Tag: mass surveillance

The EU Could Push its Private Message Ban as Early as Next Week

The EU is getting ever closer to pushing through the legislation known among critics as “chat control” – officially, Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, CSAR – and is hoping to reach a deal on this within the bloc as early as next week.

One of those who have been consistently opposed to the controversial upcoming rules, a German member of European Parliament (MEP) and lawyer Patrick Breyer, has reacted by warning once again that regardless of some minor changes if passed, the bill would effectively spell the end of proper encryption and private messaging in the EU.

Instead, the implication is, that CSAR would usher in the era of indiscriminate mass surveillance in this part of the digital space.

Warning that a recent “minor concession” the EU member-states have managed to agree on was a bid to finally come up with a majority and push the plans over the top, Breyer, referring to the proposal as “chat control 2.0,” calls it an “unprecedented” (at least for the EU) example of mass surveillance.

The summary of the regulation is that online services that provide messaging and chat would, going forward, have to implement automatic scanning of all private text and images – looking for potential abusive content, and then let the EU know about it.

There is no shortage of controversy and misgivings here, with two clearly standing out: once in place, what can this infrastructure be used for next (if politicians decide) – and the other, how are online platforms even supposed to make it work accurately and fairly, technically speaking?

Now, we are hearing that the EU Council is looking to “soften the blow,” at least rhetorically, but saying that the scanning would at first only apply to “previously classified CSAM (child sexual abuse material)” – but then later still expand it to everything.

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Carbon Passports Are The Next Dystopian Surveillance Threat

The digital ID agenda is already on the horizon. But it doesn’t stop there. Digital carbon passports are the next big proposal. Travel enthusiasts worldwide might soon face a drastic change in exploring international borders, with global warming triggering the implementation of carbon passports that could limit their wanderlust, asserts Intrepid Travel in a recently published report.

Dubbing these restrictions as “personal carbon allowances,” the report portends they would serve as determinants compelling individuals to conform to the global carbon budget.

With imposed limitations on yearly travel anticipated by as soon as 2040, travelers might be forced to relinquish the horizon-expansion privileges, usually afforded by contemporary tourism.

Crafted in collaboration with forecasting agency The Future Laboratory, the report highlights the alleged repercussions of climate change on popular summer destinations like Greece and Majorca, supposedly deemed too hot for humans.

The introduction of carbon passports could raise serious privacy concerns about the level of surveillance exercised over individuals’ movements and behavior.

Could these measures act as precursors to overreaching surveillance, tracking individuals’ carbon footprints?

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Canada Plots to Increase Online Regulation, Target Search and Social Media Algorithms

Canada is taking steps towards potentially intrusive regulation of artificial intelligence as it pertains to its application in search and social media services. The government’s intentions have been revealed, which includes AI application way beyond the realm of generative AI similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Industry giants such as Google and Facebook, who utilize AI for search results, translation provisions, and customer taste recognition respectively, are among the contenders lined up in the regulatory intent with the pro-censorship government intent on having a say on how these algorithms work.

The information comes by way of Minister François-Philippe Champagne of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) in a letter submitted to the Industry committee analyzing Bill C-27—the privacy reform and AI regulation bill. Precise amendments remain shielded from scrutiny, however, as the governmental body keeps the proposed changes under wraps.

We obtained a copy of the original bill for you here.

The existing framework in Bill C-27 leaves the identification of AI mechanisms that can be classified into the “high-impact” category to future regulatory proceedings.

Bill C-27, by treating search and social media results as “high-impact” systems, is likely to raise eyebrows as the government’s push towards regulating technology has so far been assertive of greater control over content and therefore speech.

Non-compliance, under this proposal, may invite penalties proportional to 3% of gross global revenues.

The legislation veers into controversial territory by infusing the regulation of content moderation and discoverability prioritization into the matrix, in unexpected ways. It attempts to parallel these issues to bias accusation during recruitment or when used by law enforcement, invoking substantial surprise. Consequently, Canada’s rules, although they claim to align more closely with the EU, seem to set the country apart, leaning more towards censorship and less towards free speech.

The news comes on the back of Canada’s more recent online regulations that have raised alarm.

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Schools Are Normalizing Intrusive Surveillance

If war is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne had it, then scaring the hell out of people is the health of the security state. Nothing scares people more than threats to wee ones, which is why “think of the children” is the go-to marketing hook for control-freak policies. And if children are involved in authoritarian schemes, you know that implicates public schools, which are the focus of a new report on surveillance and kids by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Over the last two decades, a segment of the educational technology (EdTech) sector that markets student surveillance products to schools — the EdTech Surveillance industry — has grown into a $3.1 billion a year economic juggernaut with a projected 8% annual growth rate,” begins Digital Dystopia The Danger in Buying What the EdTech Surveillance Industry is Selling. “The EdTech Surveillance industry accomplished that feat by playing on school districts’ fears of school shootings, student self-harm and suicides, and bullying — marketing them as common, ever-present threats.”

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GAO Report Shows the Government Uses Face Recognition with No Accountability, Transparency, or Training

Federal agents are using face recognition software without training, policies, or oversight, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The government watchdog issued yet another report this month about the dangerously inadequate and nonexistent rules for how federal agencies use face recognition, underlining what we’ve already known: the government cannot be trusted with this flawed and dangerous technology.

The GAO review covered seven agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ), which together account for more than 80 percent of all federal officers and a majority of face recognition searches conducted by federal agents.

Across each of the agencies, GAO found that most law enforcement officers using face recognition have no training before being given access to the powerful surveillance tool. No federal laws or regulations mandate specific face recognition training for DHS or DOJ employees, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Marshals Service were the only agencies reviewed to now require training specific to face recognition. Though each agency has their own general policies on handling personally identifiable information (PII), like facial images used for face recognition, none of the seven agencies included in the GAO review fully complied with them.

Thousands of face recognition searches have been conducted by the federal agents without training or policies. In the period GAO studied, at least 63,000 searches had happened, but this number is a known undercount. A complete count of face recognition use is not possible. The number of federal agents with access to face recognition, the number of searches conducted, and the reasons for the searches does not exist, because some systems used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) don’t track these numbers.

Our faces are unique and mostly permanent — people don’t usually just get a new one— and face recognition technology, particularly when used by law enforcement and government, puts into jeopardy many of our important rights. Privacy, free expression, information security, and social justice are all at risk. The technology facilitates covert mass surveillance of the places we frequent and the people we know. It can be used to make judgments about how we feel and behave. Mass adoption of face recognition means being able to track people automatically as they go about their day visiting doctors, lawyers, houses of worship, as well as friends and family. It also means that law enforcement could, for example, fly a drone over a protest against police violence and walk away with a list of everyone in attendance. Either instance would create a chilling effect wherein people would be hesitant to attend protests or visit certain friends or romantic partners knowing there would be a permanent record of it.

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Government Watchdog Calls Out Dangers in Section 702 Surveillance

Ten years after Edward Snowden sparked a debate over domestic (and international) spying by the U.S. government and its allies, arguments continue and so does the snooping. This year, one key component of the surveillance state—Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—is up for congressional reauthorization. Now, the executive branch’s own civil liberties watchdog says that, while Section 702 plays an important role, it’s also dangerous to our freedom and needs reform.

To hear America’s professional spooks, Section 702 is made up of equal servings of mom, apple pie, and a trench coat.

“In 2008, Congress enacted Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a critical intelligence collection authority that enables the Intelligence Community (IC) to collect, analyze, and appropriately share foreign intelligence information about national security threats,” insists the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “Section 702 only permits the targeting of non-United States persons who are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States. United States persons and anyone in the United States may not be targeted under Section 702.”

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), established in 2007 in an effort to limit the excesses of the burgeoning post-9/11domestic intelligence apparatus, sees things a little differently.

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How the “Surveillance AI Pipeline” Literally Objectifies Human Beings

The vast majority of computer vision research leads to technology that surveils human beings, a new preprint study that analyzed more than 20,000 computer vision papers and 11,000 patents spanning three decades has found. Crucially, the study found that computer vision papers often refer to human beings as “objects,” a convention that both obfuscates how common surveillance of humans is in the field, and objectifies humans by definition.

“The studies presented in this paper ultimately reveal that the field of computer vision is not merely a neutral pursuit of knowledge; it is a foundational layer for a paradigm of surveillance,” the study’s authors wrote. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, describes what the researchers call “The Surveillance AI Pipeline,” which is also the title of the paper.

The study’s lead author Pratyusha Ria Kalluri told 404 Media on a call that she and her co-authors manually annotated 100 computer vision papers and 100 patents that cited those papers. During this process, the study found that 90 percent of the papers and patents extracted data about humans, and 68 percent reported that they specifically enable extracting data about human bodies and body parts. Only 1 percent of the papers and patents stated they target only non-humans.

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Taliban weighs using U.S. mass surveillance plan, met with China’s Huawei

The Taliban are creating a large-scale camera surveillance network for Afghan cities that could involve repurposing a plan crafted by the Americans before their 2021 pullout, an interior ministry spokesman told Reuters, as authorities seek to supplement thousands of cameras already across the capital, Kabul.

The Taliban administration — which has publicly said it is focused on restoring security and clamping down on Islamic State, which has claimed many major attacks in Afghan cities — has also consulted with Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei about potential cooperation, the spokesman said.

Preventing attacks by international militant groups – including prominent organisations such as Islamic State – is at the heart of the interaction between the Taliban and many foreign nations, including the U.S. and China, according to readouts from those meetings. But some analysts question the cash-strapped regime’s ability to fund the program, and rights groups have expressed concern that any resources will be used to crackdown on protesters.

Details of how the Taliban intend to expand and manage mass surveillance, including obtaining the U.S. plan, have not been previously reported.

The mass camera rollout, which will involve a focus on “important points” in Kabul and elsewhere, is part of a new security strategy that will take four years to be fully implemented, Ministry of Interior spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told Reuters.

“At the present we are working on a Kabul security map, which is (being completed) by security experts and (is taking) lots of time,” he said. “We already have two maps, one which was made by U.S.A for the previous government and second by Turkey.”

He did not detail when the Turkish plan was made.

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Department of Defense Signs Contract With Social Media Monitoring Company

Fresh revelations regarding a $2.5 million contractual agreement between the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) at Fort George G. Meade and social media scrutinizer Dataminr have emerged. These claims, unveiled by a US government notice, imply a new era of digital monitoring rests on the horizon, increasingly unsettling in its reinforcement of sweeping surveillance, and potentially having implications on free speech and privacy protection.

Fort Meade, also known as the steering wheel of the US Government’s paramount signals intelligence organization, the National Security Agency, has seemingly struck a discreet deal to expand its espionage services.

DISA, commodiously located at Fort Meade, is now purported to have voluminous exposure to public posts from assorted social media platforms, including X, formerly Twitter.

Dataminr is a company specializing in AI-driven real-time information discovery and is known for detecting, classifying, and determining the significance of public information in real time. It’s plausible that government entities, including the Department of Defense, may leverage services like Dataminr to monitor social media and other public data sources to maintain situational awareness and respond to emerging events or threats more rapidly.

When privacy buffs and free speech advocates look at governmental use of tools like Dataminr, it’s met with a hefty dose of suspicion, and rightfully so. The potential implications for personal freedom, civil rights, and the pillars of democracy are considerable. There’s this looming worry about the government, potentially with too loose a leash, exploiting these tools to spy on lawful activities and on people living their everyday lives with no criminal intentions.

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U.S. Government Monitoring Pregnant Moms’ Social Media Posts

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) premier law enforcement agency monitors expecting parents’ online posts about their pregnancy and reproductive health issues, according to internal emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the online privacy activist group, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

The U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), the DHS agency that conducts criminal investigations and enforces U.S. immigration laws, is one of a handful of government agencies that use a software tracking tool called SocialNet.

SocialNet pulls citizens’ online data from a host of websites, including BabyCenter, a reference and pregnancy tracking site where new and expecting parents can post information about their health and pregnancy experiences.

Eva Galperin — cybersecurity director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a leading nonprofit defending civil liberties in the digital world — said the revelation is “concerning.”

“When people post about their pregnancies to BabyCenter, they’re usually doing it without the expectation that ICE or the local police are checking up on the status of their pregnancy,” Galperin told The Defender.

“ICE could potentially be reading information about your reproductive health and about your pregnancy or your children,” she said, adding that this is particularly concerning due to the current political climate surrounding pregnancy and abortion.

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