Yes, you are being watched

Alarms have been raised over Bill C-30, a law that would allow police to monitor Canadians’ Internet and e-mails. However, privacy analysts warn the horse has already left the barn: We are all being watched.

“The Stasi would have loved the kind of technology and the amount of information we have in these days. It’s certainly a concern,” says David Murakami Wood, Canada Research Chair in Surveillance Studies at Queens University.

Murakami Wood said while we aren’t in a government-led Big Brother surveillance society yet, the potential is there, and there is a lack of awareness about how often we are observed and tracked.

“There is an apathy about it. They are generally aware, they have seen Minority Report, but they are not aware enough at all,” he said.

From secret surveillance at border crossings to GPS tracking of shopping habits, the watchful eye is on us like no other time in history.

Privacy watchdogs say that while social media can be used to remove power from governments – as the revolts in the Arab Spring have shown – democracies must stay vigilant that it doesn’t go the other way as well.

“In Germany, they are the ones who always remind us what they had to endure in the Third Reich and how easily things can change,” Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian warns.

“Don’t think that this is impossible or far from reality and that is why we have to be vigilant to protect the freedoms we have now. They start with privacy – it is at the heart of all of our freedoms.”


At the border:

For the first time in our shared history, exit controls will start being used on all Canadians and Americans when they leave their country of citizenship.

The practice was agreed to in 2011, when the latest security agreement was signed between Ottawa and Washington. Starting in 2014, when a U.S. border guard leans in your car window and asks where you are going and why you are leaving, he will instantly share that information with the Canadian government.

To avoid the fuss, the new Nexus program just scans the iris of your eyeball at the Canada-U.S. border (again, just like in the film Minority Report), and knows what you are up to without having to see your passport or ask questions.


On your phone:

Communication tech-makers Cisco Systems estimates smartphones will outnumber human beings on the planet by 2016.

The hand-held computers can pinpoint a person’s location to within 12 inches of where they are standing any place on the planet where satellite signals can find them.

New technology using smartphones allowed stores to follow people through malls for first time this past Christmas, monitoring and mapping shoppers’ movements.

Companies hope to use the collected data for direct advertising.

Police use phone GPS data to track suspects and then use it in court to put the accused at the scene of a crime (or to give them an alibi.)

“This notion of having cellphones that are constantly recording where everyone goes has been very good for the government,” says Jeff Fischbach, an American forensic psychologist who analyzes evidence that is digitally recorded, and presents it for court cases.

“This default that when you delete something it simply disappears from sight but is still available to be found doesn’t serve the individual. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the U.S. government is the biggest customer of these companies.”


In the car:

Turn off the GPS functions on your phone? That’s OK. Modern vehicles all have GPS transponders to track the car’s locater beacon even if the assistance program isn’t subscribed to.

“If you are running a newer car, it’s probably communicating with the dealership and you will get a cellphone call reminding you your car needs a tune-up. New cars have significant two-way data streams,” says Fischbach.

“New tires, they may have imbedded in the rubber some RFID chips. Those chips will … send out data. They weren’t sold as a way to follow your vehicle, but they could certainly be used that way.”

In the United States, police cars have cameras that record licence plate numbers of passing cars, constantly running the digits through a database, with the owners’ photograph popping up on screen.

Out of the car, security cameras in parking lots and computers built into pay meters record your movements and note the time.


Where you live:

If you think you’re safe from prying eyes at home, think again.

“We can [get data from] surveillance cameras, kitchen appliances, video game systems, televisions, cars, smart phones – anything at all with a computer, I can get information out of it,” says Fischbach.

Alarm systems now include cameras with web-streaming and two-way microphones, provided by the same companies that offer phone, television and Internet connections.

Along with the fisheye webcams built into most computer monitors, new “smart” televisions have them embedded into the sets, allowing for interactive TV shows and video telephone calls, much like the wall screens described by Ray Bradbury in his dystopic novel, Farenheit 451.

Some computer viruses can switch on the cameras and speakers without the owner knowing about it, allowing hackers to watch people in their homes.

One school district in Philiadelphia was even caught remotely activating webcams on school-supplied laptops, peering at students in their bedrooms and snapping pictures of sleeping teens.


On foot:

Great Britain, birthplace of writer George Orwell, has perfected constant camera observation.

“Over the last four years, U.K. local councils have spend 550 million pounds on CCTV cameras. Just local council cameras, we have 51,000 of them, not counting central government, police and transport,” says Emma Carr, spokeswoman for Big Brother Watch in the U.K.

“It’s very much a generational divide. The younger generation have become desensitized to these cameras because we have grown up with them, watching us all of the time – in London, on average, you are caught 300 times a day on a camera.”

In the U.S., cities are installing video cameras in public spaces that can read text from hundreds of feet away.

Other cameras, being installed in New Jersey, zoom in and record when two people come close to each other and shine a bright red floodlight on them.

“London has talking cameras. We are about to deploy light-projecting cameras,” East Orange police Chief William Robinson says.

The cameras can shoot a beam a full city block away.

“The message to the criminals is: the police are observing you, the police are recording you and the police are responding.”

Some people find that disturbing.

“That is the definition of Orwellian,” says Cavoukian. “Living in a free and democratic society means that you can walk about freely, not being concerned that every act you engage in is being monitored. And if you are a law-abiding citizen, it is your right not to be monitored on a 24-7 basis.”


In the air and everywhere:

In George Orwell’s 1984, the protagonist, Winston Smith, gets away from totalitarian prying eyes for an afternoon, resting in the forest with his secret love. When a bird lands nearby and starts singing, he wonders: “What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness? He wondered whether, after all, there was a microphone hidden somewhere near.”

Today, that very bird could be the microphone and camera.

The Nano Hummingbird looks like a feathered friend, but it’s really a flapping robot, remote-controlled and armed with a live streaming camera and microphone.

Funded by the Defence Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the U.S. military, it is one of many new biomimetic robots: machines that look like spiders, insects, birds and snakes, with cameras for eyes and microphones for ears.

The U.S. military hopes to make a “pigeon” that recharges itself using its metal talons when landing on power lines.

Researchers at Cornell University and the University of Michigan are also turning real insects into cyborgs, using electrodes to control the flight of moths and beetles.

“What we expected surveillance to look like and where we expect it to be is no longer the case,” Murakami Wood says. “This is a very expanding world of unfamiliar sorts of technologies. Just when we thought we got a handle on it, suddenly they aren’t what they thought they would be.”

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have created small robots that fly in formation. Like a disciplined swarm of dragon flies, they can navigate through windows and doors.

Credit: Toronto Sun