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Tag: mass surveillance

  • Oracle Faces Class Action Suit Over Its ‘Mass Surveillance’

    Oracle Faces Class Action Suit Over Its ‘Mass Surveillance’

    Oracle is facing a class action lawsuit over what is being described as its “mass surveillance” of the general public.

    Oracle is the world’s leading database provider and a popular cloud provider. The company is accused (PDF) of using its position and platforms to collect real-time data on hundreds of millions of users and selling it. The lawsuit alleges the data is being collected on the general public, including individuals who have no direct relationship with Oracle nor any ability to consent or object to the data collection.

    This complaint sets forth how the regularly conducted business practices of defendant Oracle America, Inc. (“Oracle”) amount to a deliberate and purposeful surveillance of the general population via their digital and online existence. In the course of functioning as a worldwide data broker, Oracle has created a network that tracks in real-time and records indefinitely the personal information of hundreds of millions of people. Oracle sells this detailed personal information to third parties, either directly, or through its “ID Graph” and other related products and services derived from this data. The proposed Classes herein lack a direct relationship with Oracle and have no reasonable or practical basis upon which they could legally consent to Oracle’s surveillance.

    The plaintiffs consist of Dr. Johnny Ryan, a Senior Fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, and a Senior Fellow at the Open Markets Institute; Dr. Jennifer Golbeck, an associate professor at the University of Maryland in College Park and Director of the Social Intelligence Lab; and Michael Katz-Lacabe, a privacy rights activist.

    The plaintiffs make the case that company founder Larry Ellison set out to establish Oracle as a surveillance powerhouse.

    According to Ellison, the purpose of Oracle ID Graph is to predict and influence the future behavior of billions of people. He explained Oracle could achieve this goal by looking at social activity and locations in real time, including “micro location[s].” For example, Ellison has represented that companies will be able to know how much time someone spends in a specific aisle of a specific store and what is in the aisle of the store. “By collecting this data and marrying it to things like micro location information, Internet users’ search histories, websites visits and product comparisons along with their demographic data, and past purchase data, Oracle will be able to predict purchase intent better than anyone.”

    It’s unclear how successful the lawsuit will be. The US notoriously has no comprehensive privacy legislation, making any such lawsuit an uphill battle. At the same time, the lawsuit was filed in California, one of the few states in the US that does have privacy legislation.

    If the plaintiffs are successful, it could have profound repercussions for the US data broker industry, an industry that is already under scrutiny from privacy-minded lawmakers.

  • EU Set to Ban AI-Based Mass Surveillance

    EU Set to Ban AI-Based Mass Surveillance

    The European Union is preparing to pass rules that would ban AI-based mass surveillance, in the strongest repudiation of surveillance yet.

    According to Bloomberg, the EU is preparing to pass rules that would ban using AI for mass surveillance, as well as ranking social behavior. Companies that fail to abide by the new rules could face fines up to 4% of their global revenue.

    The rules are expected to tackle a number of major and controversial areas where privacy is concerned. AI systems that manipulate human behavior, or exploit information about individuals and groups, would be banned. The only exceptions would be some public security applications.

    Similarly, remote biometric ID systems in public places would require special authorization. Any AI applications considered ‘high-risk’ — such as ones that could discriminate or endanger people’s safety — would require inspections to ensure the training data sets are unbiased, and that the systems operate with the proper oversight.

    Most importantly, the rules will apply equally to companies based within the EU or abroad.

    The new rules could still change in the process of being passed into law but, as it stands now, the EU is clearly establishing itself as a protector of privacy where AI-based mass surveillance is concerned.

  • Video Surveillance Market Continues to Expand

    With the numerous disclosures from former NSA employee Edward Snowden that were released in 2013, a new light has been shined on a shadowy world of information gathering and government surveillance. While world governments scramble to appease their citizens and other government leaders, it seems that the security industry will simply keep running business as usual.

    Market research firm IHS today released a report showing that the video surveillance market is expected to increase by at least 12% in the coming year. The firm expects sales of video surveillance equipment to hit $15.9 billion, mostly on sales to national and local governments.

    “During the past decade the video surveillance equipment market has grown quickly, expanding at a double-digit rate in most years,” said Niall Jenkins, research manager for video surveillance and security services at IHS. “This year will be no exception, with growth led by strong demand for fixed-dome and 180/360-degree network camera products. As for vertical markets, the city surveillance and utility/energy sectors will drive the biggest increases in sales.”

    Other predictions for the video surveillance market found in the IHS report read like a list of the things government-overreach activists have been warning about for years. Police are expected to increasingly use crowd-sourced video surveillance data and companies are expected to collaborate more with police on the sharing of their own live video surveillance. IHS also believes that thermal imaging will catch on during 2014, with consumer thermal imaging products beginning to appear.

  • Snowden: American Patriot Says He Shared No Secrets with Russia

    Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, said in an interview this month that when he fled to Russia from Hong Kong SAR, China, in June, he did not take any classified NSA files with him.

    Snowden further assured that Russian espionage agents had no way of getting access to the files, as he handed over all those documents to the journalists he met in Hong Kong, and did not make any duplicate copies for himself, “because it wouldn’t serve the public interest.”

    “What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward?…There’s a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents,” he added.

    Snowden was also confident about China’s intelligence capabilities, claiming that as an NSA contractor he had extensively targeted the eastern giant’s espionage operations and even taught a course on Chinese cyber-counterintelligence.

    American espionage and covert operations officials have condemned Snowden as a traitor, and have asserted that Chinese and Russians might have gotten access to the files.

    The interview took place over several days last week in a “safe” location in Russia, where Snowden has been granted political asylum. The interview took place through encrypted online communications.

    Snowden, 30, has been praised by Constitutionalists and privacy advocates while Federal government has slapped charges on him under the Espionage Act for leaking the files. The famous fugitive claimed that he was acting in “nation’s” best interests, by revealing NSA’s omniscient surveillance efforts including conversations, emails, purchase habits, etc, and pleaded for vigorous national public debate about mass surveillance and monitoring of Americans.

    Snowden said,

    “The secret continuance of these programs represents a far greater danger than their disclosure…So long as there’s broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there’s a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program, as it was an informed and willing decision,” he said. “However, programs that are implemented in secret, out of public oversight, lack that legitimacy, and that’s a problem. It also represents a dangerous normalization of ‘governing in the dark,’ where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public input.”

    Snowden’s last target as NSA contractor was China, and he had “access to every target, every active operation” mounted by NSA against the Chinese, including:

    “ Full lists of them. If that was compromised,…N.S.A. would have set the table on fire from slamming it so many times in denouncing the damage it had caused. Yet N.S.A. has not offered a single example of damage from the leaks. They haven’t said boo about it except ‘we think,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘have to assume’ from anonymous and former officials. Not ‘China is going dark.’ Not ‘the Chinese military has shut us out.’ ”

    Snowden also feared that working through proper channels utilizing the chain of command would lead to swift gagging and retribution. In 2008 and 2009, while working in Geneva as an IT officer for CIA, he pushed for a promotion, but got into a “petty e-mail spat” over a senior manager’s judgment.

    When Snowden discovered serious vulnerabilities in a CIA software, he warned his supervisor, but was advised to keep his mouth shut. After much haggling, he was allowed to test the system with a “non-malicious” code, which proved that the system was in fact vulnerable. But this time, someone higher up in the chain of command was annoyed and gave Snowden a bad review in his personnel file.

    Snowden feared that he would be persecuted and stigmatized like former NSA employee Thomas A. Drake, who, like Snowden, had exposed NSA’s wrongdoings. He added that dissent was crushed or suppressed using “fear and a false image of patriotism.”

    Edward Snowden lamented that had he raised the issue of unconstitutional surveillance as an insider, his complaints “would have been buried forever,” and he would “have been discredited and ruined…the system does not work…you have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it.”

    Alarmed by a highly classified 2009 report he chanced upon at the agency, he concluded that, “If the highest officials in government can break the law without fearing punishment or even any repercussions at all…secret powers become tremendously dangerous…You can’t read something like that and not realize what it means for all of these systems we have.”

    Snowden is permitted to stay in Russia for one year, but his future appears perilous after this sojourn. Benjamin Franklin once remarked that, “those who sacrifice liberty for security, deserve neither.”

    [image from youtube]