Big Brother everwhere
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Big Brother everwhere
China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People
By KEITH BRADSHER - NYT
August 12, 2007
SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 9 - At least 20,000 police
surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here
in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated
computer software from an American-financed company to
recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and
detect unusual activity.
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then
spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people,
residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips
programmed by the same company will be issued to most
citizens.
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name
and address but also work history, educational background,
religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status
and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive
history will be included, for enforcement of China's
controversial "one child" policy. Plans are being studied to
add credit histories, subway travel payments and small
purchases charged to the card.
Security experts describe China's plans as the world's
largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with
police work to track the activities of a population and
fight crime. But they say the technology can be used to
violate civil rights.
The Chinese government has ordered all large cities to apply
technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency
cards to 150 million people who have moved to a city but not
yet acquired permanent residency.
Both steps are officially aimed at fighting crime and
developing better controls on an increasingly mobile
population, including the nearly 10 million peasants who
move to big cities each year. But they could also help the
Communist Party retain power by maintaining tight controls
on an increasingly prosperous population at a time when
street protests are becoming more common.
"If they do not get the permanent card, they cannot live
here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way
for the government to control the population in the future,"
said Michael Lin, the vice president for investor relations
at China Public Security Technology, the company providing
the technology.
Incorporated in Florida, China Public Security has raised
much of the money to develop its technology from two
investment funds in Plano, Tex., Pinnacle Fund and Pinnacle
China Fund. Three investment banks - Roth Capital Partners
in Newport Beach, Calif.; Oppenheimer & Company in New York;
and First Asia Finance Group of Hong Kong - helped raise the
money.
Shenzhen, a computer manufacturing center next to Hong Kong,
is the first Chinese city to introduce the new residency
cards. It is also taking the lead in China in the
large-scale use of law enforcement surveillance cameras - a
tactic that would have drawn international criticism in the
years after the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989.
But rising fears of terrorism have lessened public hostility
to surveillance cameras in the West. This has been
particularly true in Britain, where the police alreadyinstall the cameras widely on lamp poles and in subway
stations and are developing face recognition software as
well.
New York police announced last month that they would install
more than 100 security cameras to monitor license plates in
Lower Manhattan by the end of the year. Police officials
also said they hoped to obtain financing to establish links
to 3,000 public and private cameras in the area by the end
of next year; no decision has been made on whether face
recognition technology has become reliable enough to use
without the risk of false arrests.
Shenzhen already has 180,000 indoor and outdoor
closed-circuit television cameras owned by businesses and
government agencies, and the police will have the right to
link them on request into the same system as the 20,000
police cameras, according to China Public Security.
Some civil rights activists contend that the cameras in
China and Britain are a violation of the right of privacy
contained in the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights.
Large-scale surveillance in China is more threatening than
surveillance in Britain, they said when told of Shenzhen's
plans.
"I don't think they are remotely comparable, and even in
Britain it's quite controversial," said Dinah PoKempner, the
general counsel of Human Rights Watch in New York. China has
fewer limits on police power, fewer restrictions on how
government agencies use the information they gather and
fewer legal protections for those suspected of crime, she
noted.
While most countries issue identity cards, and many gather a
lot of information about citizens, China also appears poised
to go much further in putting personal information on
identity cards, Ms. PoKempner added.
Every police officer in Shenzhen now carries global
positioning satellite equipment on his or her belt. This
allows senior police officers to direct their movements on
large, high-resolution maps of the city that China Public
Security has produced using software that runs on the
Microsoft Windows operating system.
"We have a very good relationship with U.S. companies like
I.B.M., Cisco, H.P., Dell," said Robin Huang, the chief
operating officer of China Public Security. "All of these
U.S. companies work with us to build our system together."
The role of American companies in helping Chinese security
forces has periodically been controversial in the United
States. Executives from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco
Systems testified in February 2006 at a Congressional
hearing called to review whether they had deliberately
designed their systems to help the Chinese state muzzle
dissidents on the Internet; they denied having done so.
China Public Security proudly displays in its boardroom a
certificate from I.B.M. labeling it as a partner. But Mr.
Huang said that China Public Security had developed its own
computer programs in China and that its suppliers had sent
equipment that was not specially tailored for law
enforcement purposes.
The company uses servers manufactured by Huawei Technologies
of China for its own operations. But China Public Security
needs to develop programs that run on I.B.M., Cisco and
Hewlett-Packard servers because some Chinese police agencies
have already bought these models, Mr. Huang said.
Mr. Lin said he had refrained from some transactions with
the Chinese government because he is the chief executive of
a company incorporated in the United States. "Of course our
projects could be used by the military, but because it's
politically sensitive, I don't want to do it," he said.
Western security experts have suspected for several years
that Chinese security agencies could track individuals based
on the location of their cellphones, and the Shenzhen police
tracking system confirms this.
When a police officer goes indoors and cannot receive a
global positioning signal from satellites overhead, the
system tracks the location of the officer's cellphone, based
on the three nearest cellphone towers. Mr. Huang used a
real-time connection to local police dispatchers' computers
to show a detailed computer map of a Shenzhen district and
the precise location of each of the 92 patrolling officers,
represented by caricatures of officers in blue uniforms and
the routes they had traveled in the last hour.
All Chinese citizens are required to carry national identity
cards with very simple computer chips embedded, providing
little more than the citizen's name and date of birth. Since
imperial times, a principal technique of social control has
been for local government agencies to keep detailed records
on every resident.
The system worked as long as most people spent their entire
lives in their hometowns. But as ever more Chinese move in
search of work, the system has eroded. This has made it
easier for criminals and dissidents alike to hide from
police, and it has raised questions about whether
dissatisfied migrant workers could organize political
protests without the knowledge of police.
Little more than a collection of duck and rice farms until
the late 1970s, Shenzhen now has 10.55 million migrants from
elsewhere in China, who will receive the new cards, and 1.87
million permanent residents, who will not receive cards
because local agencies already have files on them.
Shenzhen's red-light districts have a nationwide reputation
for murders and other crimes.
--
By KEITH BRADSHER - NYT
August 12, 2007
SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 9 - At least 20,000 police
surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here
in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated
computer software from an American-financed company to
recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and
detect unusual activity.
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then
spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people,
residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips
programmed by the same company will be issued to most
citizens.
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name
and address but also work history, educational background,
religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status
and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive
history will be included, for enforcement of China's
controversial "one child" policy. Plans are being studied to
add credit histories, subway travel payments and small
purchases charged to the card.
Security experts describe China's plans as the world's
largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with
police work to track the activities of a population and
fight crime. But they say the technology can be used to
violate civil rights.
The Chinese government has ordered all large cities to apply
technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency
cards to 150 million people who have moved to a city but not
yet acquired permanent residency.
Both steps are officially aimed at fighting crime and
developing better controls on an increasingly mobile
population, including the nearly 10 million peasants who
move to big cities each year. But they could also help the
Communist Party retain power by maintaining tight controls
on an increasingly prosperous population at a time when
street protests are becoming more common.
"If they do not get the permanent card, they cannot live
here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way
for the government to control the population in the future,"
said Michael Lin, the vice president for investor relations
at China Public Security Technology, the company providing
the technology.
Incorporated in Florida, China Public Security has raised
much of the money to develop its technology from two
investment funds in Plano, Tex., Pinnacle Fund and Pinnacle
China Fund. Three investment banks - Roth Capital Partners
in Newport Beach, Calif.; Oppenheimer & Company in New York;
and First Asia Finance Group of Hong Kong - helped raise the
money.
Shenzhen, a computer manufacturing center next to Hong Kong,
is the first Chinese city to introduce the new residency
cards. It is also taking the lead in China in the
large-scale use of law enforcement surveillance cameras - a
tactic that would have drawn international criticism in the
years after the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989.
But rising fears of terrorism have lessened public hostility
to surveillance cameras in the West. This has been
particularly true in Britain, where the police alreadyinstall the cameras widely on lamp poles and in subway
stations and are developing face recognition software as
well.
New York police announced last month that they would install
more than 100 security cameras to monitor license plates in
Lower Manhattan by the end of the year. Police officials
also said they hoped to obtain financing to establish links
to 3,000 public and private cameras in the area by the end
of next year; no decision has been made on whether face
recognition technology has become reliable enough to use
without the risk of false arrests.
Shenzhen already has 180,000 indoor and outdoor
closed-circuit television cameras owned by businesses and
government agencies, and the police will have the right to
link them on request into the same system as the 20,000
police cameras, according to China Public Security.
Some civil rights activists contend that the cameras in
China and Britain are a violation of the right of privacy
contained in the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights.
Large-scale surveillance in China is more threatening than
surveillance in Britain, they said when told of Shenzhen's
plans.
"I don't think they are remotely comparable, and even in
Britain it's quite controversial," said Dinah PoKempner, the
general counsel of Human Rights Watch in New York. China has
fewer limits on police power, fewer restrictions on how
government agencies use the information they gather and
fewer legal protections for those suspected of crime, she
noted.
While most countries issue identity cards, and many gather a
lot of information about citizens, China also appears poised
to go much further in putting personal information on
identity cards, Ms. PoKempner added.
Every police officer in Shenzhen now carries global
positioning satellite equipment on his or her belt. This
allows senior police officers to direct their movements on
large, high-resolution maps of the city that China Public
Security has produced using software that runs on the
Microsoft Windows operating system.
"We have a very good relationship with U.S. companies like
I.B.M., Cisco, H.P., Dell," said Robin Huang, the chief
operating officer of China Public Security. "All of these
U.S. companies work with us to build our system together."
The role of American companies in helping Chinese security
forces has periodically been controversial in the United
States. Executives from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco
Systems testified in February 2006 at a Congressional
hearing called to review whether they had deliberately
designed their systems to help the Chinese state muzzle
dissidents on the Internet; they denied having done so.
China Public Security proudly displays in its boardroom a
certificate from I.B.M. labeling it as a partner. But Mr.
Huang said that China Public Security had developed its own
computer programs in China and that its suppliers had sent
equipment that was not specially tailored for law
enforcement purposes.
The company uses servers manufactured by Huawei Technologies
of China for its own operations. But China Public Security
needs to develop programs that run on I.B.M., Cisco and
Hewlett-Packard servers because some Chinese police agencies
have already bought these models, Mr. Huang said.
Mr. Lin said he had refrained from some transactions with
the Chinese government because he is the chief executive of
a company incorporated in the United States. "Of course our
projects could be used by the military, but because it's
politically sensitive, I don't want to do it," he said.
Western security experts have suspected for several years
that Chinese security agencies could track individuals based
on the location of their cellphones, and the Shenzhen police
tracking system confirms this.
When a police officer goes indoors and cannot receive a
global positioning signal from satellites overhead, the
system tracks the location of the officer's cellphone, based
on the three nearest cellphone towers. Mr. Huang used a
real-time connection to local police dispatchers' computers
to show a detailed computer map of a Shenzhen district and
the precise location of each of the 92 patrolling officers,
represented by caricatures of officers in blue uniforms and
the routes they had traveled in the last hour.
All Chinese citizens are required to carry national identity
cards with very simple computer chips embedded, providing
little more than the citizen's name and date of birth. Since
imperial times, a principal technique of social control has
been for local government agencies to keep detailed records
on every resident.
The system worked as long as most people spent their entire
lives in their hometowns. But as ever more Chinese move in
search of work, the system has eroded. This has made it
easier for criminals and dissidents alike to hide from
police, and it has raised questions about whether
dissatisfied migrant workers could organize political
protests without the knowledge of police.
Little more than a collection of duck and rice farms until
the late 1970s, Shenzhen now has 10.55 million migrants from
elsewhere in China, who will receive the new cards, and 1.87
million permanent residents, who will not receive cards
because local agencies already have files on them.
Shenzhen's red-light districts have a nationwide reputation
for murders and other crimes.
--
Re: Big Brother everwhere
The Need to Know
New York Times Editorial
August 11, 2007
Like many in this country who were angered when Congress
rushed to rubber-stamp a bill giving President Bush even
more power to spy on Americans, we took some hope from the
vow by Congressional Democrats to rewrite the new law after
summer vacation. The chance of undoing the damage is slim,
unless the White House stops stonewalling and gives
lawmakers and the public the information they need to
understand this vital issue.
Just before rushing off to their vacations, and campaign
fund-raising, both houses tried to fix an anachronism in the
1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires
the government to get a warrant to eavesdrop on
conversations and e-mail messages if one of the people
communicating is inside the United States. The court that
enforces the law concluded recently that warrants also are
required to intercept messages if the people are outside the
United States, but their communications are routed through
data exchanges here.
The House and Senate had sensible bills trying to fix that
Internet-age problem, which did not exist in 1978. But that
wasn't enough for Mr. Bush and his aides, who whipped up
their usual brew of fear to kill off those bills. Then they
cowed the Democrats into passing a bill giving Mr. Bush
powers that go beyond even the illegal wiretapping he has
been doing since the 9/11 attacks.
The new measure eviscerates the protections of FISA,
allowing the attorney general to decide when to eavesdrop -
without a warrant - on any telephone call or e-mail message,
so long as one of the people communicating is "reasonably
believed" to be outside the country. The courts have no real
power over such operations.
The only encouraging notes were that the new law has a
six-month expiration date, and that leaders of both houses
of Congress said they would start revising it immediately.
But there's a big catch: most lawmakers have no idea what
eavesdropping is already going on or what Mr. Bush's
justification was in the first place for ignoring the law
and ordering warrantless spying after 9/11.
The administration has refused to say how much warrantless
spying it has been doing. Clearly, it is more than Mr. Bush
has acknowledged, but Americans need to know exactly how far
their liberties have been breached and whether the operation
included purely domestic eavesdropping. And why did Mr. Bush
feel compelled to construct an outlaw eavesdropping
operation - apart, that is, from his broader effort to
expand presidential power and evade checks and balances?
It's not that FISA makes it too hard; the court approves
virtually every warrant request. It's not an issue of speed.
The law allows the government to initiate surveillance and
get a warrant later if necessary.
Instead of answering these questions, the administration has
done its best to ensure that everyone stays confused. It has
refused repeated requests by Senator Jay Rockefeller, the
Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
for documents relating to the president's order creating the
spying program, and the Justice Department's legal
justifications for it.
When this issue resurfaces, Mr. Bush will undoubtedly claim
executive privilege, as he has done whenever he has been
asked to come clean with Americans about his
decision-making. But those documents should be handed overwithout delay for review by all members of Congress. We also
agree with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has
petitioned the FISA court, which normally works in secret,
to make public its opinion on the scope of the government's
wiretapping powers.
If Mr. Bush wants Americans to give him and his successors
the power to spy on them at will, Americans should be
allowed to know why it's supposedly so necessary and how
much their freedoms are being abridged. If Congress once
again allows itself to be cowed by Mr. Bush's
fear-mongering, it must accept responsibility for
undermining the democratic values that separate this nation
from the terrorists that Mr. Bush claims to be fighting.
New York Times Editorial
August 11, 2007
Like many in this country who were angered when Congress
rushed to rubber-stamp a bill giving President Bush even
more power to spy on Americans, we took some hope from the
vow by Congressional Democrats to rewrite the new law after
summer vacation. The chance of undoing the damage is slim,
unless the White House stops stonewalling and gives
lawmakers and the public the information they need to
understand this vital issue.
Just before rushing off to their vacations, and campaign
fund-raising, both houses tried to fix an anachronism in the
1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires
the government to get a warrant to eavesdrop on
conversations and e-mail messages if one of the people
communicating is inside the United States. The court that
enforces the law concluded recently that warrants also are
required to intercept messages if the people are outside the
United States, but their communications are routed through
data exchanges here.
The House and Senate had sensible bills trying to fix that
Internet-age problem, which did not exist in 1978. But that
wasn't enough for Mr. Bush and his aides, who whipped up
their usual brew of fear to kill off those bills. Then they
cowed the Democrats into passing a bill giving Mr. Bush
powers that go beyond even the illegal wiretapping he has
been doing since the 9/11 attacks.
The new measure eviscerates the protections of FISA,
allowing the attorney general to decide when to eavesdrop -
without a warrant - on any telephone call or e-mail message,
so long as one of the people communicating is "reasonably
believed" to be outside the country. The courts have no real
power over such operations.
The only encouraging notes were that the new law has a
six-month expiration date, and that leaders of both houses
of Congress said they would start revising it immediately.
But there's a big catch: most lawmakers have no idea what
eavesdropping is already going on or what Mr. Bush's
justification was in the first place for ignoring the law
and ordering warrantless spying after 9/11.
The administration has refused to say how much warrantless
spying it has been doing. Clearly, it is more than Mr. Bush
has acknowledged, but Americans need to know exactly how far
their liberties have been breached and whether the operation
included purely domestic eavesdropping. And why did Mr. Bush
feel compelled to construct an outlaw eavesdropping
operation - apart, that is, from his broader effort to
expand presidential power and evade checks and balances?
It's not that FISA makes it too hard; the court approves
virtually every warrant request. It's not an issue of speed.
The law allows the government to initiate surveillance and
get a warrant later if necessary.
Instead of answering these questions, the administration has
done its best to ensure that everyone stays confused. It has
refused repeated requests by Senator Jay Rockefeller, the
Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
for documents relating to the president's order creating the
spying program, and the Justice Department's legal
justifications for it.
When this issue resurfaces, Mr. Bush will undoubtedly claim
executive privilege, as he has done whenever he has been
asked to come clean with Americans about his
decision-making. But those documents should be handed overwithout delay for review by all members of Congress. We also
agree with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has
petitioned the FISA court, which normally works in secret,
to make public its opinion on the scope of the government's
wiretapping powers.
If Mr. Bush wants Americans to give him and his successors
the power to spy on them at will, Americans should be
allowed to know why it's supposedly so necessary and how
much their freedoms are being abridged. If Congress once
again allows itself to be cowed by Mr. Bush's
fear-mongering, it must accept responsibility for
undermining the democratic values that separate this nation
from the terrorists that Mr. Bush claims to be fighting.
UNITING CHRISTIANS FORUM AND CHAT :: ENDTIME PROPHECIES/ SIGNS OF THE TIMES :: Discuss Endtime Signs here
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