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New Spy Technology Pursued by DARPA

A new generation of spy technology designed to strengthen the U.S. military’s ability to detect and eliminate suspected insurgents in Iraq and elsewhere based on computer analyses of their movements and activities is being developed by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has begun granting contracts to software firms to create algorithms that can be applied to the real-time video feeds from drone aircraft so the data can be sorted and stored on a wide range of human activities, from digging a ditch to climbing into a car to kissing someone.

The contracts represent the latest step in the Bush administration’s seven-year drive to develop high-tech spying capabilities that can be applied to a variety of situations and locales to detect terrorist or insurgent activities.

The new DARPA project would develop algorithms that would identify specific human activities – both by individuals and by groups – and evaluate if these actions suggested behavior that would justify a military response.

The list of activities that would draw attention to a single person include “digging, loitering, picking up, throwing, exploding/burning, carrying, shooting, launching, walking, limping, running, kicking, smoking, gesturing,” according to DARPA’s contract description.

For person-to-person activities, the project would identify and catalogue cases of “following, meeting, gathering, moving in a group, dispersing, shaking hands, kissing, exchanging objects, kicking, carrying together.”

Categories relating to vehicles include getting into or out of a car, opening or closing the trunk, driving, accelerating, turning, stopping, passing and maintaining distances.

According to DARPA’s description, the research project addresses challenges faced by intelligence analysts in processing and retrieving the vast amounts of visual data created by live video feeds from Predator drones and other aerial surveillance over Iraq and Afghanistan. By identifying and indexing specific actions, the analysts would be helped in evaluating potential threats and could retrieve video regarding similar behavior.

“The U.S. military and intelligence communities have an ever increasing need to monitor live video feeds and search large volumes of archived video data for activities of interest due to the rapid growth in development and fielding of motion video systems,” said the DARPA document, written in March but withheld from the public until September.

Kitware, a software company with offices in New York and North Carolina, won an initial $6.7 million contract for what is technically called Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool, or VIRAT.

In a statement about the contract award, Kitware projected that through its proposed system, “the most high-value intelligence content will be clearly and intuitively presented to the video analyst, resulting in substantial reductions in analyst workload per mission as well as increasing the quality and accuracy of intelligence yield.”

Anthony Hoogs, Kitware’s project leader, said, ”This project will really make a difference to the war fighter.”

To carry out the project, Kitware said it was teaming up with two leading military technology companies, Honeywell and General Dynamics, as well as a number of academic researchers. [See Kitware Awarded $6.7M DARPA Contract.]

Repression Works

Though this DARPA project is not expected to be completed until early next decade, other technological breakthroughs reportedly have helped U.S. forces identify and kill insurgents in Iraq.

In his latest book, The War Within, Bob Woodward writes that highly classified U.S. intelligence tactics allowed for rapid targeting and killing of Iraqi insurgent leaders, representing a more important factor in undermining the insurgency than President George W. Bush’s much touted troop “surge.” However, Woodward withheld details of these secret techniques so as not to undermine their effectiveness.

Still, there have been previous glimpses of classified U.S. programs that combine high-tech means of identifying insurgents – such as sophisticated biometrics and night-vision-equipped drones – with old-fashioned brutality on the ground, including on-the-spot executions of suspected insurgents. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s Global Dirty War” and “Iraq’s Laboratory of Repression.”]

However, the marriage of advanced technology and military repression has raised concerns among some human rights advocates that these techniques could open the door to an Orwellian future in which authoritarian regimes repress popular resistance.

DARPA, with its mandate to push the envelope on the application of technology for military and intelligence purposes, also has been caught up before in controversies about balancing security against liberty.

In 2002, DARPA came under criticism when it unveiled plans for Total Information Awareness, a project that sought to detect terrorist activities by mining electronic data about virtually everyone on earth, anyone who participated in the modern economy.

The plan was to map out “transactional data” collected from every kind of activity – “financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary, country entry, place/event entry, transportation, housing, critical resources, government, communications,” according to the DARPA Web site.

The program would then cross-reference this data with the “biometric signatures of humans,” data collected on individuals’ faces, fingerprints, gaits and irises. To run the sensitive project, the Bush administration selected retired Admiral John Poindexter, who was convicted of five felony counts in the Iran-Contra Affair (though a conservative-dominated appeals court later reversed the jury verdicts).

Public and congressional outrage over this massive data-mining operation supposedly killed the TIA program in 2003, but the National Journal revealed in February 2006 that the project was ended in name only, kept alive within the secret budget of the National Security Agency.

One TIA component, called the Information Awareness Prototype System, was renamed “Basketball” at NSA, but still provided the basic architecture tying together information extraction, analysis and dissemination tools developed under TIA.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration began deploying similar advanced technology to Iraq with the goal of throttling the insurgency that was challenging the U.S. military occupation.

In effect, Iraq was transformed into a test tube for modern techniques of repression, including use of night-vision optics on drone aircraft, heat resonance imaging, and firepower that is both deadly and precise.

The new techniques marked a modernization of tactics used in other counterinsurgencies, such as in Vietnam in the 1960s and in Central America in the 1980s.

In Vietnam, U.S. forces planted sensors along infiltration routes for targeting bombing runs against North Vietnamese troops. In Guatemala, security forces were equipped with early laptop computers for use in identifying suspected subversives who would be dragged off buses and summarily executed.

Last year, a conservative counterinsurgency expert sent me a video, spliced together by the U.S. military in Iraq, showing how some of the modern techniques worked in Iraq. The video showed night-vision aerial surveillance of suspected “terrorists” as they moved in the dark with what was described as a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun, the muzzle still warm from firing.

The tiny figures of these “terrorists” then walked into a forested area where they were mowed down by miniguns from an AC-130. Their truck also was blown to bits.

Biometrics

Besides using Predator drones to monitor the movement of Iraqis from the sky, massive amounts of biometric data have been collected on the country’s people for use in identifying suspected insurgents.

Explaining the value of this computerized database, Pentagon weapons designer Anh Duong told the Washington Post that it gave valuable information to soldiers on the ground.

“A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot?” Duong said.

Though Duong is best known for designing high-explosives used to destroy hardened targets, she also supervised this Joint Expeditionary Forensics Facilities project, known as a “lab in a box” for analyzing biometric data, such as iris scans and fingerprints, that have been collected on more than one million Iraqis.

The labs – collapsible, 20-by-20-foot units each with a generator and a satellite link to a biometric data base in West Virginia – let U.S. forces cross-check data in the field against information collected previously that can be used to identify insurgents.

Duong said the next step would be to shrink the lab to the size of a “backpack” so soldiers who encounter a suspect “could find out within minutes” if he’s on a terrorist watch list and should be killed. [Washington Post, Dec. 1, 2007]

By identifying and indexing a wide range of human activities captured on surveillance videos, the new DARPA project could augment some of these other security projects, already in place or in development.

Regarding the video analysis, however, DARPA specifically prohibited inclusion of biometric algorithms for identifying people by their gaits or other individual features. However, those elements, which are being developed separately, presumably could be added to the overall technological package at a later date.

Tags: Bush, CIA, DARPA, Intelligence, Military, NSA, spy, spying

NSA Partially Funds it’s way closer to Quantum Computing

An international team of scientists—including researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—has succeeded in storing quantum data in an atomic nucleus for nearly two seconds, then retrieving it for processing.
Although two seconds is a short period, it is thousands of times longer than reported in previous studies and marks a milestone in quantum computing.

Researchers have calculated that if data could be stored in a quantum system for at least one second, error correction could protect the data indefinitely.

As techniques for creating the specialized storage environment improve, retention times could be extended, according to Joel Ager of the Berkeley Lab team.

“The good news is that there are no known physical limits that would prevent quantum memory time in nuclear spin from being longer,” Ager said. “With even greater isotopic and chemical purity of our silicon crystals, we should be able to store data in the nucleus for an arbitrarily long period of time, maybe even in terms of years.”
The achievement was reported in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.

The team also included researchers from Princeton University in the United States and Oxford University in the United Kingdom. The work was funded in part by the National Security Agency, the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department, the parent agency of the Berkeley Lab.
Quantum mechanics offers the possibility of computing power and speed billions of times greater than possible with traditional computers, in which data is stored and processed in digital bits, represented by either a 1 or 0. Quantum bits, or qubits, encode the data in property of subatomic particles called spin, which can be either up or down.
What makes quantum computing potentially so powerful is that a qubit can exist in both states at once. In traditional data, a byte made up of three bits can represent only one of eight possible combinations of 1s and 0s. But a qubyte can represent all eight at once, and operations can be performed simultaneously on all eight.

The challenge in practical quantum computing is to isolate the qubit from the noisy environment and protect it so it can be measured and manipulated. The spin of electrons has proven well-suited to processing quantum data, but is too fragile for memory because data quickly becomes corrupted by other electrons. To overcome this, the researchers moved the data into the nucleus of the atom, which is quieter and more protected than the electron cloud.
The team used phosphorous atoms embedded in specially developed crystals of exceptionally pure silicon-28. This was important, because natural silicon crystals contain 4.7 percent of the isotope silicon-29, which has a nuclear spin that would interfere with the readout of data from the phosphorous, said Berkeley Lab’s Eugene Haller, an authority on crystal growth and purification. The silicon crystals were grown at the Berkeley Lab, where Ager designed and built a one-of-a-kind reactor for the process.
“With crystals painstakingly grown by the Berkeley team and very careful measurements, we were delighted to see memory times exceeding the threshold” of one second, said Steve Lyon, leader of the Princeton team.
The scientists established a state in the electron spin of the phosphorous atom and transferred it to nuclear spin using a combination of microwave and radio frequency pulses. That data was stored in the nucleus spin for 1.75 seconds and then transferred back to the electron spin with about 90 percent accuracy.
“The electron acts as a middle man between the nucleus and the outside world,” said John Morton, research fellow at Oxford’s St. John College and lead author of the article. “It gives us a way to have our cake and eat it—fast processing speeds from the electron and long memory times from the nucleus.”
Future steps in quantum computing will require improving spin control and readout mechanisms, and testing the limits of memory time for nuclear storage.

Tags: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, NSA, qbit, quantum, quantum computer, quantum computing

A Glimpse Into NSA Monitoring Capabilities

NSA routing internet data thru Amsterdam to monitor U.S. websites and e-mail

Questions remain whether Bush admin approval of Verizon’s MCI takeover was quid pro quo for providing email-phone records to NSA for White House enemies list

Super-secret 5th generation Watercooled Cray computers used by NSA to tap into dial-up, DSL and high-speed broadband internet connections which have satellite voice recognition and keystroke monitoring capabilities

An internet routing plot plan verifying the exact travel of website data has revealed that stories and other communications e-mailed from a Pennsylvania computer to be posted at a server in Tulsa, Oklahoma are first routed into Denver / Colorado Springs and then across the Atlantic to Amsterdam, Holland, back through Denver and then to the hosting server in Tulsa.

The discovery was made by the webmaster for TomFlocco.com after becoming curious about the internet route taken by the data and the length of time it took to post a new story when the data only had to travel over the webmaster’s phone line across the state to the hosting server in Tulsa.

After contacting a U.S. intelligence source, we were told that Department of Justice (DoJ) investigators have identified an Israeli intelligence internet provider in Amsterdam as a co-conspirator with both the National Security Agency (NSA) and Verizon-MCI in the ongoing Bush administration spy intrusion into the private and personal lives of millions of Americans without their previous knowledge or permission.

Another federal agency official with long-time experience and impeccable credentials told us, “MCI is an NSA shadow company. Just remember that MCI equals NSA and you’ll always be correct in your research and investigation.”

On February 14, 2005, Verizon announced its intention to purchase MCI for $6.7 billion, after which the company became involved in a strained bidding war with Qwest Communications.

MCI investors sharply criticized the Verizon takeover which was recently finalized; but federal prosecutors probing NSA spying will have reason to subpoena Verizon regarding whether the Bush administration’s approval of Verizon’s MCI takeover had anything to do with the company’s willingness to provide private phone and email records to the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens.

U.S. intelligence sources within the Special Operations Group (SOG) are reporting that NSA computers have been downloading financial and personal files of all American citizens as a result of upgrades to the Echelon satellite network and software program which is part of the Prosecutor’s Management Information System (PROMIS).

SOG says the NSA has a “7-10 second lead time” which effectively affords the agency the opportunity to delay the release of currency, stock and bond sales transactions permitting a criminal advantage to agency officials and other high-level associates who game the system of the world’s financial markets to steal investment capital from both U.S. and foreign citizens throughout the world.

Personal phone service shut down after posting story

A TomFlocco.com phone call on Friday to Verizon seeking comment for this report on why the company provided personal phone records to the NSA without the knowledge or permission of its customers resulted in a “no comment” response from a Verizon spokesperson identifying herself only as Mrs. Singh: “We are not able to comment on whether we have cooperated with the NSA in this matter since this is a classified issue; but we’re confident that we are within the law. We are protecting your privacy but we cannot comment further.”

When we asked whether Verizon would deny helping the NSA to spy on Americans, Mrs. Singh’s response was “we cannot comment on that.”

We also asked to speak to the Verizon legal or security departments, or even the consumer public relations department for a comment; but we were told “We appreciate that this matter is causing concern among our customers but it will not be possible for you to speak to either group. We cannot comment on whether we cooperated with the NSA because it’s classified.”

Later that afternoon, wide news reports indicated that Verizon was sued for $5 billion for illegally providing phone numbers and records to the NSA without the knowledge or permission of Verizon customers.

On Saturday evening after the Friday call to Verizon, we posted a short new story, “Phone companies help NSA spy on personal computers for enemies list” in the IN BRIEF box at TomFlocco.com.

After the story was posted, our personal office hard-line telephone service with Verizon was shut down at about 1:30 am Sunday morning with that office line remaining out of service for over 23 hours before this story was posted online.

Internet IP address logs from this writer’s computer firewall security system provide evidence that the Department of Defense (DoD) is conducting surveillance, since logs show DoD internet identification numbers during specific occasions while we conducted phone interviews with intelligence agents and other sources, and also while reports were being researched and word processed for stories regarding White House crime family activities.

NSA spying on dial-up, high-speed internet e-mail and websites for ‘enemies list’

A U.S intelligence source wishing to remain anonymous but who has direct knowledge of the operations said U.S. cable internet corporations have joined the widely-reported telephone company operations to assist in compiling the largest database in history on American citizens while “using super-secret 5th generation Cray computers to tap into dial-up, DSL and high-speed broadband internet connections which have satellite voice recognition and keystroke monitoring capabilities.”

This is the first indication that the NSA is also monitoring websites and personal e-mail communications of American citizens without their knowledge or permission.

The government official said “the voice patterns and voice print recognition comes from the original Inslaw systems which are hooked up to E-Systems Dallas voice recognition software and linked over to the NSA.”

The long-time agent added that “part of the reason they are spying on Americans is to create an ‘enemies list’ of those critical of George W. Bush,” adding “the monitored phrases and words trigger networks of contacts between people around the country who are inter-related to other activists regarding issues such as the Iraq War, NSA spying, illegal immigration and critical reporters.”

The unnamed official also told us “the U.S. and foreign intelligence community has been using lead bags for the purpose of preventing satellite surveillance and physical reconnaissance ever since the Bush administration commenced a national spy program.”

On condition of anonymity, the source added, “driver’s licenses are already set up with chips for future use in capturing financial, medical and other personal and/or private records and information for use by the Bush administration and Congress to maximize tax compliance, national identification or for potential political purposes.”

NSA/Treadstone spy-death lists?

The Bush spy program enemies list “would be used to organize groups for internment camps—particularly the big camp being developed in northeast Yuma county, Arizona where most of the ‘problem patriots and activists’ would be housed if Mr. Bush is allowed to remain in power during another major terrorist or biological event,” said the unnamed federal agent.

An October 27, 2001 report in the Houston Chronicle confirmed the existence of secret surveillance lists, and that NSA lawyers ordered a massive shredding program of the names and phone numbers of innocent Americans in late October, 2001; but the NSA made copies of the unlawful list, according to two former U.S. officials.

Federal prosecutors will likely have interest in the fact that the NSA reportedly mailed the list to then Under Secretary of State and current White House Chief of Staff John Bolton who emailed the list to Treadstone Space #77 in Colorado.

“All political critics of the Bush or Clinton families have had their names, phone numbers and addresses stored by the NSA at Treadstone Space #71/77,” said national security expert Thomas Heneghan, who confirmed another federal agent’s assertion that the NSA is being assisted by MCI regarding the Bush administration spy operation on the American people.

“#77 is the Colorado division of # 71 in New York State which is also linked to secret FBI Division 5 operations connected to both the Bush and Clinton families without the knowledge of U.S. citizens,” added Heneghan.

The national security watchdog said “the Bush-Clinton crime families are planning a bird flu pandemic as an excuse for a temporary martial law government to cover up ongoing corruption and crimes committed against the American people.”

A flu pandemic would allow Mr. Bush to suspend constitutional rights and round up patriot critics on the NSA/Treadstone death-spy list where they could transport innocent U.S. citizens who are politically outspoken to internment camps in locations such as the one in Yuma county, referred to earlier by another federal agent.

Heneghan added that U.S. Senate Leader and GOP presidential candidate William Frist and House of Representatives Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are both aware of the Treadstone death list and also the Bush administration spy operations conducted by the NSA—both overseas and in the United States.

Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL-5) was identified by Heneghan as “an Israeli intelligence operative in Congress who actually carries copies of the updated [NSA/Treadstone] death-spy list to his office each day,” raising questions as to whether alleged operatives loyal to foreign governments are only welcome in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Tags: computers, NSA, spying, wiretapping

NSA Employees Getting Entertained at Your Expense

Americans inclined to have phone sex on international calls may have an unintendedmenage a trois instead.  ABC spoke to two former NSA operatives on the record about their work in the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and let’s just say that they weren’t completely focused on the task at hand.  Instead of the narrow surveillance promised by the Bush administration, the NSA in practice likes to keep themselves amused:

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

“These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,” said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA’s Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.”

She said US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and “collected on” as they called their offices or homes in the United States.

Another Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk, worked at NSA from 2003 to late 2007, and told ABC essentially the same thing.  They saved conversations that amused them, often getting other operators to listen to phone sex, pillow talk, and other salacious tidbits. They also eavesdropped on journalists and aid workers, even after the NSA knew the numbers had nothing to do with terrorism.

They also intercepted critical information that saved lives in Iraq and elsewhere.  Faulk talked about discovering IEDs that got dismantled because of NSA intercepts, actions that saved the lives of American troops targeted by terrorists.  However, both Faulk and Kinne expressed frustration that the refusal of the NSA to winnow out numbers that clearly would produce no actionable intelligence made it harder for them to find the needles in the haystacks.  “By casting the net so wide and continuing to collect on Americans and aid organizations, it’s almost like they’re making the haystack bigger and it’s harder to find that piece of information that might actually be useful to somebody,” Kinne told ABC.  “You’re actually hurting our ability to effectively protect our national security.”

Americans have trusted the NSA to act professionally in its pursuit of terrorists, and to use its limited resources wisely.  We have heard for the last seven years about the shortage of qualified Arab linguists in the American intelligence community.  If these two are telling the truth, it’s not only a breach of that necessary trust in defending Americans from the asymmetrical threat of terrorists, it’s a criminal misuse of that limited resource.

We need a strong and focused effort from the NSA to discover terrorist plots before they have a chance to reach fruition in their goals of killing Americans.  If these accounts can be independently corroborated, then current management doesn’t appear up to the task.

Update: One commenter says, “Ed, you make a good point, but wouldn’t you possibly be tempted to listen in on a few phone sex calls after listening to thousands of hours of boring garbage?”  In my former career in commercial security, other companies in our field made extensive use of microphones in both residential and commercial applications, which can help cut down false alarms.  They can also provide endless hours of amusement for alarm company operators, especially the residential installations (if you get my drift), who don’t mind telling these stories to pass the time at their new jobs.  Believe me, I understand the impulse, although thankfully I’ve never been in that position myself.

That was why I understood the point of the NSA’s critics on the TSP.  A program like this requires strict supervision to keep abuses from happening.  If what ABC reports is correct, it doesn’t look like we’re getting it.

Update II:  Hmm.  It looks like ABC didn’t do enough research on one of its sources.  Adrienne Kinne is also on the board of directors of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a fact ABC doesn’t mention in its piece.  Faulk now works for the Metro Spirit as a reporter and doesn’t appear to have joined any organized political opposition to the war, but has spoken out against it.

Does that make them not credible?  Not necessarily, especially with Faulk.  They may have come to oppose the war based on these very experiences.  However, ABC certainly should have told its readers and viewers about Kinne’s association with IVAW.

Update III: Just to remind readers, the Bush administration claimed the TSP would only surveil without search warrants calls from phone numbers that had been previously implicated in terrorist activities.  They claimed they would get warrants, as provided by FISA, for all other calls with at least one destination point within the US.  If they’re recording calls outside of those parameters, they’re explicitly violating the law and breaking that promise.

Update IV: Conn Carroll reminds me that satellite phones are not covered under the FISA law and the NSA can listen to any and all conversations on them without warrants.  ABC didn’t bother to mention that either.  Still, is this really what the NSA should be doing?  If the satellite phone number belongs to an Army officer instead of a terrorist, why are we wasting resources on surveilling it?
Source: Hotair

Tags: communications intercept, domestic spying, national security agency, NSA, spying, wiretapping

UK Gets a Taste of American Eavesdropping

Plans for a massive expansion of ‘Big Brother’ state surveillance to cover every phone call, email, text message and internet visit in Britain were unveiled yesterday.

UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith claimed
that storing details of individuals’ communications was vital to prevent further terrorist atrocities.

Activities which will be subject to snooping for the first time include visits
to social networking sites such as Facebook, auction sites such as eBay, gaming websites and chatrooms.

Police and security services will not be
able to access the precise content but will know each site visited, and to whom and when a phone call, text message or email was sent.

If this sets alarm bells ringing, they could seek a Ministerial warrant to intercept exactly what is being sent, including the content.

The billions of pieces of data are likely
to be stored for a year or more. The cost
is estimated to be at least £1billion, and
could be far higher.

Last night MPs and privacy groups attacked the proposals as ‘Stalinist’, ‘Orwellian’ and a reversal of the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

One opponent said: ‘They are making us all suspects.’

A leaked memo written by sources close to the project revealed it was fraught with technical difficulties.

Officials are split between placing the vast amount of data to be collected on a huge central Government database or forcing service providers to store the information,
to be accessed on demand.

Currently, the option being worked on is to request data from the service providers, the memo reveals. They are likely to pass on extra costs to customers.

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: ‘These proposals would mark a substantial shift in the powers of the state to obtain personal information on individuals.

‘Given the Government’s poor record on protecting data and running databases there
needs to be a full and proper debate.

‘The public will also be acutely aware of how, under this Government, surveillance powers designed to combat terrorism and serious organised crime have been used by local authorities to investigate things like fly-tipping. This would be absolutely unacceptable.’

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: ‘The Government’s Orwellian plans for a vast database of our private communications are deeply worrying.

‘Ministers claim the database will only be used in terrorist cases, but there is now a long list of cases from the arrest of Walter Wolfgang for heckling at a Labour conference to the freezing of Icelandic assets where anti-terrorism law has been
used for purposes for which it was not intended.

‘These proposals are incompatible with a free country and a free people.’

We’re watching you: An East German Stasi officer listens in on a couple in a scene from the Oscar-winning film The Lives Of Others. Jacqui Smith has unveiled plans for a massive expansion of state surveillance
Phil Booth, of the NO2ID privacy campaign, said: ‘This is the Stalinist vision which we always knew was on the agenda. Monitoring the entire population is a complete abhorrence, reversing the presumption of innocent until proven guilty and making us all suspects.’

But senior security and police services were adamant that, without the new powers, lives would be put at risk.

They said some investigations have already been affected by criminals who use technology to avoid detection, by plotting online through social networking sites or
interactive games.

‘Criminals are getting more sophisticated in using this technology and they are going to exploit it unless we do something,’ one source said.

Miss Smith yesterday admitted the public had reason to be concerned.

In a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank, she said: ‘Of course, even if there had not been events [data losses], the British public would have every right to be sceptical about a state activity that involves the collection of data.’

But she said that, without increasing their capacity to store data, the police and security services would have to consider a ‘massive expansion of surveillance’.

And she insisted: ‘There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your emails, the texts that you send or the chats you have on the
phone or online.

‘Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through the database in the interests of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover
of counter-terrorist legislation.’
Source: Dailymail

See More: NSA Monitoring Capabilities

Tags: big brother, electronic surveillance, Jacqui Smith, NSA, spying, U.K., wiretapping