Posts tagged big brother

In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following Twitter and Facebook in an effort to stay ahead of America’s enemies.

At the agency’s Open Source Centre, a team known affectionately as the “vengeful librarians” also pores over newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms - anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.

From Arabic to Mandarin Chinese, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in native tongue.

They cross-reference it with the local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House, giving a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.

Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn’t know exactly when revolution might hit, said the centre’s director, Doug Naquin.

The center already had “predicted that social media in places like Egypt could be a game-changer and a threat to the regime,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press at the center. CIA officials said it was the first such visit by a reporter the agency has ever granted.

The CIA facility was set up in response to a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, with its first priority to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation. But its several hundred analysts - the actual number is classified - track a broad range, from Chinese Internet access to the mood on the street in Pakistan.

While most are based in Virginia, the analysts also are scattered throughout US embassies worldwide to get a step closer to the pulse of their subjects.

The most successful analysts, Naquin said, are something like the heroine of the crime novel “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” a quirky, irreverent computer hacker who “knows how to find stuff other people don’t know exists.”

Those with a masters’ degree in library science and multiple languages, especially those who grew up speaking another language, “make a powerful open source officer,” Naquin said.

The center had started focusing on social media after watching the Twitter-sphere rock the Iranian regime during the Green Revolution of 2009, when thousands protested the results of the elections that put Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power. “Farsi was the third largest presence in social media blogs at the time on the Web,” Naquin said.

The center’s analysis ends up in President Barack Obama’s daily intelligence briefing in one form or another, almost every day.

After bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in May, the CIA followed Twitter to give the White House a snapshot of world public opinion.

Since tweets can’t necessarily be pegged to a geographic location, the analysts broke down reaction by languages. The result: The majority of Urdu tweets, the language of Pakistan, and Chinese tweets, were negative. China is a close ally of Pakistan’s.

Pakistani officials protested the raid as an affront to their nation’s sovereignty, a sore point that continues to complicate U.S.-Pakistani relations.

Surveillance firms that recently attended a US conference are accused of offering their services to repressive regimes

In a luxury Washington, DC, hotel last month, governments from around the world gathered to discuss surveillance technology they would rather you did not know about. The annual Intelligence Support Systems (ISS) World Americas conference is a mecca for representatives from intelligence agencies and law enforcement. But to the media or members of the public, it is strictly off limits.

Gone are the days when mere telephone wiretaps satisfied authorities’ intelligence needs. Behind the cloak of secrecy at the ISS World conference, tips are shared about the latest advanced “lawful interception” methods used to spy on citizens – computer hacking, covert bugging and GPS tracking. Smartphones, email, instant message services and free chat services such as Skype have revolutionised communication. This has been matched by the development of increasingly sophisticated surveillance technology.

Among the pioneers is Hampshire-based Gamma International, a core ISS World sponsor. In April, Gamma made headlines when Egyptian activists raided state security offices in Cairo and found documents revealing Gamma had in 2010 offered Hosni Mubarak’s regime spy technology named FinFisher. The “IT intrusion” solutions offered by Gamma would have enabled authorities to infect targeted computers with a spyware virus so they could covertly monitor Skype conversations and other communications.

The use of such methods is more commonly associated with criminal hacking groups, who have used spyware and trojan viruses to infect computers and steal bank details or passwords. But as the internet has grown, intelligence agencies and law enforcement have adopted similar techniques.

“Traditionally communications flowed through phone companies, but consumers are increasingly using communications that operate outwith their jurisdiction. This changes the way interception is carried out … the current method of choice would seem to be spyware, or trojan horses,” said Chris Soghoian, a Washington-based surveillance and privacy expert. “There’s now a thriving outsourced surveillance industry and they are there to meet the needs and wants of countries from around the world, including those who are more – and less – respectful to human rights.”

In 2009, while a government employee, Soghoian attended ISS World. He made recordings of seminars and later published them online – which led him to be the subject of an investigation and, ultimately, cost him his Federal Trade Commission job. The level of secrecy around the sale of such technology by western companies, he believes, is cause for alarm.

“When there are five or six conferences held in closed locations every year, where telecommunications companies, surveillance companies and government ministers meet in secret to cut deals, buy equipment, and discuss the latest methods to intercept their citizens’ communications – that I think meets the level of concern,” he said. “They say that they are doing it with the best of intentions. And they say that they are doing it in a way that they have checks and balances and controls to make sure that these technologies are not being abused. But decades of history show that surveillance powers are abused – usually for political purposes.”

Another company that annually attends ISS World is Italian surveillance developer Hacking Team. A small, 35-employee software house based in Milan, Hacking Team’s technology – which costs more than £500,000 for a “medium-sized installation” – gives authorities the ability to break into computers or smartphones, allowing targeted systems to be remotely controlled. It can secretly enable the microphone on a targeted computer and even take clandestine snapshots using its webcam, sending the pictures and audio along with any other information – such as emails, passwords and documents – back to the authorities for inspection. The smartphone version of the software has the ability to track a person’s movements via GPS as well as perform a function described as “remote audio spy”, effectively turning the phone into a bug without its user’s knowledge. The venture capital-backed company boasts that its technology can be used “country-wide” to monitor more than 100,000 targets simultaneously, and cannot be detected by anti-virus software.

“Information such as address books or SMS messages or images or documents might never leave the device. Such data might never be sent to the network. The only way to get it is to hack the terminal device, take control of it and finally access to the relevant data,” says David Vincenzetti, founding partner of Hacking Team, who adds that the company has sold its software in 30 countries across five continents. “Our investors have set up a legal committee whose goal is to promptly and continuously advise us on the status of each country we are talking to. The committee takes into account UN resolutions, international treaties, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International recommendations.”

Three weeks ago Berlin-based hacker collective the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) exposed covert spy software used by German police forces similar to that offered by Hacking Team. The “Bundestrojaner [federal trojan]” software, which state officials confirmed had been used, gave law enforcement the power to gain complete control over an infected computer. The revelation prompted an outcry in Germany, as the use of such methods is strictly regulated under the country’s constitutional law. (A court ruling in 2008 established a “basic right to the confidentiality and integrity of information-technological systems”.)

“Lots of what intelligence agencies have been doing in the last few years is basically computer infiltration, getting data from computers and installing trojans on other people’s computers,” said Frank Rieger, a CCC spokesman. “It has become part of the game, and what we see now is a diffusion of intelligence methods into normal police work. We’re seeing the same mindset creeping in. They’re using the same surreptitious methods to gain knowledge without remembering that they are the police and they need to follow due process.”

In the UK there is legislation governing the use of all intrusive surveillance. Covert intelligence-gathering by law enforcement or government agencies is regulated under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), which states that to intercept communications a warrant must be authorised by the home secretary and be deemed necessary and proportionate in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic wellbeing of the country. There were 1,682 interception warrants approved by the home secretary in 2010, latest official figures show.

According to Jonathan Krause, an IT security expert who previously worked for Scotland Yard’s hi-tech crime unit, bugging computers is becoming an increasingly important methodology for UK law enforcement. “There are trojans that will be customer written to get past usual security, firewalls, malware scanning and anti-virus devices, but these sorts of things will only be aimed at serious criminals,” he said.

Concerns remain, however, that despite export control regulations, western companies have been supplying high-tech surveillance software to countries where there is little or no legislation governing its use. In 2009, for instance, it was reported that American developer SS8 had allegedly supplied the United Arab Emirates with smartphone spyware, after about 100,000 users were sent a bogus software update by telecommunications company Etisalat. The technology, if left undetected, would have enabled authorities to bypass BlackBerry email encryption by mining communications from devices before they were sent.

Computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum is well aware what it is like to be a target of covert surveillance. He is a core member of the Tor Project, which develops free internet anonymising software used by activists and government dissidents across the Middle East and north Africa to evade government monitoring. A former spokesman for WikiLeaks, Appelbaum has had his own personal emails scrutinised by the US government as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation into the whistleblower organisation. On 13 October he was in attendance at ISS World where he was hoping to arrange a presentation about Tor – only to be ejected after one of the surveillance companies complained about his presence.

“There’s something to be said about how these guys are not interested in regulating themselves and they’re interested in keeping people in the dark about what they’re doing,” he says. “These people are not unlike mercenaries. The companies don’t care about anything, except what the law says. In this case, if the law’s ambiguous, they’ll do whatever the law doesn’t explicitly deny. It’s all about money for them, and they don’t care.

“This tactical exploitation stuff, where they’re breaking into people’s computers, bugging them … they make these arguments that it’s good, that it saves lives,” he said. “But we have examples that show this is not true. I was just in Tunisia a couple of days ago and I met people who told me that posting on Facebook resulted in death squads showing up in your house.”

The growth in the use of these methods across the world, Appelbaum believes, means governments now have a vested interest in keeping computer users’ security open to vulnerabilities. “Intelligence [agencies] want to keep computers weak as it makes it easier to surveil you,” he says, adding that an increase in demand for such technology among law enforcement agencies is of equal concern.

“I don’t actually think breaking into the computer of a terrorist is the world’s worst idea – it might in fact be the only option – but these guys [surveillance technology companies] are trying to sell to any police officer,” he says. “I mean, what business does the Baltimore local police have doing tactical exploitation into people’s computers? They have no business doing that. They could just go to the house, serve a warrant, and take the computer. This is a kind of state terror that is simply unacceptable in my opinion.”

Jerry Lucas, the president of the company behind ISS World, TeleStrategies, does not deny surveillance developers that attend his conference supply to repressive regimes. In fact, he is adamant that the manufacturers of surveillance technology, such as Gamma International, SS8 and Hacking Team, should be allowed to sell to whoever they want.

“The surveillance that we display in our conferences, and discuss how to use, is available to any country in the world,” he said. “Do some countries use this technology to suppress political statements? Yes, I would say that’s probably fair to say. But who are the vendors to say that the technology is not being used for good as well as for what you would consider not so good?”

Would he be comfortable in the knowledge that regimes in Zimbabwe and North Korea were purchasing this technology from western companies? “That’s just not my job to determine who’s a bad country and who’s a good country. That’s not our business, we’re not politicians … we’re a for-profit company. Our business is bringing governments together who want to buy this technology.”

TeleStrategies organises a number of conferences around the world, including in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Every country has a need for the latest covert IT intrusion technology, according to Lucas, because modern criminal investigations cannot be conducted without it. He claimed “99.9% good comes from the industry” and accused the media of not covering surveillance-related issues objectively.

“I mean, you can sell cars to Libyan rebels, and those cars and trucks are used as weapons. So should General Motors and Nissan wonder, ‘how is this truck going to be used?’ Why don’t you go after the auto makers?” he said. “It’s an open market. You cannot stop the flow of surveillance equipment.”

CONROE, Texas — A Houston area law enforcement agency is prepared to launch an unmanned drone that could someday carry weapons, Local 2 Investigates reported Friday.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Conroe paid $300,000 in federal homeland security grant money and Friday it received the ShadowHawk unmanned helicopter made by Vanguard Defense Industries of Spring.

A laptop computer is used to control the 50-pound unmanned chopper, and a game-like console is used to aim and zoom a powerful camera and infrared heat-seeking device mounted on the front.

“To be in on the ground floor of this is pretty exciting for us here in Montgomery County,” Sheriff Tommy Gage said.

He said the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) could be used in hunting criminals who are running from police or assessing a scene where SWAT team officers are facing an active shooter.

Gage said it will also be deployed for criminal investigations such as drug shipments.”We’re not going to use it to be invading somebody’s privacy. It’ll be used for situations we have with criminals,” Gage said.

It could have been used to help firefighters in the recent tri-county wildfires, he said, and it also could be handy in future scenarios like a recent search for a missing college student in The Woodlands.

In 2007, Local 2 Investigates uncovered a secret Houston Police Department test of a different kind of drone, fueling a nationwide debate over civil liberties and privacy.A constitutional law professor and other civil liberties watchdogs told Local 2 Investigates that questions about police searches without warrants would crop up, as well as police spying into back yards or other private areas.HPD fueled that 2007 controversy even further by suggesting that drones could be used for writing speeding tickets.

The backlash prompted Mayor Annise Parker to scrap HPD’s plans for using drones when she took office.Gage said he is aware of those concerns.”No matter what we do in law enforcement, somebody’s going to question it, but we’re going to do the right thing, and I can assure you of that,” he said.

He said two deputies are finishing their training and should be ready to fly police missions within the next month.Tapped to operate the Montgomery County Sheriff’s helicopter UAV are Sgt. Melvin Franklin, a licensed pilot, and Lt. Damon Hall, who heads the department’s crime lab and crime scene unit. The sheriff said Hall’s SWAT team background will assist the department in using the new tool on hostage standoffs or active shooter events.The ShadowHawk chopper was displayed on a small conference room table as it was unveiled Friday. It displayed a sheriff’s logo and flashing blue lights on the side. On the front of the chopper, a grapefruit sized back unit houses the camera and Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR) sensor that can detect heat from a gun or a suspect’s body.Deputies said they can quickly switch between day and night vision on the camera, which is zoomed and moved from side to side by a game-like console inside a police command vehicle on the ground.

The display shows up on a small TV-like box, while the actual flight controls are handled from a laptop computer.Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, said this is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units.He said they are designed to carry weapons for local law enforcement.”The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems,” he said, including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a “stun baton.”“You have a stun baton where you can actually engage somebody at altitude with the aircraft. A stun baton would essentially disable a suspect,” he said.Gage said he has no immediate plans to outfit his drone with weapons, and he also ruled out using the chopper for catching speeders.”We’re not going to use it for that,” he said.

Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel said, “I’m tickled to death” about using the drone, pointing out that in his years of police work he could imagine countless incidents having ended more quickly and easily.”It’s so simple in its design and the objectives, you just wonder why anyone would choose not to have it,” said McDaniel.At the same time Houston police were testing a different drone, the Miami-Dade Metro Police department was also taking test flights of a helicopter UAV, and the Federal Aviation Administration said that department is now using its drone for local police work.

The San Diego Police Department also made local headlines in 2008 for beginning its own flights with a fixed-wing UAV.But Les Dorr, an FAA spokesman in Washington, said very few local police departments actually have the required certificate of authorization (COA) to fly police missions nationwide.He said Montgomery County is the first COA by a local police department in all of Texas.In September 2008, the Government Accountability Office issued a 73-page report that raised issues about police drones endangering airspace for small planes or even commercial airliners.The report’s author, Gerald Dillingham, told Local 2 Investigates that 65 percent of the crashes of military drones on the battlefield were caused by mechanical failures.He said a police UAV could lose its link to the ground controllers if wind knocks the aircraft out of range or the radio frequencies are disrupted.”If you lose that communication link as the result of that turbulence or for any other reason, then you have an aircraft that is not in control and can in fact crash into something on the ground or another aircraft,” said Dillingham.Pilots of small planes expressed those concerns in the original 2007 Local 2 Investigates reporting on police drones, and the FAA reported then that police departments across the country were lining up to apply for their own drones.

At Montgomery County, Franklin said an onboard GPS system is designed to keep the UAV on target and connected with the ground controllers. He said coordinates are plotted in advance and a command is given for the UAV to fly directly to that spot, adjusting to turbulence and other factors. He said he and the other controller can alter “waypoints” quickly on the laptop to move the chopper to areas that had not previously been mapped out. He said the aircraft moves at a speed of 30 knots, which he said makes it unsuitable for police pursuits.Small aircraft pilots have expressed concerns that drones cannot practice the “see and avoid” rule that keeps aircraft from colliding in mid-air. Since the camera may be aimed somewhere else, pilots said police controllers may not be able to see and avoid other aircraft in the area during a sudden police emergency.

Gage said he would take every concern into account as his UAV is deployed.The only routine law enforcement flights inside the United States over the past four years have been the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Their border flights over Texas and Arizona have included one crash, where the drone lost its link to the ground controller.

WASHINGTON — Three leading technology industry groups urged members of the US Congress on Monday to oppose a copyright protection bill being proposed in the House of Representatives.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would give US authorities more tools to crack down on websites accused of piracy of movies, television shows and music and the sale of counterfeit goods.

The legislation has received the backing of Hollywood and the music industry but has come under fire from digital rights and free speech groups.

It also came in for criticism on Monday from the powerful Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetCoalition, whose members include Google and Yahoo!.

In a letter to members of Congress, they said the legislation “has been framed by its sponsors as a vehicle to protect US trademarks and copyrights from foreign ‘rogue’ websites.

“While we support this concept, (the bill) puts lawful US Internet and technology companies at risk,” the letter said.

“Under this bill, a foreign or domestic Internet site that has broken no US law can nevertheless have its economic lifeblood cut off upon a single notice from a copyright or trademark owner,” it said.

“As currently drafted, we believe SOPA is an alarming step backwards” that would create a “litigation and liability nightmare for Internet and technology companies and social media,” the letter said.

“Virtually every Internet site that allows user-generated content can be subject to suit under SOPA and the bill could force Internet companies to police their users? activities,” it said.

“In short, this is not a bill that targets ‘rogue foreign sites.’ Rather, it allows movie studios, foreign luxury goods manufacturers, patent and copyright trolls, and any holder of any intellectual property right to target lawful US websites and technology companies,” the letter said.

The Stop Online Piracy Act is the House version of a bill introduced in the Senate in May known as the Theft of Intellectual Property Act or Protect IP Act.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, said the bill would help “stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators.”

“The bill prevents online thieves from selling counterfeit goods in the US, expands international protections for intellectual property, and protects American consumers from dangerous counterfeit products,” Smith said.

The House Judiciary Committee is to hold a hearing on the bill on November 16.

The Obama administration has come in for some criticism for shutting down dozens of “rogue websites” over the past year as part of a crackdown known as “Operation in Our Sites.”

US authorities in November, for example, shut down 82 websites selling mostly Chinese-made counterfeit goods, including golf clubs, Walt Disney movies, handbags and other items.

(Source: google.com)

Photo: A TSA Officer gropes a man in the name of national security.

Two former Transportation Security Administration officers based at John F. Kennedy Airport have admitted to stealing $40,000 in cash from a checked bag.

The Queens District Attorney’s Office says 44-year-old Coumar Persad, of Queens, and 31-year-old Davon Webb, of the Bronx, pleaded guilty on Thursday to grand larceny, obstructing governmental administration and official misconduct. They each face six months in jail and five years’ probation at their Jan. 10 sentencing.

Authorities say the two TSA officers swiped the cash after spotting it in a piece of luggage while it was being X-rayed. The cash was recovered.

An attorney for Persad said his client understands he made a mistake and wishes to move on with his life

Facebook is threatened with legal action in Germany over its facial recognition software, which critics say violates privacy and data protection laws.

The tool runs all photos uploaded to the social networking site through a programme and identifies the user’s friends on each picture. There was an outcry when it was rolled out in June to more than 500m members worldwide, though users can opt out of the automatic tagging, Facebook can still gather and store (indefinitely) all photos added to the site.

Now Hamburg’s data protection official has written to Facebook to demand it stops running the facial recognition programme on German users and deletes any related data. Johannes Caspar said the German authorities would take action if Facebook did not comply and could face fines of up to €300,000 (£262,000).

“Should Facebook maintain the function, it must ensure that only data from persons who have declared consent to the storage of their biometric facial profiles be stored in the database,” he said. The software offered potential for “considerable abuse” and was illegal.

It’s not the first time multinational technology firms have hit problems in Germany, which takes online privacy much more seriously than many other countries. In April, Google said it would not be collecting any more pictures for its German Street View project. The decision followed a series of objections after the mapping of 20 German cities for the service, which takes pictures of every street and property within a municipality. Germany’s privacy laws generally restrict photographs of people and property except in public places, such as a sporting event, without a person’s consent.

“The legal situation is clear in my opinion,” Caspar told Wednesday’s Hamburger Abendblatt. “If the data were to get into the wrong hands, then someone with a picture taken on a mobile phone could use biometrics to compare the pictures and make an identification,” he said. Such a system could be used by undemocratic governments to spy on the opposition or by security services around the world. “The right to anonymity is in danger,” he said.

Caspar is backed by the federal consumer protection ministry. “We expect Facebook to comply with all European and German data protection standards and for it to respond to the request from the Hamburg regional data protection officer,” said a spokeswoman.

A Facebook spokeswoman told Spiegel Online the company was looking at Caspar’s request, but that it “firmly rejected any accusations that we are not complying with our obligations to European Union data protection laws”.

An estimated 75bn photos have been uploaded to Facebook since it was set up by Mark Zuckerberg as an online directory for Harvard University students in 2004.

This weekend, a New York City man bought his wife an iPhone 4S and loaded Apple’s new Find My Friends app.

Find My Friends enables you to see the rough overall location of friends who’ve allowed you to follow them, so of course this story quickly turns sour.

The man had been suspecting his wife of cheating with a guy who lives uptown, so one night, he asked her what she was doing.

She responded that she was hanging out in the Meatpacking District (which is West Side), but when he opened Find My Friends, it appeared that she was actually in the Upper East Side.

The man, who goes by Thomas Metz, posted the story and a screenshot to the MacRumors forums. He says he plans to “meet her at the lawyer’s office in a few weeks.”

While we can’t verify the truthfulness of the story, this kind of occurrence is bound to start happening more and more frequently.

Find My Friends may’ve changed privacy forever by finally making user locations accessible.

See below for a screenshot:

A Japanese company has been forced to tone down a smartphone application that allows women to secretly track their husbands or boyfriends.

The ‘Boyfriend Log’ app allows people to track the movements of a smartphone, and presumably its owner.

The company behind the application, Tokyo firm Manuscript, marketed it towards women as a way for them to keep tabs on their boyfriends or husbands.

It also suggested women secretly install it on their partner’s phones.

But after complaints that the app was a form of spyware, its maker has apologised and toned down its functions.

An icon on the targeted smartphone will now be displayed to show the application is running.

(Source: abc.net.au)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — If you’re involved in a traffic accident with no witnesses except you and the other driver, it’s just your word against his, right?

Wrong.

Your own car just might tattle on you if you’re at fault.

So-called event data recorders that function much like the “black boxes” on airplanes, and which are now installed on virtually all new vehicles, can give investigators incriminating details about your driving behavior in the final seconds before a crash.

Some motorists — fearful of what they see as an invasion of privacy — aren’t too happy about that.

“I didn’t think my ‘98 Saturn was new enough to have the data recorder, but apparently it does, and I think it should be up to me to decide how and when I share that information with someone else,” said Bob McClellan Jr., 35, of Antioch.

“If I were given the opportunity to agree to have this on the vehicle when I buy it, then that probably would be OK,” McClellan said. “But if I own the car, it’s my business what’s on the recorder, and no one should be able to access it unless I say so.”

Details that can be scrutinized include how fast the vehicle was going, as well as whether the brakes or accelerator were being pressed, which way the car was being steered, and — yes — even whether the occupants were wearing their seatbelts. The data is always being recorded, but it’s only saved to the device’s memory if an air bag deploys, automakers say.

Critics argue that the system is a snoop and unfair to consumers.

“It’s in the cars, it can’t be turned off, and the information is available to anyone with a court order,” said Gary Biller, executive director of the National Motorists Association, a group that advocates on behalf of drivers in instances of unfair traffic enforcement.

“Our members ask whether these devices can be disabled, but they can’t, because they are integral to the computer systems that control modern cars,” Biller said.

Laws have been implemented in 13 states to limit access to the information in the recorders, but there are no such regulations on the books in Tennessee and many other states to prevent someone from uploading the data without permission.

Getting that data is easier on some vehicles than others, but a Nashville company, VCE Inc., has been at the forefront of using information from the recorders to reconstruct traffic accidents since the introduction of the devices in the mid-1990s.

“We have been involved from the start and were among the first ones to begin downloading the data from these recorders for the accident reconstructions we do for attorneys and insurance companies,” VCI Vice President Todd Hutchison said.

“We typically get permission from the owner of the vehicle, but that’s not necessarily who owned it at the time of the accident,” he pointed out. “If the insurance company has bought the salvaged vehicle, they can give us permission.”

Data easy to collect(AT)

Collecting the data is simple. VCE investigators merely connect to the vehicle’s diagnostic system using a cord that attaches to a laptop computer, and special software then reads the data, Hutchison said.

Both Metro police and the Tennessee Highway Patrol have the equipment to capture the information after an accident, he said.

It doesn’t always take a wired connection to access the data. Beginning with the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze, General Motors will be able to upload the information from the recorders wirelessly through the OnStar system included on most of the automaker’s vehicles.

And Biller said his organization has heard of possible transponder-style readers that could upload the data just by coming close to a vehicle that is equipped with special technology similar to that used by automated toll-collection systems.

“It’s a valuable tool for insurance companies,” said Buddy Oakes, a Columbia-based insurance claims adjuster. “If there is no way to tell right away what happened in an accident, sometimes we request permission from the vehicle owner or through the court to extract the data, which gives us the last 15 seconds of activity before the impact.

“It shows how fast the car was going, how hard it was being braked, what evasive moves were made. We’ve had people say they were sitting still at a stoplight and got hit, when the data recorder shows they were doing 30 mph through the intersection.”

Data used to calculate rates

Some insurance companies also are using the data to help rate customers’ driving habits to determine how much their premiums should be, but that would be only with the customers’ cooperation, Oakes said.

As for the expectation of privacy, “that pretty much went out the door for most things a long time ago,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s privacy on anything anymore. Every phone call you make can be tracked, and just about anything that becomes a legal matter becomes public information.”

Automakers defend the development and use of the data recorders as a great research tool to help make vehicles safer.

“For us, the whole purpose was safety research,” said GM safety spokeswoman Sharon Basel.

The devices were first installed in conjunction with the introduction of air bags in cars nearly two decades ago to show what forces were involved in activating the bags and to help automakers improve them, automakers say.

“We have them in all of our vehicles, and have had since the mid-’90s,” Basel said.

Nissan, Ford, Toyota and most other automakers have been using the technology in their new vehicles since at least the mid-2000s.

There are no requirements for them to put the devices in cars, but beginning with the 2011 model year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires that automakers state in the vehicle owner’s manual whether a recorder is installed and where it is located. Locations vary by make, model and year.

“We feel that, overall, it is a benefit for auto safety, but we also go to great lengths to protect our customers’ privacy,” said Ford Motor Co. spokesman Wes Sherwood. “If anyone wants access to the data, they will need the owner’s consent or the proper legal authority to do so. But the devices are included on all Ford vehicles now, and we have a supplier that provides a tool for reading the information. It’s widely available to law enforcement or anyone else with the authority to download the data.”

Dealership service departments can download the data from the recorders, which also store reports about vehicle malfunctions to help pinpoint maintenance problems, said Nelson Andrews, general manager of Nelson Cadillac and Land Rover Nashville. He said the devices go “a long way toward helping us fix” whatever is wrong.

“There’s really nothing people can do about it,” Andrews adds. “But my cellphone collects more data than these devices do.”

Nissan is among automakers that provide dealers with software to collect and analyze data from the recorders, said spokesman Steve Yaeger.

“We have event data recorders on all of our vehicles, and we have software called Consult that can be used by qualified people to read that data,” Yaeger said. “All of our dealers have it. But it’s protected by a code, and is not available to just everybody.”

“If it’s requested by law enforcement or court order, though, we can provide the information for that.”

(Source: USA Today)

SHOPPING centres will monitor customers’ mobile phones to track how often they visit, which stores they like and how long they stay.

The technology, brought to Australia by a UK-based company, has prompted a call for privacy or telephone intercept regulators to investigate.

One unnamed Queensland shopping centre is next month due to become the first in the nation to fit receivers that detect unique mobile phone radio frequency codes to pinpoint location within two metres.

The company behind the Footpath system says it is also in discussions with other major Australian sites.

Path Intelligence national sales manager Kerry Baddeley stressed that no mobile phone user names or numbers could be accessed.

“All we do is log the movement of a phone around an area and aggregate this to provide trend data for businesses,” she said.

“It’s much less intrusive or invasive than existing people-counting methods, for instance CCTV cameras and number plate monitoring.”

Australian Privacy Foundation chairman Dr Roger Clarke said emerging retail tracking techniques were “seriously creepy” and should be thoroughly investigated.

Prominent signs should notify and seek consent from customers, he said.

Some shops are already using image-monitoring to log customers’ movements, how long they stop in front of products, and whether they are male or female.

Federal Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said the Privacy Act applied only if the information collected identified individuals.

Ms Baddeley said mobile phone monitoring, already operating in the UK and US, would help the struggling retail sector develop marketing campaigns and identify the best mix of shops in centres.

She said receivers attached to walls picked up phone transmissions. Data was then fed via the internet to computer servers to create weekly reports outlining popular customer routes and visitors’ length of stay.

The shopping centre in question said it planned a public announcement once the system was running.
Retailers have been enthusiastic users of hand-held technology, with online auction site eBay yesterday announcing it planned to add image recognition to its mobile offerings early next year.

That will mean shoppers can snap photos of items they covet, such as the dress a friend is wearing, and an eBay app will find similar items for sale on its website.

The image recognition plan sounds similar to Google Inc’s Google Goggles smartphone app, which lets users photograph text or certain types of objects that Google then searches for on the internet.