Big Brother Really Is Watching Us All

siddesu writes "The BBC has a nice high-level overview of some technologies for surveillance developed in the US and the UK. 'The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game ... But it [a through-the wall sensing device in development] will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.'"

Elevated Heart Rate?

[Gabrill (556503)]

Boy that surprise birthday present sure landed me in jail quick. I hope I can explain that brand new S&M outfit adequately in court!

Re:Elevated Heart Rate?

[Joebert (946227)]

Your honor after carefull consideration we've determined the defendant is of no danger to society, however the prosecution requests the defendant not be allowed within 1000 feet from any property which houses goats.

Re:Elevated Heart Rate?

[jagdish (981925)]

however the prosecution requests the defendant not be allowed within 1000 feet from any property which houses goatse.
Fixed!

This is when...

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'll become a millionaire overnight selling my own brand of tin-foil clothing!

CAUTION: May cook organs/skin during warm weather.

Re:This is when...

[Joebert (946227)]

It's gettin hot in here.
So take off your tinfoil cloths.

Ineffective

[kccricket (217833)]

Terrorists will simply train themselves to remain calm and lower their heartrate.

Re:Ineffective

[Nossie (753694)]

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!

And you actually thought it was aimed at terrorism?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!! /moment of temporary insanity

Re:Ineffective

[DaedalusHKX (660194)]

Actually most trained professionals generally maintain calm when preparing to kill someone.

Its only untrained schmucks like us out here in the "regular Joe Bloggs world" that start pushing lots of red stuff through our hearts when we're about to do something we're not accustomed to (on slashdot, that is equal possibilities, sex or killing... j/k). I'm pretty sure most of us slashdotters have only killed things in videogames and with a fly swatter.

I can guarantee there isn't one among us who would have the ability or training to remain calm while the ninja masked, body armored thug squad is romping through the house, searching for us with the heartbeat monitor... If you can maintain your cool while that is happening, then you should be operating your own assassin for hire business and stop posting on slashdot... you're wasting your time here :)

As for the rest of us... take deep breaths folks... we've already given them so much leeway to use when they screw us, why stop now?

Re:Ineffective

[ushering05401 (1086795)]

Some people are born with this ability, but are not trained killers. A member of my family is completely immune to excitement and pain. He is in his fifties and has never accepted anaesthetic during medical procedures (including major dental) because the pain does not phase him in the least. His mood never changes. It is creepy to a lot of people, but he leads a normal life as a high-end carpenter, husband, and father.

I remember hearing that he had been hit by a cab and was in the hospital for over a week, and in a wheelchair for a while after that. After the cab hit him he got in and requested a ride to the hospital... then limped himself into the lobby and calmly told the nurse that he was seriously damaged.

I am pretty certain that he could off a bus full of preschoolers without flinching.

Re:Ineffective

[TheLink (130905)]

Spock is that you?

'Nurse, I have been hit by a taxi, it is most logical to assume that I am seriously damaged, for example my left anterior cruciate ligaments appear to be FUBARed, to use the popular technical term'.

Seriously though, it's interesting to hear that he apparently does ok - I'd thought pain would be useful in helping people learn from their mistakes.

Re:

[Cassius Corodes (1084513)]

Or use drugs to achieve that effect. (They are already using amphetamines to lower the number of people who chicken out).

Re:Ineffective

[MillionthMonkey (240664)]

Terrorists will simply train themselves to remain calm and lower their heartrate.

Well of course, because they've been tipped off now! Which means the submitter of this article is guilty of treason. Just like the traitors among us who tipped off the terrorists that we were reading everyone's email and listening in on their phone calls.

Now Bin Laden will release some yoga tapes and our intelligence gathering will be back to square one.

I hope they really can read my mind....

[timmarhy (659436)]

.. I'll just think of tub girl and goatse.cx man all day. take that fuckers.

Re:I hope they really can read my mind....

[dircha (893383)]

"No, don't talk - don't say anything. I'm filling my mind with a picture of beating their huge, misshapen heads to pulp!. Thoughts so primitive they block out everything else; I'm filling my mind with hate!"

Captain Pike salutes you :)

Re:I hope they really can read my mind....

[Perseid (660451)]

Yep. And what will the parents have to say when their kids scan them and see all the same stuff? :)

Re:I hope they really can read my mind....

[Antique Geekmeister (740220)]

You have looked into Scientology's use of the primitive polygraph called an e-meter? Go look at www.xenu.net for details on how they use it for brainwashing their own new members, and track the links for testimony about how the "auditing" confessional materials get recorded and sent back to their headquarters, for use against anyone who tries to leave the cult and speak out against it. Such monitoring is old hat: the US government grew very fond of using polygraphs on security personnel, and probing for political information.

Re:I hope they really can read my mind....

[Walt Dismal (534799)]

In reply to both the article poster who said "...We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking." and the above comment, I have some things to say about 'mind reading' and 'telepathy': they AREN'T VIABLE. The problem is this: each one of us, as we grow up, develops complex internal symbol systems - essentially private language. Example: a baby that learns to recognize a ball DOES NOT have to know the word 'ball' to think about a ball. He uses an internal symbol system. As we grow and integrate ourselves into society, we learn to map from this internal coding to a publicly accepted coding: 'aha', thinks Baby, this thing I know from sense impressions of red and round, is called a 'b-a-l-l'. Also, if we're American, we map to English words. If we're Japanese, we map to Japanese. Now the thing is, no matter how sensitive a brain scan is, it cannot pick up internal codings, which are partly physical/topological anyway, and make them available in any way that can be individually externally decoded at a semantic level. There is NO universal pulse train that always decodes to 'hamburger' in all human beings. So if I have a technology to read impulses in the nervous system of a test subject, there is NO WAY I can pick an arbitrary subject - a guy in a house - and decode to a meaningful word level what his brain is computing at the moment. In an analogous way, the concept of telepathy is pure fiction and could not work, because no two people have the same native internal base dictionary, and if you pick up 'radiation' from someone's brain, you still are stuck with not knowing the internal-to-external mapping. That spike sequence you just emitted - I can't know what it means outside of you. So the point is, no, they're not able to read minds and it isn't going to happen any time soon.

Re:I hope they really can read my mind....

[HuguesT (84078)]

The inquisition also justified their crimes by trying to make blasphemers repent so they could avoid Hell.

The second paragraph may be what you believe, but it does not compute. Education only has a minor influence on these matters: look no further than various forms of Mafias for well-educated, Christian or otherwise religious thugs.

Just like the polygraph

[Ginnungagap42 (817075)]

"And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking."

I call crap on this. We will be able to detect biometric data. We will not be able to tell "what you're thinking."

Re:

[timmarhy (659436)]

I know, doesn't it make you just gag at the sheer stupidity of it? trouble is people are idiots, and will lap this shit up. I know i can a. think of something else b. think of more then one thing at a time to really fuck them up.

My bet is if they ever really could tell what people are thinking... it would go something like this - FOOD,SEX,FOOD,SEX,FOOD,SEX...

Re:Just like the polygraph

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

You forgot ROCK&ROLL!

I forget a lot of things that come after drugs.

They can do this now, sort of.

[mosb1000 (710161)]

Actually, modern technology can detect the magnetic fields that your firing neurons produce right now. This is where you get all those images of "brain activity" that you see. It is very much a non-invasive and passive technology, and could, theoretically, be carried out remotely. If studies are carried out in real situations, they could correlate the patterns of brain activity with the the apparent intent of the individual (assuming that similar intentions make similar patterns). The result is they could tell what you are thinking (in a rudimentary way). It's not really that far fetched.

Re:They can do this now, sort of.

[CastrTroy (595695)]

You would have to have some pretty good filtering technology to filter out someones brain waves from another room with all the other ambient electromagnetic radiation going around. A standard action potential [wikipedia.org] only fluctuates the membrane voltage by about 120 mV. Meanwhile, a CRT, which actually is vulnerable to Van Eck Phreaking, requires a voltage of 32,000 volts [wikipedia.org] to display an image on the screen.

Re:They can do this now, sort of.

[eli pabst (948845)]

AFAIK, they do this using fMRI. So they'll need to figure out how to build a MRI machine that is big enough to fit over your house without anyone noticing and a way to keep all the ferrous metal objects in your house from turning it into one big blender, otherwise I doubt they could detect field changes that small anytime soon. I would agree with you about correlating general emotional responses with specific brain activity though.

But we may *think* we know what you're thinking

[Geof (153857)]

I'm inclined to agree that we will no more be able to tell what a person is thinking than a computer can understand what they've written. That may not matter: if we think we can know what a person is thinking, then we may act on it anyway. We already are: Ohio Court Admits Lie Detector Tests As Evidence [slashdot.org].

Re:Just like the polygraph

[Fex303 (557896)]

Sorry, but this is silly idea.

1) MRI is really hard to do. You can't just throw everyone into one, especially not at airports. It just takes one person forgetting to take off their metal bracers and you have one hell of a mess.

2) FMRI is really hard to do, and still not fine-grained enough to detect any of this.

3) Annoyance is not uncontrolled violence.

4) Last I checked, there's no 'anger' center of the brain, so much as there as section of the brain that controls affect - the prefrontal cortex [wikipedia.org] may have some control over emotional reactions and social setting, but that's part of a greater notion of executive function.

5) Even if you had a way to measure annoyance, I think you'll find that anyone who's being held up at customs after a 20 hour flight so they can watch a video from inside a bizarre machine will be registering pretty highly on the annoy-o-meter no matter what you show them.

6) If you think that terrorists are thinking along the same political lines as we are, only somewhat more to the left, then you're seriously misguided and need to stop watching Fox. (You think that Muslim fundamentalists won't be annoyed by gay rights videos?)

7) If you think a right wing group hasn't already started blowing shit up, then I suggest you have a good think about what terrorist attacks have happened on US soil. The worst was 9/11, and the second was?

The overall idea of the thing is flawed. If my psych major in undergrad taught me one thing (other than statistics), it's that we're extremely complex creatures, with brains that are hard to understand. Political philosophies are some of the most complex systems of abstract thought that we come up with. Deducing them when the opponent is trying to give a different impression is going require something far in advance of the sort of tech we have now.

This reminds me of my youth in Poland.

[by Anonymous Coward]

I grew up in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s. This is the sort of shit we dealt with each day.

The Communists claimed to have devices that could read minds to determine one's intentions. Now, we didn't know if this was true or not. But seeing as many of us wanted to live another day, or at the very least not get tortured, we assumed they did.

It seems that the citizenry of the UK and the US are now in a very similar position....

Re:This reminds me of my youth in Poland.

[b0s0z0ku (752509)]

I grew up in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s. This is the sort of shit we dealt with each day.

And it's funny, I was just in Poland (Krakow) two months ago. The place felt *worlds* more free than NYC or London. Fewer cameras around. No constant babble about how bags are subject to search because of terrorism. Able to buy an intercity train ticket for cash without ID (same went for a domestic plane ticket, though they did glance at my passport when I boarded). Fewer police swarming about, unlike in NYC where they seem to be out in force near Penn Station or driving in cavalcades, lights flashing to an unknown destination.

I love the USA, but Poland definitely has its good points...

-b.

Re:This reminds me of my youth in Poland.

[FooAtWFU (699187)]

This may be the case for NYC, but to be fair, NYC is hardly representative of the States at large. And NYC has ten times the population of Krakow. (Places like, oh, Washington DC have fewer excuses...) The domestic flight ID matter is a point, but it's also worth noting that the US is a lot bigger than Poland, so "domestic" flights aren't quiite the same thing. As for intercity rail, I've never tried Amtrak - their web page seems to say you'll need ID - but gaaak, who'd want to bother with Amtrak anyway? (Greyhound might be another comparison, and a cursory inspection seems to indicate they don't require it.)

Mind you, there's still plenty to go on about nationwide, but less than 3% of us are subject to the NYC level of, ah, crackdowns.

I suppose you could make some comparison with rural Poland as well, though. Eh.

Re:This reminds me of my youth in Poland.

[b0s0z0ku (752509)]

You should move there. Let us know how it goes.

I'm considering it -- plenty of opportunities in technology and engineering since the country is developing rapidly, and I'm a citizen by parentage so I'd have no problem getting a work permit or establishing a corporation there.

BTW: I never quite understood the sentiment that if someone says that a place has some good points over the USA, they're somehow not worthy of being an American. Having a citizenry that acknowledges its country's faults makes that country a better and stronger place, since they talk about the faults and strive to correct them. Blind acceptance serves no one.

-b.

Heart Rate Raised?

[Randseed (132501)]

Harm you because their heart rate is raised? They could be overdosing on caffeine. They could be on meth. They might be some teenager on Ritalin or its relatives. They might be masturbating. They might just have physiological tachycardia.

I'd rather the government not base their decision on whether to come in guns blazing on something as ridiculous as whether my heart rate is increased above some theoretical average at the time.

It's just an excuse. Re:Heart Rate Raised?

[Erris (531066)]

I'd rather the government not base their decision on whether to come in guns blazing on something as ridiculous as whether my heart rate is increased...

They will base the decision on your political expression and activism, the other things will simply justify your murder. The elevated heart rate will come when they ask you if you and your children would like some pancakes [rotten.com]. The report will say that they had reason to believe you were armed and dangerous.

Unless the US returns to rule of law, tools used to track individuals will be used to identify, harass, intimidate, disrupt and eliminate opposition. Domestic spying is against the law. Unreasonable search violates the Constitution. It is completely unreasonable for government or industry to keep tables of "gait DNA" and other metrics for people who have not committed crimes. The purpose for this kind of thing is a crime in itself.

Big brother is so cliche

[Raul654 (453029)]

Big brother has nothing on Ceiling cat [ceilingcat.com]

Revolting against over-surveilance

[shbazjinkens (776313)]

So in the end, my question is what can we do about it? It's impossible to get the masses (in the US) to actually get out and do something about this right now, I just don't think they care enough. Mass opinion is that if you don't have anything to worry about the government finding then don't worry about them watching you.

The only credible methods I've seen for avoiding surveilance involve actually destroying the surveilance equipment.

The only way to circumvent them is by RF jamming, wire cutting and creating a bright spot around you at all times to flood the camera view - which involves wearing bright LED's or a laser.

Does this mean that eventually there are going to be rogue groups going around and destroying government surveilance equipment? I think so. When you feel you're cornered you do what you have to.

Does this mean that people who are planning terrorist attacks in the future will develop plans to destroy/jam all of the surveilance equipment if they want to get out alive? Definately.

Chicken Joke

[Dragonflite (1155813)]

Why did the chicken cross the road?
Big Brother: I've seen many chickens cross many roads. Please specify.

Never Resign

[TaoPhoenix (980487)]

In the snap of the chilly evening,
My face frozen like a thrull,
The roaring of the howling wind
Is deafening to all.

House minions roam out in force,
Trying to fathom thoughts
Of Citizens within their homes,
Whose actions they know naught.

Fahrenheit Four Fifty One, and
Huxley's Brave New World
Form siren lures to power lords
Elected and unfurled.

The weak attempts must duly fail
Of the Bretheren of Cain;
Cordwainer Smith declared it best -
Scanners Live In Vain

ubiquitous surveillance ...

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'm beginning to think society is getting rather close to an era of ubiquitous surveillance ... where virtually every action (and eventually even thoughts) of every person is viewable, recordable, replayable, broadcastable, etc.

It's a scary thought at first, but then I got to thinking that as the technologies behind this mature and become more powerful (as all technologies do) we will eventually reach a point where "everybody" really means "everybody" ... corporate executives looking to skim a little cream for themselves ... politicians inking secret deals ... extremist groups looking to do harm to others in society ... that asshole neighbour who puts his garbage in front of your house late at night to avoid the excess bag charge ... everybody.

Maybe, just maybe, ubiquitous surveillance will be the thing that saves humankind from the antisocial forces that currently plague us. When anybody can have their actions exposed on YouTube (or whatever the equivalent is in the future), people will be shamed into behaving in decent, harmonious way. It will be like some kind of techno-buddhist utopia.

Re:ubiquitous surveillance ...

[wordsnyc (956034)]

That's adorable. The Free Market (tm) Panopticon is gonna save us.

Try this: there is no symmetry of rights in a class society. They get to watch you; watching them is a crime. FOIA compliance is already disappearing.

tags?

[thatskinnyguy (1129515)]

Where's the tags "tinfoilhatbait" or "overlordbait"?

The Inevitable

[istartedi (132515)]

We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.'"

Jim, Jim, what's Jack thinking?

Umm...

Well, come-on, Jim. What is it?

Umm... he's thinking that we're a bunch of lamers because we're scanning him with the BB-1600, and everybody who's anybody has a MBB-8, which is what he's got.

Ah, come on. They both work. The MBB-8 just comes in more colors.

Yeah. Mac fan boys. Piss me off.

NOT NEW

[Jane Q. Public (1010737)]

There is already court precedent for this in the U.S.

Through-the-wall IR scanners have been available to some police departments in the US for a while now. There has already been at least one court case about them.

In the United States (yes, still), it is illegal for officers of law enforcement to use electronic means to determine what is going on in your home without first obtaining a judicial warrant. The case I mentioned dealt with police using an through-the-wall scanner to determine where an alleged drug dealer was inside someone else's house, before they raided it. Because they had not obtained a warrant, the evidence was thrown out of court. The judge ruled that it was clearly an electronic device, and thus fell under the Federal Statute preventing its use.

I wish I had a citation at hand for this case, but I do not. I will try to find it.

Re:NOT BS.

[Peyna (14792)]

Kyllo v. U.S. [cornell.edu] is probably what you're looking for. The legal standard has fluctuated a bit in recent years, but right now the Court is sticking with "general public use," for determining whether a particular type of technology constitutes a search.

If Big Brother is Watching Me...

[fm6 (162816)]

...he really needs to get a life!

Where do they get their numbers?

[gillbates (106458)]

Interestingly, we, the public, don't seem to mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance.

I think we've just found the next Jason Blair.

I have to call bullshit on this one. In my entire life, I have met atheists and believers, gays and straights, liberals and conservatives, and not once, ever, in my life have I met someone who espoused more surveillance. Now, I live in a large metropolitan area - one with numerous projects involving installing more surveillance cameras, and even the most conservative, cop-loving suburbanites are at best indifferent, and quite often, vehemently opposed. There's a lot of hostility, but absolutely no support. The law of statistics would dictate that if 75% of the population supported more surveillance, I would have - at least once in my life - have heard someone argue in support of it. But I've never heard it from anyone. Not even the most gullible of idiots or stupidest of patriots I've met has ever said they'd like to see more surveillance.

Re:Where do they get their numbers?

[element-o.p. (939033)]

Really? Not even once? Because I sure have.

When the NSA wiretapping story broke, the anchor and legal specialist on CNN were arguing over whether that surveillance was really something to worry about. The legal specialist said yes, it's a violation of the fourth amendment. The anchor said, essentially, I don't care; I have nothing to hide.

I've argued with people here on /. about whether or not the surveillance powers claimed by the wiretapping, the Patriot Act, etc. are a problem or not (for example, see http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=296641&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20586283 [slashdot.org]). I've argued with my wife that surveillance without judicial oversight is a bad thing. My brother-in-law, an Air National Guard pilot, once told me, "You can't do too much to protect our country."

So, yeah, I've talked/posted with people who think that surveillance is a good thing, and who even think government could do more to protect the country.

Re:Where do they get their numbers?

[gillbates (106458)]

There's a big difference between "don't care" and "wanting more surveillance".

I too, have met the I'm-an-idiot-so-I-have-nothing-to-hide type. However, their indifference is fueled by their trust in humanity, and the fact that for most people, getting struck by lighting is a greater risk than being falsely imprisoned by their government for political reasons. Those without any political convictions won't ever be political prisoners.

I could accept that 75% are indifferent. What is unacceptable is translating "indifference" to "wanting more surveillance". I believe it is more correct to say that the average American doesn't want to be bothered by the question of surveillance, a subtle, but important difference. It doesn't mean they want more surveillance, but that they consider the appropriate level a surveillance a question better answered by the police. If they had to personally share the cost of the cameras; if the cameras inconvenienced them in some way, they'd probably take a different view.

So much for sex

[The Angry Mick (632931)]

But it [a through-the wall sensing device in development] will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised.

So your significant other is on the other side of the wall whispering sweet nothings and describing the slinky nightie she currently has on, your elevated heart rate could get you in trouble? Sounds to me like the government just killed seduction.

Meh...

[The Master Control P (655590)]

If they really decide to be dicks about this "through the wall" surveillance shit, I'll definitely open up a market for me. I'll buy rolls of copper cloth [wovenwire.com], sew it inbetween pieces of fabric, and start marketing my new and exciting line of Faraday Clothes.

Soon after I do this, weavers of copper cloth will be required to report all their sales over fifty square feet to the DEA. Wearing faraday clothes will be considered evidence of guilt, like an encrypted hard drive. If you install fine-weave copper mesh in your walls, it will be used to get a warrant for a midnight raid. Y'know, like if you use too much power today.

I'm only half joking... I actually think making faraday-cage clothes would be neat just to have them.

Through the wall ?

[Ihlosi (895663)]

But it [a through-the wall sensing device in development]

Now, wait a minute. Are they "sensing" through American walls (cardboard, wood and plaster) or through European walls (bricks or concrete) ? There's quite a bit of difference here, as anyone who tried to set up a WLAN may have found out ...

Re:I For One...

[Foobar of Borg (690622)]

*insert obligatory overlord related joke here* Come on people, I know it will eventually be posted, but it's only funny for so long.

In Soviet Russia, obligatory joke posts YOU!