IT, Security

1
IT, Security Surveillance Concerns

• January 31, 2006

2
New Century, New Risks?

• Development in information technologies has
  fundamentally changed the global environment for
  individual state security its perception,
  maintenance and the nature of its threat.
• Ontological insecurity a profound emotional
  uneasiness about ones safety and security, or
  even ones existence. A term coined by R.D.
  Laing.
• A new feeling of fear and impending catastrophe.
• Security has become a central political, societal
  and economic issue.
• The need for safety vs. the need for freedom How
  to balance between the two?

3
Changing Nature of Surveillance in the
Information Age

• A heavy (in some cases, exclusive) reliance on
  modern information and communication technologies
  (ICTs).
• Shift from centralized state informational power
  to dispersed assemblage (although the state keeps
  its powerful presence).
• Shift from targeting specific individuals to
  categorical suspicion, and from individuals to
  networks and organizations.

4
Social Sorting

• Categorical suspicion someone is in the suspect
  category because he/she belongs to a particular
  category or group.
• Social categorizing a discriminatory mechanism
  to classify people based on superficial
  social-demographic or other criteria.
• Racial profiling typically along Arab lines
• Other types of profiling e.g., particular
  behavioral patterns communication purchasing
  activities religious groups.

5
Perspectives on Surveillance (1)

• Big Brother (by George Orwell, Nineteen
  Eighty-Four, Published in 1949) A dictator in
  Occana, a totalitarian state, that keeps
  everybody under complete surveillance (via a
  telescreen) at all times. The thought police
  co-ordinate the monitoring effort of the state in
  order to maintain social order and conformity.
• Panopticon (Michel Foucault, Discipline and
  Punish, published in 1975) a prison design in
  which visibility of inmates are maximized by
  enabling the guards in the central tower to watch
  the prisoners at all times without being seen.
• New surveillance technologies, some argue, have
  created an electronic panopticon for modern
  societies.

6
Perspectives on Surveillance (2)

• Surveillant assemblage a term proposed by
  Haggerty and Ericson (2000) to describe the
  evolving mechanisms of surveillance techniques
  and technologies.
• With the latest developments of new information
  and communication technologies, discrete
  electronic monitoring systems can be combined to
  provide for exponential increases in the degree
  of surveillance capacity, both by the state and
  extra-state institutions.
• The disappearance of disappearance it is
  increasingly difficult for individuals to
  maintain their anonymity or stay away from
  monitoring mechanisms.
• A series of discreet flows about individuals is
  reassembled in different locations to achieve an
  unprecedented level of surveillance over those
  individuals.

7
Surveillance is Omnipresent

• CCTV cameras in public places
• There are about 3,000 surveillance cameras in
  Manhattan, NYC
• The city of Chicago has at least 2,000
  surveillance cameras in its neighborhoods.
• Iris-scans at the airports
• DNA databanks by law enforcement agencies
• Fingerprint databases by federal agencies
• Other technologies smart cards,
  face-recognition, biometrics, automatic number
  plate recognition (ANPR), etc.

8
Surveillance Important Legislations

• Espionage Act of 1917
• Communications Act of 1934
• The Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968
• Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978
• Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986
• Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act
  of 1994
• USA Patriot Act of 2001
• Homeland Security Act of 2002

9
Espionage Act of 1917

• Passed shortly after the United States entered
  WWI.
• Intended to suppress dissent in time of war.
• It authorized the surveillance and wiretapping of
  German delegations to the United States.

10
Communications Act of 1934

• No person not being authorized by the sender
  shall intercept any communication and divulge or
  publish the existence, contents, substance,
  purport, effect or meaning of such interrupted
  communication to any person.
• Federal agents, however, argued that the law did
  not apply to them because they were not divulging
  information.
• The Supreme Court ruled in 1937 that wiretapping
  prohibitions did apply to the Federal government.

11
Court Rulings Against Wiretapping Two Milestone
Cases

• In Berger vs. New York, the Supreme Court sided
  with Berger in ruling that the New York State
  wiretapping statute was unconstitutional because
  it did not provide for adequate supervision.
• The statue did not specify the crimes for which
  wiretapping was permitted, the places or the
  people that could be tapped, or the time
  limitation on wiretapping.
• In Katz vs. U.S. of the same year, the Supreme
  Court declared that wiretapping was a violation
  of the Fourth Amendment.

12
The Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968

• In response to the decisions in the previous two
  cases, Congress passed the Act to allow
  wiretapping in domestic circumstances under very
  limited conditions.
• To protect the nation from attacks and protect
  national security from foreign powers
• To protect the Government against any clear and
  present danger.
• Wiretapping was allowed for the first time with a
  court order.
• Agents had to prove probable cause.

13
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978

• Allowed for electronic surveillance and physical
  search of a foreign power.
• It limited its application to U.S. persons.
• No probable cause was needed if it involved a
  foreign power.

14
Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986

• ECPA stipulated that online (electronic)
  communications are protected. It extended
  government restrictions on wiretapping to
  transmissions of data by computers, cell phones
  and other electronic devices.
• It also protects messages stored on computers.
• The Act, however, is significantly weakened by
  the USA Patriot Act.
• Only against government agencies, not private
  institutions.

15
CALEA

• The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement
  Act (CALEA). Passed by Congress in 1994, and came
  into force in 1995.
• It is intended to aid law enforcement in its
  effort to conduct surveillance of citizens via
  digital telephone networks.
• The Act requires telephone companies to make it
  possible for law enforcement agencies to tap any
  phone conversations carried out over its
  networks, as well as making call records
  available.
• The act also stipulates that it must not be
  possible for a person to detect that his or her
  conversation is being monitored by the respective
  government agency.

16
USA Patriot Act (1)

• Passed 45 days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks
  on the U.S.
• The Act gave government investigators the ability
  to look into personal phone and Internet records
  on the basis of being "relevant for an on going
  investigation concerning international terrorism
  or clandestine intelligence activities", rather
  than probable cause as outlined in the Fourth
  Amendment.
• So government agencies do not need sufficient
  evidence (i.e. probable cause) to show that
  somebody is involved in some kind of terrorist
  activities in order to wiretap or collect other
  information in relation to the person.
• Several amendments have already been made by
  Congress.

17
USA Patriot Act (2)

• The Act greatly expanded the scope of traditional
  tools of surveillance.
• Traditionally, pen register and trap and trace
  are used without having to obtain court order to
  intercept phone calls. The Act allows more
  sophisticated tools to trace personal
  communications.
• The type and amount of information the government
  can obtain has been vastly increased.
• Increased information-sharing between law
  enforcement and intelligence agencies.
• Secret searches the government can conduct
  secret searches without notifying the subjects.
• Several provisions of the Act expired on Dec. 31,
  2005. The government is seeking further renewal.

18
TIPS

• Terrorism Information and Prevention System an
  initiative proposed by the Bush Administration.
• Designed as a national system for reporting
  suspicious, and potentially terrorist-related
  activity, and originally intended to be started
  in August 2002.
• TIPS volunteers, to be in the millions, were to
  be recruited primarily from among those whose
  work provided access to homes, businesses or
  public transport systems.
• However, Congress voted this initiative down in
  November 2002.

19
HSA (1)

• The Homeland Security Act was signed by President
  Bush on November 25, 2002.
• It created a new Cabinet-level Department of
  Homeland Security (DHS) that consolidated 22
  agencies into one department with 170,000
  employees.
• One of the Departments main roles is to access,
  receive and analyze information collected from
  sources including intelligence agencies, law
  enforcement, and the private sector in order to
  identify and assess terrorist threats.

20
HSA (2)

• It will also produce watch lists which contain
  names of persons suspected of some involvement in
  terrorism, though not wanted for arrest.
• The HSA included the Cyber Security Enhancement
  Act, which has a provision that expands the
  ability of ISPs to voluntarily disclose
  information to government officials. The content
  of e-mail messages or instant messages can be
  given to a government official in an emergency,
  without requiring a factual basis stated for the
  emergency or imminent threat of injury

21
ECHELON (1)

• Created by the US National Security Agency (NSA)
• A global electronic surveillance system that
  captures and analyzes virtually every phone call,
  fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the
  world.
• Other countries participating in the system
  include Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and
  Canada.

22
ECHELON (2)

• How it works
• Intercept stations are positioned all over the
  world to capture all satellite, microwave,
  cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic
• The information is processed through the NSA
  super computers using technologies like advanced
  voice recognition and optical character
  recognition (OCR), and looking for code words or
  phrases
• Intelligence analysts at each of the listening
  stations then analyze the messages and forward
  the results to the headquarters
• In addition to being used for anti-terrorist
  purposes, ECHELON has been knowingly used for
  political spying (on the opponents and unpopular
  groups/activists) and commercial espionage.

23
Carnivore

• Was developed by the FBI to intercept any
  suspicious online message.
• It uses a common technology called packet sniffer
  to monitor network activities.
• As of 2005, the FBI has opted for more
  sophisticated commercial software for the same
  purpose.

24
TALON

• A database created by the Pentagon to track
  domestic terrorist threats against the military.
• It contains raw, non-validated reports of
  anomalous activities within the United States.
• Its stated purpose is to assemble, process and
  analyze suspicious activity reports to identify
  possible terrorist pre-attack activities.
• It provides a mechanism to collect and rapidly
  share reports by concerned citizens and military
  members regarding suspicious incidents.
• Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA,
  created in February 2002 by the Pentagon, funds
  and manages this system.

25
Campus Surveillance

• In August 2005, the U.S. government (FCC)
  extended the reach of CALEA passed in 1994 that
  requires hundreds of universities, online
  communications companies and cities to overhaul
  their Internet computer networks to make it
  easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor
  e-mail and other online communications.
• The law requires institutions to become compliant
  within 18 months of the decision.
• Estimated costs for college campuses come at 7
  billion, which will come at the expense of
  student tuitions.
• Fiercely resisted by university administrators.
• Compliance with the law is estimated to increase
  college tuition by about 450 annually.
• Still an ongoing issue.

26
General Concerns and Criticisms

• The government wants us to believe that seeking
  superior technologies is the best solution to
  fighting terrorism. But many experts argue that
  these measures will only result in pervasive
  surveillance of the general public, yet they will
  not actually enhance security in the purported
  campaign against terrorists. Here are an
  incomplete of common criticisms
• Not effective, and easy to exploit
• Subject to abuse and misuse
• Too much information and the information already
  existed in one form or another already prior to
  these measures
• Lack of oversight from independent parties over
  these programs
• Unprecedented scope of domestic surveillance
• Lack of justifications for most measures
• Lack of openness and public involvement
• Crucial resources are wasted to pull away law
  enforcement from key tasks
• Unconstitutional.