These easy-to-make DIY glasses use infra-red LEDs to obscure your face from cameras... and, perhaps most usefully, from ubiquitous CCTV observation.

I checked out the video and found that it has already been censored and removed.

Perhaps the idea works after all.

In Britain, we have regressed and that is the trend which David Davis is importantly drawing attention to in the run-up to his byelection and no doubt beyond. Rights, liberties and the liberty instinct are evaporating in this country, partly through ignorance of the historic struggle to win our freedoms - and the civilising effect this had on the world - and partly from selfishness and fear that has been remorselessly encouraged by the tabloid press. Into this gap have stepped sinister forces in the Civil Service and a government programmed to think of governance as no more than control.

We may be at the stage where we should coldly ask what is the point of personal freedom in our society? Russia has democracy without liberty and China has capitalism without democracy or liberty. Does the 21st century need to bother with the thing that tied up so much effort in the previous 250 years? Have personal freedom and rights become redundant, rather like the familiar objects that are gradually disappearing in our de-physicalised world - letters, CDs, road maps, photos, address book, albums?

...Read full article

A council is being investigated by the Information Commissioner's Office after it monitored a member's mobile phone calls.

Officials at Liverpool City Council trawled through the phone logs and emails of Labour councillor Joe Anderson in an internal probe.

The inquiry was attempting to discover who leaked information to a journalist about a £2million increase in the cost of staging a Sir Paul McCartney concert in the city.

Councillor Joe Anderson, Labour opposition leader on Liverpool City Council, has demanded disciplinary action for the person who authorised a search of his mobile phone records

Under town hall rules, officials are banned from looking at councillors' mobile phone records.

The council has apologised to Anderson and reported the matter to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Poole unrepentant over trivial snooping

See full article from Bournemouth Echo

Watching over the Town of Poole?

Spying on a family over a school place was necessary' Borough of Poole has again insisted, after local government leaders condemned surveillance for trivial reasons.

In a letter sent to councils across the country Sir Simon Milton, Chairman of the Local Government Association, urged them to review the way in which they use their powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

He said: Save in the most unusual and extreme of circumstances, it is inappropriate to use these powers for trivial matters.

He added: You will all know of the examples where councils have been criticised for using the powers in relation to issues that can be portrayed as trivial or not considered a crime by the public.

There was outcry after it emerged RIPA powers had been used to spy on Poole mum Jenny Paton and her family for almost three weeks over suspicions they were living out of the catchement area of their child's preferred school.

But Poole council has again maintained that was not a trivial but a "proportionate" use of the powers.

Random searches of passengers and their belongings will begin next week on LA's Metrolink commuter trains.

Passengers got the news via a flier left on train seats. Sheriff’s deputies will be setting up random screening stations at random times. Access to the station platform will be restricted; passengers must pass through the checkpoint to gain access to the station platform, stated the flier.

The release goes on to say that some passengers will be selected from those lines and have their baggage searched. Anyone who refuses to be searched won’t be allowed to get on the train. Deputies are looking for “explosives” or other “dangerous items.”

Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said police are primarily looking for explosives, but won’t turn a blind eye to other issues. They are police officers, Tyrrell added: If you have a half a pound of hash in your book bag, they are going to arrest you. I would suggest if that’s the case you are one of the people that wants to walk away.

Sweden voted in favour of its controversial snoop law, after the proposal was amended.

Under the new law, all communication across Swedish borders will be tapped, and information can also be traded with international security agencies, such as America's National Security Agency.

A total of 143 members of parliament voted to pass the bill into law, with 138 delegates opposed.

Earlier , prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt failed to win the backing of his four-party coalition: the draft was sent back to the committee for revision. Key members of parliament who were likely to vote against the proposition were put under pressure by their parties, according to some reports.

Despite receiving copies of George Orwell's book 1984 from protesters earlier this week, MPs from Sweden's ruling party believe the law does not constitute the final nail in the coffin of democracy.

The amended law includes the creation of an agency to control the granting of permissions. The Swedish Data Inspection Board is to monitor the surveillance activities of the National Defence Radio Establishment. An external group comprising members appointed by the government will monitor privacy and integrity issues.

Pirates are the Good Guys vs the State Villains

Thanks to Donald
See Pirate Party to take Sweden to EU court from The Local

Sweden's Pirate Party has said it will take the country to the European Court of Human Rights in a bid to overturn a far-reaching eavesdropping law passed by the Riksdag on Wednesday evening.

• 'Yes' to surveillance law(18 Jun 08)
• Snoop law vote to go ahead(18 Jun 08)
• 'Orwellian law must be stopped'(18 Jun 08)

Deputy leader Christian Engström told The Local that the Pirate Party believed the new law was in clear breach of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Two groups have asked the courts to review a decision that allows border-patrol agents to search U.S. citizens' laptops without suspicion of crime.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives claim that the laptop searches violate citizens' Fourth Amendment rights, which protect them from unreasonable search and seizures.

The case began in 2005, after U.S. citizen Michael Arnold returned to the U.S. from the Philippines and was arrested by Customs and Border Patrol agents who searched his laptop. A district court ruled in Arnold's favor. 

A three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court's decision in April.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives now contend that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision essentially negated the Fourth Amendment and put citizens' privacy and identities at risk, since border patrols can confiscate laptops and make full copies of their contents.

The two groups argue that laptops often contain personal banking and identity information and the level of privacy invasion at a border search is "enormous."

The groups are asking the court to require border agents to have reasonable suspicion of a crime to search a laptop. A decision on whether the court will rehear the case is expected to come within the next few months.

The Tory shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, has announced he will resign as an MP to force a by-election centred on the government's noxious counterterrorism bill.

In his resignation speech, he said:

The name of my constituency is Haltemprice and Howden. Haltemprice is derived from the medieval proverb meaning 'noble endeavour'. Up until yesterday I took the view that what we did in the House of Commons representing our constituents was a noble endeavour because for centuries our forebears defended the freedoms of the British people – or we did, up until yesterday.

This Sunday is the anniversary of the Magna Carta, the document that guarantees that most fundamental of British freedoms, habeas corpus, the right not to be imprisoned by the state without charge or reason. Yesterday this House decided to allow the state to lock up potentially innocent citizens for up to six weeks without charge.

The counterterrorism bill will in all probability be rejected by the House of Lords very firmly. What should they be there for if not to defend the Magna Carta. But because the impetus behind this is essentially political not security the government will be tempted to use the Parliament Act to overrule the Lords. It has no democratic mandate to do this since 42 days was not in the manifesto. Its legal basis is uncertain to say the least. But purely for political reasons this government's going to do that.

In truth 42 days is just one, perhaps the most salient example, of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms.

We will have shortly the most intrusive identity card system in the world. A CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has, with thousands of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on it. We've witnessed an assault on jury trials, that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary abuse by the state, shortcuts for our justice system that make our justice system neither firm nor fair, and the creation of a database state, opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.

The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protests and so-called hate laws which stifle debate, while those who serve violence get off scot-free. This cannot go on, it must be stopped and for that reason today I feel it is incumbent on me to take a stand.

I will be resigning my membership of this House and I intend to force a by-election in Haltemprice and Howden. I will not fight it on the government's general record; there is no point repeating Crewe and Nantwich. I will fight it on my personal record. I am just a piece in this great chess game. I will fight it. I will argue this by-election against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government. That may mean I have made my last speech to the House, possible. And of course that would be a cause of deep regret to me. But at least my electorate and the nation as a whole would have had the opportunity to debate and consider one of the most fundamental issues of our day. The ever-intrusive power of the state into our lives, the loss of privacy, the loss of freedom If they do send me back here, it will be with a single, simple message. That the monstrosity of al aw that we passed yesterday will not stand.

A report just published by the Commons home affairs select committee is called A Surveillance Society?

The question mark seems somewhat redundant since - in more than 100 pages - the MPs proceed to make a number of recommendations about the need for new regulations, controls and restrictions on state accumulation of information about its citizens.

But it is a fundamental liberty of the democratic era that we should be free to live our lives privately and without interference from state agencies provided we obey the law and do not pose a risk to others.

The select committee set out to answer whether the development of CCTV technology and the accumulation of information on centrally held databases constitute a diminution of that freedom. It is commendable that a parliamentary inquiry has been carried out, although images of shut stable doors and bolting horses are difficult to dispel.

...Read full article

The German government have passed an anti-terror law that would grant police the power to monitor private residences, telephones and computers.

Instead of tapping phones, they would be able to use video surveillance and even spy software to collect evidence. Physically tampering with suspects' computers would still not be allowed, but police could send anonymous e-mails containing trojans and hope the suspects infect their own computers.

Government cyberspying, the legislators point out, would only be conducted in a handful of exceptional cases.

The bill, called a building block for Germany's security architecture by interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble, still needs to be approved by the lower and upper chamber of the German parliament.

The federal law was passed after months of heated debate. The proposed plans would not only widen the anti-terror skills of police and the Federal Crime Office, better known as BKA, it would also reverse recent rulings by Germany's constitutional court and Federal Supreme Court. A law which permits authorities in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia to spy on computer users was rejected recently and last year the the Supreme Court ruled online police spying was unlawful.

Max Stadler, a security expert with the German Free Democratic Party, warned earlier the plan would weaken the trust of German citizens in government.

Three angry expressions and you're toast. Better safe than sorry!

European airlines are prototyping cameras trained on every passenger in flight, married to some kind of snake-oil "terrorism detection" software that will be able to tell if the guy in 11J is planning to rush the cockpit.

The European Union's Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment (SAFEE) project uses a camera in every passenger's seat, with six wide-angle cameras to survey the aisles. Software then analyses the footage to detect developing terrorist activity or "air-rage" incidents, by tracking passengers' facial expressions...

It looks for running in the cabin, standing near the cockpit for long periods of time, and other predetermined indicators that suggest a developing threat, says James Ferryman of the University of Reading, UK, one of the system's developers.

Other behaviours could include a person nervously touching their face, or sweating excessively. One such behaviour won't trigger the system to alert the crew, only certain combinations of them.

Ferryman is not ready to reveal specifically which behaviours were most likely to trigger the system. Much of the computer's ability to detect threats relies on sensitive information gleaned from security analysts in the intelligence community, he tells New Scientist.

Watching over the Town of Poole?

A privacy watchdog is to investigate a council that used powers to spy on people, including a family suspected of lying about where they lived.

A couple were monitored for nearly three weeks by Poole Borough Council to find out if they were really living in a school catchment area.

Covert surveillance was also used to check for the illegal harvesting of cockles and clams by fishermen.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said it has "concerns". David Smith, deputy commissioner at the ICO, said: The ICO has some concerns about the surveillance that has taken place in Poole. It seems that in at least some cases the surveillance has involved the covert collection of personal information about those individuals under scrutiny. We will be contacting Poole Borough Council to ensure that the way in which personal information about those under surveillance has been collected and subsequently processed meets the requirements of the Data Protection Act.

The council said it had carried out surveillance on 17 separate occasions under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) since 2005.

Town hall snoopers are taking a liberty

See full article from the Telegraph by John Hipkin

Victims of the growing fondness for council surveillance are numerous and random: dog owners whose pets foul public grass; worried parents in Poole under suspicion of abusing school catchment area rules; unlawful shell fishermen in Poole. Plymouth council is currently exploring ways to make it easier to prosecute refuse "infringements".

These "crimes" have all been investigated under powers given to local councils by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), primarily designed to curb the use of the internet for illegal purposes by terrorists, serious criminals and paedophiles. It beggars belief that these powers are being used to catch such a pernicious threat to society as the under-age smoker.

Meanwhile, under a different edict, but on similar territory, the Communities and Local Government minister Hazel Blears has issued guidance for local authorities on community cohesion. This takes us into realms of social engineering of a deeply troubling kind.

Community Cohesion is what must happen in all communities... states her guidance. It will be achieved, in part, by establishing a multi-agency tension monitoring group, led by officers from the local authority and/or the local police force. These sentiments could have come from George Orwell's Ministry of Love.

...Read full article

Imagine a country where strangers have the right to ask intrusive questions and store the answers on a database. Where everyone from police officers to leisure-centre staff can demand: Tell me who you feel close to?

They will also have been trained to ask questions about sexual behaviour, family life, religion, secret fears, weight and "sleeping arrangements" at home.

Incredibly, thousands of Government and council apparatchiks in Britain became entitled on April 1 to ask such questions of anyone under 19.

This horrifying invasion of privacy has begun, almost unnoticed, because the Government has cleverly presented it as being in the interests of "child protection".

The new questionnaire, known as the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), is part of a £20million programme called Every Child Matters (ECM), ostensibly set up to ensure youngsters are safe and leading positive lives.

Professionals - such as police officers, teachers and doctors - and volunteers are now under orders to subject children to a questionnaire if they consider them "at risk": a definition so broad that many decent parents could find themselves labelled as potential abusers.

The questions don't need a parent's consent since any child over 12 is deemed responsible enough to grant permission for an interview.

Any child not achieving the Government's five "outcomes" - being healthy, staying safe, enjoying life, "making a positive contribution", and achieving " economic well-being" - is now defined as having "additional needs".

The Integrated Children's System isn't fit for purpose and many authorities are dragging their feet about implementing it because it's worrying the hell out of them, said Terri Dowty, director of Action On Rights For Children.

One police officer, who attended a CAF course, told me that many of his colleagues are so reluctant to interview teenage criminals about their emotional needs, sex life and diets that they avoid calls involving them. We're cops, not social workers, he said. It's insane. He and his colleagues have renamed the agenda Every Fat Kid Matters.

BThe Government is planning to introduce a giant database that will hold the details of every phone call we have made, every e-mail we have sent and every webpage we have visited in the past 12 months. This is needed to fight crime and terrorism, the Government claims.

The Orwellian nature of this proposal cannot be overstated. However, there is one saving grace for people who fear for their civil liberties. The probability of the project ever seeing the light of day is close to zero. This proposal - like so many grandiose government IT schemes before it - is technologically unfeasible.

...Read full article

A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned supposedly as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.

The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts.

The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients. There will also be concern about the ability of the Government to manage a system holding billions of records. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated 3 billion e-mails are sent every day.

Home Office officials have discussed the option of the national database with telecommunications companies and ISPs as part of preparations for a data communications Bill to be in November’s Queen’s Speech. But the plan has not been sent to ministers yet.

Jonathan Bamford, the assistant Information Commissioner, said: This would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the State to hold every UK citizen’s phone and internet records. We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable. We have warned before that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Holding large collections of data is always risky - the more data that is collected and stored, the bigger the problem when the data is lost, traded or stolen.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: Given [ministers’] appalling record at maintaining the integrity of databases holding people’s sensitive data, this could well be more of a threat to our security, than a support.

The proposal has emerged as part of plans to implement an EU directive developed after the July 7 bombings to bring uniformity of record-keeping. Since last October telecoms companies have been required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for 12 months. That requirement is to be extended to internet, e-mail and voice-over-internet use and included in a Communications Data Bill.

Police and the security services can access the records with a warrant issued by the courts. Rather than individual companies holding the information, Home Office officials are suggesting the records be handed over to the Government and stored on a huge database.

One of the arguments being put forward in favour of the plan is that it would make it simpler and swifter for law enforcement agencies to retrieve the information instead of having to approach hundreds of service providers. Opponents say that the scope for abuse will be greater if the records are held on one database.

The UK supermarket chain, Budgens, has installed face recognition cameras in one of its stores to stop children buying alcohol and cigarettes.

It is thought to be the first time a UK retailer has used the technology to identify underage customers.

The scheme is being piloted at an unnamed branch of Budgens in London.

If the system recognises someone who has previously been unable to prove they are 18, a signal alerts the cashier who will refuse to serve them.

Facial recognition software makes a unique template of an individual's features by taking measurements between key points on the face.

Three cameras have been installed at the pilot branch, one in each checkout lane. The cameras monitor customers as they approach the tills, transmitting the pictures to a control centre in Worcester. The customers' facial features are automatically scanned against a database of images of young people who have visited the store before. Anyone who has been refused alcohol or cigarettes on a previous occasion will be flagged up.

The system also identifies when a customer has previously verified that they are 18 or over, enabling the sale to proceed more quickly. Young customers who are not recognised by the system will be asked by the cashier to provide proof of their age when buying drink or cigarettes. Their details will then be added to the database.

Charlie Willetts, managing director of Charton Ltd, which is supplying the software, said the system had to overcome a number of technical issues first and ensure that it was compliant with data protection laws. The storage of large amounts of data is also likely to fuel concerns about civil liberties.

Almost unnoticed last week, the Government announced it had shaved another £1 billion off the cost of its proposed identity card scheme.

It did so by deciding to let the "open market" capture citizens' biometrics, effectively outsourcing the cost of enrolling people on to the ID database. You could end up getting your fingerprints taken at a supermarket, rather than at a passport office as originally proposed.

Almost imperceptibly, the security architecture originally built around the ID card project has been dismantled.

Does any of this sound secure to you? It seems to defeat the purpose of the whole exercise, which is to protect identities, capture terrorists, bear down on benefit fraud and stop illegal immigration. But of course none of these will be ameliorated by the possession of an ID card, which nobody will be required to carry with them.

As one perplexed campaigner said after the publication of the new costings: The Government now appears to have junked the primary pretext for the scheme. So what is it for?

...Read full article

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has withdrawn a secret demand that the Internet Archive, an online library website, provide the agency with a user's registered personal information after the Web site challenged the records request in court.

The FBI sent a national security letter, or NSL, to the Internet Archive in November and included a gag order barring site founder Brewster Kahle from talking to anyone other than his lawyers about the request.

Kahle, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit to challenge the subpoena, arguing that the NSL program is unconstitutional, and the FBI withdrew the NSL on April 22.

The settlement between the FBI and the Internet Archive allowed Kahle to break the gag order, a standard part of an NSL request. The Internet Archive's challenge of the NSL is only the third case that the ACLU is aware of in which an NSL has been challenged in court, said Melissa Goodman an attorney for the civil liberties group's National Security Project.

The NSLs basically allow the FBI to demand extremely sensitive personal information about innocent people without any prior court approval, often in total secrecy, Goodman said.

The NSL program, expanded when Congress passed the antiterrorism Patriot Act shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., allows the FBI and other U.S. government agencies to issue administrative subpoenas to US businesses for customer and other personal information.

Although the settlement keeps parts of the FBI request secret, Kahle applauded the lawsuit and settlement, saying it will show other businesses how to challenge NSLs. The FBI issued nearly 200,000 NSLs between 2003 and 2006, according to a U.S. Department of Justice inspector general's report.

The gag order prevented Kahle from discussing the case with the library's board of directors, staff, and even his wife, he said. Gags don't seem to be necessary, he said. Gagging librarians is horrendous.

The NSL sent to the Internet Archive asked for a user's name, address, length of service, e-mail header information and activity logs.

The Internet Archive provided the FBI some information that was publicly available on the site, but could not comply with the FBI request because the site does not track user activity or record IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the EFF. The site asks only for an unverified e-mail address when users register.

Oyster Cards: Containing pearls of data for the snoops

Spy chiefs are demanding the right to monitor the movement of bus, train and car passengers in Scotland supposedly as part of the battle against terrorism.

MI5 wants to use live information from a new generation of swipe-card payment systems planned for buses, trams and trains, as well as automatic number-plate recognition, to plot the movement of suspects as they travel.

It argues the information could be used to foil terrorist incidents such as last year's Glasgow Airport attack. But civil rights campaigners say the plan is another step towards a "surveillance society" and is open to abuse.

Currently, the security services need to make specific requests to monitor an individual, but they want to be able to watch anyone without seeking permission first.

In London, the Oyster swipe card, covering the Underground and buses, already records the details of around 17 million travellers automatically. Similar travel systems are planned across Britain, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, within five years.

If the security services get their way, details from these schemes will also be open to random checks. Plans to introduce swipe cards in Glasgow covering bus, subway or train tickets have already been mooted, and a similar scheme will come into operation with Edinburgh's new tram network.

The security agencies also want access to the Automatic Number Plate Recognition Scheme, a UK-wide network of 3,000 CCTV cameras.

The technology has the eventual capacity to monitor up to 50 million cars a day, including the time and date a vehicle was spotted, and its location, direction and final destination.

Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that the authorities can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB "thumb drive" that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer's Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.

More than 2,000 officers in 15 countries, including Poland, the Philippines, Germany, New Zealand and the United States, are using the device, which Microsoft provides free.

New snooping laws are being used by Scottish councils to track people suspected of housing-benefit fraud, selling cigarettes to children and environmental-health offences. Campaigners are now calling for a root-and-branch review into the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), after the scale of its use by local authorities across the UK was revealed.

Ripa was introduced in 2000, primarily giving the police, security services and HM Revenue and Customs wide powers to spy on people and their communications.

The main objectives of the Act were to help in the fight against crime and terrorism. But in 2002, the powers were controversially extended to councils, offering the opportunity to carry out surveillance.

An investigation has now revealed that councils have even used the Act to track dog-foulers and litterbugs, with some local authorities using the powers more than 100 times in the last 12 months.

Among the Scottish local authorities that confirmed using Ripa in the past year was Aberdeen City Council, which admitted covert surveillance on eight occasions to investigate benefit fraud, environmental-health and trading-standards issues. The council did not specify which environmental-health offences were involved, but this can include flytipping, littering and noisy-neighbour disputes.

Glasgow City Council carried out physical surveillance 24 times in criminal investigations, over trading-standards offences and illegal money-lending. Thirteen requests to access phone billing information – another power granted under the Act – were used in the same investigations.

Earlier this month, it emerged that a family in Poole in Dorset had been covertly tracked for nearly three weeks to check if they lived in a school catchment area.

The investigation has also revealed that the law was used in at least seven cases to find out about people who let their dogs foul; a breach of planning law; an animal-welfare case; and an instance of littering.

The findings have fuelled the debate on the surveillance culture in Britain and whether councils are using Ripa – which has been dubbed “a snoopers’ charter” – proportionately.

Privacy International director Simon Davies called for a root- and-branch review of Ripa and questioned the huge cost to the taxpayer of the council surveillance: There have to be hard limits on the scope of surveillance by local authorities who do not work within the spirit of the Act or indeed the letter. Local authorities can be very petty and vindictive and they can become obsessed with issues like dog fouling and there can be a lack of judgment.

The FBI has called for new legislation that would allow federal police to monitor the Internet for “illegal activity.” The suggestion from FBI Director Robert Mueller, which came during a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, appears to go beyond a current plan to monitor traffic on federal-government networks. Mueller seemed to suggest that the bureau should have a broad “omnibus” authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance of private-sector networks as well.

The surveillance should include all Internet traffic, Mueller said. In response to questions from Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, Mueller said his idea: balances on one hand, the privacy rights of the individual who are receiving the information, but on the other hand, given the technology, the necessity of having some omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to preempt that illegal activity where it comes through a choke point.

In response, Issa said: Can you have someone on your staff designated to work with members of Congress on trying to craft that legislation?

If any omnibus Internet-monitoring proposal became law, it could implicate the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. In general, courts have ruled that police need search warrants to obtain the content of communication, and the federal Wiretap Act created “super warrant” wiretap orders that require additional steps and judicial oversight.

In addition, it’s unclear whether “illegal activity” would be limited to responding to denial-of-service attacks and botnets, or would also include detecting other illegal activities, such as online gambling, the distribution of “obscene” images of adults engaged in sexual acts, or selling drugs without a license.

To be fair, Wednesday’s discussion of the plan was geared toward cybercrime and the Bush administration’s classified “cyberinitiative,” which includes a shadowy program known as Einstein. Some politicians have already raised concerns that even Einstein, which is described as dealing only with government networks and not private ones, could infringe upon the privacy rights of American citizens. It’s already in place at 15 federal agencies, but Homeland Security has said it’s still preparing the necessary privacy impact assessments for a proposed $293 million governmentwide Einstein expansion.

Just a few routine questions Sir

The power of the police to mount surveillance operations at peaceful protests is being challenged in court.

In a case seen as opposing Britain's move towards a Big Brother-style society, the High Court will determine if police are legally entitled to take photographs and compile information on protesters even if they do not break the law.

Arms campaigner Andrew Wood from Oxford claims that his human rights were infringed after Scotland Yard took his details and images of him even though he was not arrested.

The two-day judicial review is likely to determine the legality of surveillance and whether 'routine' intelligence gathering is permissible under the Human Rights Act.

Wood attended the 2005 annual meeting of Reed Elsevier, a publisher of academic journals which also runs arms fairs. The Metropolitan Police openly photographed and questioned members of the public who attended the central London meeting.

At the time Wood was press officer at Campaign Against Arms Trade. Scotland Yard has admitted that photographs and notes were stored on computers although no one was arrested or charged. Wood was there as a shareholder to ask about the recent purchase of the arms exhibition subsidiary Spearhead.

I hope this legal action will safeguard our rights to privacy, said Wood, who was granted legal aid.

Police claim that routine intelligence gathering plays a key role in deterring crime. However, the case comes amid concern that Britain is heading towards a 'police state', with the government's information commissioner warning that fears the UK would sleepwalk into a surveillance society have become a reality.

Routine journeys carried out by millions of British motorists can be monitored by authorities in the United States and other enforcement agencies across the world under anti-terrorism rules introduced quietly by Jacqui Smith.

The discovery that images of cars captured on road-side cameras, and "personal data" derived from them, including number plates, can be sent overseas, has angered MPs and civil liberties groups concerned by the increasing use of "Big Brother" surveillance tactics.

Images captured by road-side cameras will be made available to foreign authorities
Images of private cars, as well as registration numbers, could be sent outside to countries such as the USA

Yesterday, politicians and civil liberties groups accused the Home Secretary of keeping the plans to export pictures secret from Parliament when she announced last year that British anti-terrorism police could access "real time" images from cameras used in the running of London's congestion charge.

A statement by Miss Smith to Parliament on July 17, 2007, detailing the exemptions for police from the 1998 Data Protection Act, did not mention other changes that would permit material to be sent outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to the authorities in the US and elsewhere.

Her permission to do so was hidden away in an earlier "special certificate" signed by the Home Secretary on July 4. The certificate specifically sets out the level of data that can be sent to enforcement authorities outside the European Economic Area (the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) by anti-terrorist officers from the Metropolitan Police. It says: The certificate relates to the processing of the images taken by the camera, personal data derived from the images, including vehicle registration mark, date, time and camera location.

Last night, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: This confirms that this Government is happy to hand over potentially huge amounts of information on British citizens under the catch-all pretext of 'national security'.

Civil liberties campaigners said they were appalled that images of innocent people's journeys could end up in the hands of the British police, let alone foreign investigators. They feared that it was a move towards the US-style system of "data mining" - in which powerful computers sifted millions of pieces of information as they tried to build patterns of behaviour and match them to material about suspects.

Town halls responsible for areas with large Muslim populations were summoned to London and told to get their refuse collectors to search bins for discarded documents or material that might identify and incriminate Islamic extremists.

The Mail on Sunday understands that the instruction was issued at a secretive summit hosted by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), attended by Ministers and Andy Hayman, who at the time was Britain's top anti-terror policeman and an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

The meeting was designed to encourage the chief executives of 17 local authorities – including Manchester, Oldham, Leicester, Bradford and four London boroughs – to get their employees to play a greater role in addressing extremism and the terror threat.

They were told that the meeting and its deliberations were to remain strictly confidential. But the bin-searching instruction was deemed so potentially damaging to community relations that councils simply refused to carry out any sort of spying.

Bradford City Council leader Kris Hopkins said: We were asked to snoop on our own residents by getting our binmen to rummage around people's rubbish. But the idea that our binmen should be rooting around a wheelie bin to see if they can spot dodgy bits of paper or funny wires is ridiculous. Our binmen aren't there to act like the secret police. They're there to empty our bins. It goes without saying that if any of our staff spotted something illegal they'd call the police. But our job is to bring communities together, to help our communities live side by side, not do the dirty work for MI5.

The DCLG stressed that the instruction had come from the police and attempted to distance the measure from Ministers, particularly Cabinet Minister Ruth Kelly, who was in charge of the department when the meeting took place. A spokesman said: It was the police. It did not come from Ruth Kelly or any of her officials. It is not policy.

Web companies are increasing their lobbying efforts against New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky's proposed bill aimed at regulating snooping on web browsing with view to targeting advertising.

A consortium of members representing 12 companies, including AOL, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Comcast and eBay, complained about the bill in a letter to Brodsky.

The letter sent on behalf of the misleadingly named State Privacy and Security Coalition, said the proposed bill would have profound implications for the future of Internet advertising and the availability of free content on the Internet. The coalition wrote that the bill would subject advertising networks to an extremely detailed, unprecedented array of notice, consent and access obligations.

The group said the bill is unnecessary because several large advertising networks voluntarily allow users to opt out of behavioral targeting.

Brodsky, who said the measure is needed to protect privacy, said the State Privacy and Security Coalition is going to lose this fight. They're taking the position that a corporation can exploit, control and manipulate the activities of private citizens.

The proposed bill, the Third Party Internet Advertising Consumers' Bill of Rights (A. 9275), seeks to impose a host of requirements on companies that monitor Web-surfing activity for marketing purposes. Among the most significant requirement is that companies that use cookies to track browsing activity tell users about the practice and give them an opportunity to opt out.

The bill is largely patterned after the seven-year-old voluntary standards created by the Network Advertising Initiative who have proposed new behavioral-targeting guidelines. Among other changes, the new standards call for companies to obtain users' consent before using their Web-surfing history to target them based on "sensitive" matters, such as certain medical conditions, psychiatric conditions or sexual behavior. The new proposal also prohibits companies from using behavioral-targeting strategies to market to children younger than 13.

Ad-targeting system Phorm must be "opt in" when it is rolled out, says the Information Commissioner Office (ICO)

European data protection laws demand that users must choose to enrol in the controversial system, said the ICO in an amended statement.

The ICO only commented on whether Phorm complied with UK and European data protection laws. It said a decision about whether Phorm broke laws on interception was a matter for the Home Off