No Place To Hide – Big Brother Surveillance Spreads Worldwide
October 06, 2014
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Chances
are that as you go about your day to day life and business, you may be
under much more surveillance than you would imagine to be reasonable or
appropriate. It is increasingly coming to light that surveillance
systems that are visibly or clandestinely monitoring us are but a tip in
the iceberg of secret surveillance monitoring systems across North
America and throughout the world. Such surveillance normally focuses on
the use of surveillance cameras, monitoring of social media accounts and
tracking of cell phone conversations and text messages.
One may argue that such systems should of necessity be secret and clandestine to be most effective in preventing, detecting and limiting crime. However indications are that usage of such systems often exceed authorized boundaries and facilitate unnecessary violations of privacy. The bone of contention is that there doesn’t seem to be adequate supervision or control of such potential breaches. Some fairly recent examples include the following reported recently in Biometric.com:
• Boston surreptitiously spied and used facial recognition on concertgoers last year at the Boston Calling Music Festival in 2013. The system captured facial images of thousands of event attendees using more than 10 cameras. Utilizing intelligent video analysis, the system allowed the Boston Police to review over 50 hours of security footage. While the system utilized the city’s existing security camera infrastructure, the city did not inform its residents in a timely manner that they would be subjected to system testing. More than a year later, city officials only disclosed the test when exposed by excellent, local investigative journalism.
• In 2013, Canadians only learned after a special investigation that government agencies had been collecting personal information about citizens from social networking sites without a justified legal reason.
• Early 2014, it was revealed that Canada’s electronic spy agency used data from a free Internet Wi-Fi service at the country’s busiest international airport, Toronto-Pearson, to track the wireless devices of thousands of ordinary air travelers “for days after they left the airport”. These secretive spy programs have caused so much concern that Canadian academics and civil liberties organizations banded together to issue a statement against government mass surveillance.
• The Guardian and The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) operates a classified program entitled “PRISM” that enables U.S. intelligence services to directly access servers operated by Google, Facebook, Apple and other Internet giants. The “PRISM” disclosures came from documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
• Early 2014, the U.S. government declassified documents that also demonstrated that the NSA was illegally collecting a broad range of domestic electronic intelligence on Americans. The NSA had developed the capacity to monitor as much as 75 percent of all U.S. Web traffic and has admitted that its network monitoring has touched 1.6 percent of the world’s Internet data.
Indications are that these trends are by no means confined to, or even concentrated in North America. In Australia for instance, Newsmail.com in an article titled ‘Govt. dumps discrimination law change for NSA-style snooping’ reported in early August: “The (Prime Minister Tony) Abbott government appears another step closer to forcing internet service providers and phone companies to retain users' metadata for up to two years.
One may argue that such systems should of necessity be secret and clandestine to be most effective in preventing, detecting and limiting crime. However indications are that usage of such systems often exceed authorized boundaries and facilitate unnecessary violations of privacy. The bone of contention is that there doesn’t seem to be adequate supervision or control of such potential breaches. Some fairly recent examples include the following reported recently in Biometric.com:
• Boston surreptitiously spied and used facial recognition on concertgoers last year at the Boston Calling Music Festival in 2013. The system captured facial images of thousands of event attendees using more than 10 cameras. Utilizing intelligent video analysis, the system allowed the Boston Police to review over 50 hours of security footage. While the system utilized the city’s existing security camera infrastructure, the city did not inform its residents in a timely manner that they would be subjected to system testing. More than a year later, city officials only disclosed the test when exposed by excellent, local investigative journalism.
• In 2013, Canadians only learned after a special investigation that government agencies had been collecting personal information about citizens from social networking sites without a justified legal reason.
• Early 2014, it was revealed that Canada’s electronic spy agency used data from a free Internet Wi-Fi service at the country’s busiest international airport, Toronto-Pearson, to track the wireless devices of thousands of ordinary air travelers “for days after they left the airport”. These secretive spy programs have caused so much concern that Canadian academics and civil liberties organizations banded together to issue a statement against government mass surveillance.
• The Guardian and The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) operates a classified program entitled “PRISM” that enables U.S. intelligence services to directly access servers operated by Google, Facebook, Apple and other Internet giants. The “PRISM” disclosures came from documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
• Early 2014, the U.S. government declassified documents that also demonstrated that the NSA was illegally collecting a broad range of domestic electronic intelligence on Americans. The NSA had developed the capacity to monitor as much as 75 percent of all U.S. Web traffic and has admitted that its network monitoring has touched 1.6 percent of the world’s Internet data.
Indications are that these trends are by no means confined to, or even concentrated in North America. In Australia for instance, Newsmail.com in an article titled ‘Govt. dumps discrimination law change for NSA-style snooping’ reported in early August: “The (Prime Minister Tony) Abbott government appears another step closer to forcing internet service providers and phone companies to retain users' metadata for up to two years.
Plans
for data retention, encouraged by Australia's intelligence community,
are already being actively considered by the government, as part of a
Senate inquiry…Data retention was mooted by Labor more than two years
ago, before they were shelved amid fears of personal privacy
breaches…The controversial practice has been criticized by privacy and
libertarian advocates, including the Institute of Public Affairs which
on Tuesday labeled them a threat to democracy.”
The report also states that plans could include forcing phone companies and ISPs to retain the metadata - including times, dates and locations of calls and internet access - for two years, in case intelligence authorities need access. It could also reverse the onus of proof, so that government authorities would not need to prove they suspected a surveillance target of illegal or suspicious activity before monitoring their metadata. The Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt described any plans to retain Australian citizen's metadata as a "massive overreach" and part of a "plan to spy on every Australian".
Neither do these governments give an inch or quarter when it comes to having things done their way. According to Yahoo Finance, US authorities threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it failed to comply with a secret surveillance program requiring it to hand over user data in the name of national security. Court documents recently made public in a rare unsealing by a secretive court panel, "underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government's surveillance efforts," according to Yahoo general counsel Ron Bell said in a blog post that is expected to again raise privacy concerns.
Privacy advocates are regrouping to fight for a stop to excessive government surveillance secrecy. The Guardian.com has reported that Privacy International (PI), which campaigns on issues of surveillance, has just lodged to the Strasbourg court the latest in a series of post–Snowden legal challenges aimed at forcing the government to disclose details of its surveillance policies. The essence of the appeal application is that the secret "Five Eyes" treaty that authorize intelligence sharing between the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand should be published. The civil liberties group alleges that the UK is violating the right to access information by "refusing to disclose the documents that have an enormous impact on human rights in the UK and abroad".
And so the age-old battle continues, with governments arguing that they are only doing what is necessary for national and international security, while privacy advocates argue that they are going too far beyond what is necessary to achieve their goals. There is no telling when the accusations and counter accusations will ever stop. Meanwhile, as long as security and classification clauses can be legally invoked by governments (whether within reason or not), societies will probably have to get used to greater and greater levels of privacy intrusion for a long time to come. From a Bible prophecy standpoint this is trend is inevitable since the scriptures warn of a time coming when it will eventually be impossible for anyone to hide from ‘Big Brother’ (Revelation 13:16).
The report also states that plans could include forcing phone companies and ISPs to retain the metadata - including times, dates and locations of calls and internet access - for two years, in case intelligence authorities need access. It could also reverse the onus of proof, so that government authorities would not need to prove they suspected a surveillance target of illegal or suspicious activity before monitoring their metadata. The Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt described any plans to retain Australian citizen's metadata as a "massive overreach" and part of a "plan to spy on every Australian".
Neither do these governments give an inch or quarter when it comes to having things done their way. According to Yahoo Finance, US authorities threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it failed to comply with a secret surveillance program requiring it to hand over user data in the name of national security. Court documents recently made public in a rare unsealing by a secretive court panel, "underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government's surveillance efforts," according to Yahoo general counsel Ron Bell said in a blog post that is expected to again raise privacy concerns.
Privacy advocates are regrouping to fight for a stop to excessive government surveillance secrecy. The Guardian.com has reported that Privacy International (PI), which campaigns on issues of surveillance, has just lodged to the Strasbourg court the latest in a series of post–Snowden legal challenges aimed at forcing the government to disclose details of its surveillance policies. The essence of the appeal application is that the secret "Five Eyes" treaty that authorize intelligence sharing between the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand should be published. The civil liberties group alleges that the UK is violating the right to access information by "refusing to disclose the documents that have an enormous impact on human rights in the UK and abroad".
And so the age-old battle continues, with governments arguing that they are only doing what is necessary for national and international security, while privacy advocates argue that they are going too far beyond what is necessary to achieve their goals. There is no telling when the accusations and counter accusations will ever stop. Meanwhile, as long as security and classification clauses can be legally invoked by governments (whether within reason or not), societies will probably have to get used to greater and greater levels of privacy intrusion for a long time to come. From a Bible prophecy standpoint this is trend is inevitable since the scriptures warn of a time coming when it will eventually be impossible for anyone to hide from ‘Big Brother’ (Revelation 13:16).
Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/October06/064.html#L6opIVSWoAX7QX4o.99
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