Diamond Age? - Kids, RFID Chips... & Minority Reporting?!: thoughts on the new US Project Hostile Intent (PHI)
A Young Lady's Primer of RFID & Personal Security:
Do you remember Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age? Do you remember toner?
Personal Security, Data & Privacy: U.S. Eyes U.K.'s Surveillance Camera Solution
Theocratic "U.S. is building database on Iraqis": today Iraqis, but how many Canadians?
do you actually TRUST the Bushevik Corporation with... your personal data & movements?
'Home-grown terrorists' living in Canada: CSIS
Canada's spy service is warning of an increasing threat from home-grown terrorists already living in communities across the country.
& that you're somehow safer if you're under surveillance?
"Yell Fire!": Bush to freeze peace activist assets? - Executive Order to "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq"
Watching the "Ownership Society": follow-ups on Shareholder Surveillance...
Meeting 'Mr. Tuple': Six Degrees of INseparability: tagging, data-mining & Terrorism Scores
"Banality of Evil", a discussion on Maher Arar: CNN ...
Interview with Maher Arar On his way home to Canada, Maher Arar (born in Syria) was taken into custody at JFK Airport in New York.IN DEPTH: Maher Arar The Arar inquiry: recommendations & documents
Toronto on Dundas: Surveillance camera notice
Last Updated August 9, 2007. CBC News UPDATE
Previously blacked-out portions of the Maher Arar report state that Canadian security officials believed the United States might send the Syrian-born Canadian to a foreign country to be questioned under torture.
The blacked-out portions of the Arar inquiry's report were released on the July order of a Federal Court judge.
CBC News story
Report sections released by court order (PDF)
Original 362-page report
In his report, dated Sept. 18, 2006, on Canada's involvement in the extraordinary rendition and torture in a Syrian jail of Canadian engineer Maher Arar, Judge Dennis O'Connor makes 23 recommendations, grouped into eight broad categories.
"Never corner a rat": Busheviks in Crisis...
New Scientist: Can you catch a killer before they commit a crime?
Contact: Claire Bowles, claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk, 44-207-611-1210
IMAGINE the scene. You arrive at New York’s JFK airport, tired after a long flight, and trudge into line at passport control. As you wait, a battery of lasers, cameras, eye trackers and microphones begin secretly compiling a dossier of information about your body. The computer that is processing the data from these hidden sensors is not searching for explosives, knives, guns or contraband. Instead, it is working on a much tougher problem: whether you are thinking about committing a terrorist act, either imminently, or at sometime during your stay in the US. If the computer decides that might be your intention, you will be led off for interview with security officers.
The equipment could also screen passengers as they wait to have their bags checked before boarding, in an attempt to predict when someone is planning to bomb or hijack a plane.
It sounds far-fetched, but this is the aim of Project Hostile Intent (PHI), the latest anti-terrorism idea from the US Department of Homeland Security. According to DHS spokesman Larry Orluskie, the DHS wants to develop systems that can analyse behaviour remotely to predict which of the 400 million people who enter the US every year have ‘current or future hostile intentions’.
The equipment could also screen passengers as they wait to have their bags checked before boarding, in an attempt to predict when someone is planning to bomb or hijack a plane.
It sounds far-fetched, but this is the aim of Project Hostile Intent (PHI), the latest anti-terrorism idea from the US Department of Homeland Security. According to DHS spokesman Larry Orluskie, the DHS wants to develop systems that can analyse behaviour remotely to predict which of the 400 million people who enter the US every year have ‘current or future hostile intentions’.
PHI aims to identify facial expressions, gait, blood pressure, pulse and perspiration rates that are characteristic of hostility or the desire to deceive. Then the idea is to develop “real-time, culturally independent, non-invasive sensors” and software that can detect those behaviours, says Orluskie. The DHS’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) suggests that these sensors could include heart rate and breathing sensors, infrared light, laser, video, audio and eye tracking.
PHI got quietly under way on 9 July, when HSARPA issued a “request for information” in which it asked security companies and US government labs to suggest technologies that could be used to achieve the project’s aims. It hopes to test them at a handful of airports, borders and ports as early as 2010 and to deploy the system at all points of entry to the US by 2012.
Theocratic "U.S. is building database on Iraqis": today Iraqis, but how many Canadians? how soon?
Credit Ratings & the FBI: Millions of Travelers Rated for Terror Potential
Project Hostile Intent plans 'non-invasive' DHS brainscan’
Not the mind probe again, officer? My ass hurts
By Lewis Page, Published Thursday 9th August 2007 13:28 GMT
The great problem besetting the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is, of course, how on Earth to spend its mountains of federal pork on vaguely security-related stuff. One approach is to build gear which is only tangentially about security, but which might work - for example cryogenic superconductor power lines for New York. Another plan is to build something which is silly and unlikely to ever work, but which would be handy for security forces if it did - eg, handheld chunder rayguns.
Chip implant gets cash under your skin
Applied Digital Solutions is hoping that people can be persuaded to implant RFID chips under their skin to identify ...
Claim: RFID Will Stop Terrorists Mark Baard 08.08.03 | 2:00 AM
Facing increasing resistance and concerns about privacy, the United States' largest food companies and retailers will try to win consumer approval for radio identification devices by portraying the technology as an essential tool for keeping the nation's food supply safe from terrorists.
frontline: the persuaders | PBS FRONTLINE takes an in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar "persuasion industries" of advertising and public relations
Big Brother's Passport to Pry
Privacy advocates are appalled by the ongoing plan to equip all U.S. passports with RFID chips that can be read surreptitiously from a distance The U.S. is moving closer to requiring citizens to have an identity card that could be scanned from a distance. By the end of 2005, U.S. passports will come with embedded radio-tag chips -- and Congress is considering mandating similar technology in driver's licenses. The government argues that the changes will make America safer from terrorists. But privacy advocates are appalled, fearing that the information could be stolen and misused.
The story begins in 2002, when Congress passed the Enhanced Border Security Act. One provision requires that new passports be equipped with "biometric identifiers" capable of being read by machines -- in essence, a chip with personal identification information. The law also said foreigners who want to come to the U.S. without a visa (as is allowed for visitors from Europe, Japan, and some other countries) must carry a passport with the same technology.
POLICY LAUNDERING. But the law didn't specify what information should be on the chip, or what type of chip must be included. In what critics call policy laundering, that decision was ostensibly left to an obscure U.N.-affiliated agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization. For the Bush Administration, "the advantage of using the ICAO is that they have none of the transparency of a U.S. government agency," says Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberty Union's technology and liberty program. Groups like the ACLU were shut out of the process.
The ICAO's decision, which is widely viewed as reflecting the State Dept.'s own views, turned out to be very troubling to privacy advocates. Critics charge that by using the excuse that the standard was set by an international body, the State Dept. can push a technology that wouldn't have been acceptable if openly debated in the U.S.
For one thing, the biometric identifier the ICAO picked was facial recognition, which is seen as less reliable than alternatives like retina scans. More worrisome, the ICAO specified that the information be stored in a "contactless" chip -- one that can be read from a distance. Many companies, such as Wal-Mart (WMT ), are using such radio frequency identification (RFID) chips to track inventory. Putting the chips in passports would enable the government to read personal information from more than 50 feet away.
REMOTE ACCESS. "We do need passports with more data," says computer security expert Bruce Schneier. "But they chose a chip that can be queried remotely and surreptitiously. I can't think of any reason why the government would do that, other than that they want surreptitious access." And if airport and border security guards can read everyone's passports on the sly, so could anyone with a radio-chip reader, from terrorists to identity thieves.
State Dept spokesperson Angela Aggeler insists that privacy matters "are of very grave concern to the State Dept." It won't be possible to read the chips in passports with just any old reader, such as the technology being used at Wal-Mart, she says. Instead, it will take special readers that the bad guys won't have.
But critics aren't buying it. They figure that it will be possible to make or buy a reader. Then it could be used to scan a hotel to see which rooms the Americans are in, for instance, or to nab someone's identity from a distance.
"IDENTITY-THEFT NIGHTMARE." And the controversy will grow, predicts Steinhardt. Congress and some states are debating whether to require the same type of chip in driver's licenses. "As we feared, the standard is migrating to domestic identity documents," he says. "It would be an identity-theft nightmare."
The timetable is pretty alarming, too. In mid-October the government awarded contracts to four companies -- Axalto, BearingPoint (BE ), Infineon Technologies (IFX ), and SuperCom -- to produce chips for testing in the new electronic passport. By the end of 2005, all new domestic passports will probably come with the chip.
To many, that means the Big Brother is coming one step closer.
Pharmaceuticals:
Tiny Chips Could Combat Counterfeit Pills
Matthew Herper, 06.30.04, 2:55 PM ET
Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ), which has become the world's largest drugmaker, partly on the strength of Lipitor's $10 billion in annual sales, is determined to face down the shysters. Byron Bond, who oversees Pfizer's trade operations, says higher ups gave him a simple directive: "Make sure that every patient who thinks they are taking a Pfizer medication is taking a Pfizer medication." ...
Tracking Prisoners in Jail With Biometrics: An Experiment in a Navy Brig
Parents of lost children will no longer be 'bricking it'...RFID chips on kids makes Legoland safer
By Will Sturgeon, Published: Thursday 24 June 2004
...The 'Kidspotter' scheme represents the latest in a string of innovative uses for RFID technology. However, not everybody is convinced that Lego's motives are as well-intentioned as the reassuring marketing for the scheme would suggest. Leo Steiner, vice president for on-demand sales at IBM, who works closely with RFID, said: "Lego will now know exactly where each customer is, how long they are spending in each area and which products are proving to be most popular."
The knock-on effect of parents' making use of the scheme could be a more concerted and insightfully targeted marketing campaign for the perennially popular Lego brick toy sets. ...
Company requires RFID injection SecurityFocus is designed to facilitate discussion on computer security related topics, create computer security awareness, and to provide the Internet's ...
RFID tagging will create not just a tidal wave of data, but lifetime employment for data warehouse designers
RFID Tags & Smart Dust
July 18, 2003, by Ralph Kimball
A tidal wave of data is approaching the data warehouse that could easily deliver 10 to 100 times more data than we have ever seen. The data is incredibly potent, potentially tracking every tangible object, person, and location on the globe. Is this some Big Brother scheme? No, it's an incremental revolution that's been quietly proceeding in manufacturing plants, retail stores, and development labs in many locations. The revolution consists of two related technologies: radio frequency identification (RFID) and "smart dust." ...
The RFID revolution is well underway. In January, Gillette announced that it had placed an order for up to 500 million RFID tags to be used in its supply chain, including "smart shelves" in retail stores. Another major manufacturer is rumored to be preparing an order for several billion RFID tags. Avery Dennison, the well-known label maker, is deeply involved in developing RFID technology. Obviously these order volumes will drive the unit price of RFID tags down. The five-cent price point is thought to be a threshold where the RFID tidal wave will really pick up.Lifetime Employment
The biblical flood of data coming from all these RFID sources will dwarf our current databases. We have an insatiable desire to manage by the numbers, and someone, somewhere, is going to want to see all the detail. If we are routinely pushing the terabyte boundary in our larger databases today, it wouldn't surprise me to see 10TB or even 100TB fact tables before the end of this decade. Such large tables must be simple in order to be processed efficiently. Dimensional modeling provides the kind of simplicity to make these large tables queryable in a cost-effective way.
Be Afraid: Powder-Sized RFID Chips
Fri Feb 16, 2007 8:58AM EST
Everyone's so paranoid about the RFID chips that are already in place in so many parts of our lives, so here's an item (via Engadget & Pink Tentacle) about Hitachi's new powder-sized RFID chips to make us even more scared of Big Brother (or little-Brother-ID thief). RFID chips are tiny microchips that use radio waves to do everything from conduct credit card transactions (as on those little key-fob-Paypass MasterCard thingies) and pay for tolls (EZ Pass and its ilk) to keeping track of your devices and travel (U.S. passports).
Hitachi plans to start marketing these new chips—seriously no bigger than a speck of dust at 0.05 x 0.05 mm—in two to three years. The company says this super-tiny chip can be used in paper, currency, gift certificates, and the like, but as some sites have pointed out, today's chips are already small enough for those uses. So, as Engadget cracked, does this mean we should be watching what we eat in case of some James-Bond-style pepper-shaker swap?Maybe, but is the terror around RFID over-hyped? According to most proponents of the technology, and my own experiences paying with PayPass at my local drug store, you really need to physically tap the RFID chip to something for the transaction to go through. And yet, when I go through a toll booth, my RFID-enabled EZ Pass box is only about ten feet away from the sensor. So maybe it is time to watch what you eat, lest Big Brother starts to track you wirelessly (or you spill some RFID powder from which evil ID thieves can extract your vital stats!)
What do you think? Is RFID worth the convenience or is it setting up some dangerous privacy-invasion precedents?
Related links:
Is RFID On Your Radar?
Step Right Up for Your Microchip Implant
Getting Swiped with a No-Swipe Credit Card
Chipping Away At Privacy
July 21, 2007, From Wire Reports, Dallas News
"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques," said Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company. He compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. "There's a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door." Innocuous? Maybe.
But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and theerosion of privacy in the digital age.Some see the chip as a security advance; others see something far darker.
To some, this microchip was a wondrous invention – a high-tech helper that could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to buy their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming someone else. ...
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