Don’t do it NZ!

Well, I never thought I’d have to sling off at my beloved New Zealand but what the??? Has NZ taken a leaf out of the Bush Administration’s book of unwarrantless surveillance?  Are NZ citizens about to become the most surveilled on Earth, taking over from the Brits?

There’s a little piece of legislation NZ’ers need to worry about – the Search and Surveillance Bill 45-1 (2009). If you want to hyperventilate, have a read of the whole Bill. If you want to be spared the discomfort of lack of breath, I’ll summarise for you. As I understand this Bill, it will:

• give increased search and surveillance powers for government agencies, other than police, who have law enforcement responsibilities. This would include agencies such as the Fisheries Ministry, the Inland Revenue Deparment, Commerce Commission, the Reserve Bank and even…wait for it…the Pork Industry Board;
• what are these increased powers I hear you ask? These agencies will have the ability to eavesdrop on phone conversations, hack into computers and use hidden cameras to watch every move you make. This will include the power to use tracking devices without a person knowing they are being tracked.

I’ll pause here. A good friend of  mine joked the other day that I have the sort of suspicious mind that might lead me to suspect that pot plants are listening into my conversation. She was of course joking (I think). But reading this Bill, it would seem that an NZ agency could indeed place an eavesdropping device into a pot plant. Now, I do wonder what on earth the Fisheries and Pork Industry dudes would be doing – do they plan to use the goldfish in people’s homes to eavesdrop or farm pigs?

Joking aside this Bill has been slammed by the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and the NZ Privacy Commissioner. The word “chilling” has been used to describe this Bill.

Let’s look further:

• on my reading of the Bill, non-state agencies (such as fisheries, conservation or labour) will be able to conduct warrantless surveillance or compel a person to answer questions or handover computer access codes (clause 125(4)(a).  To require NZ citizens to answer questions is the removal of the right to silence and a total invasion of civil liberties;
• unfair searches and seizures could be conducted;
• these agencies will have the power to detain anyone at the scene of a search.

I don’t see much in the way of safeguards or accountability built into this Bill. For example, once remote accessing of your computer has taken place or you’ve been tracked by video camera for days on end, is there a requirement that the agency in question inform you that surveillance has taken place and has finished?  Doesn’t seem so.

When I come back from Taiwan, I plan to look into this further. I’m concerned that, particularly with computer searches, there are muddy waters – and this could lead to mixing up private data with evidentiary data.

Clause 57 has me fretting also. It deals with obtaining residual warrants for surveillance. Section 3 of the Bill defines a surveillance device as:  

(a) an interception device;

(b) a tracking device;

(c) a visual surveillance device

So residual warrants cover surveillance that is not of a visual, electronic or tracking nature. Clause 57 goes on to say that a law enforcement agency, if they wish to use a surveillance technique, procedure, or activity other than that defined in Section 3 must obtain a residual warrant. As I read it, the technique, procedure or activity could include covert entry into a private citizen’s home.

I don’t have many NZ readers. Most of my readers are from the US and Americans well know the sort of warrantless surveillance crap and threats to democracy and civil liberties that have been slung at them by Bush and his croneys. I hope that NZ citizens kick up a stink about this Bill. I believe that it was met with such criticism that it won’t potentially become law until May 2010. I just hope it doesn’t sail through Parliament.

If you know more, leave a comment.

Image credit: Tumeke!

Pigs, dogs and Big Brother

Gotta love these pigs. They are giving the finger to Big Brother, well, more their cute, wiggly tails. So we know that pets are implanted with RFID chips (usually under the skin between the shoulder blades in a dog or cat and providing the owner’s details together with information about the animal, which is logged onto a central database.) But RFID technology is also used for farm animals – to trace livestock through their life cycle. Microchip implants can identify an animal’s origin so if there is an outbreak of a disease, such as mad cow, the RFID-tracking system will identify the farm from which the animal carrying the disease came from. If you ask me, this is Animal Farm meets Big Brother. And one day, in the not too distant future, humans will be implanted with RFID chips and our daily activities and life-cycle will be tracked. But back to the pigs.

You’re about to watch a short video of smart pigs in Essex, UK. These pigs are equipped with (rather cumbersome) RFID-enabled collars that limit piggy’s food to a certain amount per day. The pig goes through a gate and the RFID collar works out how much food to dish out. You then see poor piggy looking sad that there is no more food as it leaves the feed chute area. But in a classic case of learned behaviour, some of the pigs have figured out the collar is the key to more food. And this is happening on a number of independent farms not just the one farm. Some pigs ditch the collars (yeah, they look uncomfortable) and other clever pigs come along, pick up the collar and…carry it to the feed gate a second time. So the animal that often ends up as bacon on the breakfast buffet is smart enough to make the mental connection between collar and more dinner and is teaching other pigs to subvert Big Brother.

And in another story of learned behaviour (this time without surveillance overtones) – have you heard about the Moscow dogs? Stray dogs have turned into canine commuters, using Moscow’s subway system to full advantage. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many industries moved from Moscow into the surrounding suburbs and stray dogs used the industrial complexes as shelter and for food scavenging – so when industry moved, they moved too. What’s fascinating about this is that the dogs apparently work together, helping each other to learn the length of time they need to spend on a train to the suburbs; what stop to get off; and which carriages to travel in. And just like human commuters, they often take a nap on the train. There’s even a Russian website devoted to these metro dogs. Apparently, the dogs wait patiently on the station for the train to pull in and they have learned to use the traffic lights, crossing the streets with pedestrians. And they have learned innovative tactics to easily obtain food from humans. In the evenings, they hop on the train and return to Moscow. Check out this YouTube video – you can see the dog is snoozing, the announcement is saying the train is reaching a station; the dog stirs; looks around to see people are getting off; and calmly saunters out the door, ready for a day’s scavenging.

NZ CCTV guidelines

New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner has just released guidelines on the use of closed-circuit television systems (CCTV). Clearly, the Privacy Commish is an astute woman for she says:

“CCTV has an important role to play in detecting and prosecuting crime, and even deterring some types of crime. But this does not need to be at the expense of privacy.”

I’ve read the guidelines and I think they are well-considered and offer small business and organisations practical advice on deciding whether CCTV is actually needed; how to store images; and making sure employees and the general public are aware of CCTV cams and their positioning.

2.2 of the summary is something I’m very pleased to see – “Where appropriate, consult with the community and other key stakeholders on your business plan.” 2.4 is also targetting an aspect of CCTV I’m always concerned with: “Develop a clear policy on how images collected by CCTV will be handled. Make this policy easily accessible (for example, on your website).”

Section 8 of the summary document outlines controlling who can see images and suggests a log of all access to CCTV images should be kept. This is a good step towards addressing another issue I’ve raised before: who the hell can see the images, how they are stored and who has access.

And then 9.2 suggests a very sensible step: after a year of operation, do an audit and evaluate the operation of the system to determine its effectiveness and continuing viability.

Appendix A of the guidelines is a handy checklist for small business and helps to think through clear reasons for operating a CCTV system.

Go here for the summary and the guidelines.

Nationality is not genetic

What the? Am I living in some parallel universe? One occupied by a pack of racist, fear-mongering dudes? One in which nationality and ethnicity are being viewed as one and the same thing (which they’re not)?

I’ve come across another whacko project. At first, I thought the date was April 1 but this seems to be no April Fools’ joke. And it seems that the UK has once again lost the plot. Not content to surveil the heck out of its poor citizens, the UK is now proposing to – wait for it – use DNA and isotope analysis of tissue from asylum seekers to evaluate their nationality. Yes folks, you read correctly – to evaluate nationality.

The Human Provenance pilot project was launched quietly in mid-September 2009 (yeah, if it was announced there would have been a revolution!) by the U.K. Border Agency and will run until June 2010.  Can you believe that asylum-seekers (including children)  are being subjected to mouth swabs for mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome testing and isotope analyses of hair and nail samples in an effort “to help identify a person’s true country of origin.” The program is voluntary so they say. But asylum-seekers are not likely to say “no thanks” because saying no would mean the boot out of the UK (ah, actually that might be a good thing).

Now, it’s true that refugees have been desperately trying to get to the UK from the French port of Calais, just as more boatpeople have been attempting to get to Australia. So some examination of who is a legitimate asylum-seeker might be necessary.  However, the project seems to be confusing nationality with ethnicity.

One aim of the project is to find out if asylum-seekers claiming to be from Somalia are actually from another African country such as Kenya. As one super-smart geneticist points out:

“genes don’t respect national borders, as many legitimate citizens are migrants or direct descendants of migrants, and many national borders split ethnic groups.”

And a pioneer in human DNA fingerprinting has this to say: “The Borders Agency is clearly making huge and unwarranted assumptions about population structure in Africa; the extensive research needed to determine population structure and the ability or otherwise of DNA to pinpoint ethnic origin in this region simply has not been done. Even if it did work (which I doubt), assigning a person to a population does not establish nationality – people move! The whole proposal is naive and scientifically flawed.”

Worse than being naive and scientifically flawed, there’s an echo of eugenics and Nazis ringing in my ears with this project.  Didn’t those whacko Nazis use nose calipers to “scientifically” determine ethnicity?

Science Insider is asking some very sensible questions about this project – a prime one being who is conducting the test and analysing the results? Some Border Agency official who’s been given a 20 minute crash course in validating DNA?? And some well-known geneticists and isotope specialists are making their thoughts loud and clear here.

And I’d ask: have the Border Agency dudes considered for one moment the issue of traumatising a child? Many children from Africa are the product of rape, so the child’s father may not in fact be genetically related.

This is the sort of daft stuff I fear: idiots and third-rate pseudo-scientists messing around with technology, wasting taxpayers money, in their misguided, paternalistic attempts to profile, surveil and control. In the absence of public debate and a legislative and policy framework to guide and supervise their actions, this is just bad science and morally wrong. Asylum-seekers are not guinea pigs to be subjected to lab tests.

It seems that public outcry and criticism from geneticists and scientists has whacked the UK Border Agency over the head enough to make them retreat - DNA evidence will still be collected but analysed later and will not currently be used for individual case decisions.

Mmmm…at least the whole debacle reveals what idiots are out there in Government and what whacko ideas they come up with.

NeoConOpticon

I am pretty well hyper-ventilating. You know I have said MANY times that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society (to paraphrase the UK Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas).  I’ve asked why there are so many sheep out there, not asking serious questions about why we are being surveilled, who is doing the surveilling, who has access to and can use the information about us.  Some sheep people have used the tired old mantra “if you have nothing to hide…” blah blah.

Well, perhaps they (and you) should read a chilling report I’ve found. It’s called NeoConOpticon, written by Ben Hayes for the Transnational Institute and Statewatch. You can download it here.

Let me give the gist of it though:

• the European Union has gone mad
• it is outsourcing to major corporations the development and implementation of the European Security Research Programme (ESRP) aka a powerful, interoperable European surveillance system that will be used for civilian, commercial, police, security and defence purposes alike;
• these major corporations (eg Thales, Saab) will develop and bring “security technologies” to market and assist with a Homeland Security framework for Europe;
• there has been no public debate about ESRP; minimal monitoring of its implementation; and bodies created outside of the EU decision-making structure eg Security Research Advisory Board;
• the ESRP is not there to protect civil liberties or keep the European Union safe from terrorists and weirdos – nope, it is going to foster the growth of a very lucrative and globally competitive “homeland security” industry in Europe. Defence and IT contractors will be rolling in money, whilst EU citizens’ civil liberties will be kaput.

Here is what the future holds for the EU and its citizens according to the report and I quote (p5):

“Despite the often benign intent behind collaborative European research into integrated land, air, maritime, space and cyber-surveillance systems, the EU’s security and R&D policy is coalescing around a high-tech blueprint for a new kind of security. It envisages a future world of red zones and green zones; external borders controlled by military force and internally by a sprawling network of physical and virtual security checkpoints; public spaces, micro-states and mega events policed by high-tech surveillance systems and rapid reaction forces; peacekeeping and crisis management missions that make no operational distinction between the suburbs of Basra or the Banlieue; and the increasing integration of defence and national security functions at home and abroad.

It is not just a case of sleepwalking into or waking up to a surveillance society, as the UK’s Information Commissioner famously warned, it feels more like turning a blind eye to the start of a new kind of arms race, one in which all the weapons are pointing inwards. Welcome to the NeoConOpticon.”

I think the title of the report is clever: Neocon of course referring to the political philosophy that supports military and economic power to bring democracy to countries and, through this, make a heap of profit. Opticon referring to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon – a prison design that allowed the prison guards to observe all the prisoners ie inward-looking surveillance.  So the title is referring to the private sector’s central role in delivering surveillance-based security technologies and putting us all in the Panopticon.

The fact is: before 9/11 the “Homeland Security” industry didn’t exist. The Neocons keep carrying on about making us safe from terrorism but what is really happening is this – militarisation and securitisation – and this will ultimately mean increased authoritarianism.

Don’t kid yourself into thinking that all this security and surveillance crap is there for your benefit. It’s no longer based on a sense of security. It’s shifted to being based on profit, fear mongering and control. And Israel appears to be in the centre of things (because of its world leading security industry).

Don’t believe me. READ THE REPORT. Yes, I’m shouting at you because I want you to wake up and arm yourself with information.

How Orwellian

Looks like the European Union is up to its old tricks with surveillance but this time it is basically creating a surveillance monster called Project Indect. Heard of it? Tens of thousands of Euros are being poured into a system that will detect threats and abnormal behaviour across Europe. EU: really I can save you the trouble. Just come on over and spend some time in the organisations I work in – you’ll find plenty of abnormal behaviour to study, don’t waste a heap of Euros!

The project has a web-site and I list what it says the objectives are – then I will tell you what it really will be up to:

• to develop a platform for: the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence,
• to develop the prototype of an integrated, network-centric system supporting the operational activities of police officers, providing techniques and tools for observation of various mobile objects,
• to develop a new type of search engine combining direct search of images and video based on watermarked contents, and the storage of metadata in the form of digital watermarks.

The main expected results of the INDECT project are:

• to realise a trial installation of the monitoring and surveillance system in various points of city agglomeration and demonstration of the prototype of the system with 15 node stations,
• implementation of a distributed computer system that is capable of acquisition, storage and effective sharing on demand of the data as well as intelligent processing,
• construction of a family of prototypes of devices used for mobile object tracking,
• construction of a search engine for fast detection of persons and documents based on watermarking technology and utilising comprehensive research on watermarking technology used for semantic search,
• construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, UseNet groups, file servers, p2p networks as well as individual computer systems,
• elaboration of Internet based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive, and demonstrating its efficiency in a measurable way.

Say what? You understand any of this twaffle? Let me translate for you:

• secret squirrel geeky dudes will create agents to trawl and scurry around the internet, poking and snooping into web sites, discussion forums, social networks, individual computers, P2P networks;
• it will also collect data and images from surveillance cams, CCTV
• it will store all the juicy stuff it finds in a huge central database (probably lovingly nicknamed by the geeky types, Panopticon)
• the juicy tidbits of information about you will be “behaviorally profiled”. Secret squirrel codes will be written to identify patterns of “abnormal behaviour” across Europe. This will include voice pitch, the way someone stands, eye movements and so on
• all juicy tidbits of information about you (including private or sensitive) will be tagged, flagged and shared amongst European police forces (heck, give up on Project Indect – why not just create a pan-European police force?)
• secret squirrel types (Government, police, any interested authorities) will be able to whip up a personal dossier on you in a matter of minutes. Some idiot EU politician will lovingly refer to this as “a single source of truth”.
• Indect – they clearly misspelt INDICT – because that is what will happen to you. God knows what innocent thing you might do to glean the attention of this artificial intelligence crap system; get the knock on the door in the middle of the night; be spirited off and then indicted for some “abnormal behaviour” (or for what you might do based on profiling).
• this is about predicting the likelihood to offend. It’s about modelling potentially criminal and anti-social behaviour and focusing on individuals BEFORE crimes are committed.
• this is not about keeping EU citizens safe and tucked up in bed not having to worry about so-called terrorist threats. This is not about creating a more secure society.
• this sounds more like an initiative to help police forces – something they can use to round up dissenters.

Really, my tolerance for this sort of stupidity is getting very low. If you want to know what type of society we’ll end up living in, you can turn to no-one more intelligent and insightful than Aldous Huxley. This may be an ancient, quaint TV interview (with interviewer Mike Wallace smoking and I think from 1958) and it may be talking about the US but if you ask me, it’s just as relevant today. Watch these videos, listen carefully to what he is saying. Think. Reflect. Particularly about misuse of powers. Aldous Huxley implores us not to be taken by surprise but to be eternally vigilant about our civil liberties.

The eyes that don’t see

It’s a good week for privacy-related news and stuff on surveillance.  I had to chuckle when I read an article from BBC News. London is the proud owner of over one million CCTV cams (yeegads: could they be any more surveillance obsessed!) and this network of mindless, blinking eyes managed to solve a staggering amount of crimes in 2008.

No wait: that would be the answer the people ”who have nothing to hide” brigade would give.  The true answer is every 1,000 CCTV cams, staring down on London citizens and all their activities, only manages to solve…….one crime. Yep, you read that number correctly: one crime.

So that’s one crime for every 1,000 CCTV. Yet, the investment in these CCTV cams is a massive £500m. Mmmmm…..not sure Government dudes that this is such a great return on your investment.  Apparently,  £500m is three quarters of the Home Office’s total spending on crime prevention.

An internal Scotland Yard report was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and revealed these stats on CCTV (in)effectiveness. It was also highly critical of many things I’ve blogged about before. The Home Office UK also conducted research and found that this supposed major crime fighting tool was best at catching petty thieves lurking in car parks. And a 5 year statistical study based on crime rates at two apartment complexes in the US (2002-2006) showed no persuasive evidence that the installation of cameras reduced the crime rate.

CCTV is simple remote policing.  You may think it makes you safer but given the Scotland Yard report statistics, clearly all it does is make you THINK you are safer. A more effective use of £500m would be more visible policing of streets – if people want to feel safer, no better thing than seeing some beefy police dudes patrolling. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be game enough to walk down any dark alley that boasted CCTV – I’d rather have that alley well lit. So how about putting the £500m towards better street lighting?

Why not pour the money into programmes that could very well prevent crime? For example, teaching parents good parenting skills so their kids don’t end up as delinquents roaming the streets and vulnerable to criminal acts.  Or what about empowering local communities? If pubs and clubs are magnets for youth who end up drunk or commit crimes, allow a community to shut them down.  Why not give funds to local communities to come up with their own crime-cutting ideas and programmes?

Our society is one of blame and punishment, so why not spend part of the £500m figuring out how to make following the law more attractive? How do we reward socially acceptable or positive behaviour?

Or how about setting up a programme where ex-crims are put together with youth in a mentoring situation. And by this, I’m not talking mentoring a young person into crime! But perhaps a condition of the person’s parole is that once a week, he/she has to meet with a troubled youth, talking about how crime usually lands one in jail and talking to the youth about better pathways in life. If the young person gets into trouble, bingo, the crim goes back to jail.

There must be better ways to achieve crime prevention than throwing £500m at blinking eyes that fail to stop crime at its root cause. What do you think?

Finger goes in, Coke comes out

Talk about putting your hand in the cookie jar – now, you can just put your finger in a vending machine and buy a Mars bar or packet of crisps. Forget money – cash is just sooooooooooo 20th Century.

Hitachi has a new vending machine. I’m sure they’re very proud of it. You might get all lathered up with excitement over this. But I just shake my head as I ponder the increasing rate of biometric identification that’s being pushed on us all.  In the future, you will be able to purchase a Coke or Mars Bar by jabbing your finger into Hitachi’s vending machine. This machine “uses light to scan and read the number and orientation of veins in your finger tip without directly touching a sensor”.

Presumably, your eyeballs and fingerprints will be scanned beforehand and linked to your credit card number, giving the vending machine access to your account and swipe money.

All pretty sinister if you ask me. And it’s a recipe for budgeting disaster. We have wallets and bank accounts with money in them. If you’re like me, you draw out a certain amount of cash each week and stick to that budget. But if wallets and money become quaint relics of the past, then all you’ll need to do is swipe your finger or have your eyeball scanned and voila! you can party up on the credit-card. No doubt many of you are cautious with credit card purchases but many of us are not – we think, okay gotta have that. Yep, put it on the card and worry about paying it later.

Apparently, the biometrics industry is even considering turning your ear into your password and running security checks by scanning your brain stem.

Well, just as I asked you the other day to think about Google, I’m going to ask you to think of biometric identification. Yep, it’s quick and easy. Scan, swipe, breeze through immigration. Scan, swipe, get the Mars Bar.  But:

• do you realise that biometrics is prone to recognition errors?
• your eyeballs and fingerprints are unique. But what if your biometric data becomes compromised. How do you then prove you are who you are?
• there are 7 main areas where attacks may occur in a biometric system.
• I would suggest that determined hackers and cyber-crims will find ways to access your biometric data. The crims steal your biometric data; you can’t access your house or your car or buy food. You go to the police and after bringing up your biometric data they find you are a wanted criminal because your data has been altered by the crims. Welcome to your very own Kafkaesque nightmare.

You can read more about the flaws of biometrics here.

Airport tyranny

Dear Canadian reader. Are you having a tough time with the global financial crisis? Have you been chucked out of the job you thought was secure? Don’t despair. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority might be able to use your skills.

If you have the nose of a blood hound, the eyes of a hawk and a suspicious mind, which leads you to think that the world is full of terrorists and that no-one deserves any privacy – well, then you can have a new career as a behaviour detection officer (BDO).

BDOs will be trained and deployed at major airports in Canada from 2010. The BDO will scrutinise weary travellers’ facial expressions and body movements to see if they could be criminals or terrorists. Well, I would most certainly be toast if ever I visit Canada. I usually look nervous courtesy of my uncanny ability to get hauled aside for bomb testing. This has happened to me so often at Sydney airport, I’ve lost count. Apparently, I am a prime target because (I was told by officials when I questioned them) I look “innocent”. I would also be toast because I have the habit of scanning an immigration hall for signs of CCTV and evidence of biometric equipment. A further habit I have is constantly checking to see where my boarding pass is – because I lose things often. This sign of nervousness or agitation could be misread.

BDOs will be trained to spot a passenger with “malicious intentions”, who may have involuntary nervous movements. Let’s hope there will be no religious, ethnic or racial profiling going on.

Really, monitoring peoples’ behaviour in public space is a new level of absurdity in the war against our everyday right to privacy. The BDOs will be in plain clothes watching and lurking in departure lounges and concourses. They will be on the look out for tell-tale signs like foot tapping (well, that’s what I often do at an airport because I am fed up with x-ray machines, long queues and so on). Perhaps I should start getting some botox so my face will be so totally frozen there will be no expressions for the BDO to analyse. People are often nervous at airports for various reasons: a slight fear of flying or waiting with nervous excitement for the family member they haven’t seen in 20 years. Signs of agitation aren’t necessarily because someone is a terrorist or a person with malicious intent.

How much training are these BDOs going to be given (there are BDOs in the US and Israel too). Is it a quick, intensive 4-day workshop and then a bit of field work?  That doesn’t give me any comfort. What education is required? Will BDOs be registered psychologists?? Have they been trained by Paul Ekman - a professor of psychology who has studied micro-expressions for DECADES?

A bunch of scientist dudes had this to say about behaviour detection:

“There is not a consensus within the relevant scientific community” that behavior detection is “ready for use … given the present state of the science (and) inappropriate … responses to the terrorist threat … can do more damage to the fabric of society than terrorists would be likely to do.”  And of course you would know that I would be questioning the potential for violating the reasonable expectation of the privacy of individuals.

Next up, we’ll have CCTV cams spying on us in airplanes. Oh no wait: that’s already been proposed by the European Union! Actually, I have some ideas for airports who are increasingly trying to make our travel experience a frustrating one. And I’m inspired by the film, Minority Report:

• dispense with the bothersome x-ray machines and the need to strip off belts and shoes by having hidden biometric sensors throughout the airport. These sensors detect heart rate, body temperature, sweat levels and respiration. As you are innocently passing through the departure halls checking out the Duty Free, sensors are watching you.
• as you check-in for your flight with a self-service machine, there’s a sensor within, detecting your eye movements. Maybe the screen subliminally flashes up photos or words designed to make individuals with something to hide react.
• as you sit down in a cafe to enjoy a coffee, the seat you are sitting on is equipped with biometric sensors detecting signs of emotional strain (perhaps shifting in your seat too often)
• you get on the plane, same thing – the seat you’re sitting on is providing feedback of your biometric data to a centrally controlled system and the CCTV cam in the aircraft itself is watching
• maybe your boarding pass has an RFID chip in it so your whereabouts in the airport terminal is constantly known

This less obtrusive scanning of public space is what I think the future will be and an individual’s right to not be spied on and monitored will be a quaint relic of the past.

Register now!

Holy Gaucamole! As I was hyperventilating over news that the most surveilled people on Earth (that would be the Brits) are now to suffer the possibility of CCTV cams in private homes, I completely missed news from South Africa.

Thank goodness I have alert readers. Prophet Kangnamgu let me know about what’s going on in South Africa. Yeegads! Is there no end to the surveilling, the snooping, the tracking that’s going on in contemporary society?

South African readers – you might wish to reconsider having a cell or mobile phone. Legislators over there have introduced a new law, which requires all cell phones with SIM cards to be registered from July 1, 2009.  Trotting out the usual drivel of combating crime, the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Amendment Act (or RICA), requires service providers to capture the following data before activating a SIM card:

• cell phone number
• full name of cell phone owner and address
• South African identity number
• whether on contract or pre-paid

Customers will have 18 months from implementation date to register both their pre-paid and contract SIM cards. Cell phone service providers will need to verify all this information by checking an electricity or water bill for example.  So the idea is that the  identity and whereabouts of the owner of a SIM card who uses a cell phone in planning and executing a serious crime is known by law enforcement authorities. Yep, I’m sure now this new Act is in effect, criminals will be burning up the cell phones lines planning their illegal business! Most likely, they’ll all flee to Skype.

So what I hear you say? And before some of you pounce on me, I have family who live in Johannesburg, so have been there and yes, I know that crime is prevalent.  Possibly tracking cell phones is therefore a good idea.

But then possibly it’s just part of what I’ve always been saying – a little bit more of our privacy being eroded.  More Government snooping intruding into our daily lives and tracking our movements – all because some people in society commit crimes.

Cell phone service providers will have comprehensive information about a phone owner. Let’s hope they know how to keep data secured in a central database and that staff don’t misuse said private information. Will the service providers sell the information for targeted advertising?  Will only one SIM card registration be allowed per citizen ID? The big question I think is – will criminals obligingly register giving their real names and place of residence?? What’s to stop clever crims from swapping SIM cards?

All South Africans have to go and register in person and if someone has a temporary residence, they register their address as their local school or church.  I can see it now: police tracking a criminal via the local church. How ridiculous.

And then there’s a little something known as the Bill of Rights. Section 14 of the Bill of Rights in the South African Constitution of 1996 states:  “everyone has a right to privacy, which includes the right not to have…..the privacy of their communications infringed”.

I’d also question whether all South Africans who have cell phones actually have a residence with electricity or water  - to prove their residential address for RICA registration. I know my sister-in-law’s servants (who live in her house but sometimes return to their home) basically have a hut with no water or electricity. But they do have a cell phone because it’s the way they keep in touch with their family.

And how will visitors to South Africa, like me, roam the network? For my next visit, should I stuff my suitcase full of utility bills and rate notices to prove my residential address should I wish to purchase a pre-paid SIM card? And should I whip into a public phone booth, should I leave a note behind with all my private details for police dudes?

Seems to me like crime prevention is being used as a cover-up for intercepting communications and monitoring citizens’ movements.  Next up, we’ll all have to register our iPods! Anyone know anything more?