BREAKING: Discover How A Slacker Makes $100,000 A Year!

WEBMASTERS! Get Your Website To The Top Of Google

China’s ‘Big Brother surveillance’ to dwarf UK

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

China has launched an ambitious “Big Brother” surveillance programme using everything from closed circuit television systems that can recognise faces to identity card computer chips to monitor its population.

A high-tech security company has been awarded a contract for the first phase of a scheme to encode computer chips for the residence permits all Chinese citizens must carry, starting in the southern city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.

The government will use the chips to control the whereabouts of its hundreds of millions of migrant workers. But they will also store data on the number of their children under the one-child policy, education records and ultimately medical and credit histories.

The company is already setting up television systems throughout the city armed with “intelligent surveillance” software that can recognise faces.

Police hope eventually to combine the two systems to provide complete surveillance.

Shenzhen is being used as a testing ground for part of an all-encompassing security system known as the Golden Shield Project. This also includes computer and mobile phone monitoring through the so-called “Great Firewall” of internet censorship.

Shenzhen is the most developed city in China, having been turned from a village 30 years ago into a pioneer of the country’s “special economic development zones”.

It now has a population of more than 12 million - almost twice as many as Hong Kong, on whose border it lies and which it was set up to imitate.

Per head it is the richest city in China but it suffers from widespread crime and prostitution. Virtually all its population has migrated from elsewhere, a major social issue in China, where residence permits assigned at birth dictate where you can live.

The closed circuit television system and residence card chips will be provided by China Public Security Technology, run by Chinese entrepreneurs but registered in Florida.

More than 20,000 new cameras will be installed, according to the New York Times. They will be integrated with 180,000 already set up.

Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, was the first to test the new system when he passed through immigration at the Shenzhen port on his return from a visit to Hong Kong.

But the extent of Golden Shield has alarmed human rights groups, who say it extends control over all aspects of people’s lives to authorities subject to little or no accountability.

Some of the data the authorities intend to retain on the new identity cards includes the owner’s police record; employment history; landlord’s telephone number; educational record; medical insurance status and ethnicity.

While Britain is known around the world for its surveillance culture due to the soaring numbers of CCTV cameras, human rights activists said the scale and sophistication of the Shenzhen project dwarfed the UK.

“I don’t think they are remotely comparable, and even in Britain it is quite controversial,” said Dinah PoKempner of Human Rights Watch.

The US has announced that it is to expand the use of spy satellites for domestic surveillance, turning its “eyes in sky” inward to combat terrorism and eventually for law enforcement.

Have Your Say: China’s ‘Big Brother surveillance’ to dwarf UK
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Bush Administration Spends $1.6 Billion On Propaganda

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

By Christopher Lee

How much is good press worth? To the Bush administration, about $1.6 billion.

That’s how much seven federal departments spent from 2003 through the second quarter of 2005 on 343 contracts with public relations firms, advertising agencies, media organizations and individuals, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

The 154-page report provides the most comprehensive look to date at the scope of federal spending in an area that generated substantial controversy last year. Congressional Democrats asked the GAO to look into federal public relations contracts last spring at the height of the furor over government-sponsored prepackaged news and journalism-for-sale.

Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator, had been unmasked as a paid administration promoter who received $186,000 from the Education Department to speak favorably about President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law in broadcast appearances.

Around the same time, a spat erupted between the GAO and the White House over whether the government’s practice of feeding TV stations prepackaged, ready-to-air news stories that touted administration policies (but did not disclose the government as the source) amounted to “covert propaganda.” The GAO said that it did. The administration disagreed, saying spreading information about federal programs is part of the agencies’ mission, and that the burden of disclosure falls on the TV stations.

Congress sided with the GAO. Lawmakers inserted a provision into an annual spending bill requiring federal agencies to include “a clear notification” within the text or audio of a prepackaged news story that it was prepared or paid for by the government.

The new report reveals that federal public relations spending goes far beyond “video news releases.” The contracts covered the waterfront, from a $6.3 million agreement to help the Department of Homeland Security educate Americans about how to respond to terrorist attacks; to a $647,350 contract to assist the Transportation Security Administration in producing video news releases and media tours on the subject of airport security procedures; to a $6,600 contract to train managers at the Bureau of Reclamation in dealing with the media.

“Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States,” Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), ranking Democrat of the House Government Reform Committee, said in a statement yesterday.

Have Your Say: Bush Administration Spends $1.6 Billion On Propaganda
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

US moves to use spy satellites for domestic surveillance

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

AFP

The United States is moving to expand the use of spy satellites for domestic surveillance, turning its “eyes in sky” inward to counter terrorism and eventually for law enforcement, a US official said Wednesday.

The director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, expanded the range of federal and local agencies that can tap into imagery from spy satellites in a memo in May to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

He also expanded the kind of intelligence that can be made available to include measurement and signature intelligence, which is used to identify and track targets by their particular physical characteristics, the official said.

“There is no new legal ground being broken here,” said the official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the plans Wednesday.

NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration and US Geological Survey have had access to imagery from US reconnaissance satellites in the past.

But the new authorities raise questions about its implications for US civil liberties, and the extent to which law enforcement agencies will be able to spy on Americans using tools to spy on foreign adversaries.

The official said the use of satellites by law enforcement would proceed “slowly” to make sure that civil liberties are protected.

Initially, the satellites will be used for “homeland security” missions like border control, monitoring key infrastructure and disaster response, the official said.

The Department of Homeland Security will control access through a committee that will draft “proper use memorandums” stipulating what the intelligence can be used for, the official said.

The committee is not expected to take up law enforcement requests for access until sometime next year.

The plan has been vetted throughout the national government and the appropriate congressional committees have signed off, approving a reallocation of funds for it, the official said.

Have Your Say: US moves to use spy satellites for domestic surveillance
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Wikipedia ’shows CIA page edits’

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

By Jonathan Fildes

An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries.

Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency’s computers made edits to the page of Iran’s president.

It also purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

The tool, developed by US researchers, trawls a list of 5.3m edits and matches them to the net address of the editor.

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia that can be created and edited by anyone.

Most of the edits detected by the scanner correct spelling mistakes or factual inaccuracies in profiles. However, others have been used to remove potentially damaging material or to deface sites.

Mistaken identity

On the profile of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the tool indicates that a worker on the CIA network reportedly added the exclamation “Wahhhhhh!” before a section on the leader’s plans for his presidency.

A warning on the profile of the anonymous editor reads: “You have recently vandalised a Wikipedia article, and you are now being asked to stop this type of behaviour.”

It is claimed the entry was changed by a CIA computer user

Other changes that have been made are more innocuous, and include tweaks to the profile of former CIA chief Porter Goss and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey.

When asked whether it could confirm whether the changes had been made by a person using a CIA computer, an agency spokesperson responded: “I cannot confirm that the traffic you cite came from agency computers.

“I’d like in any case to underscore a far larger and more significant point that no one should doubt or forget: The CIA has a vital mission in protecting the United States, and the focus of this agency is there, on that decisive work.”

Radio change

The site also indicates that a computer owned by the US Democratic Party was used to make changes to the site of right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

The changes brand Mr Limbaugh as “idiotic,” a “racist”, and a “bigot”. An entry about his audience now reads: “Most of them are legally retarded.”

The IP address is registered in the name of the Democratic National Headquarters.

A spokesperson for the Democratic Party said that the changes had not been made on its computers. Instead, they said that the “IP address is the same as the DCCC”.

The DCCC, or Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is the “official campaign arm of the Democrats” in the House of Representatives and share a building with the party.

“We don’t condone these sorts of activities and we take every precaution to ensure that our network is used in a responsible manner,” Doug Thornell of the DCCC told the BBC News website.

Mr Thornell pointed out that the edit had been made “close to two years ago” and it was “impossible to know” who had done it.

Voting issue

The site also indicates that Vatican computers were used to remove content from a page about the leader of the Irish republican party Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams.

Wikipedia already collects the IP address or username of editors

The edit removed links to newspaper stories written in 2006 that alleged that Mr Adams’ fingerprints and handprints were found on a car used during a double murder in 1971.

The section, titled “Fresh murder question raised” is no longer available through the online encyclopaedia.

Wikipedia Scanner also points the finger at commercial organisations that have modified entries about the pages.

One in particular is Diebold, the company that supplied electronic voting machines for the controversial US election in 2000.

In October 2005, a person using a Diebold computer removed paragraphs about Walden O’Dell, chief executive of the company, which revealed that he had been “a top fund-raiser” for George Bush.

A month later, other paragraphs and links to stories about the alleged rigging of the 2000 election were also removed.

The paragraphs and links have since been reinstated.

Diebold officials have not responded to requests by the BBC for information about the changes.

Web history

The Wikipedia Scanner results are not the first time that people have been uncovered editing their own Wikipedia entries.

Earlier this year, Microsoft was revealed to have offered money to experts to trawl through entries about the company and its products to make corrections.

Staff at the US Congress have also previously been exposed for editing and removing sensitive information about politicians.

An inquiry was launched after staff for Democratic representative Marty Meehan admitted polishing his biography

The new tool was built by Virgil Griffith of the California Institute of Technology.

It exploits the open nature of Wikipedia, which already collects the net address or username of editors and tracks all changes to a page. The information can be accessed in the “history” tab at the top of a Wikipedia page.

By merging this information with a database of IP address owners, Wikipedia Scanner is able to put a name to the organisation and firms from which edits are made.

The scanner cannot identify the individuals editing articles, admits Mr Griffith.

“Technically, we don’t know whether it came from an agent of that company, however, we do know that edit came from someone with access to their network,” he wrote on the Wikipedia Scanner site.

A spokesperson for Wikipedia said the tool helped prevent conflicts of interest.

“We really value transparency and the scanner really takes this to another level,” they said.

“Wikipedia Scanner may prevent an organisation or individuals from editing articles that they’re really not supposed to.”

Have Your Say: Wikipedia ’shows CIA page edits’
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Related News

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Translate: