Still from a recent Apple launch

In his iconic novel “1984”, George Orwell envisioned omnipresent “telescreens” in every home, business and on every street that could be monitored by the government.  These screens were especially powerful because the subject never knew when the screen was being monitored or if, in fact, monitoring ever occurred.  One had to live as though one were watched at all times.

As is often the case, truth seems to lie somewhere between the totalitarianism of Orwell’s “1984” and the hedonistic consumer dystopia of Huxley’s “Brave New World.” As two recent stories point out, our actual telescreens cost hundreds of dollars and have designer labels.

The useful GPS technology that allows us to navigate our way through city streets also allows government agencies to track our movements.  Not in theory, but in practice.  A recent story notes that agencies have made rampant use of cellphones to track the physical movements and identities of individuals.  As long as we are not up to any wrongdoing, who cares?  Except that the definition of “wrongdoing” is a tricky one.  One Alabama sheriff used the technology to track his daughter’s whereabouts when she stayed out too late.  Even more unsettling is the story of Michigan police who used the technology to note the identities of protesters at a labor union rally.  And these are just the abuses that had been reported thus far.

Having taken part in many marches and protests during the Bush years, I observed that police utilized cameras as weapons of intimidation, recording the faces of each and every protester for purposes that remain unknown.  Did they do this to create a record or merely the belief that such a record might exist?  Was their object to record identities, prevent illegal activity or to intimidate peaceful protesters?  In any event, it seems that these tactics have moved from digital cameras to mobile telephony.  So while tools like Twitter and text messaging have been used by protesters around the world to organize and mobilize, mobile telephony may be just as useful for officials to monitor protest and “chill” dissent.  

 Meanwhile, do you know that little camera that sits on top of your computer screen or laptop–the one that may be pointed at you right now?  How do you know that nobody can see you through it?  If that seems silly, then you should read this story from CBS News about a high school sophomore who was spied on in his home by his school using the webcam in a school issued laptop.  In this case, the danger is that this technology is not only exploitable by overeager officials, but by child predators either within the school system or who may hack into the school’s system.  That is, it might not only be Big Brother who is watching, but Big Pervert.  The FBI is investigating the incident, but it is unclear if they are looking for wrongdoing or pointers.  

 When a Philadelphia mainline school district starts taking pages from the playbook of Orwell’s Oceania, privacy advocates and consumers should take note.  With mobile computing on the rise, hundreds of millions of Americans are using objects that may be used to track their movements and to view their lives.  As cameras and GPS systems become more prominent in these devices, there is every reason to suspect that our personal devices may not be as personal as they seem.

“The bill, which expires in six years, allows the government to install
permanent wiretapping outposts in telephone and internet facilities
inside the United States without a warrant. However, if those wiretaps
are used to target Americans inside or outside of the country, the
government would have to get a court order. However, if the target is a foreigner or a foreign corporation, and they call an American or an
American calls them, no warrant is required.”

In other words, Americans are screwed, but international students and other foreigners are even more screwed.Being an international student at an American university myself sensitizes me to this problem. Consider this ability to wiretap all our phone and internet traffic without requiring a warrant in the following context:

1. the government is already tracking every move of international students and visitors.
2. the university is asking students to provide their cellphone number so that they can be contacted in cases of emergencies.
3. while the university has good privacy policies in place
4. they have to comply under the Patriot Act if the government asks them to disclose private information (including cellphone numbers)
5. the government also has the phone records from the telecom companies
6. the government doesn’t even need a warrant or court order if it decides it wants to wiretap foreigners

You do the math. International student? Check. All his/her personal and not-so-personal information? Check. Cellphone number? Check. Phone records showing who is calling who at what time for how long from where? Check. Permission to wiretap and spy at will? Check. Civil Liberties? Uhm.

On a smaller side note, it is interesting to see how the presidential candidates have voted on this. McCain voted in favor of giving telecom companies immunity. Obama voted against. Clinton decided to abstain from voting. It’s too bad I don’t get to vote in this country.

As we noted last month, the White House and telecoms pressed for retroactive immunity. This pressure has not worked–at least not yet–despite Bush’s threat of a veto.

According to the Colorado ACLU letter to the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education, administrators at Monarch High School detained a student on May 24th and accused him of smoking cigarettes. When a search of his backpack and pockets revealed no evidence, Vice Principal Drew Adams seized the student’s cell phone, reading and transcribing several messages.

The ACLU alleges this is a class 6 felony under Colorado law.

Adams misrepresented the seizure as a means of preventing distractions during the disciplinary meeting, the ACLU letter continues. The student’s mother asked for the phone, but Adams kept it over Memorial Day weekend.

When the phone was returned, the student’s mother discovered that somebody—presumably Adams—had attempted to send a text message to one of her son’s friends over the weekend, “falsely representing himself as a student.” The attempt failed because the mother had cancelled the service.

Beginning with the text messages from this first student’s phone, “Monarch High School authorities followed up with a cascade of additional interrogations accompanied by seizures and searches of additional students’ cell phones.”

After interviews “with many of the parents and over a dozen students who were drawn into these successive waves of interrogations and cell phone searches,” the group concluded this is part of a broad pattern of such behavior at Monarch.

Many students and parents report being lied to regarding the purpose of seizing cell phones. Further, “school administrators hindered students’ efforts to involve their parents and obstructed concerned parents’ efforts to obtain accurate and complete information about the school’s investigation of their children.” Two students allege to have been held for extended periods without a chance to contact their parents—one long past the end of the school day.

The ACLU also uncovered two earlier instances of Monarch administrators searching students’ cell phones.

In a press release, the district has claimed its legal right to engage in such activities, insisting that district counsel gave them the green light. The Denver Post reports that administrators in Douglas and Jefferson counties have also searched students’ cell phones.

Dear Rep. Sires,

I am a voter in your district, and I am writing in regards to H.R. 3773, the RESTORE Act. I urge you not to support this legislation unless it meets two key conditions.

First, the bill must not be amended to grant immunity for telecommunications providers who cooperated with the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping program. Such a grant of immunity will cut important court cases off at the knees before we can learn the full nature of the administration’s spying. In short, you must not reward the administration for their blatant disregard for the law of the land, including the very balanced Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and you must not reward common carriers for their willingness to join in the illegalities. Bush’s threat to veto the legislation without such a grant of immunity only confirms concerns that the law has been broken.

Second, do not approve the bill without all of its current protections for civil liberties. In particular, insist that the bill retain or strengthen the following provisions:

• Section 5, requiring oversight and periodic audits of surveillance activities
• Section 7, requiring the Department of Justice to conduct a timely audit of all warrantless surveillance programs since September 11, 2001
• Section 8, requiring record keeping of all surveillance of United States persons
• Section 10, reiterating FISA as the sole legal justification for the gathering of electronic surveillance

Not incidentally, the Bush administration’s willful disregard for FISA is an impeachable act if ever there was one, but sadly it is not the only one committed in the past seven years. Speaker Pelosi may consider impeachment to be off the table, but I do not, and if you and your colleagues do not stand up for the Constitution, I fear for the future of our democracy.

Sincerely,

Bill D. Herman

It’s unclear to me how often, if ever, these cameras get used to make charges. All the articles I’m finding about a somewhat recent riot indicate that charges were made against several students, and that security camera footage may be used.

According to UMass’s Daily Collegian, however, footage posted by students to YouTube was actually used by UMass Police “to identify suspects involved in the riot.”

Since December 2006, the Central Intelligence Agency has been using Facebook.com, the popular social networking site, to recruit potential employees into its National Clandestine Service. It marks the first time the CIA has ventured into social networking to hire new personnel.

The profile even sports an embed of a promotional YouTube clip (read: recycled TV ad).

There’s only one problem: any would-be spy who joins the group outs him/herself for all the world to see. I hope that Cliff Kurlander (Emory ’07), Jen Sharp (UC Davis ’10), and Stew Anderson (Vanderbilt ’08) didn’t really want to be agents. But I do; why else would I have joined?

UPDATE: Boy, was I not joking about “recycled TV ad.” I finally watched the end of the clip, and there are a few frames’ worth of a 1-800-Fitness commercial. Congrats to the folks at the CIA for their top-notch understanding of both social networking sites AND video editing software.

Among key privacy reforms, he is seeking tighter supervision of government databanks, action on data leaks and identity theft, and (the shock!) warrants as a prerequisite to surveillance of Americans.

Patent reform is long overdue, and there should be bipartisan support for his efforts. He and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah co-sponsored a bill this year that, among other things, would make it cheaper and easier to challenge bunk patents. It’s similar to a bill sponsored by Republican Lamar Smith in the House.

Of course, the Senate has a bigger concern right now: Senator Tim Johnson getting better. Our hearts go out to Senator Johnson and his family.

Like the “No Fly” list, you’ll be unable to see where you stand (does this post add to my score?) or have the chance to challenge it–unless the EFF, ACLU, or another civil liberties group can win another court battle.

If the terrorists really had attacked us because “they hate our freedom” (perhaps the dumbest claim ever uttered by any administration), then we’ve done nothing but help them for the past 5 years.

Recommendation systems, also known as collaborative filtering systems, try to predict whether a customer will like a movie, book or piece of music by comparing his or her past preferences to those of other people with similar tastes. Such systems will look at, say, the last 10 books, movies or songs a customer has rated highly and try to extrapolate an 11th.

But they’ve hit a kind of wall. If you can improve the current system by 10%, you win a cool million.

There’s another twist to the story: to make the contest work, they have to release the database of rental histories. Unlike the AOL search data debacle, however, Netflix carefully considered the privacy implications and got the nod from privacy experts. The data are also just easier to anonymize; a person’s web portal search records are generally much more personal than a list of rented movies.

Researchers are jazzed to finally have a big data set to work on. Having watched my colleagues and professors jealously guard the large survey datasets floating around Annenberg (those who get more credit for assembling and managing the survey, weighted by seniority, informally get to decide which lines of research are theirs), I can imagine the excitement of university researchers and other engineers outside the labs of major for-profit web companies.

So fire up your terminals; the contest will be officially announced today.

(Here’s the same story at the NY Times.)