U.S.-China Surveillance

An interesting post in the Financial Times today talks about a new online surveillance trend in China, led by the Beijing-based company TRS Information Technology, that shifts from searching for politically sensitive keywords to “advanced text mining solutions enabling censors to monitor and forecast public opinion.” The article appears to takes a negative view [...]

A new policy for Internet cafe users to register with their real names, announced last March, appears now to be implemented on a widespread basis within the city. First time visitors to a particular Internet cafe locale must have their pictures taken and their national ID cards scanned before sitting down at a terminal. The [...]

The San Franciscos Chronicles’ “TheTech Chronicles,” along with a number of other media outlets, is reporting that Google has will “halve the time it stores logs of user web searches” from 18 to 9 months. Charitably, one could call this a misleading statement, but it really is just plain wrong. Google keeps its search logs [...]

From today’s Seattle Times:
Microsoft device helps police pluck evidence from cyberscene of crime
By Benjamin J. Romano
Seattle Times technology reporter
Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that may have been used in crimes.
The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB [...]

The Information Office of China’s State Council released an English-language report on human rights in the US today. Section III of the report, On Civil and Political Rights, deals with issues of surveillance and data privacy. Here are some excerpts:
From January 2005 to September 2007, Verizon provided data to federal authorities “on an emergency [...]

According to a report today in the London-based online journal, The Inquirer, net cafe patrons in metropolitan Beijing must register with their real names starting later this year. Beijing, to my knowledge, becomes the second Chinese city (Xiamen was the first, in the wake of the successful PX Chemical plant protest) to attempt to impose [...]

The Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be [...]

Good opinion piece be Leslie Harris on the Real ID program….
Most disappointing, the hard decisions on how to implement Real ID — including how to protect privacy — have been left to the states. Simply put, there are no privacy rules. States are simply encouraged to follow a set of “best practices” for protecting privacy. [...]

Privacy International’s 2007 annual report ranking privacy in the major nations of the world now classifies the U.S. as an “endemic surveillance society,” putting it in the same company with eight other countries, including Russia, China, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and the UK. The U.S. was one of 14 nation states in which surveillance grew significantly. [...]

A report released by the US Government Accounting Office this month, Terrorist Watch List Screening (pdf), indicates that the number of people suspected of having terrorist ties and who appear on the official terrorist watch list ballooned to 755,000 names as of May, 2007. Most of the people on this list are Americans. According to [...]