Surveillance Takes On New Tasks
Spy Business Booms As Detractors Worry about its Effect
Nov 14, 2008
Reservoir sensors protect water safety, Canada monitors arctic ice and illegal encroachment and government health services watch populations to prevent disease. Elsewhere, weather stations check for tsunamis, earthquakes, typhoons and hurricanes. All good stuff.
Surveillance also reduces workplace harassment, increases employee productivity and performance, guards against visits to insalubrious websites and monitors fire and other hazards. Street CCTV cameras deter crime, although not suicide bombers or crooks who know how to keep to blind spots. Mohali in India deters drunken driving with them. Reading systems can identify you by how you walk. Hitachi's vein-printing technology is used at thousands of Japanese bank machines.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags track goods in stores and warehouses although Katherine Albrecht, director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy) worries they can easily be hidden in products people carry and read by devices hidden in the environment.
RFID applications based on loyalty cards identify customers as they browse and trigger customized computer avatars that appear on nearby screens. Further, one program follows customers to see what products interest them so they can follow up with special offers.
Consumers' nanny cams monitor sleeping babies and domestic security companies guard against break-ins. The family pet has an embedded chip to guard against its being lost and medically challenged humans have them so they can get quick help. There are even main street shops selling spying gadgets for everyday use. Anybody can use Internet Protocol (IP) to check, with their computers or cell phones, what is going on at home. On the medical scene, biological sensors for HIV, pregnancy and diabetes are part of everyday life.
Surveillance Equipment Manufacturers Report Healthy Profits
Surveillance equipment manufacturers report healthy profits, especially in the United States where Homeland Security primes the pump. Before the Olympics, the website Seeking Alpha urged stock pickers to look into the Chinese surveillance market, which was set to expand 5-fold and and explode to $33 billion by 2009.
The US State Department (www.state.gov), acting very '007', warns business travelers to be on guard against "foreign nationals" trying to steal sensitive information from them or from the companies for which they work. Foreign spies may also want to recruit them. "Surveillance is an assessment of vulnerabilities in an attempt to determine any information available, from any source, about you or your activities such as lifestyle or behavior that can be used against you." Its final admonishment is that you shouldn't do anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times! In their eyes, unfriendly human surveillance may not be electronic but just old fashioned wheeling and stealing.
In the May 22, 2008 Times On Line, Phil Hendren writes that the United Kingdom's plan to introduce a giant database to hold every phone call, email sent or web page visited is technologically unfeasible.
In Canada, Bell Sympatico monitors or investigates the content or use of a customer service provider's networks so it can disclose information to the government. Yvan Dror reported in Haaretz that ebay has six detectives under contract to scrutinize "suspicious users and behavior" and inform outside investigators.
Surveillance Conjures Disquiet.
To many, the word 'surveillance' conjures disquiet. Privacy International (www.privacyinternational.org) reports that only Canada and Germany have what it considers acceptable surveillance programs. However, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service is permitted, after obtaining a judge's warrant, to conduct electronic surveillance including wiretaps, mail intercepts and covert searches.
The Urban Eye
What is all this doing to people? The European group, the Urban Eye intends to find out in its research project featuring political scientists, criminologists and technicians. Surveillance can be good and bad but perhaps there's too much of it.
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