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User talk:Brian McNeil/Project INDECT

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Latest comment: 13 years ago by Brian McNeil in topic Latest developments, February 2011
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There is a lot of reading material here, please help.

Original reporting

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Analysis of documents/excerpts

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INDECT project page
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Research area: SEC-2007-1.2-01 Intelligent urban environment observation system
  • Are there any documents describing this 'category'?
Final generalised purpose: "automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence"
Aim: prototype, "supporting the operational activities of police officers", "providing techniques and tools for observation of various mobile objects", "search engine combining direct search of images and video based on watermarked contents", "for fast detection of persons and documents based on watermarking technology and utilising comprehensive research on watermarking technology used for semantic search", "construction of [software] agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, UseNet groups, file servers, p2p networks as well as individual computer systems,"
List of project partners, and coordinator at that page.
People
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Helen Petrie (petrie@)

member, Ethical review board for Suresh's research.
  • Professor at York University. Speciality is Universal Access - i.e. technology aids for disabled and blind.

Drew Harris, Head of Project INDECT Ethics Board

-Crime Operations Department
Joined Northern Ireland police in 1983 as on-beat Constable. Promoted to Chief Inspector in 1996, Superintendent in 2000.
Appointed to current position in Feb. 2006.
Responsibilites: Organised Crime, Major Investigation Teams, Intelligence Branch, Special Operation Branch, Analyst Branch, Scientific Support Branch, Serious Crime Review Team, E-Crime and Central Authorisation Bureau. In addition, he also holds the ACPO Hate Crime Portfolio.
BA Honours in Politics and Economics from the Open University
M.St in Criminology (Cantab) - w:Master of Studies (cantab - Cambridge? Part-time?)
"completed the Strategic Command Course in 2004 and the Leadership in International Counter Terrorism Course in 2005.
Northern Ireland Policing board: search matches from minutes
Contact point: Assistant: Zulema Rosborough - firstname.lastname-at-psni.pnn.police.uk

Zulema Rosborough - Detective Chief Inspector, PSNI

  • Piotr Szczuko - Gdańsk - project lead GUT
  • Andrzej Ciarkowski - Gdańsk - technical lead GUT
  • Grzegorz Szwoch - Gdańsk - Video analysis

...

  • Józef Kotus - Gdańsk - Monitoring station design
  • Maciej Szczodrak - Gdańsk - Supercomputing applications
European Commission remit and grant
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Effectively similar information to the project page. Lists funding, duration, status, and participants (without offsite links or contact details)
INDECT project report on news & social media monitoring (Highlighted by Wikileaks)
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Title: "XML Data Corpus: Report on methodology for collection, cleaning and unified representation of large textual data from various sources: news reports, weblogs, chat."
Contributors: Various EU universities, heavy on the Eastern-EU side. Polish police, Northern Ireland police, companies...
Main page features GSM tracking systems, Video surveillance techniques
list of clients (notable number of ISPs)
Profile, address, and contact details ("We are researching and developing tools for workflow enhancements in broadcast telcos and other corporations using rich media.")

Content

Responsibility: "Extraction of Information for Crime Prevention by Combining Web Derived Knowledge and Unstructured Data."
Introduction: "learn relationships between people and organizations through websites and social networks"
Data collected: "Automatic Content Extraction Dataset (release: LDC2007E63)", "Knowledge Base Population (KBP)" ... "entity types of Person (PER), Organization (ORG), and Geo-Political Entity (GPE), Location (LOC), Facility (FAC), Geographical/Social/Political (GPE), Vehicle (VEH) and Weapon (WEA)."
Purpose: "augment an existing knowledge representation with information about entities that is discovered from a collection of documents. A snapshot of Wikipedia infoboxes is used as the original knowledge source. The document collection consists of newswire articles on the order of 1 million." + Netflix released rating data for their rating algorithm competition + "Web People Search (WePS) workshop" ... "extracting 18 kinds of attribute values for target individuals whose names appear on a set of web pages", then annotate - relationships, birth dates, 'other'. Dataset includes approximately 40,000 words of 'conversational telephone speech'.
Captures ethnic and political affiliation data; groups organisations or individuals can be classed and recognised as having an ideology (eg Christian).
Categorises/recognises "salient events" - destruction/damage, Creation/improvement, movement, transfer of possessions.
Working with Netflix data, other sets, and US Census data in "filling in the blanks" on people.
  • "The subset of the collected data will be annotated using the annotation scheme described in this report. This annotation will be detailed in that it will identify all relevant potential threats, the participants, the locations, the time and connections between entities involved. End users (i.e. the police) will be used to verify the correctness of the annotation where it is necessary." (Emphasis mine)

Contacts for additional material

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  • Name, Contact method, Questions
Prof. Wieslaw Lubaszewski (University of Science and Technology, AGH, Poland) - Responsible for data collection - only done in Polish and Czech
Email address located in this Polish-language paper
  • Emailed UK Home Office and Attorney General's office
AG referred me to Home office, did not answer questions on legal repercussions of INDECT.
Correspondence CC'd to scoop, any accredited reporter may verify.
Home Office 'passed the buck' to the Northern Ireland Office.
  • Emailed PSNI and Met. police
Asking if their operational procedures are based on MoD MoS
Eddan Katz, International Affairs Director, EFF
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Skype interview, Eddan in Brussels, spending week there. Meeting/seminar/conference/thing with EU tomorrow.

Eddan intends to mention INDECT in talk, found YouTube video a few days ago, has been getting familiarised with INDECT since the Telegraph(?) story. --Brian McNeil / talk 00:17, 7 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

International Affairs Director of the EFF
Held position since early 2008, interviewed by Wikinews in early weeks at post.[ Lobby groups oppose plans for EU copyright extension February 26, 2008].
Initial section of the interview was an informal discussion, bringing Eddan up to speed on INDECT and this latest document from Wikileaks.
This (and possibly other things), analysing relevance to "legal frameworks"
mention of people to "proactively protect themself" (encryption)
...
...Eddan makes mention of a possible "Ombudsman request"
...Eddan first became aware of this with Telegraph report
...INDECT YouTube video uploaded on Friday, EFF found shortly after
...Eddan sends link to Neoconopticon report (refers me to P78)
...Eddan suggests UK Home Office unlikely to know anything on this (re: my queries)
...Neoconopticon is on the "Security-Industrial Complex"
More formal, on-the-record (quotable and attributable)
Q:Is this illegal? Is this an invasion of privacy? Spying on citizens?
"When the European Parliament issued the September 5 2001 report on the American ECHELON system they knew such an infrastructure is in violation of data protection law, undermines the values of privacy and is the first step towards a totalitarian surveillance information society"
Q:Who is making the decisions based on this information, about what?
"Whats concerning to such a large extent is the fact that the projects seem to be agnostic to that question. These are the searching systems and those people that are working on it in these research labs do search technology anyway."
"...but its inclusion in a database and its availability to law enforcement and its simultaneity of application that's so concerning" ... "because the people who built it aren't thinking about those questions, and the social questions, and the political questions, and all this kind of stuff."
"...seems like it's intransparent, unaccountable"
Q:Who paid for it? Who is paying for it? Was it legal? And, why did they pay for it?

This is covered by the "Seventh framework programme under the European Commission". - See p21 (Neoconopticon report). "Ethical Research" about the FP7 programme.

Q:What's the techology/research?

See NeoConOpticon.

TOTAL INTERVIEW DURATION ~50min. Notes &c available to verify above. --Brian McNeil / talk 03:10, 7 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Standardised questions

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These are a basis for any Wikinewsies looking into this. Select and tailor questions depending on who you get to talk to. The "targets" for these questions are the researchers, the companies involved in Project INDECT research, and the politicians and bureaucrats who're making sure this gets money.
  1. Is your research designed to support an EU version of Echelon?
  2. How does the EU version work?
  3. What, in your professional view, is the purpose of such a network/software?
  4. Who will be in charge of the implementation of this system?
  5. What ground resources are involved in your component? I.e. Countries, entities, hardware, data?
  6. When do you expect to receive output/data?
  7. Who will have access to the output?
  8. What are the details of the funding? A grant, or a competitive bid procedure?
    1. (Above note: Grant: €10.1M Pricetag: €16M+)
  9. How did you get involved in this? Where, when did you first hear about it?
  10. Do you know of anyone else who is currently involved, or has been in the past?

Above from chat on IRC, to be customised before putting to anyone. --Brian McNeil / talk 18:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Summary of apparent target system

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The information available from the sources above suggests there is an "ideal" system which there is a political drive to attempt to create.

This is the EU attempt to build the modern-day Echelon

The clearly stated objective is to provide a system which sifts and tracks vast quantities of data, categorised in such a way that an individual's interaction with data can be tracked. This has repercussions offline, as well as on. The analysis of data from mainstream sites, news reports, comments therein, and analysis of content relates to events, places, 'intellectual property', organisations, physical objects - firearms, mobile phones.

Police are the only explicitly mentioned users of the system,

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Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The Defence Manual of Security Volumes 1, 2 and 3 Issue 2
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE October 2001
By Command of the Defence Council

-Nov 21, 2006 (The Register)

Extensive emphasis on actively thwarting attempts of investigative journalists.

Which neatly ties into this video on Youtube. --Brian McNeil / talk 00:48, 6 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

The EU on ECHELON

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'My Intro: The 'rumoured' American ECHELON communications intercept system was analysed, and the link to the report is given below. This is to a Cryptome-hosted copy with redacted information restored. Notable, particularly in relation to my conversation with Eddan Katz of the EFF, are the following points:
A European Parliament resolution relating to ECHELON was discussed, and passed, on September 5, 2001 - six days before 9/11. (Erikki Liikanen of the European Commission gave this speech, and the Parliament issued this resolution).
Compatibility with EU law
"The findings of the Committee concerning the compatibility of a system of the 'Echelon type' with EU law distinguish between two scenarios:" 1. "whether such a system is used purely for intelligence purposes," 2 "or the system is abused for the purpose of gathering competitive intelligence."
"Maintaining an interception system for the purpose of gathering intelligence in the context of a Member State's defence or national security is outside the scope of the directives in force on data protection."
"As to the second scenario, gathering of competitive intelligence does not come within the scope of a common foreign and security policy. It is not an activity that would be allowed under the guise of the pursuit of a Common Foreign and Security Policy."
"In so far as Community law is concerned, such activity could fall within the scope of the data protection directives. This is the case if data gathered by Echelon type systems is collected or subsequently passed on to commercial undertakings for purposes unrelated to the prevention of criminal offences and unrelated to State security matters."
And the full, unredacted report:
"The committee's remit includes the specific task of examining the compatibility of an 'ECHELON' type communications interception system with Community law"
"...If it is true that the system is used to obtain competitive intelligence, the further issue arises of whether this is compatible with Community law. This second aspect will therefore be discussed separately."
"In principle, activities and measures undertaken for the purposes of state security or law enforcement do not fall within the scope of the EC Treaty. ... the Community rightly excluded these areas from the scope of application of the data protection directives, ... Directive 59/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data ... Directive 97/66/EC concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the telecommunications sector ... do not apply to 'the processing of data/activities concerning public security, defence, state security (including the economic well-being of the state when the activities relate to state security matters) and the activities of the state in areas of criminal law'." (Emphasis mine)
"the same wording has been used in the proposal for a directive concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector" (This was 2001).
"The involvement of a Member State in an interception system for the purposes of State security cannot therefore be in breach of the data protection directives".
"there can be no breach of Article 286 TEC, which extends the scope of the data protection directives to data processing by Community institutions and bodies. The same applies to Regulation 45/2001 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Community institutions and bodies and on the free movement of such data"
"emphasised at this point that no sources whatsoever contend that there is any involvement of Community bodies and institutions in a surveillance system and the rapporteur has absolutely no grounds for assuming this to be the case" (in 2001 - and now?)
"since at EU level there are still no regulations concerning the admissibility of the interception of telecommunications for security or intelligence purposes, the issue of infringement of Article 6(2) TEU does not yet arise."
"If a Member State were to promote the use of an interception system, which was also used for industrial espionage, by allowing its own intelligence service to operate such a system or by giving foreign intelligence services access to its territory for this purpose, it would undoubtedly constitute a breach of EC law." ... "activities of this kind would be fundamentally at odds with the concept of a common market underpinning the EC Treaty, as it would amount to a distortion of competition".
Member State obligations "In particular, they shall prohibit listening, tapping, storage or other kinds of interception or surveillance of communications, by others than users'. Pursuant to Article 14, exceptions may be made only where they are necessary to safeguard national security, defence and law enforcement. As industrial espionage is no justification for an exception, it would, in this case, constitute an infringement of Community law."
"To sum up, it can therefore be said that the current legal position is that an ECHELON type intelligence system is not in breach of Union law because it does not concern the aspects of Union law that would be required for there to be incompatibility. However, this applies only where the system is actually used exclusively for the purposes of state security. On the other hand, were it to be used for other purposes and for industrial espionage directed against foreign firms, this would constitute an infringement of EC law. Were a Member State to be involved in such action, it would be in breach of Community law."

The NeoConOpticon report

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Author: Ben Hayes
Title Page: Transnational Institute[ Statewatch entry ] - NeoConOpticon - The EU Security-Industrial Complex
Report date: September 25,2009
TNI summary: "A new TNI report reveals the extent to which Europe’s largest defence and IT contractors are benefiting from a €1.4 billion EU “security research” programme. "


Extract: Following the money 

This report is based on a simple reading of the capital
flows within the European Security Research Programme:
economic, political and social. It reveals a programme that
has been designed largely by lobbyists, for lobbyists; the
product of a structural conflict of interests arising from
the failure to separate the development and implementa-
tion of the ESRP. Within this framework the companies
whose names appear frequently in this report have played
a particularly prominent role. This, coupled with an almost
entire lack of democratic control over the ESRP, warrants
strict auditing and a full review of the projects funded to
date. The kind of enquiries conducted by the USA Federal
Government Accountability Office (GAO) could provide a
suitable model; the EU Court of Auditors could also sub-
ject the programme to more rigorous scrutiny should it be
deemed necessary.

There is also a pressing need for clarity in the aims and
objectives of the ESRP. The programme is predicated on
the twin objectives of supporting the emerging European
homeland security industry and increasing public safety.
What is happening in practice is that multinational cor-
porations are using the ESRP to promote their own profit-
driven agendas, while the EU is using the programme to
further its own security and defence policy objectives. As
suggested from the outset of this report, the kind of secu-
rity described above represents a marriage of unchecked
police powers and unbridled capitalism, at the expense of
the democratic system.

As far as the ESRP is concerned, it is also difficult to draw  
much needed lines between research and procurement, be-        
tween civilian and military technology control, and between    
homeland security and defence applications. Amid all this
confusion, if the programme is to continue, the parameters
of the ESRP must be radically redrawn to put the programme
under democratic control, to separate research and procure-
ment and security and defence, to provide impartial objec-
tive avenues for research (rather than R&D tailored to the
policy objectives of an EU security state), and to put human
rights and social justice at the centre instead of the margins
of every project.

This is an extremely daunting task that requires an unravel-
ling of the fears – real and imagined – that sustain the demand
for new security policies. As the authors of ‘Making Threats:
Biofears and Environmental Anxieties’ have explained: “Un-
ravelling fear is a difficult and complicated project because
we have to face squarely the demons of our history, politics,
ideologies and economies... In these terror-filled times, the
search for just and peaceful solutions depends on seeing
through and beyond our fears to new moral choices and
political possibilities”.
  • European Security Research Programme - ESRP
  • INDICT is a part of this, note RP7 in reference to INDICT.

Reading notes

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These are notes as reading the NeoConOpticon report.

"The comments of Kevin Haggerty (Department of Sociology, University of Alberta) on an earlier draft paper on the European Security Research Programme (ESRP), prepared for the ‘Surveillance and Democracy’ conference, were also very helpful in terms of shaping this report."
Kevin Haggerty, Associate Professor (Criminology and Sociology) University of British Columbia. web page/bio

Quote cited in report intro: "Governmental spending on products and services for homeland security should reach $141.6bn worldwide in 2009... The high priority given to homeland security has made that market one of the few recession-resistant sectors of the defence industry, some experts believe." --Visiongain Market Research, 2009.

Refers to Statewatch/TNI 2006 report, "Arming Big Brother" (this PDF?)
that was examining the European Union's Security Research Programme (ESRP), seven-year €1.4 billion programme.
Purpose of ESRP: "need to deliver new security enhancing technologies to the Union's member states to protect EU citizens from every conceivable threat to their security".
"aim of fostering the growth of a lucrative and competitive 'homeland security' industry in Europe. To this end, a number of prominent European corporations from the defence and IT sectors have enjoyed unprecedented involvement in the development of the security 'research' agenda."
NeoConOpticon is a followup to Arming Big Brother
on the ESRA: "Though technically a Research and Development (R&D) programme, the ESRP is heavily focused on the application of security technologies (rather than objective research per se), and is increasingly aligned with EU policy in the fields of justice and home affairs (JHA, the ‘third pillar’), security and external defence (CFSP, the ‘second pillar’)."
Arming Big Brother also authored by Hayes
"...shows that the design of the ESRP has been outsourced to the very corporations that have the most to gain from its implementation" "...focuses on the implementation of the ESRP and the broader consolidation of the EU security-industrial complex."
"What emerges from the bewildering array of contracts, acronyms and EU policies is the rapid development of a powerful new ‘interoperable’ European surveillance system that will be used for civilian, commercial, police, security and defence purposes alike."
Claims ERSP is "coalescing around a high-tech blueprint for new kinds of security" ... " division of a future world into internal/external zones internally "...policed by high-tech surveillance systems and rapid reaction forces; ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘crisis management’ missions that make no operational distinction between the suburbs of Basra or the Banlieue; and the increasing integration of defence and national security functions at home and abroad."
Report quote, clearly attributed to author Hayes: "It is not just a case of “sleepwalking into” or “waking up to” a “surveillance society”, as the UK’s Information Commissioner famously warned, it feels more like turning a blind eye to the start of a new kind of arms race, one in which all the weapons are pointing inwards. Welcome to the NeoConOpticon."
"This report does not start from the standpoint that security technology is bad. On the contrary, genuine, civilian-led efforts to enhance the capacity of states to prevent and respond to crime and catastrophic events through technology should, in principle, be welcomed. It is the way in which they will work in practice that should determine their acceptability." (italicised in report)
"The idea behind the ‘NeoConOpticon’ is to emphasise both the central role played by the private sector in ‘delivering’ surveillance-based security policies and the inherently neo-conservative appeal to the ‘defence of the homeland’ against threats to the ‘Western way of life’ used by the EU and other powerful actors."
"The EU’s security policies are premised on the neo-con philosophy of global policing and intervention in failed states to both pre-empt ‘threats’ to security and further the spread of the free market and western-style democracy around the world."
Ref: A secure Europe in a better world: European Security Strategy, EU Council document 15895/03, 8 December 2003; available at: http://www.iss-eu.org/solana/solanae.pdf. See also: Climate Change and International Security: Paper from the High Representative and the European Commission to the European Council, EU Council document S113/08, 14 March 2008, available at: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/reports/99387.pdf.
"Linked to the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, which promises “more reliable partners, more secure investments, more stable regions”, an inherently conservative world view is taking hold of EU consensus."
Ref: Solana, J. (2000) The Development of a Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU and the role of its High Representative, available at: http://afa.at/globalview/052000/solana.html.
"The ‘NeoConOpticon’ is a crude attempt to encapsulate these ideas: a coherent state-corporate project, potentially global in scope, designed to impose a high-tech security apparatus for the express purpose of maintaining and extending the current neo-liberal order into the 21st century."
"...in the words of a former EU Commissioner, “security is no longer a monopoly that belongs to public administrations, but a common good, for which responsibility and implementation should be shared by public and private bodies”
Ref: Frattini, F. (2007) ‘Security by design’, Homeland Security Europe, based on a speech by Commissioner Frattini to the EU Security Research Conference in

Berlin, 26 March 2007, available at: http://www.homelandsecurityeu.com/currentissue/article.asp?art=271247&issue=219.

Security-Industrial Complex - Most successful: Israel - defined by report as "The model 'surveillance economy'"
"This report uses the model of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ to explore and conceptualise the inevitable outcome of authoritarian EU approaches to security, risk and public order. The term was first used at the turn of the century by the USA’s Department of Defence as a euphemism for control over all elements of the 'battlespace' using land, air, maritime, IT and space-based assets. The doctrine seeks to harness the full capacity of the so-called ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ engendered by the revolution in IT."
..."It follows that if freedom is to survive, then this project cannot be allowed to succeed." (Referring to ESRB)
EU in Feb. 2004 announced PASR: "Preparatory Action for Security Research" (€65 million)
"...no ‘Green Paper’ on security research, setting out possible policy options, and no public debate"
"...legal basis for the PASR: Article 157 of the EC Treaty on the ‘competitiveness of the Community’s industry’," ... "This political decision meant the ESRP would now develop under the auspices of the Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise, instead of DG Research, the established Research & Development (R&D) arm of the Commission. This implied that the goals of the DG Enterprise (industrial competitiveness and long-term profits) were more important than those of its R&D counterpart (the creation of a ‘knowledge society’)."
Quotes from EU people to back up assertion policy is to view ESRB as US vs EU Security-Industrial Complex competition. A 'Buy European' attitude, associated with funding the technology's development.
"...€200 million per year allocated to the security research component of the seven-year, Seventh Framework Programme (FP7)"
This is what INDECT is part of.
Report author believes additional funding from elsewhere in EU budgets, and national security projects will bring ESRB budget up to 'what they want'. - "...to match the billion dollars spent annually on security R&D in the USA."
Source used by report: Group of Personalities (2004) Research for a Secure Europe, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/research/security/pdf/gop_en.pdf.
Group of Personalities (appears as 'GoP' through report)
"...EU’s Preparatory Action for Security Research (PASR) ran from 2004 to 2006, providing a total of €65 million to 39 projects over the three years."
"The most striking feature of the Preparatory Action for Security Research was the extent of the involvement of the defence industry. Of 39 security research projects, 23 (60%) were led by companies that primarily service the defence sector. One third of the PASR projects (13) were led by Thales (France), EADS (Netherlands), Finmeccanica companies (Italy), SAGEM Défense Sécurité (part of the SAFRAN Group, France) and the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD, Europe’s largest defence industry lobby group). Together with BAE Systems (UK), these companies participated in 26 (67% or two-thirds) of the 39 projects."
"EU was also funding security-related research projects from its mainstream framework research’ programme of 2002-6 (the €16.3 billion, ‘FP6’ programme)."
"The relevant FP6 research priorities included IT security, aeronautics, space and satellite-based monitoring and surveillance."
"There is, of course, nothing new about governments consulting industry about policy, particularly at the EU level, but while corporations have been embraced by the ESRP, parliaments and civil society – with a few chosen exceptions – have been largely excluded. The process, as we shall see, has been wholly undemocratic."
"...2004 SeNTRE project (Security Network for Technological Research in Europe, PASR) was led by the lobby group ASD (AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe), with the support of 21 partner organisations, two-thirds of which came from the defence sector."
"The SeNTRE consortium’s findings included a ‘methodology for security research’ based on ‘threats and mission classification’, a government and law enforcement ‘user needs survey’, a technological survey within the SeNTRE consortium and the ‘identification of technology driven innovations and priorities’. The SeNTRE consortium also delivered an ‘organised platform of users and technology experts for future consultation’ which almost certainly provided the basis for the European Security Research and Innovation Forum (see section 7, page 22)."
Ref: See also Blasch, B (2008), note 46, ... Blasch, B (2008) ‘Welcome on behalf of the European Commission and the European Programme’, STACCATO [Stakeholders platform for supply Chain mapping, market Conditions Analysis and Technologies Opportunities”] Final Forum 24 April 2008, ASD Europe, available at: http://www.asd-europe.org/Objects/2/Files/blasch.pdf.
STACCATO (Stakeholders platform for supply Chain mapping, market Condition Analysis and Technologies Opportunities) - 2005 report (unpublished) "How to foster the European Security Market"
Ref: STACCATO was comprised of four work packages: Stakeholder Platform (led by EADS), Market Condition Analysis (Finmeccanica), Integration of Priorities and Recommendations (Thales) and Analysis of Competencies of the Supply Chain (EU Joint Research Centre). See further ‘STACCATO RESULTS and DELIVERABLES’, ASD website: http://www.asd-europe.org/contentdefault.asp?PageID=34.
"Contrary to repeated European Commission claims that the ESRP is concerned only with security technology (and not security policy), the ESSTRT study contained over 70 detailed recommendations – including 32 specific EU ‘policy actions’. In addition to the final report, ESSTRT delivered a set of 24 reports and annexes to the European Commission, including ‘Threats to European Security’, ‘Technology Survey’, ‘Political Legal and Ethical Aspects of Security’, ‘Technology Gaps’, and ‘Responses to Terrorist Threats’. The ESSTRT recommendations conclude with an extraordinary ‘unified Strategic Aim governing future activities at all levels’, drafted in the style of an EU Treaty provision or Declaration, calling on member states to ‘avoid policies likely to create new obstacles for counter-terrorism policies and measures..." [link to inset detailing provision-style points] "...ESSTRT also recommended that the European Commission ‘develop a communications strategy that fosters public awareness of threats and of the extent and limits of governments’ ability to counter them’. Such a strategy should stress ‘that it is a long-term challenge; that while it may be driven by external factors, considerable attention needs to be devoted to the capacity for internal generation of terrorist cells within EU member states (emphasis in original). The advice continued with a call on the EU member states to adopt ‘minimum standards of law enforcement’ that ‘allow necessary powers to security organisations including – depending on legislation – access to bank records, ability to intercept communications, and the capacity to use surveillance measures".
"Only one of the 39 PASR projects, the PRISE project led by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, focused specifically on issues of privacy and civil liberty in the context of European security research. The PRISE consortium set out to develop “acceptable and accepted principles for European Security Industries and Policies” based on ‘privacy enhancing security technologies’. In its final report, PRISE produced detailed and well-reasoned criteria and recommendations, including the entrenchment of EU privacy and data protection standards in all security technologies."
"...EU policy makers are now talking about limiting the availability of privacy enhancing technologies to the people of Europe on the grounds that they could be ‘exploited’ by terrorists and criminals."
Section break - brianmc editing
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European Security Research Advisory Board (ESRAB) - Established April, 2005
No parliamentary consultation
included pro-Security State stakeholders.
"...less to do with research than the needs of commerce..."
"...board was chaired by Markus Hellenthal of EADS..."
Two two 'civil liberties' organisations included - "...both of which have conservative agendas."
Set the agenda for FP7 (2007-13) [7th Framework Programme - includes Project INDECT]
"...five core ESRP ‘mission areas’: ‘border security’, ‘protection against terrorism and organised crime’ (note the mission creep), ‘critical infrastructure protection’, ‘restoring security in case of crisis’ and ‘integration, connectivity and interoperability’."
"...European Security Research and Advisory Board’s report devoted just one of its 84 pages to ‘ethics and justice’, observing that “security technologies, and the government policies accompanying them, raise many different ethical and legal concerns amongst the European citizens”"
EU defence contractors regeared/retooled post 9/11 and went into the 'Homeland Security' sector - dominating position
"The same is true of Israeli organisations and corporations, whose Homeland Security expertise predates 9/11 and is born out of the politcs of the occupation and the attempt to surveille and control Palestinian populations. Israeli actors are participating in ten of the first 46 ESRP projects, leading four of them. It is also notable that the FP7 security research programme now includes demonstration projects (where prototype security systems are manufactured and tested) and infrastructure projects (for example, communications systems, critical infrastructure and crisis management capacity). Such projects are clearly geared toward the public procurement (at either EU or national level) of security technologies, rather than objective research in the traditional sense."
"Funds for security technology are also available under the €4 billion EU fund for ‘Solidarity and Management of Migration Flows’, of which €1.8 billion is earmarked for external borders and some €676 million is committed to the EU Return Fund for the expulsion and repatriation of ‘illegal aliens’."
additional funds - "...At least seven member states have already established national security research programmes..."
"...‘Phase one’ of the SEREN project will develop the network of national contact points for security research among EU and non-EU participating states."
See SEREN project website: http://www.seren-project.eu/.
"...The EU Space programme now includes a significant security and defence component. ..."
"...If the hype around ‘nano-technology’ – which is to receive a staggering €3.5 billion under FP7 – is translated into applied science, it too has the potential to impact fundamentally on military and security research by revolutionising surveillance capabilities, biological and chemical warfare, munitions and armaments."
"Under the ESRP, the FORESEC project on ‘Europe’s evolving security: drivers, trends and scenarios’ will provide “cogent guidance, orientation and structure to all future [EU] security related research activities” and “enhance the shared vision and facilitate the emergence of a coherent and holistic approach to current and future threats and challenges for European security amongst the community of official and non-official constituencies involved”."
Two more FP7 security research projects
CPSI Project - led by TNO
FESTOS Project - led by Tel-Aviv University
      • BREAK AT P21 of PDF***

Possible titles

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Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

As developed, 'Echelon' has become more inappropriate or irrelevant to this. It needs a new title, and what that might be could depend a great deal on the responses to the large number of emails I've sent out.

Do not rename this at the moment, I think that should be done when ready to mode out of prepared (plus I've sent shortlinks pointing at this title).

If I can get someone to call this "Stasi 2.0"...

  • Previously library records of who read what when were virtually impossible to obtain
  • Records, book check-in/out now computerised
  • Access to these records not considered in a serious manner (anecdote: friend working in college library - could look up any book, see who read it. Any student, see every book they read. In addition to drill-down form topics - like politics).
  • Wikipedia is the online library for reference material. Facebook et-al are our online coffee shops.

Any other suggestions? Give a note about how you arrive at them. --Brian McNeil / talk 15:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Additional bits

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RAFAL ROHOZINSKI - The SecDev Group

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Citizen lab

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Highlighted relevant report

Synopsis: "Intelligence agencies have asked the government to consider blocking Skype as operators of the popular global VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) engine are refusing to share the encryption code that prevents Indian investigators from intercepting conversations of suspected terrorists."

GhostNet

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This is the the network of compromised computers that spied on the Dali Lama. Presumed to be operating out of China, although no way to confirm it is 'official' as opposed to 'patriotic hackers', or even a CIA op designed to look like the Chinese.

(URL of print version used for single-page display)

[Full report available on scribd, pdf download requires an account - supports openID]

Breakdown

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Project INDECT consists of a number of work packages.

  • WP1 Intelligent Monitoring and Automatic Detection of Threats
  • WP2 Interactive Multimedia Applications Portal for Intelligent Observation System
  • WP3
  • WP4
  • WP5 Search Engine for Fast Detection of Person and Documents Based on Watermarking and Agent Technology
  • WP6
  • WP7
  • WP8
  • WP9

Unsorted

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INDECT: Short Introduction - PDF/presentation - Piotr Romaniak

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  • Date: January 27, 2009

Goals in INDECT 

Development of multimedia surveillance techniques,
including:
   Automated video analysis algorithms (object tracking
   & classification, event detection)
   Advanced audio surveillance (security-related sound
   event detection, sound source localization)
   Combined analysis of multimedia data from multiple
   sources
   Collecting and presentation of surveillance and
   telemetric data (RFID, GPS...)

Latest developments, February 2011

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Latest comment: 13 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Project INDECT has, over the last 18 months, had little coverage in mainstream news. By-and-large, coverage has been from the blogosphere and fairly poorly informed.

However, a new story which I found via a Google alert seems to indicate that Eddan Katz's talk to the European Parliament may actually be leading somewhere:

I've emailed the office of EuroParl Vice President Stavros Lambrinidis (CC'd scoop) advising that I'm aware of several of the members of INDECT's Ethics Board. Additionally, I've emailed Eddan Katz again, looking to build a stronger case to take to the parliament. Since possible future action includes holding hearings in the Civil Liberties Committee, I am very keen to push for questions which Wikinews attempted to put to Drew Harris to be included in that review, and for the Assistant Chief Constable to actually be summoned to appear before the committee.

This makes it look good for Wikinews getting an inside track on another significant report on INDECT, possibly even helping the European Parliament derail the Commission's plans to implement this excessively intrusive system at taxpayers' expense, with substantial profits for the Military-Industrial Complex who can get funding for research they'd undertake regardless.

My intent is to try and phone Stavros' office in the next day or two; hopefully I can get to a state where he'll talk to me about this and give us some exclusive copy. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:01, 23 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

  • Phoned the office around 1250GMT, the guy I got on the phone was aware of my email, details are with a colleague who's handling their issues with INDECT. Gave him Drew Harris' name and position, was promised his colleague would be in touch.
  • Still waiting any feedback from Eddan. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:02, 23 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

Is this illegal?

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What is the *actual* evidence saying that INDECT is illegal? Who can quote particular legal acts and face them with particular INDECT technologies?

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