Marina Hyde / The Guardian | June 28, 2008

Closed-circuit TV cameras are the crime-fighting tool so fiendishly sophisticated that they can be foiled by the wearing of a hood. Yet having stuck 4.2 million of the things around this country, with nary a consultation on the matter - nor any significant impact on crime statistics - efforts to pimp them to 2.0 status continue

This week it emerged that scientists at Portsmouth University are developing “listening” cameras. Artificial intelligence software will be able to recognise sounds such as breaking glass, so that, when such a noise is detected, they can rotate in its direction and capture the act of vandalism/terrorism/God that resulted in a milk bottle falling off your doorstep. I paraphrase slightly, but given that the most recent Home Office report on the matter found that better street lighting is seven times more effective at cutting crime than CCTV, the truly suspicious behaviour is our deepening obsession with surveillance.

The past few years have thrown up dozens of instances which made one wince to be a citizen of this septic isle, but a personal low came with the discovery that 500,000 bins had been fitted with electronic tracking devices. Transponders in bins … Could any morning news item be more designed to force one back against the pillows, too embarrassed about one’s country to start the day? Yes, as it turned out. A couple of months ago it was discovered that Poole borough council, in Dorset, had used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - designed to track serious criminals and terrorists - to determine whether a school applicant and her parents lived where they said they did. They did, and were appalled to discover they had been spied on for three weeks, the subject of surveillance notes such as “female and three children enter target vehicle and drive off”. Target vehicle, if you please! The thought of some deep-cover council drone jotting this stuff down as though it were an elite Delta Force operation is not as funny as it is horrifying.

Just who are these people, these swelling legions of unelected, ill-qualified monitors who wield such extraordinary power in our surveillance society? Clarification in one case came last year, when the civilian in charge of a Worcester police station’s surveillance team was suspended after detectives found, among one day’s footage, a 20-minute sequence of close-ups of a woman’s cleavage and backside as she walked oblivious through the streets. Whether the woman ever discovered she was the star of a kind of pervert Truman Show is not recorded. But the offending monitor escaped with a warning and was - unbelievably - back in post within weeks.

In some city centres, such as Middlesbrough, speakers have been put on the cameras, so that those monitoring can interact with potential miscreants. Let’s hope these remote bossy boots imagine they’re involved in some high-level negotiation, in which they talk down a teenager from his decision to drop a hamburger wrapper on the pavement.

The former home secretary John Reid, on whose draconian watch the Middlesbrough scheme was approved, even suggested at its launch that schoolchildren should enter a competition to become the voice of the cameras - once again laying bare the government’s desire to co-opt its citizens into the surveillance process at all levels. We are, of course, coming up to the time of year when we are ordered to shop our neighbours for acts of hosepipe, while the Shoreditch Trust recently trialled a scheme encouraging residents to watch live CCTV feeds on a special local channel, the better to assist in policing.

For all this creepy “outreach”, though, the only hands-down beneficiaries of our CCTV obsession (apart from the revenue gatherers) have been broadcasters. For no good reason, all manner of TV networks have been furnished with hours of footage to pad out their witless police chase documentaries, or offensively cheap “street crime UK” shows. Britain’s CCTV network: proudly supporting the Bravo channel.

The worst thing is the blithe insistence that this is all necessary and normal. We are watched more closely, by more cameras, with each passing day. But so faultlessly designed is our society that we have never come close to having a say on it.

There’s a great bit in Woody Allen’s movie Deconstructing Harry when Robin Williams’s character goes out of focus, appearing as a sort of fuzzy version of himself, which sounds increasingly like the sort of sickness that should be courted by any attractive woman keen to walk through Worcester. That said, she could always don a hood. Yet there does seem a vaguely depressing irony in governments insisting that constant surveillance is essential to prevent our being overrun by repressive regimes who’d make us all cover our heads and the like. It’s these initiatives that drive even the most pliant members of society to dream of taking just that precaution themselves, if only for a bit of privacy.

By CHRIS BROOKE
UK Daily Mail
Thursday, May 1, 2008

Many of them face abuse and aggression from drivers every day.

But lollipop men and women have been given a new weapon against reckless or angry motorists.

Video cameras are being built into their lollipop poles.

The cameras are visible so it is hoped they will act a deterrent.

If not, their time-coded footage can used as evidence against offenders.

Around 1,400 incidents were reported to councils last year and dozens of lollipop staff needed hospital treatment after being hit by cars.

They - and the children they are shepherding across roads - are often abused and sworn at.

A number of councils, including Dudley in the Midlands and Kirklees in West Yorkshire, have bought the camera poles, which are being rotated around “lollipop rage” hotspots.

“It’s unbelievable that we have to take this action, but the lives of children are at risk from increasing numbers of drivers,” said David Sparks of the Local Government Association’s transport board.

“Drivers are so selfish that they are willing to put lives at risk by refusing to stop for 30 seconds at a school crossing.

“Councils will do everything in their power to stamp this out. Abuse and intimidation of lollipop men and women who are carrying out a vital service to the community will also not be tolerated.

“Motorists need to be made aware that they are committing a criminal offence and we hope this new technology will prove an effective deterrent.”

Under the law, a lollipop patrol should be obeyed in the same way as a traffic light.

Failure to stop for one could mean a fine of up to £1,000 and three penalty points.

Don Mac-Dougall, road safety officer at Dudley council, said offenders who escaped prosecution could now be taken to court.

“Only a handful of incidents each year end up in prosecutions because it’s usually just one person’s word against another,” he said.

“The video evidence will obviously provide much stronger evidence, although we are hoping it will be a deterrent rather than anything else.”

Kirklees councillor David Hall said: “Our patrols do a fantastic job looking after the safety of children.

“These lollipops will give the patrols peace of mind when stepping into the road.”

The camera poles, costing £890, have been developed by Oxfordshire-based company Routesafe.

Cory Doctorow
Boingboing
March 15, 2008

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels, this shot of the fingerprint reader at Walt Disney World’s turnstiles. These machines (which, I’m told, capture the shape of your fingertip instead of your fingerprint itself) are used to keep Disney World customers from sharing or re-selling their admission tickets, and are part of a general and growing police-state climate at the parks that includes routine bag-searches at each park entrance.

The readers aren’t very effective at stopping admission cheats. You can choose not to register your fingertip, and to use photo ID for admission instead (I’m thinking of having a random piece of photo identification made with the words “OFFICIAL BOGUS SECURITY IDENTIFICATION FOR HOTELS, THEME PARKS AND OTHER JUNIOR G-MEN” printed on it). So it would be very easy to share your pass: the person named on the pass enters with his ID, and the person with whom he’s sharing the card uses a fingertip — you could visit with your sister’s family and half of you could use the tickets in the morning while the other half hung around the pool and relaxed, then switch at lunch: the morning crew uses fingertip, the afternoon uses ID.

What these readers are effective at is conditioning kids to accept surveillance and routine searches and identity checks without particularized suspcion. One morning at Epcot Center, as we offered our ID to the castmember at the turnstile and began to argue (again — they’re very poorly trained on this point) that we could indeed opt to show ID instead of being printed, a small boy behind us chirped up, “No you have to be fingerprinted! Everybody has to be fingerprinted!”

To all those parents who worry that Disney will turn their kids into little princesses, it’s time to get priorities straight: the “security” at the parks is even more effective at conditioning your children to live in a police state.

UK Daily Mail
Friday, November 23, 2007

Children are to be tracked in school via radio chips sewn into their uniforms.

The manufacturer is marketing the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) surveillance system nationwide, following a trial with 19 pupils at Hungerhill School in Doncaster this year.

The chip is embroidered into school uniforms using conductive ’smart threads’. A teacher can then scan these to view the pupil’s identity, photo, whether they misbehaved in lessons and their school attendence record.

Hungerhill headteacher Graham Wakeling said the pilot was “not intrusive to the pupil in the slightest” because tracking would not go beyond the school’s gates.

However, the chip has drawn criticism from civil liberties groups. David Clouter, from LeaveThemKidsAlone, a campaign group, was appalled by the idea.

“To put this in a school badge is complete and utter surveillance of the children. Tagging is what we do to criminals we let out of prison early,” he said.

The chips were developed by Danrbro Ltd, which was set up by Andy Stewart, an ICT teacher at Hungerhill School, and a school uniform company.

Schools could fit scanners to doors or give teachers hand-held scanners to identify pupils entering or exiting rooms.

Darnbro siad their product can “trace a pupil’s every step during the school day” and that the system can be set up to limit access to doors, such as shutting the main doors of a school to pupils during classtime.

Mr Stewart, 36, said the system would cost about £2000 for a small primary school and up to £14,000 for an average-sized secondary, according to the Times Educational Supplement.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families supports the use of electronic registration to improve safety and security and reduce truancy.

London Independent
June 17, 2007

Schools are to get the go-ahead to fingerprint pupils as young as five, in new measures to be approved by the Government.

Ministers will issue guidance telling schools they have the right to collect biometric data and install fingerprint scanners.

But the decision has angered opposition MPs who say collecting fingerprints from children will be a gift to identity thieves.

The guidance will say that personal data, including fingerprints and eyeball scans, can be collected from pupils and used to monitor attendance, so long as schools consult parents first and do not share the data with outside bodies.

Schools will be able to place fingerprint scanners at the entrances to classrooms, the school gates and even in cafeterias.

Fingerprint and eyeball scans would make it easy for schools to track children during the day, and tell if they are playing truant, or even what they have eaten for lunch.

MPs fear that school computers are not secure enough to hold biometric data safely and will be unable to erase the information from systems when students have left school.

Civil liberties campaigners accused the Government of wanting to barcode children and questioned whether the data would be kept from other government agencies and the police.

Nearly 900,000 children aged 10 to 17 have their genetic information stored on the police’s national DNA database, along with 108 under the age of 10. The guidance, to be approved by ministers this week, will say that schools can benefit from using biometrics at entry points to schools and classrooms as well as to take out library books.

It will warn schools not to give out the sensitive information, telling them it is governed by the same data-protection laws as children’s addresses and birthdays. But it is understood that schools will not have to gain written permission from each parent before their child’s fingerprints are taken. The guidance, written by Becta, which advises the Government on the use of technology in education, will go out to schools and further education colleges.

The civil rights group Liberty said: “We have some serious concerns that this biometric data is being collected from children simply for administrative convenience. We want to know what happens to the data after the children leave. The police have the right to get into any database, private or public.”

About 200 schools are thought to use fingerprint scans already, but most have been waiting for the Government to give the go-ahead. Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said she was concerned that hackers could access sensitive data and steal children’s identities. She questioned whether schools would be able to erase the data when children left school.

“We wanted a guarantee that nobody can get hold of this information and an absolute guarantee that the data would be destroyed,” she said. “The temptation for schools to reveal this sensitive information to the police will be enormous.”

Jim Knight, the schools minister, said he wanted “parents to be fully engaged with every aspect of their children’s education - this will be at the heart of our guidance.

“I back every headteacher’s right to choose technology to improve their day-to-day running - but it’s plain common sense for them to talk to parents about this and all other issues relating to their pupils. Schools need to collect pupil personal information… But we are clear that they have to comply with data protection laws. This means that no outside organisation can access any information.”

Celeste Biever
New Scientist Magazine
June 6, 2007

It looks deceptively familiar. The patient rolls up his sleeve, the doctor sticks a needle into his arm, and soon it’s all over. But this is no routine vaccination. Instead, the patient has been injected with a fleck of silicon that will uniquely identify him when zapped with radio waves. Now, nearly three years after their use was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, implantable radio frequency identification (RFID) chips are the focus of a new controversy.

The battle lines are being drawn in a quiet corner of West Palm Beach, Fla. In May, some 30 protesters held an interfaith prayer vigil outside Alzheimer’s Community Care, a day care facility for people with dementia. At issue is the facility’s plan to implant 200 patients with microchips manufactured and donated by VeriChip of nearby Delray Beach. When scanned, the chip reveals a unique ID number, which when entered into a password-protected database gives access to medical information about its owner.

If the plan goes ahead, it will be the first time the technology has been tried on a group of people with a specific mental impairment. The forgetfulness that comes with Alzheimer’s can make it impossible for people with the condition to pass on vital information when faced with a medical emergency, which is why advocates are keen to make use of RFID chips with this group.

“If for whatever reason — an automobile accident or hurricane — the person becomes separated from their loved one, they are totally, totally helpless. They can’t share what medically is wrong with them,” says Mary Barnes of Alzheimer’s Community Care. “This could be a safety net.”

Privacy advocates say that it is precisely this helplessness that makes the proposed use of the tags unacceptable. “This is a community that is not in a position to give fully informed consent or to say no,” says Katherine Albrecht, of CASPIAN, a Florida-based consumer rights organization. “The nature of the disease is that they can’t fully understand.”

Albrecht likens “the violent and invasive act” of implanting a chip in someone who does not have the ability to consent to the act of rape. Others agree with the sentiment, if not the comparison. “This is by definition a way of doing something that denies a person control,” says Lee Tien, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, San Francisco. “If that doesn’t strike at the heart of human dignity, I don’t know what does.” He and Albrecht would rather see a chip implanted in a bracelet.

Barnes says a bracelet would not be nearly as useful. People might remove it if it got uncomfortable, especially those with Alzheimer’s, who might not understand why they should wear it.

Bracelets could also label people as mentally ill, whereas an implanted chip is much less obvious, says Rick Rader, of the Orange Grove Center, Chattanooga, Tenn. The center, which cares for children with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and autism, was in the media spotlight two years ago when it considered using Veri- Chip’s device in a similar study on its patients, a plan that has since been put on the back burner.

At the time, there was an outcry from those who saw an implantable RFID as reminiscent of the “mark of the beast,” as described in the Book of Revelation. As explained on Albrecht’s Web site, the Bible states that people who take the mark of the beast — a mark on the right hand or the forehead that contains a number or a name that is required for buying and selling — will receive a “grievous sore” as well as the “wrath of God,” while those who refuse will be rewarded.

It is something Albrecht, a Christian, takes seriously. “I don’t think anyone is arguing that the VeriChip implant in its current incarnation would meet that definition,” she says. “But the concern for many people is that this would be a necessary precursor to getting to that point and therefore probably should be objected to.”

Uninformed.co.uk
Tobias Cunningham
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

As more of our civil liberties are eroded in the name of “fighting crime” or “protecting the people from terrorism”, yet another Orwelian idea is just about to be implemented here in the UK.

The eery “spy planes” will be in effect above the skies of Liverpool in around one week’s time and the unmanned drones, originally used for military reconnaissance but now being used against British citizens, aim to tackle anti-social behaviour and other types of crime.

There is just one problem with this. CCTV has already proved completely ineffective in reducing the level of crime we have in the UK. They simply don’t do what the police claim they do. And while the use of CCTV is obviously a benefit in the tracking of criminals after an offence has been committed, research shows that criminals are undeterred by the presence of cameras.

Now, however, the spy planes are here. Along with the shouting CCTV cameras they are here to wipe away the ever so slight mark of privacy that we had left in our lives. The privacy of being able to walk down the street at any time of the day or night and not “feel” like you’re being watched, even when we know we already are being watched almost everywhere we stray.

When this story first surfaced last year, Merseyside Police played down the reports stating in this BBC article that police were “exploring a number of technology-driven ideas” but while the use of surveillance drones is among them they would be “a long way off”.

Well, forgive me for not really thinking that October 2006 was a long time ago. Because it wasn’t. Their attitude in October had a slight air of “conspiracy theorist” branding…something which has worked well for the government’s Orwelian plans in the past leaving them clear to usher in these kinds of quite unbelievable measures that the majority of the people would have been shocked at some years ago but now accept as “necessary to fight crime”.

Unfortunately for those people these spy planes will not reduce crime and they will not reduce the number of anti-social incidents in areas like Liverpool or Manchester or anywhere for that matter. They will, however, serve the increasingly paranoid New World Order’s attempts to keep tabs on our entire society.

Don’t buy into it.

Maddy nightmare gives establishment platform to promote the tracking of every child

Uninformed.co.uk
Tobias Cunningham
Friday, May 18, 2007

Click here to show your support in the fight to find missing Madeleine McCann!

Europe’s largest newspaper the London Times has come out with an article that I and many others who have their eyes open to the New World Order agenda have been expecting over the past 2 weeks since the tragic abduction of four-year-old Leicestershire toddler Madeleine McCann.

That article is the imminent push for our children to have implantable microchips embedded under their skin.

Click here to read the Times’ article in full.

The majority of the British public and indeed that of the wider international community, particularly those with children will willingly take in what the press subconsciously tells us when these kinds of seemingly caring journalists step up and ask questions such as “Would an implanted chip help to keep my child safe?”.

People with children are going to answer yes to this question. The majority of those without children are still going to answer yes to this question. The reason for this is that they fail to see the underlying motives behind the seemingly rational suggestion that we should all know where our children are and therefore ensure they are safe.

Of course we want our children to be safe. Of course we want them to be kept well away from the grips of an abductor such as the person or persons who have taken young Madeleine in Praia da Luz and of course we want these kinds of people brought to swift justice, but microchipping the entire child population is certainly not the answer and it simply never will be.

As Aaron Russo revealed on the Alex Jones show in January of this year, the true intentions of the global elite, in particular the Rockefeller family, is a microchipped society. A society where you have no privacy, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, whether you’re innocent, guilty, indifferent or impaired. This is the true face of the London Times article quoted above and this is what we have to fight.

Let me make myself clear. On the surface this idea, be it for children only, is a good one. The reasoning sounds good, the media feeds it to you and your emotions lead you to believe that this is the way forward. But the notion that these chips are “just for children, to keep them safe” is a theory which will eventually evaporate if this plan comes to true fruition.

Hear this. Your child has been implanted with a microchip. You, the police and the government can track your child wherever he or she goes. Good idea? “Of course,” you think to yourself, “my child will never be lost again…and if the worst comes and my child is taken, the police can identify exactly where they are and locate them immediately.

But what about when your child grows up. Your child is now a teenager…they’re still chipped…they’re still trackable by the police and the government and they still lack the privacy and freedom that was so readily taken away from them in the name of safety when they were in their early years of life.

But that’s even if this system would work. The UK Government’s own research shows that CCTV is not a crime deterrent, yet here in the UK we have 1 camera for every 14 people and there are tonnes more going up all around us. We are the most surveilled nation on the planet, yet we have one of the biggest crime rates…and that is simply because the CCTV that plagues your everyday life…the CCTV that watches you almost every step you walk on every day of your life is not there to prevent crime or preserve public safety as the nice yellow stickers will have you believe. They are there to serve the purpose they were built for. To watch…watch YOU!

Make no mistake, the New World Order’s plan to microchip the entire human population will begin in this manner. With children. If it were ruled tomorrow that every child on the planet should be microchipped from this point on then where will Earth be in say 50 years down the line? An almost entirely microchipped population. Everyone trackable. This is what we have to fight, because it is wrong in every single way. There are better ways to help keep our children safe from the evils that lurk in our world.

I sincerely hope that the McCann family have their daughter returned to them safe and well as does the rest of our nation and the rest of the world who have seen this case unfold over the past fortnight.

GLEN OWEN
UK Daily Mail
Sunday, March 11, 2007

A primary school headmaster has outraged parents after he tricked his pupils into recording their fingerprints by telling them they were playing spies.

Children were persuaded to give their prints after being told by Mark Woodburn that it was ‘just a game…so there’s no need to tell your parents’.

Privacy campaigners said the case, involving children as young as three, highlights the extent to which Britain is becoming a surveillance society.

It follows the leak of Home Office documents last week which revealed that from 2010, children aged 11 to 16 are to have their fingerprints taken and stored on a secret database when they apply for a passport.

Mr Woodburn, head teacher at Ghyllside Primary School in Kendal, Cumbria, devised the spies game when he introduced a new print-recognition library system at the school.

After being told it was not necessary to tell their parents, pupils were split up into groups of five or six before being photographed and fingerprinted. The ruse was revealed when one young boy did tell his parents, who then complained.

Mr Woodburn says he was unprepared for the strength of feeling among parents about the ‘Big Brother’ system - but admits ‘in hindsight’ at he should have consulted them first.

‘I suppose I was naive,’ he said. ‘I have now sent out letters to every parent, and at the moment only five out of 360 pupils do not use the system.’

One parent, Michael Dawson, described the spread of fingerprinting in schools as ’surveillance by the back door’.

More than 3,500 schools have purchased fingerprint technology, for use in anti-truancy measures or cashless canteens, as well as library systems.

Dudley Council has even published a guide to fingerprinting children on its website.

Last week, Malcolm Trobe, president of the Association of School and College Leaders, complained about the growing mass of ‘intrusive’ information held about pupils and said parents were becoming increasingly alarmed by the Big Brother-style initiatives.

Parents have no rights in law to prevent third-party agencies from accessing this information - schools merely have to tell them what is being held and how it will be used.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty, said: ‘Authoritarian societies usually sacrifice the rights and freedoms of vulnerable minorities first. Sadly Blair’s Britain is taking the same path.’

BBC | Sunday, March 4, 2007

Proposals to fingerprint children aged 11 to 15 as part of new passport and ID card plans are being considered.

Immigration minister Liam Byrne told ITV1’s The Sunday Edition the proposals were being “looked at”.

Under existing plans every passport applicant over 16 will have details - including fingerprints - added to a National Identity register from 2008.

But there was concern youngsters could use passports without biometric details up to the age of 20, said Mr Byrne.

This could happen if they are issued a child passport between the ages of 11 and 15, which would be valid for five years.

Both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties called the idea “sinister”.

Officials at the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) had proposed the fingerprint database, said Mr Byrne.

But he added that no final decision had yet been made on whether to go ahead with the idea.

“The challenge that officials have been asked to find an answer to, is how do you make sure that people who are 16 and over have got biometric details recorded in their passports?” he told the programme.

‘Arrogance’

Shadow home secretary David Davis said the proposal “borders on the sinister” and added it showed the government was trying to end the presumption of innocence.

“This government is clearly determined to enforce major changes in the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way never seen before.”

“The determination to build a surveillance state behind the backs of the British people is becoming increasingly sinister,” said Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said.

“It is a measure of ministerial arrogance that plans are being laid to fingerprint children as young as 11 without having a public debate first.

“As millions of British citizens discover that they will have to pay through the nose for the privilege of being included in a range of government databases, ministers should not be surprised if public resistance becomes ever more vocal.”

Parental consent

Last month the opposition parties expressed anger that all fingerprints collected for ID cards would be cross-checked against prints from 900,000 unsolved crimes.

And campaigners have long battled fingerprinting of children in schools, a practice they estimate happens in about 3,500 establishments.

From this month guidelines from privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner will urge schools to get parental consent before taking biometric data.

But under the Data Protection Act schools do not have to seek parental consent, and calls to outlaw the controversial practice have been rejected by the government.

On Monday campaign group Leave Them Kids Alone will launch a list of 10 questions it recommends all parents ask of their child’s school, if biometric systems are being considered or introduced.

Campaigner David Clouter said they feared “normalising” the practice in schools would lessen resistance to pressure for the fingerprinting of younger and younger children.

“Whatever the reason, it is an infringement of a person’s civil liberties,” he said.