Cloakers

I’m sure there are other examples around the world, but this post is regarding my home town of Melbourne that has replaced a healthy, functional ticketing system with a $1 billion system that uses smart card technology. It is called “Myki”

• 2.2 million public transport users (all must use a Myki card)
• 1.1 million Myki users have registered their cards

Registration is a smart move because you will get a SMS or email when your balance it running low. It also makes it easier to reload your card with cash online.  But buried away in the small print it says that authorities might be given access to your movements. And concession card holders have no choice, they must register.

There have been 71 police requests for customer movements in Melbourne this year. Most people acquired their Myki part way through the year, so a more accurate number going forward would be perhaps 200 requests annually.

Combined with CCTV footage, police will be able to prove your whereabouts down to the minute for all the time you spend on public transport. CCTV imagery will show that it is you using the card, and train/tram/bus logs will show where they took you and when.

It remains to be seen which criminal activities will be affected, and which civil liberties will be compromised. Of more concern, perhaps, are countries with looser privacy controls. In the USA, could 3rd parties (like private detectives) be sold this information? In Eastern Europe could citizens be spied on because of grey area activities?

Without a warrant, a U.S. law enforcement agency can obtain the following pieces of information about your cell phone use:

• text messages
• voicemails
• geolocation data
• phone numbers you called
• when you called

In fact, everything but a phone conversation, because that’s all that is protected by antiquated laws. Consequently government officials are taking advantage of this, with 1.3 million requests for cell phone data last year. And each request could involve hundreds of subscribers, via “cell tower dumps”.

“We’re talking about everything you can get from a cellphone carrier, except the content of the conversation,” says ACLU legislative counsel Chris Calabrese. Much of this information can be obtained without direct or substantive evidence of criminal behavior. When a law enforcement agency requests a cell tower “dump,” that is, information on who was near a specific cell tower at a given time, “it may get back hundreds or even thousands of names.” 

New legislation, if passed, will partially fix the problem. The Geolocation Privacy and Security Act bill would allow only the following without a warrant:

• “emergency situation” involving “immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person”
• “conspiratorial activities threatening the national security interest”
• “conspiratorial activities characteristic of organized crime.”

Another bill on the horizon would not allow any exceptions, with warrants required for all cell phone data. Until then, disposable phones are your only option if you have something to hide.

The US military have operated 66 bases (in 33 states) for unmanned drone aircraft within the USA itself, and has 22 more planned across the country.

This does not mean that active drones are taking off from those bases, although it will be true in many cases. Other uses include:

• remote cockpits, where soldiers fly the unmanned craft in the Middle East
• training facilities for prospective drone pilots
• depots for analyzing drone data

The bases house mostly smaller spy drones like the RQ-7 Shadow, the RQ-11 Raven and the Wasp III, which has a wingspan of less than two and a half feet.

Six of the bases are home to the larger Predator and Reaper drove, which can carry missiles.

[Source: Daily Mail]

View Current and future US military drone bases in a full screen map

Seriously, the more commonplace these words become, the less useful they are to the authorities who are spying on all of us.

Imagine tweeting about the power outage caused by the tsunami and hoping it didn’t affect nuclear power plants nearby. That’s three trigger words without even trying. Just because the government does something doesn’t mean they are good at it.

Still, be cautious about what you say unless it is a personal whisper…

As time passes by, more and more surveillance cameras and automated license plate readers are watching the highways of the United States.

Sometimes you can see what they see, like in Virginia – but it’s not as if you have license plate recognition software on your home PC, or that you can see a resolution higher enough to do that.

In Washington D.C they have 250+ cameras doing just that:

…police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

GPS tracking of private/personal vehicles is sometimes allowable – the reasoning is that it is the same as a police officer tailing someone, just more efficient:

But little is known about how or how often law enforcement agents use them. And without a clear ruling requiring agents to obtain a “probable cause” warrant to use the devices, it leaves citizens who may have only a distant connection to a crime or no connection at all vulnerable to the whimsy of agents who are fishing for a case.

How long before vehicle black boxes are compulsory, and the authorities can download the data in an instant?