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The Telegraph reports that a police force is recruiting driving instructors, milkmen and delivery drivers to be its “eyes and ears” on the streets in response to criticism over lack of visible policing.
West Midlands police said that as “trouble spotters”, they will be urged to report crimes and traffic accidents, and will be issued with clipboards and asked to write down any activity they believe needs investigating.
Rising crime and paperwork for officers has meant that beat officers and roving patrol cars are seldom seen.
Twenty instructors have already joined the pilot scheme in Halesowen, which will be expanded across the force.
We are having some problems with the White Rose comments system (as in “it is completely buggered up” sort of problem). This has been caused by the installation of some comment anti-spam defenses over on Samizdata.net, which shares server space and some system resources with White Rose.
We hope to have the comments up and running again soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Update: Fixed! The comments are now working fine once again
Coverage of surveillance in the Nov 2003 issue of National Geographic is summarised and accessed here.
The theme, a running meme here, is that because surveillance technology can do such good stuff, it will be installed, and then it can also do bad stuff.
Underwater surveillance, we are told, saved this man’s life:
On this particular day maybe the lifeguards weren’t paying as close attention as they should have been. Certainly they believed the trim, athletic LeRoy was not a high-risk swimmer.
But on this evening LeRoy was practicing apnea swimming – testing how far he could swim underwater on one breath – and at some point, without making any visible or audible disturbance on the water’s surface, he blacked out. The guards failed to notice as he stopped swimming and descended to the bottom of the deep end of the pool. With his arms crossed over his head and his feet twitching, he was unconscious and drowning. It would take him as little as four minutes to die.
Although the human lifeguards watching the pool were oblivious, 12 large machine eyes deep underwater were watching the whole thing and taking notice. Just nine months earlier the center had installed a state-of-the-art electronic surveillance system called Poseidon, a network of cameras that feeds a computer programmed to use a set of complex mathematical algorithms to distinguish between normal and distressed swimming. Poseidon covers a pool’s entire swimming area and can distinguish among blurry reflections, shadows, and actual swimmers. It can also tell when real swimmers are moving in a way they’re not supposed to. When the computer detects a possible problem, it instantly activates a beeper to alert lifeguards and displays the exact incident location on a monitor. The rest is up to the humans above the water.
Sixteen seconds after Poseidon noticed the large, sinking lump that was Jean-François LeRoy, lifeguards had LeRoy out of the pool and were initiating CPR. He started breathing again. After one night in the local hospital, he was released with no permanent damage. Poseidon – and, more precisely, the handful of French mathematicians who devised it – had saved his life.
And if the machines can see stuff like that, what else can they see?
Maria of Crooked Timber has posted this, warning that there are proposals afoot to oblige those who register domain names to give lots of personal information.
Here is a clip from Maria’s post:
Next week the body that oversees the technical co-ordination of the internet, ICANN, meets at Carthage in Tunisia. The top item on the agenda, for anyone who cares about privacy and freedom of expression, is the WHOIS database. This is the set of data of domain name owners which was originally collected so that network administrators could find and fix technical problems and keep the internet running smoothly.
Of course no collection of personal data can remain long without various interests campaigning to open it up to a variety of unintended uses. In this case, those interests include IP rights holders, law enforcement, oppressive regimes, stalkers, and of course spammers.
While the first two groups have some legitimate interests in this data [Some of us here might disagree re law enforcement – NS], the others clearly do not. (I have blogged before about the unholy alliance of law enforcement and IP holders on this issue.) But instead of pushing for proportionate lawful access requirements, the latter are demanding that the entire database be policed for accuracy and published on the internet for all to see. Which means that if A.N. Other wants to publish a website, he/she must be content for his email and postal address to be made completely public. There are plenty of good and legitimate reasons to want to publish a website anonymously (and you don’t have to be a Chinese dissident to think of them)…”
The rest of the post includes some sample letters to the bods at ICANN. I am not sure I would sign up to every word in them, but it does look to me as if now might be a good time to register our protest.
In Australia it is common for voters to receive letters from their political representatives, and these letters are becoming more and more sophisticated in targeting the interests of the individual voters.
The two major political parties are able to do this because they have established databases. The inner workings of the databases have been somewhat elusive, but Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen have written an academic paper (warning- PDF file) on how these databases work. The implications for the privacy of voters are odious, especially considering the temptations for political parties in government to cross check their party databases with government ones.
I found this via Ken Parish, and check out the comments on his post where Wayne Errington makes some further good points about the database’s operation. He says the saving grace (so far) is that the political parties are actually rather slack in maintaining their databases; however, as time goes on, you can expect the party machines to become more professional in this matter.
Guardian reports that the prime minister declared today that the only obstacles to a UK identity card were “cost and efficiency” and that arguments about civil liberties were outdated.
I think these arguments have gone far beyond the old civil liberty arguments about it and are really to do now with cost and efficacy. Can you get a cost-effective programme that is actually effective? That does what you think it is going to do.
Now that is where the debate is centred and I have an open mind on that but in principle I think it is right. It is not something I think that is considered completely noxious to do.
Guardian reports that Tony Blair’s hopes of winning cabinet support for identity cards have been dealt a further blow after Alistair Darling, the transport secretary, submitted a five-page cabinet letter opposing their introduction. Mr Darling is the fourth cabinet member to challenge the home secretary David Blunkett’s goal of introducing a bill in the Queen’s speech.
He points out that passports and driving licences are already due to be upgraded using biometric technology. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is establishing links with the passport service database to enable electronic validation of identity information. Passports are due to include embedded biometric information from 2005.
According to those who have seen his letter, Mr Darling claims an ID card would only add value if citizens were required to carry it – something the government has ruled out.
The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration has banned news organisations from reporting the dead bodies arriving home from Iraq.
The policy has in fact been in place for several years but was never enforced. Bush has now decided that the US public should not be allowed to see the realities of war.
Putting aside the rights and wrongs of the war, there can be no security implication of showing such footage. It might be distasteful, but that is a judgement for the broadcasters to make. This ban on media coverage appears to be for simple political purposes.
Once again the First Amendment is being quietly eroded.
Immigration Minister Beverley Hughes has become the latest recruit to Big Blunkett’s cause. The BBC Reports that Hughes has supported introducing compulsory National Identity Cards for innocent British citizens. She told the Home Affairs Committee that ID Cards would be a good thing because they are “the only way” to prevent illegal immigrants from working.
She is wrong for three simple reasons:
- Lack of ID Card would not stop most of the illegal immigrants who work for cash, no questions asked and no records kept.
- ID Cards would not prevent illegal immigrants – or others – supporting themselves though crime.
- Even if the Cards did work, describing them as the “only way” is pure hyperbole. There are always options.
Hughes also talked about an on-going cost benefit analysis of ID Cards. It would be interesting to know how the privacy and civil liberties issues of ID Cards are being costed. In all probability they are being ignored, making the entire analysis worthless.
I’ve emailed Ms Hughes asking that question. In the unlikely event that she replies I’ll pass it on.
Cross posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
From last Friday’s Guardian:
Charles Clarke, the education secretary, is fighting for a short bill in the Queen’s speech next month which would give every child an identity number and allow local authorities in England to share information about any suspicion of neglect or abuse in the family.
The bill would be the first instalment of the government’s plans to reform child protection after a public inquiry into the murder of Victoria Climbié.
Which nicely illustrates the connection between state “protection” and state numbering of its human possessions.
What is objectionable, I think, is the idea that all children, the overwhelming majority of whom are not suspected of being abused, will nevertheless get numbered. Is that really necessary?
Plus, you can’t help wondering if, after a brief interval while we all get used to this process, children who have got their numbers will start not to shed them, even when they’ve stopped being children. After all, it isn’t only children who need protecting, is it?
The Guardian reports that the Conservatives have drawn up detailed plans to defeat some of the worst parts of Big Blunkett’s discredited Criminal “Justice” Bill.
In particular the Tory peers plan to prevent Blunkett from removing the right to trial by jury in certain cases and allowing gossip to be accepted as evidence.
Since the government doesn’t have an automatic majority in the Lords they will have to compromise, risk losing the entire Bill or invoke the rarely used Parliament Act.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
Internet.com reports that UK retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S) is to begin trials of RFID tagging at item level.
Clothes in M&S stores will be tagged with RFID chips. These each contain a unique ID and can be read by a nearby scanner without the consumer being aware of it. Thus your underwear might be broadcasting your location.
To be fair to M&S they did show an unusual degree of social responsibility concerning these trials. They consulted with CASPIAN and as a result the tags will be obvious and will not be scanned at checkouts.
Welcome as these factors are, this trial is still another step on the dangerous road towards making RFID ubiquitous. Not all companies will share M&S’s ethical stance, therefore RFID tagging at item level must be opposed outright.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe. Thanks to shanti941 for the pointer.
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