VOLUME 22

   ISSUE 22

 20 May  2013

Part 01   

Imagine tracking your location via your mobile phone, locating your vehicle via its GPS system, traffic cameras which monitor our movements, super markets, banks and recording and logging every email or sms you send to your loved one! This all may sound like a science fiction that might become a reality in another 10 years time but actually this is real and it is happening right now .

Knowingly or unknowingly we are living is a Surveillance Society where we are watched always. Especially in developed countries this has even reached to sub ways, busses and even your medical records and bank records are being monitored and it is being recorded.

Surveillance Society

 
Within hours of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, as federal officials shut down airports and US strategists began plotting a military response, Attorney General John Ashcroft was mobilizing his own forces. In meetings with top aides at the FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Centre - during which the White House as well as the State and Defence departments dialled in via secure videoconference � Attorney General pulled together a host of antiterrorism measures.
 

Days later, the Attorney General sent a bill that would make it easier for the government to tap cell phones and pagers, give the federal officialss broad authority to monitor email and Web browsing, strengthens money-laundering laws, and weakens immigrants' rights

Almost immediately, there were unmistakable signs that new surveillance tools would be a linchpin in the war on terrorism. The FBI met with AOL, EarthLink, and other large Internet Service Providers, and there was renewed talk of using DCS 1000 to let the FBI monitor their email traffic.

Though USA proposed to strengthen its Surveillance Society programme after 9/11 Attack, it already existed in the country. Traffic Camera network, ATM/Bank Camera Network, Visionics - a maker of face-recognition software used in surveillance cameras in London and Tampa, Florida, and in the databases of close to a dozen state law enforcement agencies, GPS Locator devices in vehicles were already in place even before the 9/11.

Methodology

Cameras are not the only method or tool in Surveillance Society. Telephones, mobile phones, bank accounts, emails, travel itinerary, credit cards are also methods that are used in the Surveillance Society. In many developed countries such as USA, UK, these methods are used extensively and in 2006, Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) named UK being 'the most surveilled country' among the industrialized Western states.

Below listed are few methods and techniques used by many countries to enforce a Surveillance Society:-
 

� CCTV Camera Networks
� Unmanned Air Craft Vehicle Systems- ie; drones
� Public Transport System- ie; cards used to travel in busses
� Analogue Communication- ie; telephone, fax records
� Mobile Phone Tracking
� Vehicle Tracking- ie; via GPS, automatic number plates recognition
� DNA Database- ie; fingerprints and other bio metrics
� Overseas Travel- ie; airport, ports tacking systems
� Internet/Digital Communication- ie; email/electronic communication tracking via systems like tracking, Carnivore, Echelon
� Data Mining- ie; gathering information on financial records, internet usage patterns, social networking sites

(Please refer next month's eNews letter for part 02)

- Rangamini Werawatta

Rangamini is a ICT Consultant and a freelance journalist who contributes to national newspapers. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology (BSc-IT) from the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) and he is a Member of the British Computer Society (MBCS), the Chartered Institute of IT.
He is also the author of the book �Cyber Security: 01 Byte from the Cyberspace�; ISBN: 978-955-658-253-6
 

'.... On Monday, three days after Boston police arrested 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings, Reddit general manager Erik Martin issued an apology. It had not been the best of weeks for his online community. Law enforcement officials had explained that one of their motivations for releasing surveillance camera footage of the Tsarnaev brothers was to put an end to the wild speculation on sites like Reddit, where anyone with a backpack was being floated as a possible suspect.......'

'....A suspect, believed to be Dutchman Sven Olaf Kamphuis, has been arrested in Spain in relation to the cyber-attack on Spamhaus, which has been called the biggest in the history of the internet......'

Phone scammers call the wrong guy, get mad and trash PC

'....Have you ever received a call from someone with a heavy Indian accent from Microsoft saying your computer had errors or viruses?The purpose of these calls is to get an easy $299 (or whatever amount they choose) by scaring you into thinking there's something really wrong with your computer and that they can fix it for you.These telephony scams have been going on for many years and scammers keep robbing innocent people sadly because their success ratio is still worth their time and effort......'

'....A group of Chinese hackers suspected of being behind a cyber-attack on the New York Times earlier this year may be restarting their campaign.BAE Systems, the defence contractor, says it has unearthed evidence that indicates the group is active for the first time since February, when the hackers were accused of being linked to a Chinese military unit in Shanghai.Although the connection has not been proven, the hacking group went immediately quiet on the day the allegation was made. Now analysts believe the hackers are ready to strike again.David Garfield, managing director of cyber security at Detica, a BAE Systems subsidiary, told Sky News: "The activity we have detected indicates that the espionage group was lying low until the attention around their activities died down, before getting back to 'business-as-usual'."Detica researchers have obtained a copy of malware that has all the hallmarks of being crafted by this espionage group......'