School Administrators: Webcam Spying

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don’t know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I’m getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students’ clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.

Schools are in an absolute panic about kids divulging too much online, worried about pedos and marketers and embarrassing photos that will haunt you when you run for office or apply for a job in 10 years. They tell kids to treat their personal details as though they were precious.

But when schools take that personal information, indiscriminately invading privacy (and, of course, punishing students who use proxies and other privacy tools to avoid official surveillance), they send a much more powerful message: your privacy is worthless and you shouldn’t try to protect it.

Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (PDF)

Surveillance Widens in U.K.

All telecom companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they have contacted, when and where, as well as the websites they have visited.

Despite widespread opposition to the increasing amount of surveillance in Britain, 653 public bodies will be given access to the information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to obtain the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a single government-run database, but chose not to because of privacy concerns.

However the Government announced yesterday it was pressing ahead with privately held “Big Brother” databases that opposition leaders said amounted to “state-spying” and a form of “covert surveillance” on the public.

It is doing so despite its own consultation showing that it has little public support.

The Home Office admitted that only one third of respondents to its six-month consultation on the issue supported its proposals, with 50 per cent fearing that the scheme lacked sufficient safeguards to protect the highly personal data from abuse.

The new law will increase the amount of personal data that can be obtained by officials through the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which is supposed to be used for fighting terrorism.

Although most private firms already hold details of every customer’s private calls and emails for their own business purposes, most only do so on an ad hoc basis and only for a period of several months.

The new rules, known as the Intercept Modernisation Programme, will not only force communications companies to keep their records for longer, but to expand the type of data they keep to include details of every website their customers visit, effectively registering every online click.

While public authorities will not be able to view the contents of these emails or phone calls, they can see the internet addresses, dates, times and identify recipients of calls.

Firms involved in storing the data, including Orange, BT and Vodafone, will be reimbursed at a cost to the taxpayer of £2 billion over 10 years.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said he had fears about the abuse of the data. He said: “The big danger in all of this is ‘mission creep’. This government keeps on introducing new powers to tackle terrorism and organised crime which end up being used for completely different purposes. We have to stop that from happening”.

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, added: “Whilst this is no doubt necessary in pursuing terrorist suspects, the proposals are so intrusive that they should be subject to legal approval, and should not be available except in pursuit of the most serious crimes.”

The Information Commissioner’s Office also opposed the moves.

“The Information Commissioner believes that the case has yet to be made for the collection and processing of additional communications data for the population as a whole being relevant and not excessive,” a spokesman said.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, has criticised the amount the scheme will cost for what he said is effectively “state spying”.

He added yesterday: “It is simply not that easy to separate the bare details of a call from its content. What if a leading business person is ringing Alcoholics Anonymous?”

Ministers said that they still have to work with the communications industry to find the correct way of framing the proposal in law — meaning it will not come before Parliament until after the general election. But the Home Office yesterday insisted it would push the legislation through. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, originally released a consultation paper in April.

Only 29 per cent of respondents supported the Government approach. Meanwhile the communications providers themselves questioned the cost of the scheme and whether it was even technically feasible.

John Yates, Britain’s head of anti-terrorism, has argued that the legislation is vital for his investigators.

David Hanson, the Home Office minister, said: “The consultation showed widespread recognition of the importance of communications data in protecting the public .. we will now work with communications service providers and others to develop these proposals, and aim to introduce necessary legislation as soon as possible.”

Israeli Espionage Case Dropped by U.S.

A case that began four years ago with the tantalizing and volatile premise that officials of a major pro-Israel lobbying organization were illegally trafficking in sensitive national security information collapsed on Friday as prosecutors asked that all charges be withdrawn.

From the beginning, the case against the lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was highly unusual. The two, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged under the World War I-era Espionage Act, accused of improperly providing to their colleagues, journalists and Israeli diplomats sensitive information they had acquired by speaking with American policy makers.

Some lawyers at the Justice Department had always had significant reservations about the case, some current and former officials said. They believed that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman had acted imprudently, but doubted that either man should be criminally prosecuted. Nevertheless, F.B.I. agents poured substantial resources into the case, and the decision to seek a dismissal infuriated many within the law enforcement agency.

But several current and former officials said the decision to abandon the case was no surprise. With adverse judicial rulings making the prosecution increasingly risky, lawyers in the United States Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Va., and at Justice Department headquarters met on several occasions in recent weeks, agonizing over whether to go forward with the trial, which was scheduled to begin June 2.

Last week, officials from the F.B.I.’s Washington office who investigated the case made their final pleas to keep the case alive, arguing that there was enough evidence to persuade a jury to find the two men guilty. But prosecutors — including some who had worked on the case for years — disagreed.

Joseph Persichini Jr., the top official at the F.B.I.’s Washington office, praised the work of the F.B.I. agents on the case, and said he was “disappointed” in the decision to drop the charges.

The case had raised delicate political issues about the role played by American Jewish supporters of Israel and their close, behind-the-scenes relationships with top government officials. Advocates of civil liberties and of open government asserted that the defendants were being singled out for activities that were part of the accepted and routine way that American policy on Israel and the Middle East had been formulated for years, with people exchanging information.

The decision to drop the case comes just days before Aipac is scheduled to begin its annual policy conference in Washington, which has often served as an advertisement of its influence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to address the event via satellite.

Lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman said in a statement that while they were pleased at the decision, the government had erred in bringing the case in the first place and had caused great damage to their clients. Aipac dismissed the men early in 2004 after prosecutors presented some of their evidence to an Aipac lawyer. The group later agreed to subsidize their legal costs.

The Justice Department said that the decision to drop the case had been made solely by career prosecutors in Alexandria, and that senior officials of the Obama administration had acted only to approve the recommendation.

Several other officials said, however, that while senior political appointees at the Justice Department did not direct subordinates to drop the case, they were heavily involved in the deliberations. These officials said David S. Kris, the newly appointed chief of the department’s national security division, and Dana J. Boente, the interim United States attorney in Alexandria, had conferred regularly with prosecutors and ultimately decided to accept the recommendation to abandon the case. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was informed and raised no objections.

The case would have been the first prosecution under the espionage law in which no documents were involved and in which the defendants were not officials who provided the information, but the private citizens who received it from them in conversations.

While Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman trafficked in facts, ideas and rumor, they had done so with the full awareness of officials in the United States and Israel, who found they often helped lubricate the wheels of decision-making between two close, but sometimes quarrelsome, friends.

The move by the government to end the case came in a motion filed with the Federal Court in Alexandria.

In pretrial maneuvering, the prosecution suffered several setbacks in rulings from the trial judge, T. S. Ellis III, that were upheld by a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va. Judge Ellis rejected several government efforts to conceal classified information if the case went to trial. Moreover, he ruled that the government could prevail only if it met a high standard; he said prosecutors would have to demonstrate that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman knew that their distribution of the information would harm United States national security.

The investigation of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman also surfaced recently in news reports that Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat long involved in intelligence matters, was overheard on a government wiretap discussing the case. As reported by Congressional Quarterly, which covers Capitol Hill, and The New York Times, Ms. Harman was overheard agreeing with an Israeli intelligence operative to try to intercede with Bush administration officials to obtain leniency for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman in exchange for help in persuading Democratic leaders to make her chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Ms. Harman has denied interceding for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, and has expressed anger that she was wiretapped. She is to be among the featured speakers at the Aipac conference next week.

Over government objections, Judge Ellis had also ruled that the defense could call as witnesses several senior Bush administration foreign policy officials to demonstrate that what occurred was part of the continuing process of information trading and did not involve anything nefarious. The defense lawyers were planning to call as witnesses former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Stephen J. Hadley, the former national security adviser; and several others. Government policy makers indicated they were clearly uncomfortable with senior officials’ testifying in open court over policy deliberations.

The government’s motion to dismiss claimed the government was obliged take a final review of the case to consider “the likelihood that classified information will be revealed at trial, any damage to the national security that might result from a disclosure of classified information and the likelihood the government’s success or failure at trial.”

Spy Satellites Spying on Each Other

In a top secret operation, the U.S. Defense Dept. is conducting the first deep space inspection of a crippled U.S. military spacecraft. To do this, it is using sensors on two covert inspection satellites that have been prowling geosynchronous orbit for nearly three years.

An artist’s concept shows a DSP satellite deployed in space. Credit: Northrop Grumman

The failed satellite being examined is the $400 million U.S. Air Force/Northrop Grumman Defense Support Program DSP 23 missile warning satellite. It died in 2008 after being launched successfully from Cape Canaveral in November 2007 on the first operational Delta 4-Heavy booster.

Since the U.S. is now demonstrating the ability to do such up close rendezvous and inspection of American spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, it means USAF now has at least a “call up capability” to do the same to non-U.S. spacecraft like those from Russia and China.

The operation, at nearly 25,000 miles altitude, reveals a major new U.S. military space capability, says John Pike who heads GlobalSecurity.Org, a military think tank.

“There is not much we do in space any more that is really new, but this is really new,” Pike tells Spaceflightnow.com.

Although being used in this operation to obtain data on a failed U.S. spacecraft, such inspections of especially potential enemy spacecraft, is something the Pentagon has wanted to do since the start of the space age, Pike says.

The Orbital Sciences and Lockheed Martin “Mitex” inspection spacecraft involved are part of a classified Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) technology development program. When initially launched on a Delta 2 from Cape Canaveral in 2006, the project involved maneuvering around and inspecting each other at geosynchronous altitude.

But there is no unclassified data to indicate whether the two spacecraft may have secretly paid visits to one or more non-U.S. spacecraft in the geosynchronous arc that circles the Earth at about 22,300 miles altitude, much like the Capital Beltway circles Washington, D.C.

A U.S. Defense Dept. analyst speaking on deep background says although a visit to a non-U.S. satellite is doubtful, the demonstration will cause concern, especially among Chinese government military analysts in Beijing. He said they will see the capability as a new U.S. intelligence tool that could theoretically also enable a sneak anti-satellite attack in geosynchronous orbit.

A DSP satellite is pictured here during pre-flight testing. Credit: Northrop Grumman

One key feature aiding the Mitex spacecraft to fly undetected is they are unusually small — only about 500 pounds each. Virtually all modern geosynchronous orbit spacecraft are far larger.

“The Chinese will complain to the international community in Geneva, Switzerland” says Greg Kulacki, Chinese program manager for the Union of Concerned Scientist’s Global Security Program.

They will be concerned about whether a covert U.S. ASAT development could stem from the Mitex system, but also “about how the U.S. is always complaining about the need for transparency in Chinese space operations, but then is itself conducting secret operations like this,” Kulacki says.

At the same time, Chinese engineers will be glad to see the U.S. doing it. This is because it will also “give Chinese space planners an opening to develop their own similar system” to achieve parity with the U.S., Kulacki says.

At nearly 25,000 miles high, objects in geosynchronous orbit are too small to be easily seen optically or by radar. This gives the Defense Dept. concern that China could someday conduct ASAT tests there to follow up on its low altitude ASAT capability demonstrated earlier.

In fact, DSP 23 itself carried a White House-mandated sensor package designed to detect whether rogue nuclear powers like Iran or North Korea were conducting secret nuclear tests in deep space. That capability, however, has now been lost with the loss of DSP 23.

But when DSP 23 malfunctioned, it gave the two Mitex satellites a U.S. target to examine that could provide information on why the 2.5-ton satellite failed. Imaging of the satellite could possibly show damage from a micrometeorite hit or perhaps a bent antenna.

Radio data obtained up close could also perhaps detect a malfunctioning circuit or computer. And the exercise of coordinating the Mitex visits to the DSP in itself is valuable to DARPA.

In addition the Delta 2 that launched the Mitex spacecraft from the Cape here was a unique four-stage version that used a new, solar array-equipped upper stage developed at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) near Washington, D.C. This new NRL upper stage is itself an important new military space element, that in the future could allow the delivery of small covert spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit.

DSP 23, the last of a highly successful series flown since 1970, is only the second one to fail in orbit. But the DSP is now a ghost ship moving 69 miles per week east along the geosynchronous arc where many other spacecraft are parked.

The USAF is contacting operators who may need to move their spacecraft out of the way of the 5,000-pound hulk. If it were to collide with a Russian, Chinese or even European satellite, the crash would cause an international incident in space. It can not be shot down as was the failed USA 193 reconnaissance satellite, because the debris would stay in the geosynchronous arc.

Details emerging on how the inspection exercise is playing out indicate that the DSP most likely failed around Oct. 8, when it was supposed to maneuver to tweak its orbital position but did not complete that command.

The spacecraft was, at the time, parked at 8.5 deg. East longitude over the equator south of Nigeria, where its infrared telescope could scan Russia and China for missile tests and threats.

But when the satellite became uncontrollable from its ground control center, orbital mechanics started moving it east at about 69 miles, or 1 degree, per week.

The two Mitex satellites then became possibly the first “first responders” in space when they were dispatched on emergency runs toward the DSP from their own parking spots on opposite sides of the planet.

These artist’s concepts depict the Orbital- and Lockheed-built Mitex satellites and the Navy upper stage. Credit: DARPA

The initial Mitex was parked west of DSP 23 over the mid-Atlantic when, during the second week of December, it was commanded to begin to move east around the planet toward the 33-foot DSP, which by this time was crossing south of Eurasia.

It is not known how close this initial Mitex got to DSP 23, but their signatures essentially merged starting about Dec. 23. This could possibly mean the initial Mitex moved in close to DSP 23 to image it or perform other diagnostic work and could still be keeping watch there.

The second Mitex started its trip from a position much further east of DSP 23. It maneuvered west along the geosynchronous arc and flew past the DSP on New Years Day. It is possible this spacecraft was being prepared to then move back east toward the failed satellite.

Failed or depleted spacecraft like DSP 23 are normally maneuvered higher into a graveyard orbit so they will not be a hazard to other spacecraft holding their positions in the geosynchronous belt.

In a few years, DSP 23 will reach a position on the equator north of Australia where orbital mechanics will start to maneuver the spacecraft back west, where it will travel until reversing the process south of Europe years from now. It could continue this motion back and forth for thousands of years.

DSP 23 was supposed to bridge the space based U.S. missile warning capability to the lagging Space Based Infrared SBIRS program. But the USAF is now beginning an emergency procurement for a gap filler spacecraft.

The two Mitex spacecraft have relatively little maneuvering propellant remaining and will likely fly themselves into graveyard orbits in the next few years.

But the inspection of geosynchronous spacecraft remains a high military space priority. The USAF could theoretically go for an operational direct inspection system like the Mitex satellites for extremely high priority targets.

But it is also procuring the Space Based Surveillance Satellite System now in development by Boeing and Ball Aerospace and set for first launch in April from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The SBSS satellites are to be a low altitude system to optically characterize spacecraft maneuvers from a great distance away. It will have nowhere near the imaging capability of Mitex type spacecraft operating near the target satellite, however.

U.S. Developing Mind Reading Technology

The use of scanners to read brain signals allowed the researchers to correctly determine which of two images their guinea pigs were looking at 80 per cent of the time. The test is one in a series in which scientists have read minds using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners, which are normally used in hospitals to detect the flow of blood around the brain using a radiomagnetic field and radio waves.

Dr Stephanie Harrison, who led the study at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, asked six volunteers to look at different images on a screen – one of a circle with almost horizontal lines across it and one of a circle with almost vertical lines across it.

As they were shown the images, monitoring showed that different sides of their brains had lit up.

They were then asked to remember one particular circle and, from looking at the pattern of brain activity, the researchers were able to tell with considerable accuracy which one they were thinking of.

Writing in the journal Nature, Dr Harrison said: “Decoding accuracy greatly exceeded chance-level performance of 50 per cent and proved highly reliable in the six participants.”

While the study does not unlock the secrets of mind-reading or thought prediction, it does allow scientists to determine which parts of the brain are involved in short-term visual memory.

Previously, scientists in California asked volunteers to look at 1,750 images then used MRI scans to correctly judge, in nine out of ten cases, which one they were thinking of.

Lead researcher Dr Jack Gallant warned after the results were published last year: “It is possible decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications. We believe that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading involuntarily, covertly, or without informed consent.”