Posts tagged brother

Hawaii’s legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.

Its House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing this morning on a new bill (PDF) requiring the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents. The measure, H.B. 2288, says “Internet destination history information” and “subscriber’s information” such as name and address must be saved for two years.

H.B. 2288, which was introduced Friday, says the dossiers must include a list of Internet Protocol addresses and domain names visited. Democratic Rep. John Mizuno of Oahu is the lead sponsor; Mizuno also introduced H.B. 2287, a computer crime bill, at the same time last week.

Last summer, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) managed to persuade a divided committee in the U.S. House of Representatives to approve his data retention proposal, which doesn’t go nearly as far as Hawaii’s. (Smith, currently Hollywood’s favorite Republican, has become better known as the author of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.)

Democrat Jill Tokuda, the Hawaii Senate’s majority whip, who introduced a companion bill, S.B. 2530, in the Senate, told CNET that her legislation was intended to address concerns raised by Rep. Kymberly Pine, the first Republican elected to her Oahu district since statehood and the House minority floor leader.

“I was asked to introduce the Senate companions on these Internet security related bills by Representative Kymberly Marcos Pine after her own personal experience in this area,” Tokuda said. “I would defer to her on the origins of these bills as she has done the research and outreach, and been the main champion of this effort.”

Pine, who did not immediately respond to queries, has been targeted by a disgruntled Web designer, Eric Ryan, who launched KymPineIsACrook.com and claims she owes him money, according to an article last summer in the Hawaii Reporter. Her e-mail account was also reportedly hacked around the same time. The article said Pine would advocate for “tougher cyber laws at the Hawaii State Capitol” as a result.

“We must do everything we can to protect the people of Hawaii from these attacks and give prosecutors the tools to ensure justice is served for victims,” Pine said at the time.

Whatever its sponsors’ motivations, the bill isn’t exactly being welcomed by Hawaiian Internet companies.

“This bill represents a radical violation of privacy and opens the door to rampant Fourth Amendment violations,” says Daniel Leuck, chief executive of Honolulu-based software design boutique Ikayzo, who submitted testimony opposing the bill. He adds: “Even forcing telephone companies to record everyone’s conversations, which is unthinkable, would be less of an intrusion.”

Mizuno’s proposal currently specifies no privacy protections, such as placing restrictions on what Internet providers can do with this information (like selling user profiles to advertisers) or requiring that police obtain a court order before perusing the virtual dossiers of Hawaiian citizens. Also absent are security requirements such as mandating the use of encryption.

Because the wording is so broad and applies to any company that “provides access to the Internet,” Mizuno’s legislation could sweep in far more than AT&T, Verizon, and Hawaii’s local Internet providers. It could also impose sweeping new requirements on coffee shops, bookstores, and hotels frequented by the over 6 million tourists who visit the islands each year.

“H.B. 2288 raises all of the traditional concerns associated with data retention, and then some,” Kate Dean, head of the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association in Washington, D.C., which counts Verizon and AT&T as members, told CNET. “And this may be the broadest mandate we’ve seen.”

Even the Justice Department has only lobbied the U.S. Congress to record Internet Protocol addresses assigned to individuals—users’ origin IP address, in other words. It hasn’t publicly demanded that companies record the destination IP addresses as well.

In Washington, D.C., the fight over data retention requirements has been simmering since the Justice Department pushed the topic in 2005, a development that was first reported by CNET. Proposals publicly surfaced in the U.S. Congress the following year, and President Bush’s attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said it’s an issue that “must be addressed.” So, eventually, did FBI director Robert Mueller.

(Source: CNET)

The Indian government is ramping up efforts to fingerprint and iris scan the entirety of its 1.2 billion citizens in an ambitious scheme to issue national ID cards with biometric details. The plan has so far already enrolled 110 million people and issued 60 million numbers, with the aim of enrolling 200 million by this March and 600 million by 2014.

The Indian government is ramping up efforts to fingerprint and iris scan the entirety of its 1.2 billion citizens in an ambitious scheme to issue national ID cards with biometric details. The plan has so far already enrolled 110 million people and issued 60 million numbers, with the aim of enrolling 200 million by this March and 600 million by 2014.

The project stems from two separate, overlapping schemes, the Unique Identifcation program (UID), aimed at providing India’s 200 million poorest citizens with failsafe access to the country’s welfare system, and the National Population Register (NPR), aimed at providing a national ID card to help identify and deport undocumented immigrants.

Last month, the UID plan hit a roadblock when a Parliamentary committee issued a blistering attack on the scheme, calling it “directionless” and “full of uncertainty,” while critics note the danger of the project in the absence of coherent privacy laws. Just how the government will use the information, or even who will have access to it, has yet to be properly determined.

Although fast becoming the largest such database in the world, it is not the only government-administered repository of biometric details. Nations across the globe are increasingly turning to the collection of biometric information under a host of programs, including proposed national id schemes like the one being implemented in India.

Countries around the world are now adopting biometric passports and travel documents that use fingerprints and digital photographs to verify passenger identity. Presented as a way of streamlining and standardizing entry and exit procedures at national borders, what the public is not told is that these documents are the end result of a years-long process of coordination that has codified the technical specifications for these systems via international agreements. In addition, countries are increasingly agreeing on an infrastructure for sharing their biometric databases between each other via database sharing agreements that have received scant attention.

Governments around the world are eager to tout the potential benefits of these national identification registers in glossy promotional videos depicting gleaming science-fiction-like future societies of efficiency, however the privacy and civil liberties implications of this technology are seldom discussed.

The UK under the Labour government of Tony Blair and later Gordon Brown attempted to implement a national identity register and ID card system that would have required the logging of an extensive amount of personal and biometric information in a central database, but the program caused waves of protest and the government eventually gave in to the public outcry, scrapping the plan for the national registry and instead only implementing the biometric id scheme for foreign nationals:

Now, concerned Indian citizens are hoping that a boycott can be organized to help derail the Indian id card scheme to prevent the institution of an all-seeing surveillance state, and to keep this information from being sold to the highest bidder in a country notorious for its official corruption.

(Source: grtv.ca)

Children as young as four could be fingerprinted to take out books from a school library.

(Source: telegraph.co.uk)

• Fake profiles used by Department of Homeland Security, says privacy group
• List of keywords flags ‘danger’ signal
• DHS may attempt to identify users from their accounts
• Keywords include ‘virus’, ‘drill’ and ‘illegal immigrant’

The Department of Homeland Security makes fake Twitter and Facebook profiles for the specific purpose of scanning the networks for ‘sensitive’ words - and tracking people who use them.

Simply using a word or phrase from the DHS’s ‘watch’ list could mean that spies from the government read your posts, investigate your account, and attempt to identify you from it, acccording to an online privacy group.

The words which attract attention range from ones seemingly related to diseases or bioweapons such as ‘human to animal’ and ‘outbreak’ to other, more obscure words such as ‘drill’ and ‘strain’.

The DHS also watches for words such as ‘illegal immigrant’.

The DHS outlined plans to scans blogs, Twitter and Facebook for words such as ‘illegal immigrant’, ‘outbreak’, ‘drill’, ‘strain’, ‘virus’, ‘recovery’, ‘deaths’, ‘collapse’, ‘human to animal’ and ‘trojan’, according to an ‘impact asssessment’ document filed by the agency.

When its search tools net an account using the phrases, they record personal information.

It’s still not clear how this information is used - and who the DHS shares it with.

An online privacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Centre has requested information on the DHS’s scans, which it says the agency announced in February.

The privacy group has requested information on the DHS, and contractors it claims are working with the agency to scan social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The group says that the government has used scans of social media before to analyse specific events - such as the 2010 BP oil spill - but this general ‘watching’ of social media using fake profiles is new.

‘The initiatives were designed to gather information from ‘online forums, blogs, public websites, and message boards,’ to store and analyze the information gathered, and then to ‘disseminate relevant and appropriate de-identified information to federal, state, local, and foreign governments and private sector partners,’ the group said in a court filing.

The group claims that a request under the Freedom of Information Act to access the documentation has gone unanswered.

(Source: Daily Mail)

Photo: Scientists are researching how to link your brain to your devices, such as a computer or a smartphone

Century-old technology colossus IBM has depicted a near future in which machines read minds and recognise who they are dealing with.

The “IBM 5 in 5” predictions were based on societal trends and research which the New York State-based company expected to begin bearing fruit by the year 2017.

“From Houdini to Skywalker to X-Men, mind reading has merely been wishful thinking for science fiction fans for decades, but their wish may soon come true,” IBM said in its annual assessment of innovations on the horizon.

“IBM scientists are among those researching how to link your brain to your devices, such as a computer or a smartphone,” it continued.

IBM gave the examples of ringing someone up just by thinking it, or willing a cursor to move on a computer screen.

Biological makeup will become the key to personal identity, with retina scans of recognition of faces or voices used to confirm who people are rather than typing in passwords, the company forecast.

“Imagine you will be able to walk up to an ATM machine to securely withdraw money by simply speaking your name or looking into a tiny sensor that can recognise the unique patterns in the retina of your eye,” IBM said.

“Or by doing the same, you can check your account balance on your mobile phone or tablet,” it continued.

Technology will also be able to produce electric power from any type of movement, from walking or bicycle riding to water flowing through pipes of homes, IBM predicted.

Mobile phones will narrow the digital divide between “haves and have-nots” by making information easily accessible and junk email will be eliminated by smarter filtering and masterful targeting of ads people like, according to IBM.

AFP

(Source: abc.net.au)

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year.

Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year’s Day, two U.S. malls — Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. — will track guests’ movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.

While the data that’s collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers’ paths from store to store.

The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria’s Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren’t being visited?

While U.S. malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this is the first time they’ve used cell phones.

But obtaining that information comes with privacy concerns.

The management company of both malls, Forest City Commercial Management, says personal data is not being tracked.

“We won’t be looking at singular shoppers,” said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. “The system monitors patterns of movement. We can see, like migrating birds, where people are going to.”

Still, the company is preemptively notifying customers by hanging small signs around the shopping centers. Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones.

The tracking system, called FootPath Technology, works through a series of antennas positioned throughout the shopping center that capture the unique identification number assigned to each phone (similar to a computer’s IP address), and tracks its movement throughout the stores.

The system can’t take photos or collect data on what shoppers have purchased. And it doesn’t collect any personal details associated with the ID, like the user’s name or phone number. That information is fiercely protected by mobile carriers, and often can be legally obtained only through a court order.

“We don’t need to know who it is and we don’t need to know anyone’s cell phone number, nor do we want that,” Shriver-Engdahl said.

Manufactured by a British company, Path Intelligence, this technology has already been used in shopping centers in Europe and Australia. And according to Path Intelligence CEO Sharon Biggar, hardly any shoppers decide to opt out.

“It’s just not invasive of privacy,” she said. “There are no risks to privacy, so I don’t see why anyone would opt out.”

Now, U.S. retailers including JCPenney (JCP, Fortune 500) and Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500) are also working with Path Intelligence to use their technology, Biggar said.

Home Depot has considered implementing the technology but is not currently using it any stores, a company spokesman said. JCPenney declined to comment on its relationship with the vendor.

Why Apple and Google need to stalk you

Some retail analysts say the new technology is nothing to be worried about. Malls have been tracking shoppers for years through people counters, security cameras, heat maps and even undercover researchers who follow shoppers around.

And some even say websites that track online shoppers are more invasive, recording not only a user’s name and purchases, but then targeting them with ads even after they’ve left a site.

“It’s important for shoppers to realize this sort of data is being collected anyway,” Biggar said.

Whereas a website can track a customer who doesn’t make a purchase, physical stores have been struggling to perfect this kind of research, Biggar said. By combining the data from FootPath with their own sales figures, stores will have better measurements to help them improve the shopping experience.

“We can now say, you had 100 people come to this product, but no one purchased it,” Biggar said. “From there, we can help a retailer narrow down what’s going wrong.”

FULL-BODY scanners will be introduced at Australia’s eight major gateway airports after receiving the green light from the federal government.

The decision comes after trials of the scanners in Melbourne and Sydney and has a target date of July 1 2012.

EU Adopts Rules To Use Full-Body Scanners At Airports

BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)—The European Commission Monday adopted rules that will allow airports in the European Union to use full-body scanners instead of metal detectors at their security checks, while also guaranteeing strict privacy standards for passengers.

The measures will “ensure that where this new technology is used it will be covered by EU-wide standards on detection capability as well as strict safeguards to protect health and fundamental rights,” Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said in a statement. “The new legislation legally allows member states and airports to replace current security systems with security scanners,” the commission said.

The use of this type of scanner—on which each country can decide—has seen some opposition in the EU, as the systems can detect plastic explosives that wouldn’t be found by a regular scanner, but can also give a full picture of a person’s body, possibly breaching their rights.

Because of this, the new rules, which will provide a common legal framework for the use of body scanners in the EU, state that passengers’ faces must be blurred and once the technology becomes widely available the scanners will only be able to show a matchstick picture. Images mustn’t be saved and the viewer will have to be in a separate room from the one where the scanning takes place.

Travelers will also have to be able to refuse to go through full body scanners and select another search method, the commission said, adding that no X-ray technology will be used for the scanners.

The industry welcomed the decision, saying it was an important move. “It’s a tremendous step forward…For the first time, you’re not adding layer on layer, you’re replacing equipment,” Magnus Ovilius, senior vice-president for government relations at Smiths Group PLC (SMIN.LN), a manufacturer of security scanners. Ovilius is also director of the European Organization for Security, a Brussels trade group.

Some EU countries, including the U.K., Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy, have been trialing the scanners, after an attempt two years ago to blow up a plane from Amsterdam to Detroit with plastic explosives hidden in an individual’s underwear, the commission said.

Washington Post
The Australian