SCI FI SPYING

The Hamilton Spectator - 2001.08.08
Sci-fi spying now very real
By Joan Walters

KEEPING WATCH: An ever-widening array of devices is monitoring our movements and habits. Surveillance technology is emerging at such a speed that ethicists and watchdogs worry it is outpacing privacy laws.

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It wasn't a surprise to learn that US police trying to track missing Washington intern Chandra Levy gained clues about her movements by checking the Internet history on her computer. It showed she visited Web sites for directions to a local park, a strand of cyber-information most of us would expect police to have authority to find.

It shocked many, though, to learn from the New Jersey case of alleged mafia kingpin Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. just how sophisticated the underbelly of covert police surveillance has become. Court records show police secretly installed a device that recorded every keystroke typed on Scarfo's computer, including passwords to his encrypted files. Its legality is being challenged.

This comes amid rising public concern over the spread of snooping by government, police and others. "Why people get so frightened is they've finally realized we don't know who's checking up on us, what they're finding, who's seeing it, who's snooping and how much," says Judith DeCew, a US privacy ethics expert. "This lack of control is very disturbing and very real."

New, intrusive surveillance that uses spy satellites or face-scanning to track individuals is emerging at such warp speed that privacy experts believe the technology is now outpacing the law. "I think that's what's causing some of the upheaval that we're seeing," says Stephen Keating, director of the Privacy Foundation, a non-profit research group in Denver. "The technology is forcing social change without any legal framework to contain it. But you will not be able to stop the technology." There is little on the books to cope with the last six months or so of staggering developments and revelations.

* Carnivore, a secret FBI Web surveillance system uncovered by the media this spring, appears to sample the communications of as many Internet users as it chooses, not just suspects.

* Echelon, a covert global satellite network said to have the ability to intercept all phone, fax and e-mail messages in the world, may have up to 20 major international listening posts, a European Parliament committee says.

* Some rental car drivers now are tracked by Global Positioning System satellites, enabling car companies, not police, to levy stiff fines for speeding.

* Airline passengers soon will be able to go through customs with a two-second biometric scan that confirms identity by mapping the iris of the eye.

* Immigration officials in Australia are considering proposals to tag asylum seekers with electronic trackers before sending them into the community to await hearings.

The online and from-the-sky technology has been developing for years. But disclosures about its secret uses, and controversy around projects like public face-scanning in Tampa, Fla., have torqued anxiety among people who weren't watching closely.

"I don't think the concern is always legitimate," says Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian. "Just because a surveillance activity is taking place does not necessarily mean it will be privacy invasive. But it's true people are confused, and sifting the facts from the hype is hard."

Last month, activists wearing masks to foil surveillance staged a widely covered protest in Tampa, where the city is testing a system that matches live facial images from street cameras with a database of criminal mug shots. It's the same face recognition technology used at this year's Super Bowl, also in Tampa. Police there scanned crowds for suspects and found 19. Civil liberties challenges have since been launched in the US.

It's also the technology that Ontario Provincial Police and the alcohol and gaming commission dismissed as fantasy when The Spectator disclosed in January that casinos use covert face-scans to catch criminals and cheats. Ontario officials confirmed the face-scans, but said they were done only on single individuals already under suspicion. Crowd surveillance was so far in the future it was laughable to imagine the OPP could scan thousands of patrons at a casino, they said. Ten days later, police bulk-scanned 100,000 fans arriving at the Super Bowl and checked each facial image electronically against the computer files of city police, the FBI and other agencies. Today, police on stakeout can transmit the faces they see through high-tech binoculars back to headquarters for live scanning against mug shots at a speed of 1,000 matches a second.

"There are lots of familiar examples of these technologies racing ahead," says privacy expert David Jones of McMaster University. "The public needs to be persuaded it's true. The tendency is to say this isn't real, it's science fiction. But these things aren't experimental any more, they're everywhere."

The struggle for balance between legitimate surveillance and the right to privacy has intensified this summer. The public is especially worried about new invasive uses for technology we already have. "There is alarming potential for misuse of all these systems," says Texas congressman Dick Armey, majority leader in the House of Representatives. "We are extremely troubled by an unprecedented expansion in high-tech surveillance ... and believe privacy risks outweigh any benefits these devices may have to offer."

Last month, 13 public interest groups in the United States filed formally with the Federal Trade Commission against Microsoft's new operating system Windows XP. The complaint alleges the system is intended to "profile, track and monitor millions of Internet users." Microsoft denies the claim.

The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles announced last week it will review rules for its powerful highway surveillance cameras, used to monitor traffic and alert drivers to problems. Privacy advocates want policies to prevent abuses of such systems, and to strictly limit their use. "Awareness of privacy is at an all-time high," Cavoukian says. "There is a consumer backlash to the systemic collection of information and the development of personal profiles."

Beth Givens, head of the U.S. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego, says there is ample reason for concern. "The imminent threat is there will be more snafus. We're reeling from one crisis to another and at least once a week, we read of some new mistake."

One was the recent Prozac case. Eli Lilly & Co. said last month it inadvertently divulged e-mail addresses on 600 people who registered for Internet reminders to take Prozac, the company's top-selling antidepressant. The American Civil Liberties Union has asked for an investigation. Givens says businesses racing to market with high-tech products need to build in privacy controls.

Also, privacy impact assessments similar to those used regularly in Ontario are needed elsewhere. Ontario - which is speeding ahead with controversial projects from smart cards to database tracking of students - at least does formal privacy checks, she said.

Many of the new devices are beneficial, says Jones, the McMaster professor who heads Electronic Frontier Canada, a privacy rights group. "I don't think it's too much to ask that when government or police go to deploy these technologies, we as a society know what they're doing - and it's not done in secret," he said. "We should decide what limits or procedures need to be put in place. If they can be used properly, that's OK."

Chris Pettingill, a Hamilton software consultant, says he watches many public agencies looking to adopt high-tech solutions face a privacy "chill". "There's a real desire to use some of this technology, but they're afraid," he said. "They think the privacy issues are going to open a big can of worms." Privacy backlash does mean challenges ahead, says Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC. He warns that "a type of privacy survivalism could easily result ... where each person will be forced to adopt elaborate defensive measures to protect privacy." The average consumer is already looking for tools. The most popular section of the centre's Web site shows how to "snoop proof" your e-mail or surf the Net without leaving a trail (ww.epic.org/privacy/tools.html).

DeCew, the author and ethicist from Clark University in Massachusetts, says she worries about the huge number of files on individuals, no matter how well protected they may be. "Whether it's credit information or medical data, your driving habits or what you buy, there are immense amounts of data out there," the philosophy professor says. "Most of it is unimportant. I don't care if someone knows I bought a taco kit or pasta."

But what if, in a nightmare scenario, your personal files were maliciously culled, combined and disclosed to the world with only certain bits of negative information present? What about that one sex film on your video tab, just the liquor from your shopping file, your arrival at an airport with a person from the office who could be presented as your love interest? "Anybody who knows how to access this data and is out to get you - they didn't want you to run for office maybe - could create a damaging profile," DeCew says. "It could be based on accurate details but presented in a distorted way. It could be police or the government or someone else."

Sort of the way actor Will Smith sees his life dismantled in public as out-of-control federal bureaucrats pursue him in the 1998 Hollywood surveillance thriller Enemy of the State. Smith, playing a mystified Washington, DC, lawyer, finds his reputation, finances and relationships shredded by evil-doers who track him with spy satellites and surveillance devices so outrageous they seemed like fiction. It was not an exaggeration of what's in use today, says Keating, the privacy foundation director from Denver. "Privacy invasions are somewhat like violence in that we all know it occurs but it doesn't have emotional resonance unless it affects you or someone close to you," Keating explains. "As these things become more commonplace, there will be more reaction. I think it's hard for any individual to get really wound up about privacy invasion until it affects them personally."

New technology can not only wreck a person publicly but steal his or her life. Identity theft, aided by the availability of personal information online, is North America's fastest-growing crime. The US Federal Trade Commission reported more than 700,000 victims in 2000, most targets of what is now the routine lifting of names, security numbers and credit data for fraud. Victims spend an average of 175 hours and $808 in expenses to clear their names. But there is also growth in international identity counterfeiting, fuelling a market in illegal immigration and, sometimes, terrorism.

Bodies such as Citizenship and Immigration Canada have hit back with new, potentially invasive measures of their own, including a new high-tech identity card for immigrants here. The machine-readable cards will carry sensitive personal information in encrypted formats, similar to laser-readable green cards issued in the US.

Civil rights groups are concerned about the ethics of forcing immigrants to carry cards, sex offenders to submit to satellite surveillance and other vulnerable groups to see their privacy compromised for the public good. "It is getting people worried about what are the limits," says DeCew. "How much power do we want to give the authorities? How do we weigh what's OK for social benefit and what individual rights we have?"