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Walton's paper did have an impact, but not the one he had hoped. The revelation that China was constructing a gigantic digital database capable of watching its citizens on the streets and online, listening to their phone calls and tracking their consumer purchases sparked neither shock nor outrage. Instead, Walton says, the paper was "mined for ideas" by the U.S. government, as well as by private companies hoping to grab a piece of the suddenly booming market in spy tools. For Walton, the most chilling moment came when the Defense Department tried to launch a system called Total Information Awareness to build what it called a "virtual, centralized grand database" that would create constantly updated electronic dossiers on every citizen, drawing on banking, credit-card, library and phone records, as well as footage from surveillance cameras. "It was clearly similar to what we were condemning China for," Walton says. Among those aggressively vying to be part of this new security boom was Joseph Atick, now an executive at L-1. The name he chose for his plan to integrate facial-recognition software into a vast security network was uncomfortably close to the surveillance system being constructed in China: "Operation Noble Shield."

Empowered by the Patriot Act, many of the big dreams hatched by men like Atick have already been put into practice at home. New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are all experimenting with linking surveillance cameras into a single citywide network. Police use of surveillance cameras at peaceful demonstrations is now routine, and the images collected can be mined for "face prints," then cross-checked with ever-expanding photo databases. Although Total Information Awareness was scrapped after the plans became public, large pieces of the project continue, with private data-mining companies collecting unprecedented amounts of information about everything from Web browsing to car rentals, and selling it to the government.

Such efforts have provided China's rulers with something even more valuable than surveillance technology from Western democracies: the ability to claim that they are just like us. Liu Zhengrong, a senior official dealing with China's Internet policy, has defended Golden Shield and other repressive measures by invoking the Patriot Act and the FBI's massive e-mail-mining operations. "It is clear that any country's legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information," he said. "We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front." Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China Information Security Technology, credits America for giving him the idea to sell biometric IDs and other surveillance tools to the Chinese police. "Bush helped me get my vision," he has said. Similarly, when challenged on the fact that dome cameras are appearing three to a block in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Chinese companies respond that their model is not the East German Stasi but modern-day London.

‘‘(a) REQUIREMENT FOR CERTIFICATION.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a civil action may not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against

1 any person for providing assistance to an element of the

2 intelligence community, and shall be promptly dismissed,

3 if the Attorney General certifies to the district court of

4 the United States in which such action is pending that—....

.....‘‘(B) the subject of a written request or directive, or a series of written requests or directives, from the Attorney General or the head of an element of the intelligence community (or the deputy of such person) to the electronic

10 communication service provider indicating that

11 the activity was—

12 ‘‘(i) authorized by the President; and

13 ‘‘(ii) determined to be lawful;

It doesn't even have to be the President that sent the permission slip.

It can be ANY DEPUTY of ANY INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

This isn't just retroactive.

This is the law of the land moving forward.

Yes, this won't be abused.

Swedish radio cops caught in warrantless surveillance scandal

The document describes communications between a Russian company and a Swedish small business owners.

As the document includes several Russian fax numbers, the traffic from which was likely carried by telecommunications cables in the 1990s, Alexandersson concludes on his blog that "it is reasonable to assume that FRA received the information by monitoring cables".

But FRA's director rejects the claim that the document shows FRA was monitoring cable-bound communications in 1996.

 

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/28/swedish-radio-cops-c.html

UK Gov't Proposes Massive Internet Snooping, Data Storage

Siemens Develops Multi-Purpose Surveillance System

UK ISPs Are Censoring Wikipedia

surprise, surprise, they are spying on everything.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/22/002/24210/125/687385

Russell Tice, one of the NSA whistleblowers who exposed the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program, is speaking out now that the Bush administration is gone. On Countdown, Tice described, partially, the extent of the illegal wiretapping program.

First, on the scope of the data monitoring:

OLBERMANN: Let's start with the review. We heard the remarks from Mr. Bush in 2005, that only Americans who would have been eavesdropped on without a warrant were those who were talking to terrorists overseas. Based on what you know, what you have seen firsthand and what you have encountered in your experience, how much of that statement was true?

TICE: Well, I don't know what our former president knew or didn't know. I'm sort of down in the weeds. But the National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications, faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications. And that doesn't -- it didn't matter whether you were in Kansas, you know, in the middle of the country, and you never made a communication -- foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.

OLBERMANN: To what degree is that likely to mean actual eavesdropping and actual inspection? In other words, if not actually read or monitored by the NSA, everything was collected by the NSA, recorded, archived? Do you have any idea to what degree the information was ever looked at, per se?

TICE: Well, it's actually, even for the NSA, it's impossible to literally collect all communications. Americans tend to be a chatty group. We have the best computers at the agency, but certainly not that good.

But what was done was a sort of an ability to look at the meta data, the signaling data for communications, and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected. Basically, filtering out sort of like sweeping everything with that meta data, and then cutting down ultimately what you are going to look at and what is going to be collected, and in the long run have an analyst look at, you know, needles in a haystack for what might be of interest.

 

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/21/204520/358/173/687337

Cruising through downtown San Francisco in his car with a $250 homebrew RFID reader setup consisting of a Symbol XR400 RFID reader and a Motorola AN400 patch antenna stuck to the side of his Volvo, he snagged the info off of two passports in just 20 minutes. The point, he says, is "mainly to defeat the argument that you can't do it in the real world, that there's no real-world attack here, that it's all theoretical." The range of his gear is about 30 feet, which is plenty of clearance.

He plans to release the source code of his software next month—not the first time he's tried to publicly discuss his methods and the dangers of RFID embedded in personal IDs. It also won't be the first time the government denies it's really an issue, either. [The Register via Gadget Lab]

http://i.gizmodo.com/5144548/scary-video-rfid-passports-secretly-copied-on-a-lovely-sunday-drive

What an embarrassment for an administration that holds itself out as an end to the corrupt, business-as-usual beltway fandango.

Chairman , Mr. Eric H. Smith

President

International Intellectual Property Alliance

Vice-Chairman

Mr. Jacques J. Gorlin

President

The Gorlin Group

Sandra M. Aistars, Esq.

Senior Counsel, Intellectual Property

Time Warner Inc.

Kira M. Alvarez, Esq.

Director, International Government Affairs

Eli Lilly and Company

Mark Chandler, Esq.

Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Ms. Erin L. Ennis

Vice President

The U.S.-China Business Council

Francis (Frank) Z. Hellwig, Esq.

Senior Associate, General Counsel

Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc.

J. Anthony Imler, Ph.D.

Director, Public Policy, Latin America

Merck & Co., Inc.

Ms. Mary A. Irace

Vice President, Trade and Export Finance

National Foreign Trade Council, Inc.

Jeffrey P. Kushan, Esq.

Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood LLP

Representing Biotechnology Industry Organization

Stevan D. Mitchell, Esq.

Vice President, Intellectual Property Policy

Entertainment Software Association

Douglas T. Nelson, Esq.

Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary

CropLife America

Timothy P. Trainer, Esq.

President

Global Intellectual Property Strategy Center, P.C.

Representing the Thomas G. Faria Corporation

Neil I. Turkewitz, Esq.

Executive Vice President

Recording Industry Association of America

Ms. Susan C. Tuttle

Governement Programs Executive

IBM Corporation

Mr. Herbert C. Wamsley

Executive Director

Intellectual Property Owners Association

Ms. Anissa S. Whitten

Trade Director

Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.

Ms. Deborah E. Wiley

Senior Vice President

John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Association of American Publishers, Inc.

Shirley Zebroski, Ph.D

Director, Legislative Affairs

General Motors Corporation

Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.

Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will also collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants.

The F.B.I., with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its rate of growth from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 17-fold increase. F.B.I. officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs — which now stand at more than 500,000 cases — to increase.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/19DNA.html?_r=1&hp

Before posting Erick reached out to the RIAA, Last.fm and parent company CBS for comments. The only response was from CBS - “To our knowledge, no data has been made available to RIAA.” The CBS spokesperson, Katie Gunion, subsequently emailed us to say “would you please attribute the statement to Last.fm, it is currently reading as though CBS issued the statement” Gunion’s email lists her title as Public Relations, CBS Interactive, and her first statement did not name Last.fm (this is important, see below). A subsequent statement by Shannon Jacobs, VP of Communications at CBS: “this is a last.fm issue, as far as I am concerned. It is not a corporate issue. This is a last.fm issue, not a corporate issue. The posting represents last.fm’s response.”

After the story broke all concerned parties had no problem commenting publicly.

Last.fm cofounder Richard Jones said “I’m rather pissed off this article was published, except to say that this is utter nonsense and totally untrue.” He followed up with a blog post “Techcrunch are full of shit, “I denied it vehemently on the Techcrunch article, as did several other Last.fm staffers. We denied it in the Last.fm forums, on twitter, via email – basically we denied it to anyone that would listen, and now we’re denying it on our blog.” One blog called us a “tabloid masquerading as a legitimate news outlet.” Lots of others piled on.

A company called V.i. Laboratories Inc. is proposing a new approach called CodeArmor Intelligence, which embeds stealth algorithms inside programs that "phone home" with information about the unauthorized usage of software, including their Internet domain and even a company location on a Google Map.

"We go after organizations that are using illegal software, giving rewards of up to a million dollars to insiders that report and help us document misusage," said Keith Kupferschmid of the Software and Information Industry Association. "But with V.i. Labs' new technology, organizations can potentially generate high-quality leads to recover revenue from businesses using pirated software without insiders."

Software industry groups offer legal services to vendors using the new anti-piracy tool, helping them to recoup income lost due to piracy by pressuring companies using unlicensed software to pay licensing fees.

"Often we are not dealing with companies that use pirated software, but rather ones that purchase 10 copies legally, but then load it onto 50 people's machines," said Kupferschmid.

EDA software tools and other expensive software tools for engineers have been hard hit by piracy. V.i. Labs charges vendors $50,000 or more to monitor its programs, providing daily reports on unauthorized usage.

V.i. Labs claims that vendors using its tool can recover lost revenue by documenting misuse of unlicensed software and pinpointing the offenders location. Victor DeMarines, vice president of products at V.i. Labs, said: "We gather forensic evidence that [vendors] can use to recover lost licensing revenue, including in many cases their location on a Google map."

Vendors that build CodeArmor algorithms into an update of their software application receive daily reports from the field about companies are using unlicensed copies. Pirates can crack the licensing and activation protection in an application, but can't hack the anti-piracy tool because it lies dormant until the software is used.

http://eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217600543