. The right to privacy is our right to keep a domain around us, which includes all those things that are part of us, such as our body, home, property, thoughts, feelings, secrets and identity. The right to privacy gives us the ability to choose which parts in this domain can be accessed by others, and to control the extent, manner and timing of the use of those parts we choose to disclose. Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others Privacy creates a space separate from political life, and allows personal autonomy, while ensuring democratic freedoms of association and expression. Individuals want to be left alone and to exercise some control over how information about them is used A right to privacy is explicitly stated under Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. The U.S. Supreme Court has found that the Constitution implicitly grants a right to privacy against governmental intrusion. This right to privacy has been the justification for decisions involving a wide range of civil liberties cases, including Pierce v. Society of Sisters, Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, and Lawrence v. Texas... Most states of the United States also grant a right to privacy and recognize four torts based on that right: * Intrusion upon seclusion or solitude, or into private affairs; * Public disclosure of embarrassing private facts; * Publicity which places a person in a false light in the public eye; and * Appropriation of name or likeness. The nothing to hide argument is an argument which states that government data mining and surveillance programs do not threaten privacy unless they uncover illegal activities, and that if they do uncover illegal activities, the person committing these activities does not have the right to keep them private. Hence, a person who favors this argument may state Ive got nothing to hide and therefore does not express opposition to government data mining and surveillance. The data can still be misused though, for example if a third-party gains access to it. In 1999, during a launch event for the Jini technology, Scott McNealy, the chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems, said that privacy issues were a red herring and then stated You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it. ============================================== A police state is a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive. The inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state One way to view the concept of the police state and the free state is through the medium of a balance or scale, where any law focused on removing liberty is seen as moving towards a police state, and any law which limits government oversight is seen as moving towards a free state. An electronic police state is one in which the government aggressively uses electronic technologies to record, organize, search, and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens. Electronic police states also engage in mass government surveillance of landline and cellular telephone traffic, mail, email, web surfing, Internet searches, radio, and other forms of electronic communication as well as widespread use of video surveillance. The information is usually collected in secret. Electronic police states may be either dictatorial or democratic. The crucial elements are not politically based, so long as the government can afford the technology and the populace will permit it to be used, an electronic police state can form. The continual use of electronic mass surveillance can result in constant low-level fear within the population, which can lead to self-censorship and exerts a powerful coercive force upon the populace. Seventeen factors for judging the development of an electronic police state were suggested in The Electronic Police State: 2008 National Rankings: * Daily documents: Requirement for the use and tracking of state-issued identity documents and registration. * Border and travel control: Inspections at borders, searching computers and cell phones, demanding decryption of data, and tracking travel within as well as to and from a country. * Financial tracking: A state’s ability to record and search financial transactions: checks, credit cards, wires, etc. * Gag orders: Restrictions on and criminal penalties for the disclosure of the existence of state surveillance programs. * Anti-crypto laws: Outlawing or restricting cryptography and/or privacy enhancing technologies. * Lack of constitutional protections: A lack of constitutional privacy protections or the routine overriding of such protections. * Data storage: The ability of the state to store the data gathered. * Data search: The ability to organize and search the data gathered. * Data retention requirements: Laws that require Internet and other service providers to save detailed records of their customers’ Internet usage for a minimum period of time. * Telephone data retention requirements: Laws that require telephone companies to record and save records of their customers’ telephone usage. * Cell phone data retention requirements: Laws that require cellular telephone companies to record and save records of their customers’ usage and location. * Medical records: Government access to the records of medical service providers. * Enforcement: The state’s ability to use force to seize anyone they want, whenever they want. * Lack of habeas corpus: Lack of a right for a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court in a timely fashion or the overriding of such rights. * Lack of a police-intel barrier: The lack of a barrier between police organizations and intelligence organizations, or the overriding of such barriers. * Covert hacking: State operatives collecting, removing, or adding digital evidence to/from private computers without permission or the knowledge of the computers owners. * Loose or no warrants: Arrests or searches made without warrants or without careful examination and review of police statements and justifications by a truly independent judge or other third-party. The list includes factors that apply to other forms of police states, such as the use of identity documents and police enforcement, but go considerably beyond them and emphasize the use of technology to gather and process the information collected. ============================================== This is a list of government surveillance projects and related databases throughout the world ************* International ************* * ECHELON: A signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement. ************** European Union ************** * Data Retention Directive: A directive requiring EU member states to store citizens telecommunications data for six to 24 months and allowing police and security agencies to request access from a court to details such as IP address and time of use of every email, phone call, and text message sent or received. * INDECT: Research project funded by the European Union to develop surveillance methods (e.g. processing of CCTV camera data streams) for the monitoring of abnormal behaviours in an urban environment. * Schengen Information System: A database kept for national security and law enforcement purposes. ******** National ******** ***** China ***** * Golden Shield Project: Also known as the Great Firewall of China, it is a censorship and surveillance project operated by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) division of the government of the Peoples Republic of China. The project was initiated in 1998 and began operations in November 2003. * Monitoring Bureau * Public Information Network Security ****** France ****** * Frenchelon: A data collection and analysis network operated by the French Directorate-General for External Security. ***** India ***** * Centralized Monitoring System (CMS): A data collection system similar to the NSAs PRISM program. It enables the government of India to listen to phone conversations, intercept e-mails and text messages, monitor posts on social networking service and track searches on Google. * DRDO NETRA: Network that is capable of tracking online communications on a real time basis by harvesting data from various voice-over-IP services, including Skype and Google Talk. It is run by the Research and Analysis Wing of India. * NATGRID: An intelligence grid that links the databases of several departments and ministries of the Government of India. ****** Russia ****** * SORM: A technical system used by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation to monitor internet and telephone communication. ****** Sweden ****** * Titan traffic database: A database established by the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment where call detail records (CDRs) of telephony and internet traffic and transaction data (IPDRs) concerning international telecommunications are stored. *********** Switzerland *********** * Onyx: A data gathering system maintained by several Swiss intelligence agencies to monitor military and civilian communications, such as e-mails, telefax and telephone calls. In 2001, Onyx received its second nomination for the ironically-named Big Brother Award. ************** United Kingdom ************** * Impact Nominal Index: The Impact Nominal Index or INI is a computer system that enables the UK police force to establish whether other relevant authorities are holding information regarding a person of interest. * Interception Modernisation Programme: An initiative to extend the UK governments capability to lawfully intercept and store communications data in a central database. * Mastering the Internet (MTI): A clandestine mass surveillance program led by the British intelligence agency GCHQ. Data gathered by the GCHQ include the contents of email messages, entries on the social networking platform Facebook and the web browsing history of internet users. * UK National DNA Database (NDNAD): It is also the oldest national DNA database in the world. Since its establishment in 1995, the database has grown to include DNA samples from 2.7 million individuals, or 5.2% of the UKs population, many of whom have neither been charged with, or convicted of, any offence. * Tempora: Launched in the autumn of 2011, this initiative allows the GCHQ to set up a large-scale buffer that is capable of storing internet content for 3 days and metadata for 30 days. * Royal Concierge: prototyped in 2010, sends daily alerts to GCHQ whenever a booking is made from a .gov. second-level domain at select hotels worldwide. ************* United States ************* * Boundless Informant: A system deployed by the National Security Agency to analyze global electronic information. In March 2013, Boundless Informant gathered 14 billion data reports from Iran, 6.3 billion from India, and 2.8 billion from the United States. * BULLRUN, a highly classified U.S. National Security Agency program to preserve its ability to eavesdrop on encrypted communications by influencing and weakening encryption standards, by obtaining master encryption keys, and by gaining access to data before or after it is encrypted either by agreement, by force of law, or by computer network exploitation (hacking). * Carnivore: A system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. Apparently replaced by commercial software such as NarusInsight. * Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative * DCSNet: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)s point-and-click surveillance system that can perform instant wiretaps on any telecommunications device located in the United States. * Fairview: A mass surveillance program directed at foreign mobile phone users. * Financial Crimes Enforcement Network: A bureau of the Department of the Treasury that collects and analyzes financial transactions in order to combat financial crimes. * Magic Lantern: A keystroke logging software deployed by the FBI in the form of an e-mail attachment. When activated, it acts as a trojan horse and allows the FBI to decrypt user communications. * Main Core: A personal and financial database storing information of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security. The data mostly comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, as well as other government sources. * MUSCULAR: Overseas wiretapping of Googles and Yahoos unencrypted internal networks by the NSA. * Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative: Under this government initiative, a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) may be filed by law enforcers, public safety personnel, owners of critical infrastructure or the general public. * NSA call database * PRISM: A clandestine national security electronic surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) which can target customers of participating corporations outside or inside the United States. * Room 641A: A telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency. * Special Collection Service (SCS): A black budget program that is responsible for close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, breaking and entering. It employs covert listening device technologies to bug foreign embassies, communications centers, computer facilities, fiber-optic networks, and government installations. * Stellar Wind (code name): The open secret code name for four surveillance programs. * Tailored Access Operations: Intelligence-gathering unit of the NSA that is capable of harvesting approximately 2 petabytes of data per hour. * Terrorist Finance Tracking Program: A joint initiative run by the CIA and the Department of the Treasury to access the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) transaction database as part of the Bush administrations Global War on Terrorism. According to the U.S. government, its efforts to counter terrorist activities were compromised after the existence of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was leaked to the media. * Intelligence Community (IC): A cooperative federation of 16 government agencies working together, but also separately, to gather intelligence and conduct espionage. * Utah Data Center: The Intelligence Communitys US$1.5 billion data storage center that is designed to store extremely large amounts of data, on the scale of yottabytes. * X-Keyscore: A system used by the United States National Security Agency for searching and analysing internet data about foreign nationals. ************** Unclear origin ************** * GhostNet: A fictitious code name given to a large-scale surveillance project that is believed to be operated by the Peoples Republic of China. * Stuxnet: It is the first discovered malware that spies on industrial systems, and it was used to attack Irans nuclear facilities. It is believed to have originated from the United States under the Bush administration. ********************* Recently discontinued ********************* * Information Awareness Office: An office established to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other threats to U.S. national security. * Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX): A data mining system originally developed for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. * Terrorist Surveillance Program: Replaced by PRISM. * ThinThread: A U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) program involved wiretapping and sophisticated analysis of the resulting data. * Trailblazer Project: U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) program intended to develop a capability to analyze data carried on communications networks including cell phone networks and the Internet.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 10:08:59 +0000
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