Boston PD used facial recognition surveillance during 2013 music festival

During the 2013 Boston Calling music festivals, the Boston police department used a facial recognition surveillance system to keep an eye on those who attended. Thousands of faces were captured, according to Dig Boston, via ten cameras that could perform so-called "intelligent video analysis" in real time.

The story is an interesting one, something that revolves around Dig Boston's reporters "searching the deep web" and spotting unsecured documents related to the Boston Calling surveillance programs. IBM is said to have worked with law enforcement in providing a facial recognition system that would tag "every person" that attended.

IBM is said to have licensed an Intelligent Operations Center, and at the heart of it all was a system being tested via Boston Calling surveillance that analyzed, in real time, things like faces and bodies, skin color, clothing, traffic patterns, and more. In addition, information nabbed from social networks was integrated in real time and factored into the overall equation.

There is a division between what the Boston PD says about the discovery and what the alleged documents reveal. According to Dig Boston, the docs have photos of police officers watching the IBM system while the music festival took place, but a statement from the department said, "BPD was not part of this initiative. We do not and have not used or possess this type of technology."

Boston Mayor's press secretary had different things to say, however, confirming that surveillance was used during the two music festivals, summing it up by saying that ultimately the city didn't go with the software, because it had "not seen a clear use case for this software that held practical value for the City's public safety needs."



Source : slashgear.com

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Wickr founder details FBI request for backdoor

In December, it was reported that security firm RSA -- according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden -- was paid millions by the NSA to put a back door into its encryption products. A couple days later, the company denied having a secret contract with the government agency, and said that it never knowingly put a back door in its offerings. That didn't stop some companies from gravitating away from RSA, however, and one such company was Wickr. The company's founder, Nico Sell, announced this change at an RSA Security Conference, during which she made it clear her company would not have a back door and that users' security was important. Immediately after, an FBI agent approached her with a request -- to add a backdoor on behalf of the agency.

Wickr is a self-destructing message service akin to Snapchat, and it's company tagline is "Leave No Trace". The company touts the use of military-grade encryption for all video, picture, audio, and text messages, with secure file-shredding features for users and the ability to control who, where, and for how long one's own messages are available. Security, obviously, is the company's biggest point of focus.

According to Sell, immediately after exiting the stage at the conference where she detailed the service's security elements, an FBI agent casually approached her with a request that her company introduce a backdoor into the service that would give the FBI access to users' messages. The approach was said to be casual, something Sell states is apparently how such approaches are commonly done. "Always casual, testing, because most people would say yes."

Reportedly, Sell's response was an ear-full for the agent on the Constitution, a bit about George Washington, and followed up with a request for details on his part. Said Sell, "I asked if he had official paperwork for me, if this was an official request, who his boss was. He backed down very quickly." Sell has suggested the NSA revert to a surveillance model that involved the targeting of individuals rather than the mass surveillance of communications. "I'm not against helping law enforcement, but the most important thing to me is protecting my friends and family the best way I know how. There are plenty of ways to track people without trampling human rights."




SOURCE: PC Magazine

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NSA project working towards encryption-breaking quantum computer, reveals Snowden doc

According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA dreams of a quantum computer that can break nearly every type of encryption -- one it is working towards (in part, at least) via a program called Penetrating Hard Targets, a $79.7 million project. The NSA isn't the only entity working on making a quantum computer reality, and such technologies would have widespread benefits beyond the cryptographically-oriented industry and various spy games.

Whether the NSA has advanced beyond similar efforts underway at the civilian level is unknown, but the Washington Post is reporting such efforts on the government's part are no farther ahead in terms of progress. A large amount of the work is reportedly taking place via classified contracts with a College Park laboratory, but not much is known beyond that.

If such a technology is developed, all forms of public key encryption could be broken. The documents seem to state the NSA is performing a lot of its research in Faraday cages, something said to be necessary to keep the "delicate" experiments up and running. No immediate breakthroughs seem likely, however, and MIT associate professor Scott Aaronson took that a step further, saying: "It seems improbable that the NSA could be that far ahead of the open world without anybody knowing it."

Experts who spoke to the Washington Post expressed doubt that any such computer could be developed in the next five years, but that isn't stopping the NSA from trying. The security agency, according to the document, is concerned that quantum computing could have future implications on both the ability to spy on the communications of foreign entities, but also to protect its own communications from other agencies beyond the US.






SOURCE: Washington Post

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Laptop searches by U.S. border agents ruled legal

For most people, one's laptop is a like a trusted friend, packed full of data that one would not give out part and parcel to just anyone, particularly not strangers. Random laptop searches at United States borders have been taking place for years, and have been the subject of much outcry, particularly due to the complete lack of suspicion needed to perform the search. Civil rights attorneys filed a lawsuit against this activity, citing reasons of being unconstitutional, but a New York judge has dismissed their complaint, giving border agents the go-ahead.

Travelers, when entering the United States, are vulnerable to potential laptop searches by border agents. These searches aren't guaranteed to take place, but if you're one of the unfortunate travelers who gets tagged, you have no say in having your digital data picked through. There have been instances where laptops have been confiscated, such as the case regarding Pascal Abidor, a French-American citizen who, upon entering the U.S. border territory, had his laptop confiscated by the border personnel.

It is being argued that allowing border agents to search laptops -- which includes the machines of news photographers and those of similar professions -- will give access to both sensitive and confidential information. The judge had a different view of this however, saying that, in the case of Abidor, who was abroad researching Shiite history, he "cannot be so naive to expect that when he crosses into Syrian or Lebanese border that the contents of his computer will be immune from searches and seizure at the whim of those who work for Bashar al-Assad or Hassan Nasrallah."

Thus was part of U.S. District Judge Edward Korman's final decision, dismissing the lawsuit and ruling that reasonable suspicion is not needed to perform a laptop search. The plantiffs, it was ruled, did not show any injury resulting from the searches, and legal precedents were used to conclude that US border crossings allowed for government searches -- reasonable suspicion aside -- in the name of national security.

Said ACLU lawyer Catherine Crump: "Unfortunately, these searches are part of a broader pattern of aggressive government surveillance that collects information on too many innocent people, under lax standards, and without adequate oversight." The organization is debating about appealing the judge's decision, though whether it will is yet to be determined.





SOURCE: Associated Press

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Uber, SnapCar, et al soon must wait 15 min before meeting fares in France

The ever proliferating Uber "black car" service and other mobile-app-dispatched driver services will have to wait 15 minutes before picking up any customer starting Jan. 2014, a French bill has decreed. The bill was spotted by the French news organization Libération and passed on by way of TechCrunch. The decree is intended to preserve the state-regulated taxi industry.

The driver services affected by the decree typically let passengers request rides via a mobile app. The app connects them with a nearby driver, who can then accept the fare and pick them up in little time. The proliferation of GPS has enabled such services to make much headway into the taxi monopoly in France and elsewhere, which is exactly what the French government is concerned about and why it issued the decree.

Currently the French taxi system requires new drivers to pay a large sum of money to become licensed. Once they're in the club, so to speak, the government pays the drivers back by helping to maintain a near monopoly on taxis. Up until this year, driver services like the ones mentioned above as well as SnapCar (app screenshot below), LeCab, Chauffeur-privé, Allocab, Voitures Jaunes, and Driver-prive.com weren't considered tax replacements but driver services. But as they are indeed eating into the taxi industry's business, the government decided to step in.

Two exceptions to the new rule: Driver services can omit the 15-minute delay when picking up passengers from 4-star and 5-star hotels, or when operating at the behest of trade fair organizers. This is presumably to force driver services back towards their traditionally middle-upper class customer base. It also seems to indicate that the government views its taxi system as intended for the less well-to-do.

The driver services industry is unhappy with the decree to say the least, especially considering the average length of time to meet a fare is about 7 minutes. That's according to the driver service company AFP's CEO Yan Hascoet, who is also Secretary General of the French Federation of Passenger Transport Reservation. The organization, which counts Uber and other companies mentioned in this article as members, will be fighting to overturn the decree, Hascoet vowed.








SOURCE: TechCrunch

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NSA catalog lets agents deliver cloned hardware to targets

A new examination of the seemingly bottomless well of Snowden documents describes an internal NSA catalog of dead ringers for consumer hardware that the NSA can deploy on unsuspecting targets' systems. For example, when a target orders a new hard drive, router, monitor cable, or USB plug online, the NSA can intercept the order and send a bugged clone, which the target would then install by his own volition. The catalog includes hardware by Seagate, Samsung, Cisco, Huawei, Dell and many others.

Western Digital and Maxtor are two other hardware providers named in the monitoring device catalog. It also includes back door access to firewalls by Juniper Networks, as well as ready-made hacks for the BIOS firmware that runs when a personal computer starts up.

The catalog was produced by the Advanced/Access Network Technology (ANT) division of the NSA hacker unit Tailored Access Operations (TAO).

Der Spiegel reported that the NSA can intercept automated personal computer communications like Windows crash reports to ferret out vulnerabilities in users' systems. It does this via a so-called "shadow Internet" that runs alongside the regular Internet. SlashGear has previously reported on the NSA's "quantum insert" technique of serving copies of popular sites like LinkedIn to target users by dint of beating the legitimate websites to the server punch.

In other words, any of your electronics and favorite websites could actually be NSA-created resources should the spy agency deem you an asset.

On the industrial side, the catalog lets agents acquire and physically install bugged base stations that stand in for proprietary mobile network equipment. The NSA can use the stations to collect mobile communications data from personal devices in range.

Finally, the Der Spiegel analysis delved into how the NSA and its partners in private telecommunications companies have tapped major intercontinental data cables to conduct mass data surveillance. For example, the agency in early 2013 mapped the "SEA-ME-WE-4" undersea cable that connects Europe, North Africa and Asia.




SOURCE: Der Spiegel

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Oh, the places cams go! 24 hours in surveillance camera news, condensed

You might think the U.S. is nearing a saturation point with cameras, but you'd be wrong. We've got a long ways to go before we can safely consider ourselves to be stuffed to the gills with cameras like Sentinels breaching Zion.

But we're making swift progress! Every day, another city installs traffic cameras designed to recognize license plates and human faces, detect violations, identify activities, and issue fines automatically. Every day, another courtroom lets the news media in with cameras and another police department dons body-mounted video cameras.

Such cameras don't always work very well at all. Statistics as to their ability to actually decrease accidents and crime are few and far between.

But boy can they pull in the dough if wielded correctly!

Here is your camera news roundup for just the past 24 hours alone.

One microscopic town outside of Cincinnati, OH was facing financial difficulties and was on the verge of disbanding its local government, so the town of less than 3,000 people installed traffic cameras that could issue speeding tickets automatically. In just a single month, the cameras issued 6,600 citations for a tidy $2 million prize. Cha-chinnng! But then a judge said that was ridiculous so the cash cow got crushed and now the town doesn't know how it's going to survive.

Meanwhile, Baltimore has fired its second consecutive traffic camera contractor -- with a $600,000 severance package -- after paying him $2.2 million for 72 cameras. The cameras were supposed to be able to detect automobiles' speed using radar and issue tickets accordingly. Except the radar didn't work on many of the cameras and hundreds of citation numbers were wrong. The first contractor Baltimore used generated $50 million in revenues.

Washington, D.C. will be ready to rake in the mad traffic cam dough starting Dec. 30, 2013. May they hit jackpot. Delmarva, Maryland is all set to install more "crook-catching" cameras with facial recognition, except no one will be watching the monitors, if rumors are facts.

Surprisingly, not everyone likes the cameras. The Miami County Commissioner thinks the high-tech traffic cameras are a lazy way for a city to raise money while impoverishing your own citizenry. And a judge in Tampa Bay, Florida seems to think red-light cameras are unconstitutional. I for one think right turns on red are a sign of poor character and uncouth upbringing.

And finally, for good measure, we have news cameras finally being let in to the courtrooms of Kane County, Illinois, as well as chest-mounted cameras for police officers in Park City, Utah.

None of this is new as a trend. What's surprising here is the rate at which proliferation is occurring. All of these stories were published within the last 24 hours. Now multiply that by Whoa and carry the Seriously?, and now you have an idea as to how fast this freight train is moving.

Where's it headed? Comments are down there.



Source : Slashgear

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NSA phone surveillance ruled legal by NY judge [UPDATE]

In a ruling on federal phone-tracking this week a U.S. District Judge based in New York has ruled that the NSA’s actions thus far have been legal. Judge William Pauley sent a ruling on Friday, the 27th of December, saying the NSA program “represents the government’s counter-punch” in efforts to eliminate al-Qaida network efforts. This ruling dismisses a lawsuit brought on by the American Civil Liberties Union.

 

At this time the ACLU has not sent out comment on the matter, but we’ll expect that they’ll have something to say imminently. The ACLU brought case to a New York court earlier this year after NSA documents were leaked by Edward Snowden. The ACLU suggested that the programs outlined in these documents far exceeded the congressional authority of the Patriot Act, authorized after September 11th, 2001 and reauthorized in the years 2005 and 2010.

Judge Pauley’s ruling this week suggests that the government’s efforts have “adapted to confront a new enemy: a terror network capable of orchestrating attacks across the world.” According to SFGate, Judge Pauley suggested that the data-collection programs outlined by Snowden’s documents were part of this new adaptation.

At this time it would appear that Judge Pauley’s dismissal of the lawsuit brought on by the ACLU will require the group to seek higher court if they wish to continue. Have a peek at the timeline below to gain greater insight into the ever-expanding world of the NSA’s programs as revealed over the preceding set of months in 2013.

UPDATE: You can now read the full ruling in PDF form courtesy of the ACLU.

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