving the recording by private individuals, rather than government or corporate entities.
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