Signalfire

August 2, 2010

At the intersection with Shanxi Lane, a busy crossing in this northwest China metropolis, 11 surveillance cameras eye the bustle from a metal boom projecting over one corner. Still more cameras stare down from the other three corners — 39 in all, still-photo and high-resolution video.

“The whole city is under surveillance,” said one nearby shopkeeper who, like many here, refused to give his name. Asked why, he replied sourly, “It’s not my business.”

But it is no secret. Roughly a year ago, Urumqi’s ethnic Han and Uighur populations took part in the worst ethnic rioting in modern Chinese history, killing at least 197 people. The riots caught the Communist Party and the local government unaware.

Now at least 47,000 cameras scan Urumqi to ensure there are no more surprises. By year’s end, the state news media says, there will be 60,000.

Video surveillance is hardly uncommon in the West. But nowhere else is it growing as explosively as in China, where seven million cameras already watch streets, hotel lobbies, businesses and even mosques and monasteries — and where experts predict an additional 15 million cameras will sprout by 2014.

Much of the proliferation is driven by the same rationales as in Western nations: police forces stretched thin, rising crime, mushrooming traffic jams and the bureaucratic overkill that attends any mention of terrorism.

But China also has another overriding concern — controlling social order and monitoring dissent. And some human rights advocates say they fear that the melding of ever improving digital technologies and the absence of legal restraints on surveillance raise the specter of genuinely Orwellian control over society.

Video software can already spot a chosen automobile in a stream of traffic by reading license plates, and cameras have improved so greatly that some can even take clear pictures of people inside autos. Facial-recognition software is in its infancy, but already, China requires Internet cafe users to be photographed, so that computers can identify them no matter which cafe they patronize, and what identification they present.

“This is not a self-contained system of video surveillance, but one part in a much larger architecture of surveillance that includes Internet monitoring and censorship, telecommunications and law enforcement databases,” Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, wrote in an e-mail exchange. “Privacy safeguards are simply nonexistent in China, making the state entirely free to mobilize this architecture of surveillance for political ends.”

It is unclear what share of China’s growing camera population is government-controlled. The Ministry of State Security reported one year ago that police had installed 2.75 million cameras nationwide, most in urban public spaces, and had asked local police forces to place more in rural areas.

IMS Research, a company based in Britain that tracks China’s surveillance industry, estimates that 30 percent of new camera installations have purely governmental uses, from police surveillance to cameras in libraries or prisons. Cameras on roads and in airports, subways and other modes of transport are the second most common use.

But that underestimates the extent of state surveillance. The video cameras in China’s Internet cafes are required to be linked to government security offices. Guangdong Province, in southeast China, last year ordered hotels, guesthouses, hospitals and places of entertainment to install cameras in all main rooms and reception areas, joining museums and galleries, schools, newspapers and television stations on a growing list.

In Guangdong, adjoining Hong Kong, security officials are just wrapping up a reported $1.8 billion installation of one million video cameras covering major cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Beijing was expected to have 470,000 cameras by the end of 2009, says the Beijing Security and Protection Industry Association. Chongqing, a sprawling South China city, will add 200,000 cameras by 2012 to the 300,000 it now has.

China’s string of “coming-out parties,” from the 2008 Olympics to this year’s Shanghai Expo and the Guangzhou Asian Games, have all been preceded by security clampdowns that included extensive installations of surveillance cameras.
Officials say the cameras leverage the latest technology to battle crime and terrorism. Guangdong provincial officials told Chinese news services last year that their new cameras had deterred more than 18,000 street crimes even before the one million cameras had been fully deployed. In Kunming, in south-central China, crime dropped 10 percent after the police installed new cameras, the city’s deputy police chief told a security forum last spring.

That said — and some Western skeptics dispute claims of the cameras’ crime-fighting success — China’s video surveillance clearly has a darker side.

After ethnic rioting in Tibet in 2008 and Urumqi in 2009, security authorities installed live cameras both inside and on the grounds of monasteries and mosques, and hoteliers were ordered to place high-quality cameras and scanners in their buildings. Deploying video cameras for 24-hour monitoring of dissidents and troublemakers, such as citizens seeking to bring grievances to authorities, is now standard procedure.

Most recently, Mr. Bequelin said, the Beijing writer Yu Jie and environmental activist Wu Lihong have come under constant video watch after coming under official scrutiny.

The longer-term concern, he said, is that video surveillance will become a pervasive tool for controlling not only China’s comparative handful of dissidents, but the masses of people who ordinarily would not run afoul of the state.

In Urumqi, Communist Party and security officials initially agreed to a reporter’s request for an interview about cameras there, then demurred, explaining that cameras were a well-known anticrime tool and that there was nothing new to say. Still, recent reports in the Chinese news media, which was given broad access to security officials to report on the surveillance system, hint at the cameras’ potential.

Urumqi’s taxi fleet has had live video cameras for two years. Officials said they had since posted cameras on the city’s 3,400 buses and in 200 bus stations, 200 major stores and markets, 270 schools and along 4,400 roads — and would continue to mount new cameras until the entire city is blanketed.

In the city’s Tianshan district, a Uighur neighborhood racked by riots a year ago, a report on the Chinese Internet portal NetEase described 20 staff members at the local Public Security Bureau scanning the monitors. “One showed the picture inside of a Line 50 bus; the other showed the picture in front of a major supermarket on Qinnian Road,” the report said. “As the monitoring camera rotated 360 degrees, every corner in front of the supermarket was in clear panoramic view.”

Which was a comforting sight, the report assured its readers. The purpose of the surveillance, it stated, “is to ensure the safety of the public places, and to provide good public service for all people of different ethnicities.”

When asked, Han Chinese in the city generally saw the cameras as a good thing. “I think the whole thing was probably triggered by the incident last July,“ said 42-year-old Xie Gang, a wholesaler, referring to last year’s ethnic riots. “But the significance of the cameras is not to crack down on rioters, but to prevent crimes. If something happens, the message will get to the authorities right away.“

Ethnic Uighurs had a markedly different take. “Oh, the security is very, very good here,“ one man who refused to give even his first name said, with evident sarcasm, when asked whether the cameras deterred crime. “You can see the police patrolling everywhere.“

They are everywhere.

In schools, hospitals, grocery stores, churches, car washes and highways. Surveillance cameras have become as much a part of the American landscape as apple pie and lawsuits.

“If you are in a public place you can just about assume you’re on camera,” said John Knox, owner of Knox Integrated Systems, a company that installs security systems.

Consider the numbers:
The Tennessee Department of Transportation has 357 SmartWay cameras along highways, mainly through the state’s major cities, including 50 in Knox County,

More than 595 cameras are deployed in just dormitories at the University of Tennessee. How many are on the entire campus not even UT knows, but the number is certainly well over a thousand.

More than 200 Public Building Authority cameras operate in and on various city and county properties.

More than 1,500 are in and around Knox County Schools – 90 in Hardin Valley Academy alone.

The Knoxville Police Department has 354 vehicles, each with a camera on board. The Knox County Sheriff’s Office has roughly 125 cruisers equipped with cameras.

Red-light camera systems click away at 15 intersections around Knoxville.

Steven Wyatt, federal spokesman at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, says security cameras there “number in the hundreds.” Exactly how many cameras are there and how far they reach is not disclosed.

Businesses in general tend to keep quiet about the number of cameras they deploy. West Town Mall, Pilot Travel Centers and Weigel’s, for example, turned down requests to talk about security issues. But, the smoky domes and little, white boxes are so prevalent in and around such businesses that nobody gives them much thought.

Two reasons are behind the camera boom.

The first is money.

“Cost-effectiveness is a huge part of it,” said Dale Smith, executive director of the Knoxville Public Building Authority. He points out that securing World’s Fair Park would take seven or eight guards working around the clock, but with the nine cameras there, he needs only one or two guards – who aren’t working all of the time.

“To have a security presence is cost-prohibitive, and technology has made it a lot less costly,” he says. “The cameras don’t sleep, and they don’t eat doughnuts.”

Knox, who got into security systems in the early 1980s when surveillance cameras amounted to less than 5 percent of the business, is vice president of the national Electronic Security Association and often represents the industry in Washington.

“The boom is still going on,” he said. “The last five years, when it (cameras) went from analog to digital, the price went way down because so many people started buying them. The cameras now are so much cheaper and so much better. And, they are available at many price levels.

“It used to cost $5,000 for one camera and now those are down to $1,000. You can get them as cheap as $100.”

Reason No. 2? The cameras work.

“We used to have bomb threats called in about once a day,” says Lt. Mac Doss, supervisor of safety and services with the Public Building Authority, which began installing its cameras seven years ago. “We have had two in the past six years.”

“When we took over management of the security at the health department we heard that a prostitution ring was being run in their parking lot and the department’s employees were complaining of feeling threatened,” PBA’s Smith says. “We put up a fence, then we put up cameras and signage that said there were surveillance cameras on site, and that basically stopped it cold.”

“When we took over management of city garages, one had a real history of automobile theft and vandalism. We put cameras in there and it became a nonissue.”

Now, city garages average about 10 cameras each.

Lt. Robert Hubbs of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office Crime Analysis Unit tells of a rape case at a Laundromat in South Knoxville.

“The investigating officer asked to check out the (nearby) red-light camera video thinking he might see the car go through,” Hubbs said. “We did better than that. The guy ran a red light at Moody (Avenue) and Chapman (Highway). We had him.”

“They (cameras) do serve as a deterrent,” says Lt. Keith Lambert, who oversees the University of Tennessee Police Department’s surveillance program, “Criminals love the dark, but they are less likely to do things when they know there is at least the potential that somebody is seeing what they are doing.”

A section of 16th Street from the Panhellenic Building toward the UT campus is considered a potential problem area. To combat that situation, 13 cameras are installed there, and they are monitored continuously.

“We have had some success with seeing people who are committing a crime,” Lambert says. “There isn’t really an accurate way to measure (how many crimes it has prevented). It does give people who frequent these areas a sense of security.”

At schools

Amid the ruins of what was once Rule High School on Maryland Avenue is an unassuming metal building. Inside has the feel of a tidy workshop with a row of cell phones recharging, a couple of desks and a handful of people with badges coming and going. On one wall are three large television screens. The screens run 24-7, almost always with at least one person on hand to observe. They look deceptively underwhelming considering the job they do. On each can be viewed the goings-on before 1,500-plus surveillance cameras at schools, maintenance and other structures in the Knox County system.

A click of the laptop computer can call up a camera to monitor a hallway at Halls Elementary or help determine who vandalized the Bearden football field, as happened in October.

The cameras all record around the clock. They all have motion detectors and can all be called up on Maryland Avenue with the push of a couple buttons.

“Camera location is based upon the footprint of the school, the size and dimensions,” explains Mike Walker of Professional Security Consultants and Design, the company that has been installing the cameras in schools for nine years. “We involve the maintenance and security staffs at the schools (when installing a system), and we meet with the principal and talk about areas of concern and the threat-level issues.”

They decide on the number of cameras needed. West High School, which in terms of square footage is the largest school in Knox County, has around 64 cameras.

Walker said the cameras have helped with everything from noncustodial parents snatching their children from school to wayward graffiti artists to school shootings such as the August 2008 one at Central High School. For big problems, Walker says he gets a call.

“Usually if they involve me it’s major,” he said. “It likely means it’s something that could go to court.”

Court is where Walker is called upon to explain the surveillance system to defense attorneys looking to poke legal holes in their operation.

“We have been very successful,” Walker says.

At UT

Walker is also heavily involved in much of the security around the University of Tennessee – one large structure in particular.

The Knoxville surveillance community speaks in awe of the system in and around Neyland Stadium. Walker, who dealt with the installation, says only that he worked with the federal Department of Homeland Security on the project and he is not allowed to talk about it.

With 100,000-plus gathered at Neyland on a football Saturday, Homeland Security considered the stadium a potential target for terrorists.

“We don’t discuss anything about the cameras at the stadium or (Thompson-Boling) arena,” said UT’s Lambert. “We stay away from (disclosing) what we see and how many cameras there are. I can say there are a significant number of cameras. Not only can we monitor the stadium, but we are more concerned with the area around the stadium than inside. Our focus is on the outside.”

Lambert says the surveillance stretches a good distance from Neyland’s gates. In fact, a fringe benefit has been funding for monitoring the parking garages around the stadium. The cameras there can be used year-round, not just on football weekends.

The vast number of cameras at the UT campus in general – certainly well over 1,000 – has become a concern. There are so many different systems operating, conducted by so many agencies and programs, that in truth no one – not even the UT police department – knows how many there are.

“We started working earlier this year trying to work with the departments on campus to identify who has cameras,” Lambert said. “All of these schools and colleges are set up into individual departments. If you are a department and you want a camera and you have the bandwidth and everything in place to put one up, you put one up. A lot of places on campus have put these things in on their own. There is no point or centralized control. There are different systems. We have been trying to coordinate where they are and who is in control.”

In public

Lt. Doss of the Public Building Authority stands in a room just inside the entrance to the Knox County Sheriff’s Office in the basement of the City County Building. It’s call the COMM room. Before him are at least 25 television screens. The screens can call up more than 200 cameras in almost all county and city offices as well as parking garages and other areas.

The push of a button gets him a view of Volunteer Landing; another shows him an escalator in the Knoxville Convention Center. One more button and the first floor of the Market Square Garage is on the screen.

“We have cameras in any building we manage and any property we have,” Doss says. “When we started in ’03 we had six monitors. Now they run all the way across (the room) and we even had to extend the office at one time to put in extra monitors.”

The World’s Fair Park cameras can each swivel and zoom in on just about any part of the park. The ninth was recently added on an elevator where mischievous riders jumping up and down had brought on a series of $1,000 visits from the repair company. The new Knoxville Station Transit Center has at least eight cameras and a linked-in public address system that could call out an offender in the act – perhaps someone shaking a vending machine to get his dollar back.

Jayne Burritt of the PBA says the security system has become so popular that various public entities are coming to the authority now requesting that cameras be added. She mentioned that Knoxville greenways and KAT stops have been among the places suggested for additions. Powering the cameras from spots with no electricity is a challenge.

At hospitals

Hospitals are usually extremely competitive in the area of patient care, battling intensely for bragging rights over who has the latest equipment, best health care ratings, etc. In at least one area, they work together.

“One of the things we try to do from time to time is meet with other area hospitals (about security),” says Harry Watson, vice president of facility operations at University of Tennessee Medical Center. “We compare notes – ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this?’ We went to the Vanderbilt Medical Center to see how they do things.”

Watson says UT Medical Center has dozens of cameras; some record, some only look out on areas. A security center monitors the cameras inside the hospital and on the parking lots.

“I have worked here since the mid-1980s and we had them when I came to work here,” he says. “The big growth has been in infant and pediatrics. There are a lot of concerns in how we manage and protect those infants. In that area, it goes beyond cameras.”

Communication is vital.

“We do a security review,” Watson says. “We bring in our nursing staff and we talk about what their concerns are. We bring them in based on the type of security calls we get from a specific area. Based on their concerns and what we see, then a decision is made on what cameras are needed.”

On patrol

Detective Aaron Yarnell of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office sees himself as a puzzle master.

“Every case is a puzzle,” he says. “I take each piece and try to formulate the totality of it. Cell phones, videos, witness statements … I put them all together.”

Hubbs says Yarnell, who has been with the Sheriff’s Office for 13 years, “thinks outside the box.”

For example, a huge problem with the quick and continued evolution of surveillance cameras is the variation in sophistication that has emerged in the cameras used by businesses and other entities. Some aren’t compatible with any system the Sheriff’s Office has. Hubbs says the investigation of a robbery at one fastfood restaurant was slowed because the restaurant had no way to get the image off its camera.

“People don’t have the same formats (on the surveillance systems), and they don’t know how to use them,” Hubbs said.

Yarnell found a simple but huge workaround for most cases. He uses his BlackBerry to take a snapshot of images off the video screen onsite and e-mails the image directly to a network of law enforcement agencies throughout the area.

“He took a picture off the video after a robbery at the CVS (pharmacy) on Maynardville Highway and within 10 minutes the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office called to say they recognized the guy,” Hubbs said. “We had him in the next day.”

Hubbs said in the not-so-old days the information likely would not even have been distributed until the next day.

“When I came on as a cop in 1979 we didn’t have any of this stuff, but now it’s just like that,” says Hubbs, snapping his fingers.

July 21

A former employee at a Baltimore County automotive repair shop lurked nearby in the days after his firing last year, watching the comings and goings from across the street. Employees feared that he was plotting revenge.

What the ex-employee didn’t know was that he, too, was being watched.

Philip Deming, a consultant in workplace violence prevention, had set up a “counter surveillance” operation. Deming had been called by the small company’s president to intervene after spotting the man outside and being told by employees that he had been out there for days.

The disgruntled employee apparently made threats against the company and was eventually arrested on weapons charges, preventing what could have been an explosive situation in the workplace, according to Deming, who declined to identify the company, citing client confidentiality.

Workplace violence prevention efforts and policies have become more commonplace, much as sexual harassment training has become an integral part of doing business. More employers, including many prominent businesses in Maryland, are taking steps to thwart a range of threatening acts — such as harassment, bullying, stalking and physical assaults — by hiring consultants like Deming and implementing protocols.

That greater awareness and intervention may have contributed to a decline in the mass shootings that captured headlines in the late 1980s and early 1990s, workplace experts believe. Homicides in workplaces have fallen 52 percent to 526 in 2008 since reaching a high of 1,080 in 1994, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics released in April.

Still, about 2 million U.S. workers each year are victims of some kind of workplace assault, according to frequently cited statistics from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports. And most workplaces in the U.S. — 70 percent — do not have either a formal program or policy in place to address the problem, a study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health found.

“Workplace violence is something a lot of employers don’t like to talk about, because of the ‘It can’t happen here’ mentality,” Deming said. “People don’t want to believe it can happen, and if someone does act out, it is viewed as a personal problem that should be handled outside the workplace.”
When violence erupts at work, it can be deadly. Last October, 54-year-old Dennis Leon McLaughlin walked into direct-mail company Keary Advertising Co. in eastern Baltimore County and opened fire, killing company owner Wayne Lee Keary. As employees ran screaming through a side door, McLaughlin left by a main entrance and shot himself. He later died. Police pegged his motive to a dispute involving his estranged wife, an employee.

Similar incidents have been reported across the country. Earlier this month, the former boyfriend of a worker at Emcore solar and fiber optics company in Albuquerque, N.M., killed six people, including himself, and wounded four others in a rampage officials believe stemmed from a custody dispute.

In March, a supermarket meat cutter at a Publix in Tarpon Springs, Fla., was shot and killed in his car outside the store by a co-worker who police said had been fired after threatening the meat cutter, who reportedly taunted her at work. And in January, at a truck rental company in Kennesaw, Ga., a disgruntled former employee shot four employees and one customer, killing three people.

Violence prevention programs and policies encourage employees to spot disruptive behavior and recognize signs of domestic disputes that could follow an employee to work. Sometimes they incorporate training in how to respond to an on-site shooter.

Baltimore-based companies such as McCormick & Co, Constellation Energy Group and Legg Mason Inc. all either offer training or have implemented guidelines designed to thwart workplace violence.

Consultants say they’re seeing upticks in attendance at prevention seminars and more requests for training. They say companies have become more sensitive to at-risk employees and more likely in recent years to offer help to keep problems from escalating. Yet employers are still far too likely to focus on workplace violence when it might be too late, after an incident occurs, they say.

Too often, while security or human resources managers might be on the lookout for potential triggers of workplace violence, such as employer reprimands and terminations or financial difficulties and family problems, rank-and-file co-workers might not be trained to look for those warning signs.
It wasn’t until the early to mid-1990s that larger and more progressive firms started to address workplace violence, said Barry Nixon, executive director of the National Institute for Prevention of Workplace Violence, a consulting firm. Even now, he said many companies might have a written policy but fewer undertake training and risk assessment.

Nonetheless, Nixon said, he has seen increased demand for workplace violence prevention training, which he offers to private industry and government agencies.

“We’re reaching more and more employers who understand they need to get ahead of the curve, as opposed to being reactionary when something happens,” he said.

Security firm Allied Barton and ASIS International, a professional association representing security officers, have been offering seminars in the Baltimore- Washington region that planners hope will boost awareness and correct misperceptions about workplace violence. They held a seminar last month in Owings Mills. Two more are planned later this year in Montgomery County and Western Maryland.

“Developing workplace violence plans and policies is becoming more of a need these days and more of a priority, and companies are starting to focus on it,” said Stephen Somers, vice president of operations for AlliedBarton and chair of the Baltimore chapter of ASIS. “It’s getting more attention, and there have been more high-profile incidents.”

The seminars have sparked additional requests for on-site training at such workplaces as government agencies, property management firms and hospitals in the Baltimore-Washington area, he said.

During the seminars, instructors discuss myths and the gamut of workplace violence from behaviors that trigger concern to those that result in physical harm. Attacks can come from employees, customers, relatives of employees or someone with no connection to the workplace. Almost always, they’re preceded by warning signs.

One of the biggest myths is that someone walks into a workplace and just snaps, said Paul Danek, a regional training director for Allied Barton.

“That’s not normally the case. It has been building up,” Danek told more than 100 people attending a seminar last month. “If you see something that isn’t right, you’ve got to react. The biggest problem we have is people don’t take action, even if to report something to a supervisor.”
At McCormick & Co., the Sparks-based spice maker, all employees receive training in workplace violence prevention, in which they are encouraged to report various levels of threats, said Bill Ramsey, director of corporate security. The company’s policy covers three levels of threat severity and lays out steps for each scenario.

“People have to understand what the lines are, what constitutes a threat and what can happen as a result of committing these acts,” he said. “We take every threat seriously, no matter how slight, seriously enough to investigate.”

Ramsey said domestic disputes trigger about half of the threats the company has investigated. The company has investigated more than 250 reported threats since the policy took effect in 1996, Ramsey said. Responses have included verbally defusing a situation, clearing an area or calling police.

http://www.thirdfactor.com/

June 17

Schools across the district may be letting out for summer this month, but just because the students are on vacation, doesn’t mean vandals will be.

Local schools often find themselves under attack during the summer months, and School District No. 42 is asking the public to be on the look-out for mischievous miscreants and help minimize their mess.

“The public are our eyes and ears,” says school trustee Kathie Ward, chair of the district’s anti-vandalism committee.

The district is employing high tech solutions like metal rolling shutters to protect their windows, as well as video surveillance, motion detectors, automated sprinkler systems, and the Mosquito high-frequency teen deterrent – a device that emits an obnoxious high-pitched noise audible only to young people.

While all of these methods have been effective in reducing vandalism, they are also very expensive, Ward notes. Metal rolling shutters can cost $1,000 per horizontal metre, and a single Mosquito unit can run $900 per unit, plus installation.

Schools will also be boarding up their windows, and security patrols will be stepped up, but often the most effective form of vandalism prevention is the most obvious.

“If you drive by a school, or if you’re out walking your pet and you see something, call the vandalism hotline,” said Ward.

The hotline operates around the clock and forwards reports of vandalism to the district’s security firm or the RCMP so they can respond.

Vandalism numbers have been dropping of late, and Ward hopes that encouraging trend continues.

From the 2003/04 to 2007/08 school year, annual incidents of vandalism rose from 778 to 1,248, respectively.

In 2008/09, that number dropped to 1,116, and Ward is hoping when the 2009/10 numbers are calculated at the end of June, the district will see another decrease.

As of May 31, the district had just 889 incidents so far this year.

However, vandalism is still costing the school district more than $600,000 annually, said Ward, and that’s money that could be better spent elsewhere.

“It’s money that’s coming out of the classroom,” said Ward.

“That’s the equivalent of eight, maybe 10 teachers.”

Ward said vandals generally strike late at night, or on weekends, and that’s when the district needs the public to be aware.

“A lot more schools are engaging the community to bring awareness to the problem,” said Ward. “But we need citizens to step up to the plate.”

If you think standard security cameras are an invasion of your privacy, the Department of Homeland Security is testing a surveillance cam that puts others to shame.

It gives law enforcement high-def, 360-degree footage of a scene. The feeds are integrated with image-stitching technology.

The Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (ISIS) under development at the department’s Science and Technology Directorate is a hemispherical group of cameras that deliver a “high-res video quilt,” according to the DHS.

The ultrawide camera system streams distortion-free, real-time stitched video and has a resolution capacity of 100 megapixels, which is “as detailed as 50 full-HDTV movies playing at once, with optical detail to spare,” the DHS said in a release. It has been built with off-the-shelf cameras, image processors, and software.

The ISIS interface can zoom in on certain areas without loss of clarity while continuing to capture the whole scene. A range of commercially available applications allows the system to perform functions such as automatically tracking objects, vehicles, or people picked out by a user–even against cluttered backgrounds. Another app can establish a visual “exclusion zone” and will alert users if it is breached.

The DHS has been testing ISIS at Boston’s Logan airport since December 2009. Meanwhile, it’s working on a second generation that will be no larger than a basketball but will shoot at higher resolution and with greater range. An infrared ISIS is also in the works for nighttime surveillance.

Like the headline on the release warns, there will be “no place to hide” from ISIS.

May 27

The suspects in the firebombing of a Glebe bank used a rented 2010 SUV as their getaway car, and clocked more than 1,500 kilometres before returning the vehicle the next day, the Citizen has learned.

One of the suspects used his credit card and driver’s licence to rent the GMC Acadia from a ByWard Market agency on May 17, the day before the early-morning firebombing of a Royal Bank of Canada branch on Bank Street.

The suspect reportedly declined insurance and re-fill service charges. He registered only himself as a driver and returned the rented SUV on time.

Ottawa police detectives have seized the SUV and dusted it inside and out for fingerprints.

The Citizen has also learned that police seized the floor mats from the SUV and are now testing them for evidence in what they call a top-priority investigation.

According to the suspect’s MasterCard information, he was charged a $500 deposit, which was refunded when the vehicle was returned.

His driver’s licence lists his address. No one answered the door when the Citizen went to the residence.

The SUV is equipped with an OnStar Communications system, which affords police with search warrants or production orders the vehicle’s exact locations, speed and direction at any given time. It is understood that detectives are exploring the rented getaway car’s route from May 17 to May 19.

The firebombing by anarchist group FFFC-Ottawa, which was filmed and posted online, was an unsophisticated attack and, as a result, detectives have collected trace evidence from the burned-out branch at Bank Street and First Avenue.

The police department has also secured security video from storefronts along Bank and First, including high-definition images.

The “homegrown terrorists,” who attacked the bank because it sponsored the Vancouver Olympics, made their getaway in the rented SUV, according to police.

The group is believed to include at least four people. They are linked to an online independent media site and an anti-establishment network that organizes protests against G8 and G20 summits, unfair trade and government cuts to welfare.

Ottawa police Chief Vern White has said he is confident his detectives will make arrests soon.

Detectives are in overdrive, prompted in part by the “catch-me-if-you-can” video of the attack posted by the firebombers.

All 144 CTA rapid transit stations will be equipped with surveillance cameras by the end of this month, expanding the Big Brother reach of the nation’s most extensive and integrated camera network.

By the end of this year, CTA buses and rail stations will have nearly 3,000 high-definition surveillance cameras — up from 1,800 currently. Initially, cameras will be positioned at station entrances.

Ultimately, each station will have a “full complement” of 20 cameras. And later this year, the CTA will launch a pilot program so see “whether it’s feasible to retrofit” older CTA rail cars with cameras. New 5000-series cars come equipped with cameras.

The cameras are being bankrolled, in part, by the $22.6 million in federal Homeland Security funds the CTA has received since 2006. The CTA is investing $19 million.

“If there’s something that needs a closer look, we’re able to zoom in and get a better view. The high-definition cameras help us get a very clear picture,” said CTA President Richard Rodriguez.

“As more cameras are added. You’ll be able to go through a number of different camera views from any given station …Video images provided help first-responders to assess situations and act accordingly, whether it’s a service disruption, a medical or a police emergency.”

At a news conference at the Brown Line’s Paulina Station called to mark the security “milestone,” Mayor Daley acknowledged that CTA cameras are not routinely monitored and are mostly used to identify crime suspects after-the-fact. They can also be used to assist in evacuations after major service disruptions.

But, they are sometimes used pre-emptively.

“When schools are getting out at certain locations and a large group of students from different schools are there on CTA platforms, we will use the cameras for that purpose — to make sure all the young people are safe going to and from dealing with the CTA,” the mayor said.

Daley said there is no doubt that surveillance cameras help solve crimes.

“Say someone commits a robbery, runs to the CTA trying to get on the CTA. They come through here. When they have cameras, we’ll get their pictures coming in,” he said.

“If it’s an armed robbery, a home invasion or a burglary — whatever it is. If they’re in a car driving down, a camera will pick ‘em up.”

Daley proudly proclaimed Chicago’s vast network of public and private surveillance cameras the “largest in the United States.”

Asked for a specific number, he said, “I couldn’t give you that.”

Annapolis police will soon have extra eyes on downtown streets, thanks to a federal grant to supply 20 additional surveillance cameras, The Baltimore Sun reports.

The new cameras will make a total of 30 surveillance cameras downtown, and they will be installed early this summer, said Beth Hart, special projects director for the Police Department.

She said the surveillance cameras provide an alternative to “sending an officer out.” The department has about 130 officers to cover the city of about 39,000 residents.

The money comes from a Department of Homeland Security grant to provide extra security to the state’s capital. Six cameras were installed more than two years ago and have helped solve crimes, Hart said. She said the cameras have been particularly helpful by monitoring bar crowds.

BERLIN — Google came under increased pressure in Europe on Tuesday over its collection of private data from unsecured home wireless networks, as a German regulator threatened legal action if the company did not surrender a hard drive for inspection.

The German demand underscored the seriousness of the quandary Google now faced following its admission last Friday that it had stored the snippets of Web sites and personal e-mail messages from people around the world while compiling its Street View photo archive.

Johannes Caspar, the data protection supervisor for the city-state of Hamburg, where Google’s German headquarters are located, said Tuesday that he had given Google until May 26 to hand over one of the hard drives that it had used to collect and store information in Germany, where Street View is not yet available.

Through a spokesman, Google reiterated its offer to destroy the WLAN data in conjunction with regulators, but stopped short of saying it would hand over a hard drive, which would allow regulators to see for the first time what kind of data had been collected.

Viviane Reding, the European justice commissioner, criticized Google for not cooperating with German privacy officials.

“It is not acceptable that a company operating in the E.U. does not respect E.U. rules,” she said in a statement released by her office.

Mr. Caspar, who is leading the government’s discussions with Google, said during an interview that “Up until now, all we have to go on at this point is what Google has told us that they have collected. But until we can inspect one of the hard drives ourselves, we will not know to what extent what kinds of data have actually been stored.”

Prodded by Mr. Caspar and other officials in Germany, Google last week said it had collected 600 gigabytes of data from unsecured wireless area networks, or WLANS, from around the world as its roving cars compiled a photo archive for Street View.

The admission was sharply criticized in Germany, and came less than two weeks after Google had assured officials that it had stored only two pieces of WLAN data: the unique I.D. number of the device, called a MAC address, and its assigned name.

Google apologized for collecting what it described as fragments of information from unsecured WLANs, saying its actions were inadvertent and the result of a programming error.

A Google spokesman in Hamburg, Kay Oberbeck, said the company had no response to the Hamburg regulator’s request beyond its standing offer to destroy the data collected in Germany in conjunction with regulators. Google said it had destroyed WLAN data during the weekend that had been improperly collected in Ireland, at the request of the regulator.

“We are in contact with the Hamburg regulator, Mr. Caspar,”Mr. Oberbeck said. “Naturally we are interested in destroying the data, in conjunction with the relevant regulators, as soon as possible.”

In a blog posting late Monday, Alan Eustace, a Google senior vice president for engineering and research, wrote that a San Francisco company, Isec Partners, had overseen destruction of the Irish data. In his blog Mr. Eustace included a link to a report from Alex Stamos, the Isec Partners employee who witnessed destruction of the Irish data from the larger batch of WLAN data improperly collected around the world.

In his letter to Google, Mr. Stamos described the WLAN data in question as being contained on four hard drives, organized by individual country. Mr. Stamos said he created volumes on two new encrypted hard drives and copied over all of the data except for Ireland. The original four hard drives were then destroyed, Mr. Stamos wrote.

Google has said its WLAN catalogue was designed to enhance its mobile advertising service, which can alert mobile phone users to nearby businesses and other attractions by often pinpointing their locations through WLANs.

Mr. Caspar said he had not yet received a response from Google. “I would think it would be in their interests too to clarify the matter as quickly as possible,” he said.

Should Google defy the regulator’s request, Mr. Caspar said he had the power to fine the company, and could ask the state prosecutor in Hamburg to evaluate whether to bring charges against Google for improper collection of private data. Mr. Caspar said Hamburg’s data protection law gave him the power to assess fines of up to €300,000, or $369,000.

To ease privacy concerns in Germany, Google has agreed to give property owners the right remove their property from Street View before the service goes live, which was planned for later this year. It is the first time that Google is giving consumers the right to opt out in advance. Current procedures let users request that their property be removed after the service goes live.

In a related development, a law student from western Germany said Tuesday that he had filed a formal complaint with the Hamburg state prosecutor’s office alleging that Google’s WLAN data collection violated German law. Jens Ferner of Alsdorf said he faxed his complaint to the prosecutor’s office on Monday seeking to clarify the legal situation regarding use of open WLANs.

“The ability to control the cell phone switch—and through it, the cell
phone system—can be a tool of singular power in the search for infor-
mation superiority. To demonstrate as much, this chapter outlines a
systems concept of cell phone switch control and user registration,
illustrates how such control can be used to facilitate counterinsurgency
operations, and addresses issues associated with making the system
work in the interest of the government.
If, as noted, insurgencies are about individuals who choose to
align with or oppose the constituted government in greater or lesser
degree, then information about individuals at a fine-grain level is cen-
tral to countering insurgency. To know how people are moving and
interacting on a day-to-day basis, there is no information quite as rich
as that which the cell phone system routinely collects by the minute.
Every time someone makes a phone call, some switch, in the normal
course of doing its job, records who is calling, where the caller is, who
is being called, where the called party is, and how long the call lasts.”

Byting Back: REGAINING INFORMATION SUPERIORITY AGAINST 21ST-CENTURY INSURGENTS pp 43 ( RAND corporation)

China has tightened controls on internet use, requiring anyone who wants to set up a website to meet regulators and produce ID documents.

The technology ministry said the measures were designed to tackle online pornography, but internet activists see it as increased government censorship.

A number of websites are now being registered overseas in an attempt to avoid controls.

China has the world’s biggest online population: more than 380m users.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Tuesday lifted a freeze introduced in December on registration for new individual websites.

Extensive censorship

But the technology ministry said would-be website operators would now have to submit identity cards and photos of themselves, as well as meeting regulators before their sites could be registered.

The freeze had been imposed by the state-sanctioned group which registers domain names, after complaints by state media that not enough was being done to screen websites for pornography.

The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Beijing says that despite extensive censorship, the internet remains a surprisingly vibrant and critical environment in China.

Internet users have used it to highlight cases of injustice or to embarrass corrupt officials.

China’s web users often manage to stay one step ahead of government controls, says our correspondent.

The Chinese authorities have launched a number of campaigns against online pornography, with the government saying thousands of people were detained last year alone.

AP, Feb 23

SYDNEY: Australia intends to impose tougher visa checks on people from countries considered at high risk for terrorism as part of a 69 million Australian dollar ($62 million) counterterrorism plan released Tuesday.
The new visa requirements, which include mandatory collection of fingerprints and facial imaging data for visa applicants from 10 countries, would help keep terrorists from evading detection, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in releasing the government’s counterterrorism “white paper” in Canberra.

“Terrorism has become a persistent and permanent feature of Australia’s security environment,” Rudd said. “Prior to the rise of jihadist terorrism, Australia was not a specific target. Now Australia is such a target.”

Under the plans, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship would begin collecting the fingerprints and facial images this year, and cross-check them with immigration and law enforcement databases in Australia and overseas, the report said. It does not name which countries would be subject to the new requirements.

“We’re not identifying those countries until the rollout occurs,” Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said. “There may be a diplomatic effort required in regards to some of those countries, as you would expect.”

While the report says the primary terrorist threat to Australia comes from a global jihadist movement, including al-Qaida, it also cites a rise in the number of terrorists born or raised in Australia. The government notes the 2005 London suicide bombings carried out by British nationals as an example of the growing threat of locally generated terrorism in Western democracies.

Of the 38 people Australia has prosecuted or are being prosecuted as a result of counterterrorism operations, 37 are Australian citizens, Attorney General Robert McClelland said.

“That is an indication that we are not simply looking at the possibility of a terrorist event occurring from overseas,” he said.

The government plans to establish a counterterrorism control center to coordinate Australia’s domestic and international intelligence efforts.

More than 100 Australians have been killed in terrorist attacks worldwide since 2001.

SANGAREDDY: Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Director-General R.S. Sharma has expressed satisfaction with the software developed by Hyderabad-based 4G Identity Solutions.

He, however, suggested conducting of a pilot test covering about 30,000 persons in 20 villages in the next phase. Mr. Sharma, along with a team, visited Veluru village in Wargal mandal and examined the functioning of the software.

The software was developed to take two iris impressions two eye balls at the same time and 10 finger prints. Based on the date of the ration cards the tests were conducted.

Mr. Sharma was accompanied by Deputy Director-General P. Bhaskar, Collector L. Sashidhar and Joint Collector Ram Shankar Naik.

The lower house of the French parliament has approved a draft bill that will allow the state unprecedented control over the Internet. Although the government says it will improve security for ordinary citizens, civil rights activists are warning of a “new level” of censorship and surveillance.

For members of the French administration, it is a law against digital crime. For civil rights activists and politicians from opposition parties, it is a plan for censorship that excites fear and loathing — and even conjures up the specter of Big Brother and the surveillance state.

The lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly, passed the first draft of the bill, known as “Loppsi 2,” on Tuesday. It will now go on for a second reading in the Senate, where it seems likely to pass, thanks to the government’s majority. If the Senate approves the bill, the new law could come into force as early as this summer. The legislation could have far-reaching consequences: Loppsi 2 contains rules that would make France the European country where the Internet is subject to the most censorship, regulation, control and surveillance.

The new legislation could in the future force Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut off access to criminal sites, should they be officially instructed to do so. According to the draft legislation, the law “makes it the responsibility of each Internet service provider to ensure that users don’t have access to unsuitable content.”

French Government to Employ Malware

The list of banned Web sites would be provided by the Interior Ministry. The approach is very similar to a proposed German Internet law aimed at fighting child pornography, which also foresaw limiting access to certain sites. That legislation was signed into law by German President Horst Köhler on Wednesday — even though the German government had recently decided it no longer wanted to apply the law in its existing form, after massive protests by Internet users.

Under the new French legislation, police and security forces would be able to use clandestinely installed software, known in the jargon as a “Trojan horse,” to spy on private computers. Remote access to private computers would be made possible under the supervision of a judge.

The draft law indicates that President Nicolas Sarkozy is sticking to his hard line on Internet issues. Last year his administration pushed through the HADOPI law which gives ISPs the power to block or restrict Internet access to users of illegal file-sharing sites who refuse to desist under a “three strikes” system. The new legislation is simply the next step in regulating Internet use in France.

Political Motivations

The French government’s hard line should not surprise anyone. In a few weeks’ time, regional elections will take place in France. In the 2004 regional elections, Sarkozy’s UMP party did particularly badly. By showing himself to be a tough leader, Sarkozy hopes to avoid history repeating itself and shore up support for his policies. Polls indicate there is disappointment with his leadership and his government has low approval ratings. That is the reason why, in the face of a rampant economic crisis, growing unemployment, a devastatingly large budget deficit and various political scandals, Sarkozy is pulling out a presidential trump card. He is hoping that fear of criminals will convince voters to come to the polling booths.

In that respect, there is no more suitable issue than child pornography on the Internet and the hunt for pedophile criminals whose only desire is to seduce innocents via their home computers. According to that argument, it is necessary to impose controls on the digital world and introduce state surveillance, so that a pro-active Big Brother can fight the cyber world’s sexual deviants who are, in all likelihood, lurking on Facebook or Twitter.

More Than Just Controlling Cyberspace

In fact, Internet controls are only part of the bundle of legislation that is included in Loppsi 2. The various articles include a colorful batch of security measures developed by Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, a close ally of Sarkozy’s, who pushed through the first version of the security laws in 2002.

The new package has been in the works since October 2007 and has, according to Hortefeux, been beefed up by 13 provisions “like in bodybuilding.” It is a hodgepodge of different measures, governing issues as disparate as courtroom procedures, traffic laws, defense, sport, integration and even questions regarding burial ordnances in the French territory of New Caledonia in the South Pacific. The French daily Le Monde wrote of a “chest with many drawers.”

In addition to law enforcement tools for municipal police and private security companies, there is also a provision calling for a tripling of surveillance cameras in France — from 20,000 to 60,000 — by 2011. The provision has been described harmlessly as “video protection.”

The package also contains harsher penalties for break-ins, assault and drunk driving. Curfews for minors are also to be allowed.

‘Serious Threat’ to Internet Neutrality

Civil rights activists are outraged, as is the opposition. “We are seeing a whole series of lapses and rights limitations,” says Jean-Pierre Dubois, president of the French League of Human Rights. Sandrine Béllier, a member of the European Parliament for the Green Party, says the bill represents “a serious threat” to the neutrality of the Internet.

“The filtering and blocking of the Web has become a standard weapon in the legislative arsenal of a government which has been shameless in its handling of personal freedoms,” Béllier said in an interview with the online edition of the magazine Marianne. She complained that policing responsibility was being handed to Web providers, despite the lack of a legal basis for doing so. Indeed, it is precisely for this reason that the similar draft law in Germany will likely never come into force.

“Loppsi has brought us to a new level,” Béllier says, adding that “when it comes to restrictions, this text is preparing us for hell.”

Loppsi 2 contains a number of other gifts to French security authorities as well, including improved integration between police files and personal data kept by, for example, banks. The goal, Hortefeux explains innocently, is that of “improving the daily security of French citizens.” He says the laws will help to “maintain the level and quality of service provided by domestic security forces.”

Police officers in England and Wales have made arrests just to get people on to the DNA database, a retired police superintendent has claimed.

Read more…

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

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The US Pentagon’s latest version of bugging an enemy is the first wireless flying-insect cyborg- a remote-controlled beetle borg by University of California at Berkeley engineers – which can rise, hover and fly on command, guided by a radio receiver that relays signals to electrodes connected to the insect’s optic lobes and flight muscles, says Spencer Ornes in Discover magazine. Researchers recently demonstrated the bugbot at a conference in Italy. With the mind of a machine and the nimble body of an insect, it may be the perfect scout: inexpensive, expendable and strong enough to carry payloads, such as miniature reconnaissance camera.

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NEW DELHI: Intelligence agencies have asked the government to consider blocking Skype as operators of the popular global VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) engine are refusing to share the encryption code that prevents Indian investigators from intercepting conversations of suspected terrorists.

The Cabinet Committee on Security has accepted the recommendation in principle but has not set a date for initiating action. The urgency to track Skype calls stems from the fact that terrorists — as the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai showed — are increasingly using VoIP services. The shift to VoIP has been prompted by the growing ability of intelligence agencies to intercept mobile and other calls.

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The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.

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FBI agents have arrested a man suspected of posting online messages threatening the life of a California transit cop who was involved in a controversial shooting earlier this year. Read more…

This article was taken from The Police Chief Magazine, an internal law enforcement journal. It speaks to the targeting of specific organizations in particular the Black Riders Liberation Party. We can connect this also to the case of Alex Sanchez. Please read carefully.[ LA Copwatch] Read more…

Johnson accused of pressing ahead compulsory scheme by ‘back door’

by Alan Travis

British citizens who apply for or renew their passport will be automatically registered on the national identity card database under regulations to be approved by MPs in the next few weeks.

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LOS ANGELES: FBI director Robert Mueller on Monday defended the agency’s use of informants within US mosques, despite complaints from Muslim organizations that worshippers and clerics are being targeted instead of possible terrorists.

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German Internet Security

The Autobahn has SOS phones for motorists in need. Now, police want to launch a similar service for the German Internet. Soon, those who stumble across dubious Web content may be just a click away from the authorities.

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Your commute = your fingerprint

By Dan Goodin

Anonymized data collected from GPS-enabled devices may not be as anonymous as you think, according to researchers who show that knowing someone’s general home and work locations can be enough to identify an individual uniquely.

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