Surveillance or Sousveillance?

[a_majoor]

The age of privacy is over, but not quite in the way that George Orwell had considered. This article points out the scale and scope of the problem, but reaches no conclusions. Essentially, data recording, storage and retrieval have become so cheap and sophisticated that we are all under surveillance of some sort or other all the time. Now it is still possible to get under the radar some of the time (although with mixed results. I throw the occasional nonsense search into Google to see what will come up on adsense [the sidebar ads on your searches and Gmail page], and after playing with Bollywood movies started getting ads for saris, medical tourism to Mumbai and offers to date Indian women....I can hardly wait to see what happens when I start doing searches on Sergei Eisenstein). OTOH since your data is being sent to marketing organizations and profilers for free, corrupting their databases seems an appropriate response.

The longer term effects of living in a surveillance society where the State intrudes on your life is bad, but the effects of living in a sousvellance society where you are under constant observation by random strangers are hard to judge. At least a sousvellace society also means the watchers are also under observation (as the article notes, the numbers and placement of cameras is easily accessable via crowdsourcing and the Internet).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323984704578206063994711952.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Andy Kessler: In the Privacy Wars, It's iSpy vs. gSpy
Big Brother is watching us. But we are watching back.

By ANDY KESSLER

Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Mark, thinks she's got problems? Last week she complained that a family photo posted to Facebook FB +3.56% had been circulated on Twitter without her authorization. Well, over a few hours around town that day I counted 57 cameras—at traffic lights, various stores and the bank—and my phone told me I switched between eight different cellphone towers. We are all being watched, whether we like it or not.

So who's winning? It is a battle between you and the government—like Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy comic, but it's gSpy vs. iSpy.

There are thousands of toll booths at bridges and turnpikes across America recording your license plate. There are 4,214 red-light cameras and 761 speed-trap cameras around the country. Add 494,151 cell towers and 400,000 ATMs that record video of your transactions. New York City alone has 2,400 official surveillance cameras and recently hired Microsoft MSFT -1.87% to monitor real-time feeds as part of the Orwellian-named Domain Awareness System. And that is nothing compared with England, where over four million surveillance cameras record the average Londoner 300 times a day.

Popular Mechanics magazine estimates that there are some 30 million commercial surveillance cameras in the U.S. logging billions of hours of video a week. I guarantee that you're in hundreds if not thousands of these. In the year 1984, we only had lame amber-screened PCs running Lotus 123. Now, 64 years after George Orwell sent "1984" to his publisher, we have cheap video cams and wireless links and terabyte drives and Big Brother is finally watching.

So gSpy is winning, right?

Not so fast. We are watching back. I know the precise number of red-light cameras because a website (poi-factory.com) crowdsources their locations and updates them daily for download to GPS devices. And 30 million surveillance cameras are a pittance compared with the 327 million cellphones in use across America, almost all of them with video cameras built in. (interpolation. Andrew Breitbart once asked an audience to take out their cell phones and hold them aloft. He asked them to look around at all their fellow cell phone weilders and declared "You are now the Media". This sort of power is what is destroying the Legacy media and undermining gatekeeper functions in multiple areas of life.)

How do you think the "Don't tase me, bro" guy protesting a 2007 speech by John Kerry ever got famous? Last year, when cops at the University of California at Davis were caught on video pepper-spraying protesters, they had to pay $30,000 each to 21 students to settle. A man arrested for blocking traffic at an Occupy Wall Street protest (who was there to defend police tactics, oddly) was acquitted when smartphone photos and video showed protesters on the sidewalk, not the street. Six members of the 2004 St. John's basketball team had rape charges against them dropped when a video of the accuser's extortion demands was recorded on a player's cellphone.

Zapruder, Rodney King, the young Iranian Neda Agha-Soltan's death by gunshot after her country's rigged 2009 election. In America and increasingly across the world, iSpies are watching, too.

Both sides are getting more sophisticated. Snowboarders mount GoPro Hero cameras to their helmets to record up to eight hours of their exploits. So-called lifeloggers pin small, $199 "Memoto" cameras to their shirts and snap a photo every 30 seconds. With cheaper data storage, it is easy to envision iSpies logging audio, GPS and eventually video of our lives.

But gSpy is going further. Already a third of large U.S. police forces equip patrol cars with automatic license plate-readers that can check 1,000 plates per hour looking for scofflaws. Better pay those parking tickets because this system sure beats a broken tail light as an excuse to pull you over. U.S. Border Patrol already uses iris-recognition technology, with facial-recognition in the works, if not already deployed. How long until police identify 1,000 faces per hour walking around the streets of New York?

In September, Facebook turned off its facial-recognition technology world-wide after complaints from Ireland's Data Protection Commission. I hope they turn it back on, as it is one of the few iSpy tools ahead of gSpy deployment.

The government has easy access to our tax information, stock trades, phone bills, medical records and credit-card spending, and it is just getting started. In Bluffdale, Utah, according to Wired magazine, the National Security Agency is building a $2 billion, one-million-square-foot facility with the capacity to consume $40 million of electricity a year, rivaling Google's GOOG +1.98% biggest data centers.

Some estimate the facility will be capable of storing five zettabytes of data. It goes tera, peta, exa, then zetta—so that's like five billion terabyte drives, or more than enough to store every email, cellphone call, Google search and surveillance-camera video for a long time to come. Companies like Palantir Technologies (co-founded by early Facebook investor Peter Thiel) exist to help the government find terrorists and Wall Street firms find financial fraud.

As with all technology, these tools will eventually be available to the public. Internet users created and stored 2.8 zettabytes in 2012. Facebook has a billion users. There are over 425 million Gmail accounts, which for most of us are personal records databases. But they're vulnerable. We know from the takedown of former Gen. David Petraeus that some smart legwork by the FBI (in this case matching hotel Wi-Fi tags and the travel schedule of biographer Paula Broadwell) can open up that database to prying eyes. Google has accused China of cracking into Gmail accounts.

Google gets over 15,000 criminal investigation requests from the U.S. government each year, and the company says it complies 90% of the time. The Senate last week had a chance to block the feds from being able to read any domestic emails without a warrant—which would put some restraint on gSpy—but lawmakers passed it up. Google's Eric Schmidt said in 2009, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Thanks, Eric.

From governments to individuals, the amount of information captured and stored is growing exponentially. Like it or not, a truism of digital technology is that if information is stored, it will get out. Mr. Schmidt is right. It doesn't matter whether an iSpy friend of Randi Zuckerberg tweets it or a future WikiLeaks pulls it out of the data center at Bluffdale and posts it for all to view. Gen. Petraeus knows it. Politicians yapping about "clinging to guns" or "the 47%" know it. Information wants to be free and will be. Plan for it. I'm paying my parking tickets this week.

Mr. Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager, is the author most recently of "Eat People" (Portfolio, 2011).

 

[a_majoor]

The positive of Sousveillance is *we* can find out about these things. The bad thing about Sousveillance is it provides no context. Given the bare facts laid out in this article, it is pretty easy to see how paranoid conspiracy theories can arise (what exactly is the purpose of all that ammunition? Why are government departments not actively involved in law enforcement being armed and equipped?). We can hope that exposure does lead to explanation:

http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/020813-643707-obama-homeland-security-vast-ammunition-purchases.htm

[pquote]
Why are the feds loading up on so much ammo?

By Andrew Malcolm

Posted 09:02 AM ET

In a puzzling, unexplained development, the Obama administration has been buying and storing vast amounts of ammunition in recent months, with the Department of Homeland Security just placing another order for an additional 21.6 million rounds.

Several other agencies of the federal government also began buying large quantities of bullets last year. The Social Security Administration, for instance, not normally considered on the frontlines of anything but dealing with seniors, explained that its purchase of millions of rounds was for special agents' required quarterly weapons qualifications. They must be pretty poor shots.

But DHS has been silent about its need for numerous orders of bullets in the multiple millions. Indeed, Examiner writer Ryan Keller points out Janet Napolitano's agency illegally redacted information from some ammunition solicitation forms following media inquiries.

According to one estimate, just since last spring DHS has stockpiled more than 1.6 billion bullets, mainly .40 caliber and 9mm. That's sufficient firepower to shoot every American about five times. Including illegal immigrants.

To provide some perspective, experts estimate that at the peak of the Iraq war American troops were firing around 5.5 million rounds per month. At that rate, DHS is armed now for a 24-year Iraq war.

The perceived need for so much ammunition in federal custody is especially strange given Obama's double-barreled emphasis in his inaugural address on the approaching end in Afghanistan "of a decade of war." And he also noted, "We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war."

The lack of a credible official explanation for such awesome ammunition acquisitions is feeding all sorts of conspiracy theories, mainly centered on federal anticipation of some kind of domestic insurrection. Napolitano has at times alluded to threats from the extreme right-wing.

Other conspiracists harken back to an Obama Colorado campaign speech in July, 2008. That day he deviated from his prepared text to say:

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Writing at American Thinker, Lee Cary noted at the time that the speech context seemed to involve expanded opportunities for community service. But as still happens when Obama goes off-teleprompter, his non-fortuitous word choice on the fly such as "national security force" prompted numerous writers to speculate since about some kind of national Obama para-military force.

And as great as Obama's unlikely, newly-revealed passion for skeet-shooting might be, that involves shotguns, not handguns over-heated from blasting off millions of rounds.

Additionally, Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, is widely expected to seek the 2016 Democrat presidential nomination. But you wouldn't think she'd need that much ammo for such a bid.

Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/020813-643707-obama-homeland-security-vast-ammunition-purchases.htm#ixzz2KKpTBrHC
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[/quote]

 

[BeyondTheNow]

I feel there's a blind complacency to 'sousveillance', which is both scary and expected, unfortunately.  I think the people who are most uncomfortable with the direction society has taken in this regard feel that they're at too much of a loss to bother doing anything about it--is there anything that can be done at this stage to somewhat dampen the level at which we're all monitored?  New laws/legislation can't keep up with the speed at which things are progressing...

I remember reading an article not too long ago about some patrons at a mall being upset that they weren't properly notified (via signage, mainly) about being recorded (video surveillance) while inside.  The most prominent comment about the article and directed at the complainants was, basically, you should expect it these days.

But honestly, out of both articles, what scared me the most was;

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." Yikes.

 

[a_majoor]

Don't forget Sousvellance is where *we* monitor *them*, rather than the one way surveillance of the past. For the literary minded, imagine if Winston Smith was able to use the Telescreen to see just what the Inner Party member were up to.

Like I pointed out, sousvellance provides a tool to observe, but not to provide insight. On the surface, it is very difficult to imagine what, exactly is going on with the various US government departments purchasing firearms and ammunition in sufficient quantities to fight prolonged wars, or what Mr Obama ment when he made the "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." remark.

Absent of further information, you can spin this in all kinds of ways (and very few seem compatable with ideas of limited government, adherence to the Rule of Law and so on), but since you cannot prove a negative, this is clearly a counterproductive exercise. Perhaps the reality is these agencies find this an easy way to "blow" the budget on domestic goods and services, and decades from now we will discover warehouses of containing millions of rounds of corroded ammunition that had been improperly packed and stored.

 

[BeyondTheNow]

Sorry, I didn't clearly identify that I understood the meaning very well and after re-reading my own comment, I see that it's very slanted towards 'surveillance' rather than 'sous...'. I like your summarization very much though--more straight-forward. 

I'd like to think that there's a more intelligent and (positively) productive plan behind the purchasing, but I wouldn't be surprised if your last paragraph turned out to be true.  I struggle with the amount of (limited) insight I/society has into government workings as a whole.  Personally speaking, the more insight I gain, the more questions I have, and the more dissatisfied I am with the answers I manage to find.  Some would think that the more insight one has, the less likely one would be to create or "spin" radical conspiracies/theories and spread their odd ideas to those who grasp them readily.  There are countless examples of this not being the case though, so what's better? I don't know. Is it better to remain blissfully ignorant or to continue on the path we're on where all aspects of society (government/civie) are being monitored to varying degrees for a variety of reasons?

I feel limited on how much I can intelligently contribute to the subject matter--aspects of it are definitely over my head.  But it's very thought-provoking, which I tend to be drawn to.  If you find more related articles, please do share.  I really enjoy items like this.

 

[a_majoor]

Well here is an article that ties the themes of Sousveillance and context neatly together. It seems that the reason for the exaggerated amounts of ammunition being purchased by government organs is nothing more than old fashioned money laundering:

http://senseofevents.blogspot.ca/2013/02/why-is-dhs-buying-billions-of-rounds-of.html

Why is DHS buying billions of rounds of amunition?
By Donald Sensing
Your tax dollars at work:

Why? At the link to the original site, we read,

The federal agency’s primary concern is now centered around thwarting “homegrown terrorism,” but information produced and used by the DHS to train its personnel routinely equates conservative political ideology with domestic extremism.

A study funded by the Department of Homeland Security that was leaked last year characterizes Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

In August 2012, the DHS censored information relating to the amount of bullets purchased by the federal agency on behalf of Immigration & Customs Enforcement, citing an “unusual and compelling urgency” to acquire the bullets, noting that there is a shortage of bullets which is threatening a situation that could cause “substantial safety issues for the government” should law enforcement officials not be adequately armed.

But we should not discount that for years the Left has promoted the idea of disarming Americans by controlling the availability of ammunition for civilians.

On Jan. 2, DHS awarded a contract to

...Evian Group Inc., an organization that was formed just five days before the announcement of the solicitation [in December].
As James Smith documents, Evian Group seems to be little more than a front organization and doesn’t appear to have any real business assets, a genuine physical address, a website, or even a phone number.

So not only is the DHS stockpiling decades of war's worth of ammunition - which means literally centuries of DHS usage - it's doing so through front companies that come into being to collect the contract checks and presumably disappear once the checks have been written. The real questions here are who owns or controls Evian Group and what is his/their connection to the Democrat party?

Again the question, Why is DHS buying all this ammo? Here are the answers I propose in order of my preference of accuracy:

1. To transfer enormous sums of money to politically-connected or -useful individuals. In other words, the massive purchases are just old fashioned, money laundering graft and corruption. It sure would be useful to know how much Evian was paid for the ammo, because my guess is that Evian's controllers are buying the ammo from manufacturers at discount, then marking it up at least 40 percent to sell it to DHS.

What ultimately happens to that 40 percent markup? It goes two places: the bank accounts of Evian's controllers get half and the other half is funneled through shell-corps, bogus non-profits and established foundations, finally to the Democrat National Committee and Democrat campaigns and causes.

2. To reduce the supply of ammunition available to ordinary Americans.

3. To shoot right-wing domestic "terrorists," although honestly the purchases so far exceed what might be remotely be needed for that even if these presumed terrorists ever, you know, actually started terrorizing, that I can't imagine this is much related to the reason for the purchases.

No, this is looting the public treasury, pure and simple, to keep the Democrat party in power.

 

[BeyondTheNow]

I personally enjoyed reason number 3...


For the fun of it, I looked up The Evian Group Inc., which according to their website was founded in 1995.

http://www.imd.org/eviangroup/

"The forces of globalization will continue to foster economic interdependence and systemic complexity in the 21st century. As the velocity of economic interactions increases and changes occur, there is a natural temptation for governments to rely on trade protectionism and regulatory intervention. The Evian Group@IMD focuses its efforts on promoting a better understanding of how multilateral rules and governance can help businesses and societies to benefit from economic globalization.

Carlos A. Primo Braga, 2012
Professor of International Political Economy
Director of The Evian Group@IMD"

========

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evian_Group_at_IMD

"The Evian Group at IMD is an international coalition of corporate, government and opinion leaders, committed to fostering an open, inclusive, equitable and sustainable global market economy in a rules-based multilateral framework."

========

A brochure example

http://www.imd.org/research/centers/upload/EG_brochure_for_website.pdf

...I'm not sure that I fully understand what their purpose is (?)

 

[a_majoor]

Sousveillance in action in England:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9863442/Vigilantes-fighting-revenue-driven-traffic-enforcement.html

Vigilantes fighting revenue-driven traffic enforcement
Meet the motorcyclists dedicated to save you from traffic fines.

By Linda Harrison

11:57AM GMT 18 Feb 2013

Imagine the scene. Masked bikers riding through the streets of London in determined pursuit of their quarry. They have names such as Bald Eagle, Parking Warrior and Coco and cover their faces with V For Vigilante masks and communicate via on walkie-talkies. But don't be afraid, they're on your side – and if you drive a car, they may have already saved you a £130 fine.

Meet the NoTo Mob, a group dedicated to fighting what they see as unfair parking tickets and charges. During the week they're normal blokes (and the odd woman). Steve Baker, aka Bald Eagle, is a legal adviser from north London. Graeme Jones, aka Parking Warrior, is an auditor from south London.

But on Saturdays they come together for a common cause. They follow council CCTV cars, or "spy cars", then stand nearby holding signs to warn drivers about the presence of a CCTV vehicle and potential fine if they break the rules.

Motorists pull over, wave or give the thumbs up in gratitude. Complete strangers have been known to hug them in support.

"There are 22 mobile enforcement vehicles within four miles of Charing Cross," says Graeme. "We know where they go, they're creatures of habit."

The NoTo Mob isn't opposed to parking enforcement. It's opposed to what it sees an unfair parking enforcement. The group targets "honey pots" – high-ticket areas with confusing road markings or unclear signs where the CCTV cars are most likely to operate.

Graeme explains: "These honey pots can result in the same driver caught five days on the trot. The first they know about it is when they get the fine through the post. We have to have parking enforcement. But it has to be fair and in proportion."

The NoTo Mob says CCTV cars should be a visible deterrent. So the group makes sure that their presence is highlighted.

Steve feels motorists are being used as cash cows. "I was near a bus lane and asked drivers who pulled over, 'Did you see that sign?' They replied, 'What sign?' They didn't realise. They'd have got a fine if they'd driven down it.

"It's exploiting the average motorist, it's disproportionate and it's plain wrong. It's highway robbery."

Steve Brown, aka Boyo, is a 46-year-old sound recordist from Hertfordshire. He adds: "When we turn up to warn motorists, the CCTV cars often run back to their base and won't come out to play.

"Everyone's tired of these services being contracted to private companies, local authorities don't seem accountable. We're just a group of like-minded individuals giving our time voluntarily. It's people power."

Most action is in traffic hotspots in and around central London but word is spreading. What started in July 2010 is capturing people's imaginations and steadily gaining support.

A hardcore group – mostly men over 50 – go out regularly to "escort" CCTV-equipped cars. But since featuring on the BBC1 documentary Parking Mad, membership on its forum has grown to 700. Members include a gas fitter and retired diplomat. Cyclists or pedestrians can also join in, while people have even arrived on mobility scooters wearing masks.

"Anybody can do it," says Steve Baker. "We have rules and guidelines for our safety and to ensure we don't get arrested. But we're not doing anything wrong. It's not rocket science, you just need to understand the dos and don'ts and off you go."

If you want the NoTo Mob's help, just go online and ask. Essex, Hertfordshire and Kent have seen recent activity, while concerned motorists want to set up sections in Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham.

The group also offers help to motorists who have received tickets. They cite one success in central London where signage changed from "no right turn" to "no left turn", resulting in about £54,000 of tickets in one month. They contacted the local authority saying the signage was unlawful, and the money was repaid. In total, they reckon they've got £2.8 million back into motorists' pockets.

Meanwhile, at the end of a long day on the road, you might spot Parking Warrior and Bald Eagle heading into the West End.

"People recognise our masks and cheer and hold up their mobiles to take pictures," says Graeme.

"Sometimes there can be thousands cheering us through Soho on a Saturday evening, it makes you feel good. People appreciate what we're trying to do."