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      Can a Garrick member chair an inquiry into police sexism fairly? I have my doubts | Alison

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 16:00 · 1 minute

    Sir John Mitting will rule on whether undercover officers broke the law by deceiving women like me. Yet he’s a member of a male-only club

    Those of us involved in the so-called spy cops scandal have followed with interest the recent media coverage of the men-only Garrick Club and its membership list of high-profile individuals. It is not news to us that senior judges and powerful men in the security services have been members. Included among the elite was the chair of the public inquiry into undercover policing, John Mitting. Since his appointment as inquiry chair in 2017 we have been calling this out, as we believe it is an obvious conflict of interest – yet our concerns have predictably been ignored.

    The inquiry had been established two years earlier by the then prime minister, Theresa May, as a direct result of investigations by women like me into the disappearances of our ex-partners , and the subsequent revelations of their true identities as Metropolitan police undercover officers. The abuse of women, and institutional sexism in the police, are fundamental to understanding the significance of this inquiry.

    Alison is one of eight women who first took legal action against the Metropolitan police over the conduct of undercover officers and a founder member of Police Spies Out of Lives . A core participant in the public inquiry into undercover policing, she is one of the authors of Deep Deception – The Story of the Spycop Network by the Women who Uncovered the Shocking Truth

    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

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      Revealed: a California city is training AI to spot homeless encampments

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 4 days ago - 15:00

    San Jose invited tech companies to mount cameras on a vehicle in what appears to be first-of-its-kind experiment

    For the last several months, a city at the heart of Silicon Valley has been training artificial intelligence to recognize tents and cars with people living inside in what experts believe is the first experiment of its kind in the United States.

    Last July, San Jose issued an open invitation to technology companies to mount cameras on a municipal vehicle that began periodically driving through the city’s district 10 in December, collecting footage of the streets and public spaces. The images are fed into computer vision software and used to train the companies’ algorithms to detect the unwanted objects, according to interviews and documents the Guardian obtained through public records requests.

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      Threats, fear and surveillance: how China targets students in the UK who criticise regime

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 4 days ago - 11:19

    Chinese students tell the Guardian they are scared to return home and worry for their families after being followed and harassed

    The first time Liying* realised she was being watched, she was on her way home from an anti-Beijing protest outside the Chinese embassy in London in 2022. The sky was dark, and Liying – a student in her 20s from China – was walking with a fellow protester, megaphone in hand, when she noticed a stranger lurking behind them.

    The pair quickened their pace but the man, who looked Chinese, kept following. Ten minutes passed; then 20. Eventually, they ran into a nearby hospital and hid for more than half an hour. When they came out, he was gone.

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      Yes, TikTok sucks. But the rules for tech giants must be better than 'it’s only bad if China does it' | Samantha Floreani

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 19 March - 14:00

    Such blinkered focus on TikTok as the bad guy of the internet derails a much more pressing task

    What year is it? All this talk of a TikTok ban makes it feel like 2020 again.

    But this time it might eventuate. Last week the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would require TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell to a US company or face a national “ban” . Time will tell if it will pass the Senate, but this is the closest the US has come to a national ban since Donal Trump floated the idea four years ago.

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      Phantom Parrot review – eye-opening documentary about Orwellian surveillance in the UK

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 17 March - 11:30

    The arrest of a British Muslim who refused to give up his phone password to UK border police kicks off Kate Stonehill’s look at the state’s excessive intrusion into our privacy

    British human rights activist Muhammad Rabbani had been stopped and interrogated at the UK border on several previous instances – the consequence, he says wryly, of being a Muslim man with a beard. But this time was different: the interviewer asked for the password to his electronic devices, and when Rabbani refused – his clients are vulnerable, their information highly sensitive – he was arrested and charged.

    Kate Stonehill ’s eye-opening and at times slightly muddled documentary uses Rabbani’s case as a jumping-off point to explore the Orwellian surveillance activities of the UK; the potential for abuse of Schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Bill and the terrifying amounts of data about each one of us that can be mined from our mobile phones.

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      U.S. Government Seeks “Unified Vision of Unauthorized Movement”

      news.movim.eu / TheIntercept · Tuesday, 12 March - 18:25 · 4 minutes

    As the immigration crisis continues and the Biden administration pursues a muscular enforcement strategy with an eye to public opinion and the 2024 presidential election, the Department of Homeland Security prospers. One obscure $6 billion program has grown silently: a network of over 1,000 surveillance towers built along America’s land borders, a system that it describes as “a unified vision of unauthorized movement.”

    A broad outline of the Biden administration’s plan to solve the immigration crisis in America was unveiled this week, including 5,800 new border and immigration security officers, a new $4.7 billion Southwest Border Contingency Fund, and more emergency authority for the president to shut down the border when needed. Moving forward on these programs will “save lives and bring order to the border,” President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address last week.

    Homeland Security’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request , released yesterday, includes $25.9 billion to “secure the border,” mostly through more government agents and more (and more capable) technology. Hidden in the fine print is the $6 billion tower surveillance program, one that has been in the works and growing since 2005 for years.

    The system is called Integrated Surveillance Towers, and it is projected to reach “full operational capability” in 2034, a network of over 1,000 manned and unmanned towers covering the thousands of miles that make up America’s northern and southern borders. IST includes four ever-growing programs: Autonomous Surveillance Towers (AST); Integrated Fixed Towers (IFT); Remote Video Surveillance System Upgrade (RVSS-U); and the Northern Border RVSS (NB-RVSS). The deployment of various towers have been going on so long, some are already obsolete, according to the DHS 2025 budget request.

    According to the Department of Homeland Security, IST detects and identifies “threats in near real time,” plugging up one gap that allows for “the exploitation of data collected by sensors, towers, drones, assets, agents, facilities, and other sources informing mission critical decisions in the field and at Headquarters.” Modern technology, including AI and “autonomous capabilities,” the Border Patrol says , is key to “keeping front-line personnel safer, more effective, and one step ahead” of border enemies.

    Towers are currently being built and netted together by Elbit America (part of Israel’s Elbit Systems), Advanced Technology Systems Company, and General Dynamics. Defense Daily reported in September that DHS plans to acquire about 277 new IST towers and upgrade about 191 legacy surveillance towers in the latest set of contracts. A January press release from General Dynamics celebrates the distinction of being named one of the three recipients of a piece of a $1.8 billion indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract: “The Consolidated Tower & Surveillance Equipment (CTSE) system consists of all fixed and relocatable sensor towers, and communications and power equipment necessary for CBP [Customs and Border Protection] to perform surveillance along the southern and northern borders of the United States.” The company says it may take up to 14 years to complete.

    The network of towers hosts various day and night capable cameras and radars, and can also be equipped with other sensors, including cellphone communications intercept devices, to paint a picture of hostile terrain below. The main focus of DHS today is to net all of the towers into “a single unified program” and integrate AI into the ability to detect movement and activity to create a “common operating picture.”

    Though billions have been spent on the IST program, government auditors have consistently questioned whether it actually reduces unlawful border crossings. A General Accountability Office assessment from 2018 concluded that the DHS was “not yet positioned to fully quantify the impact these technologies have on its mission,” that is, whether the towers actually help to stem the flow. The GAO then recommended that DHS establish better metrics to “more fully assess … progress in implementing the Southwest Border Technology Plan and determine when mission benefits have been realized.”

    A new GAO report issued last month updates progress on the IST program and says that finishing the network in Texas has been a problem. “According to the IST program manager,” the report reads, “… ease of access and willingness of property owners are key factors when considering sites for tower placement. The program manager stated that sites in the Laredo and Rio Grande Valley sectors … are still challenging because these areas need permissions from multiple landowners and road access may be an impediment.”

    Though the vast majority of undocumented immigrants cross the southern border at just a handful of locations, homeland security equally seeks to cover the entire Canadian border with towers, according to DHS documents. And not only that: Homeland security is eyeing the California coast and the coastal Atlantic for future expansion, portending a ubiquitous nationwide system of ground surveillance.

    ResearchAndMarkets.com’s November report on “Border Security Technologies”says that the market will exceed $70 billion globally in 2027, rising from $48 billion in 2022. “The adoption of AI-integrated surveillance towers will be critical to driving growth, with the total value of camera systems globally expected to reach $22.8 billion by 2027; up from $10.1 billion in 2022. Surveillance towers are capable of creating a virtual border, detecting, identifying, and tracking threats over great distances.”

    “AI-integrated surveillance towers are at the centre of growing concern by campaign groups regarding their potential to analyse the behaviour of the general population, possibly infringing upon people’s human rights. These concerns may slow adoption unless addressed,” the report says.

    The post U.S. Government Seeks “Unified Vision of Unauthorized Movement” appeared first on The Intercept .

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      Phantom Parrot review – cautionary tale of state surveillance and the war on privacy

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 12 March - 11:00

    A compelling documentary on digital war-on-terror laws that centres on a programme that can mean prison for anyone who refuses UK police access to their smartphones

    We all know (and are largely complacent) about the limitless possibilities for digital surveillance and data collection by corporations intent on selling us things, or using our existence to sell advertising. Kate Stonehill’s film is about the more old-fashioned subject of state surveillance and specifically the existence of a disquieting new programme in the UK nicknamed “Phantom Parrot”: the practice of remote spying on mobile phone use.

    Stonehill’s film is also about schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act , which gives the police powers to search people at UK borders, without needing explicit grounds for suspicion on terrorism. That legislation was brought in before the smartphone was invented, but means that officers can demand detainees hand over their PINs and passcodes to all devices on pain of prosecution and a three-month prison sentence. Because, for all that almost all the information exists on external servers and the cloud, there are still some things which are only held on this handset, to which most of us entrust our entire existence.

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      Airbnb bans creepy surveillance cameras inside rentals starting April 30

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 11 March - 20:43

    camera hidden in flower pot indoors

    Enlarge (credit: Liudmila Chernetska/Getty )

    Airbnb, like hotels and rival vacation rental site Vrbo , will no longer allow hosts to record guests while they're inside the property. Airbnb previously allowed hosts to have disclosed cameras outside the property and in "common areas" inside, but Airbnb's enforcement of the policy and the rules' lack of specificity made camera use troubling for renters.

    Airbnb announced today that as of April 30, it's "banning the use of indoor security cameras in listings globally as part of efforts to simplify our policy on security cameras and other devices" and to prioritize privacy.

    Cameras that are turned off but inside the property will also be banned, as are indoor recording devices. Airbnb's updated policy defines cameras and recording devices as "any device that records or transmits video, images, or audio, such as a baby monitor, doorbell camera, or other camera."

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      Surveillance through Push Notifications

      news.movim.eu / Schneier · Monday, 4 March - 22:38 · 1 minute

    The Washington Post is reporting on the FBI’s increasing use of push notification data—”push tokens”—to identify people. The police can request this data from companies like Apple and Google without a warrant.

    The investigative technique goes back years. Court orders that were issued in 2019 to Apple and Google demanded that the companies hand over information on accounts identified by push tokens linked to alleged supporters of the Islamic State terrorist group.

    But the practice was not widely understood until December, when Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, said an investigation had revealed that the Justice Department had prohibited Apple and Google from discussing the technique.

    […]

    Unlike normal app notifications, push alerts, as their name suggests, have the power to jolt a phone awake—a feature that makes them useful for the urgent pings of everyday use. Many apps offer push-alert functionality because it gives users a fast, battery-saving way to stay updated, and few users think twice before turning them on.

    But to send that notification, Apple and Google require the apps to first create a token that tells the company how to find a user’s device. Those tokens are then saved on Apple’s and Google’s servers, out of the users’ reach.

    The article discusses their use by the FBI, primarily in child sexual abuse cases. But we all know how the story goes:

    “This is how any new surveillance method starts out: The government says we’re only going to use this in the most extreme cases, to stop terrorists and child predators, and everyone can get behind that,” said Cooper Quintin, a technologist at the advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation.

    “But these things always end up rolling downhill. Maybe a state attorney general one day decides, hey, maybe I can use this to catch people having an abortion,” Quintin added. “Even if you trust the U.S. right now to use this, you might not trust a new administration to use it in a way you deem ethical.”