Europe Develops RFID License Plate Tracking

European Union spends $10 million to develop advanced system to track motorists and issue tickets for minor infractions.

The European Union is spending 8.1 million Euros (US $10.3 million) on wireless tracking systems designed to allow authorities to issue automated tickets for increasingly minor traffic infractions. Pilot projects underway in Finland, France and Germany use systems designed by the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland as part of a project called ASSET-Road. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a key component in achieving the goal described as “traffic violations detected in a flash.” Many of the ideas have already made their way to the United States.

“The intention is to elaborate for public authorities new innovative solutions and technology to gather traffic data and utilize it in traffic enforcement and surveillance,” VTT explained in a statement.

Prototype units of the Finnish technology issue automated tickets commercial vehicles for violations, no matter how small, of height or weight restrictions. Last month, Arizona-based camera vendor American Traffic Solutions (ATS) announced it would begin selling a similar system to jurisdictions interested in ticketing truckers. The European system adds the capability of issuing automated tickets for vehicles that appear to have faulty brakes.

Another system under development targets passenger vehicles by constantly tracking the distance between automobiles. Any car within sensor range that strays too close to another vehicle would be mailed a ticket for tailgating. In documents provided to the Arizona Department of Public Safety, ATS also explained it has developed automated tailgating tickets as a feature that can soon be added to existing speed camera programs.

Camera-based systems, however, are prone to error when the machinery fails to read a license plate accurately. European officials hope to increase the ease and accuracy of total vehicle surveillance by switching to RFID.

“VTT is also investigating the utilization of RFID technology as an electronic number plate where the tags imitate electronic license plates,” the company stated. “When these tags are mounted on a vehicle, an RFID reader can then identify each vehicle according its identity code.”

Readers for RFID systems, like the ones used to monitor E-ZPass, FasTrak, SunPass and TxTag toll road transponders, can also be more easily hidden than a camera. In 2005, a Texas lawmaker proposed a bill that would have forced all state residents to use RFID chips in their license plates (read bill). The bill failed to gain support, but the universal surveillance program envisioned by such programs is slowly advancing. The cities of Hanover Park, Oak Forest and Streamwood, Illinois last month announced they would deploy red light cameras with an “amber alert” feature provided by the Dutch company, Gatso. This feature allows every passing vehicle to be photographed, identified and tracked. Complete travel histories for all motorists could be stored in a database so that allows police and other officials could keep track of any individuals of interest.

Britain Drops Privacy Invasion Plan

The British government said Monday it wants communications companies to keep records of every phone call, email and Web-site visit made in the country. But it has decided not to set up a national database of the information, a proposal civil liberties group had been condemned as a “Big Brother”-style invasion of privacy.

The government said in October it was considering a central database of phone and Internet traffic as part of a high-tech strategy to fight terrorism and crime. But Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said Monday the plan had been dropped.

A document outlining the department’s proposals said the government “recognizes the privacy implications” of a database and “does not propose to pursue this approach.”

Instead, the government said it was backing a “middle way” that would see service providers store and organize information on every individual’s phone and Internet traffic so that it could be accessed by police and other authorities upon request.

The Home Office estimated introducing the new system would cost up to £2 billion ($3 billion).

Under current rules, British Internet service providers are already required to store records of Web and e-mail traffic for a year. The new proposals would also require them to retain details of communications that originated in other countries but passed across British networks — for example if someone in Britain accessed a U.S.-based e-mail account.

The government said providers wouldn’t store the content of calls, e-mails or Internet use. They would retain details of times, dates, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web site URLs.

Ms. Smith said officials had to strike “a delicate balance between privacy and security,” but insisted police and intelligence agencies needed more tools to fight crime and terrorism in an increasingly complex online world.

“Advances in communications mean that there are ever more sophisticated ways to communicate and we need to ensure that we keep up with the technology being used by those who would seek to do us harm,” Ms. Smith said.

The proposals are still a long way from becoming law. The government is seeking public comment until July, and widespread opposition is expected.

The government said there would be strict safeguards on who could access the information, but critics say existing surveillance powers have been abused by local authorities investigating relatively trivial offenses such as littering. That led the government in December to say it would clamp down on abuses of surveillance laws.

Trust in the government also has been hit by a series of lost-data incidents. In November, a government department lost a disk that contained the names, addresses and bank details of 25 million people.

Fusion Centers Collecting Intelligence

They are run by the Department of Homeland Security and are locally based across the country.  A fusion center is an effective and efficient mechanism to exchange information and intelligence, maximize resources, streamline operations, and improve the ability to fight crime and terrorism by merging data from a variety of sources.

At first blush this sounds good.  After 9/11 discussions were had about how to streamline communication between local and federal law enforcement agencies.

From the Department of Homeland Security website:

Many states and larger cities have created state and local fusion centers to share information and intelligence within their jurisdictions as well as with the federal government.  The Department, through the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, provides personnel with operational and intelligence skills to the fusion centers.  This support is tailored to the unique needs of the locality and serves to:

help the classified and unclassified information flow,
provide expertise,
coordinate with local law enforcement and other agencies, and
provide local awareness and access.

But, it is being alleged that something has gone wrong along the way.  Fusion centers have now come under the scrutinizing eye of the ACLU, and for good reasons.

Who is spying in your neighborhood?

These centers have been placed in our neighborhoods.  Our local fusion center is located on Bataan Boulevard in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  You can find the fusion center nearest you by clicking on this interactive map. The ACLU has also set up a site that tracks camera surveillance. Video surveillance is nothing new, but:

Video surveillance is not a new phenomenon, but the amount of attention that the federal government has been paying is. In the past five years, the Department of Homeland Security has awarded $300 million in grants to state and local governments, all in the name of public video surveillance.

From the same article:

Meanwhile, a timely University of California study has found that San Francisco’s $700,000 ‘Crime Camera’ program has had no impact on violent crime since its 2005 installation. The study also states that robberies dropped significantly within each camera’s radius, but notes that this finding is inconclusive.

These two paragraphs beg some further discussion.  Is the surveillance arm of the Department of Homeland Security working in conjunction with the fusion center in this California neighborhood?  If surveillance cameras aren’t reducing crime significantly, what other purposes are they serving?

From California again:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of California have filed a federal lawsuit against the FBI and local authorities over the seizure and search of two organizations’ computers, they jointly announced Wednesday.

…

On August 27, 2008, the University of California Police, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI took part in a raid of the Berkeley offices of two politically active groups, Long Haul Infoshop and East Bay Prisoner Support Group (EBPS), seizing every computer in the building, even those behind locked doors, which were opened by force. The raid was conducted despite no allegations of wrongdoing on the part of either organization or any of their members, and the complaint questions the legality of the warrant obtained by authorities.

Why search and seize at the Long Haul Infoshop or the East Bay Prisoner Support Group?  Was the FBI working in conjunction with the local fusion center?  More questions.

The neighborhood spying isn’t limited to California.

From the Washington Post:

Organizational meetings, public forums, prison vigils, rallies outside the State House in Annapolis and e-mail group lists were infiltrated by police posing as peace activists and death penalty opponents, the records show. The surveillance continued even though the logs contained no reports of illegal activity and consistently indicated that the activists were not planning violent protests.
…
The records show that undercover agents collectively spent 288 hours on surveillance activities over 14 months from March 2005 until May 2006.

The fusion center in New Mexico is known as a “cut and paste” shop.  Analysts peruse media, in all forms (print and electronic), clipping information that they feel is “important” or “questionable.”  It is also alleged that they peruse the internet.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they were reading this diary, now.

Their peering eyes are looking into the private sector:

A new institution is emerging in American life: Fusion Centers. These state, local and regional institutions were originally created to improve the sharing of anti-terrorism intelligence among different state, local and federal law enforcement agencies. Though they developed independently and remain quite different from one another, for many the scope of their mission has quickly expanded – with the support and encouragement of the federal government – to cover “all crimes and all hazards.” The types of information they seek for analysis has also broadened over time to include not just criminal intelligence, but public and private sector data, and participation in these centers has grown to include not just law enforcement, but other government entities, the military and even select members of the private sector.

Legislation has been drafted, and will be presented to the New Mexico State Legislature, addressing concerns over the fusion center in Santa Fe.

A draft of the ACLU legislation, sponsored by Rep. Antonio “Mo” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, would prohibit a law enforcement agency from collecting, maintaining and sharing “with any other law enforcement agency, information about the political, religious or social associations, views or activities of a person unless” they are suspected of committing a crime.

That is the kicker…they aren’t watching American citizens who are suspected of committing crimes.  They are watching whoever they want to.

A quick summary:

But in a democracy, the collection and sharing of intelligence information – especially information about American citizens and other residents – need to be carried out with the utmost care. That is because more and more, the amount of information available on each one of us is enough to assemble a very detailed portrait of our lives. And because security agencies are moving toward using such portraits to profile how “suspicious” we look.

American citizens aren’t being spied on just by the NSA.  They are being spied on by the fusion center office around the corner.

Big Brother Extends Reach in U.K.

A new generation of speed cameras that can track drivers for up to 30 miles and cannot be dodged are being tested by police.

The devices stop motorists evading a ticket by braking suddenly before a camera and then speeding up immediately afterwards. The new cameras could cover whole areas of cities or suburban housing estates, guarding any number of entry and exit points.

By ‘talking’ to each other down phone or internet lines, they calculate a car’s average speed – even if it makes a series of left and right turns down a variety of roads.

The cameras are already in use, but mainly on the motorways.

They are now likely to appear on rural and urban roads, spelling the end for the 6,000 yellow ‘Gatso-style’ box cameras currently in use.

Transport minister Jim Fitzpatrick yesterday told a road safety conference that the latest cameras would be a key weapon in the fight to reduce road casualties.

Supporters say they are ‘fairer’, have so far reduced casualties by 50 per cent and encourage a smoother traffic flow and safer, more consistent driving behaviour.

But critics say it is merely a new chapter in the Government’s war on motorists, who paid £106million in fines last year.

One system, costing £200,000 to £1million depending on the size of the area covered, could replace many fixed-point speed cameras.

But although the number of cameras might reduce, greater areas of the road network would be covered.

One of the providers of average speed cameras, SPECs, told the conference that the cameras could be networked together, could be forward or rear facing, could scan multiple lanes and cover areas from 250 yards to nearly 30 miles.

The cameras photograph a number-plate as a vehicle enters the speed restriction zone, and then again when it leaves.

The system then calculates the car’s average speed between the two points.

If it is higher than the speed limit, the driver is automatically sent a fixed penalty fine and receives three points on their licence.

Mr Fitzpatrick said: ‘Trials have shown very good results. Wherever there are average speed camera signs, traffic moves at a uniform speed and crashes reduce.’

Approval for the new generation of cameras is imminent. It will be up to local authorities to decide whether to buy the system.

˜ Electronic signs that sense when a car is speeding and switch traffic lights further down the road to red, forcing it to stop, are to be introduced in Britain.

The system, already in use as a traffic calming measure in Spain, will be installed on Camden High Street in North London.

Have Mind Reading Machines Arrived

Years ago, Woody Allen used to joke that he’d been thrown out of college as a freshman for cheating on his metaphysics final. “I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me,” he confessed.

Today, the joke is on us. Cameras follow your car, GPS tracks your cell phone, software monitors your Web surfing, X-rays explore your purse, and airport scanners see through your clothes. Now comes the final indignity: machines that look into your soul.

With the aid of functional magnetic resonance imaging, neuroscientists have been hard at work on Allen’s fantasy. Under controlled conditions, they can tell from a brain scan which of two images you’re looking at. They can tell whether you’re thinking of a face, an animal, or a scene. They can even tell which finger you’re about to move.

But those feats barely scratch the brain’s surface. Any animal can perceive objects and move limbs. To plumb the soul, you need a metaphysician. John-Dylan Haynes, a brilliant researcher at Germany’s Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, is leading the way. His mission, according to the center, is to predict thoughts and behavior from fMRI scans.

Haynes, a former philosophy student, is going for the soul’s jugular. He’s trying to clarify the physical basis of free will. “Why do we shape intentions in this way or another way?” he wonders. “Your wishes, your desires, your goals, your plans—that’s the core of your identity.” The best place to look for that core is in the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex, which, he points out, is “especially involved in the initiation of willed movements and their protection against interference.”

To get a clear snapshot of free will, Haynes designed an experiment that would isolate it from other mental functions. No objects to interpret; no physical movements to anticipate or execute; no reasoning to perform. Participants were put in an fMRI machine and were told they would soon be shown the word “select,” followed a few seconds later by two numbers. Their job was to covertly decide, when they saw the “select” cue, whether to add or subtract the unseen numbers. Then, they were to perform the chosen calculation and punch a button corresponding to the correct answer. The snapshot was taken right after the “select” cue, when they had nothing to do but choose addition or subtraction.

Until this experiment, which was reported last month in Current Biology, nobody had ever tried to take a picture of free will. One reason is that fMRI is too crude to distinguish one abstract choice from another. It can only show which parts of the brain are demanding blood oxygen. That’s too coarse to distinguish the configuration of cells that signifies addition from the configuration that signifies subtraction. So, Haynes used software to help the computer recognize complex patterns in the data. To dissect human thought, the computer had to emulate it.

Each participant took the test more than 250 times, choosing independently in each trial. The computer then looked at a sample of the scans, along with the final answers that revealed what choices had actually been made. It calculated a pattern and used this pattern to predict, from each participant’s remaining scans, his or her decisions in the corresponding trials. Haynes checked the predictions—add or subtract—against the participants’ answers. The computer got it right 71 percent of the time.

I know what you’re thinking: Why would anyone want a machine to read his mind? But imagine being paralyzed, unable to walk, type, or speak. Imagine a helmet full of electrodes, or a chip implanted in your head, that lets your brain tell your computer which key to press. Those technologies are already here. And why endure the agony of mental hunt-and-peck? Why not design computers that, like a smart secretary, can discern and execute even abstract intentions? That’s what Haynes has in mind. You want to open a folder or an e-mail, and your computer does it. Your wish is its command.

But if machines can read your mind when you want them to, they can also read it when you don’t. And your will isn’t necessarily the one they obey. Already, scans have been used to identify brain signatures of disgust, drug cravings, unconscious racism, and suppressed sexual arousal, not to mention psychopathy and propensity to kill.

Haynes understands the objection to these scans—he calls it “mental privacy”—but he buys only half of it. He doesn’t like the idea of companies scanning job applicants for loyalty or scanning customers for reactions to products (an emerging practice known as neuromarketing). But where criminal justice is at stake, as in the case of lie detection, he’s for using the technology. Ruling it out, he argues, would “deny the innocent people the ability to prove their innocence” and would “only protect the people who are guilty.”

I hear what he’s saying. I’d love to have put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed through an fMRI before Sept. 11, 2001, instead of waiting six years for his confession. And I wish we’d scanned Mohamed Atta’s brain before he boarded that flight out of Boston. But what Haynes is saying—and exposing—is almost more terrifying than terrorism. The brain is becoming just another accessible body part, searchable for threats and evidence. We can sift through your belongings, pat you down, study your nude form through your clothes, inspect your body cavities, and, if necessary, peer into your mind.

FMRI is just the first stage. Electrodes, infrared spectroscopy, and subtler magnetic imaging are next. Scanners will shrink. Image resolution and pattern-recognition software will improve.

But don’t count out free will. To make human choice predictable, you first have to constrain it so that it’s not really free. That’s why Haynes confined his participants to arithmetic, gave them only two options, and forbade them to change their minds. They could have wrecked his experiment by defying any of those conditions. So could you, if somebody came at you with a scanner or an electrode helmet. To look into your soul and get the right answer, science, too, has to cheat. Somewhere, Woody Allen is laughing. I can feel it.