



'War on Terror' Allies Form Information Consortium 139
Wowsers writes us with a story from The Guardian about FBI interest in connectivity between its own database resources and those abroad. It's spearheading a program labeled 'Server in the Sky', meant to coordinate the police forces of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to better fight international crime/terrorist groups. The group is calling itself the International Information Consortium. "Britain's National Policing Improvement Agency has been the lead body for the FBI project because it is responsible for IDENT1, the UK database holding 7m sets of fingerprints and other biometric details used by police forces to search for matches from scenes of crimes. Many of the prints are either from a person with no criminal record, or have yet to be matched to a named individual. IDENT1 was built by the computer technology arm of the US defence company Northrop Grumman. In future it is expected to hold palm prints, facial images and video sequences."
Server in the Sky? (Score:1, Interesting)
I can't think of a name more likely to inspire fear/conspiracy theories. Why not call it the Big Brother Server? Or the Stalin Server? Or the Anal Rapist server?
'night all - enough scotchx for me
Re:Server in the Sky? (Score:4, Funny)
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Before you know it, they will want to 'recycle' people when they turn 30 and
there will probably be a 'Green' company to provide high energy biscuits to people and the company name will be "The Soylent Biscuit Company".
Has imagination left mankind?
There is no sanctuary. (Score:2)
Do you know how long all this will last? Not thirty years... or thirty thousand years... but thirty thousand years... and you'll be part of it. Ages will roll... Ages. And you'll be here... the two of you... eternally frozen... frozen... beautiful.
LOGAN
There must be somebody else up here. I can't believe that he's --
BOX
interrupting; his voice tone changing; very lucid)
Let me sculpt you and I will show you where the others have gone.
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People seem relaxed about the bread, circuses, and state-run services.
Yet when the logical law-enforcement applications of state control come along, up go the hackles, revealing velveteen shackles, while the bureaucratic overlord quietly cackles.
Re:Server in the Sky? (Score:4, Funny)
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* For a given value of man.
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I think this [uncyclopedia.org] answers your question.
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There is no server in the sky, just a database... Then again I can't imagine IT staff flying around all day.
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by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15, @04:10PM (#22057282)
That's where my data's going when I die.
Norman, is that you?
UKUSA Community (Score:5, Insightful)
There are three categories of individuals proposed for this initiative:
- internationally recognised terrorists and felons
- major felons and suspected terrorists
- subjects of terrorist investigations or criminals with international links
Categorization makes sense, and information sharing between allies for individuals suspected to travel internationally and who may want to actively target Western nations makes sense.
Every new database or mechanism for tracking or identifying individuals has privacy implications. Those implications must be managed by the laws of each respective nation. But increased information sharing will, by nature, almost always decrease "privacy".
As a DNI official recently noted, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"
Keep in mind, though, that this data is data that the respective nations already gather via law enforcement and investigative means. It is in databases that are already maintained. The proposal is to collectively share the information in these databases. Any argument that there might be privacy implications to voluntarily sharing data between allies, or that simply building the infrastructure and capability to do so creates an opportunity for abuse (with the implication that it should therefore not be done) are very weak arguments. The merits or drawbacks of the proposed program itself are what is at issue; not the technology. Arguing that technology shouldn't be used for the purpose is the same as arguing that law enforcement shouldn't be able to use, say, computers, databases, telephones, cameras, or vehicles because they "enhance" their abilities, and "could be abused". So, when arguing for or against this initiative, please concentrate on the actual initiative itself, not the unsurprising fact that long-time allies are cooperating with one another electronically.
If Northrop Grumman did as well with IDENT1 as it did on Grants.gov [grants.gov] in the early stages, we can expect it to not be very functional.
Re:UKUSA Community (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the technology can lead to a significant difference in the way the data is used. Just look at Echelon (again, a very similar "data sharing" agreement between the same block of countries).
Although one could also argue with Echelon that "this is data which was already collected by the respective governments", the fact that a country received data that they were legally prohibited from collecting themselves was the issue. I could imagine a similar situation here, when all countries routinely begin collecting fingerprints from everyone entering their borders (as the USA already does).
Such data-collection programs can slip through, because the government says "we just collect the data on foreigners!". The fact that they then immediately make this data available to the other countries, and in return immediately receive access to similar data about their own citizens, is never mentioned.
The technology becomes an issue because it then allows massive trawling through the data. When fingerprint data exchange involved faxing a blurry copy across the Atlantic, abuse is effectively limited _by_the_technology_. When the home-government can instantly search through every fingerprint of every citizen who has ever visited one of the partner countries, it becomes a whole different animal.
Re:UKUSA Community (Score:5, Insightful)
You said that
"Any argument that there might be privacy implications to voluntarily sharing data between allies, or that simply building the infrastructure and capability to do so creates an opportunity for abuse (with the implication that it should therefore not be done) are very weak arguments."
Let me propose a slight different view for you.
Most countries have laws protecting their own citizens private rights, but not those that aren't their citizens.
Now, if more than 2 countries have such a policy, then share information freely, it effectively gives both countries freedom to spy on their own people, without any reprecussions. They just ask their partner country to do it. In most cases they don't even need to ask, it's already in the databases somewhere, due to how vast most foreign policy spying is.
The privacy implication is that by sharing information, you are allowed to violate laws in your own country by letting countries where its not illegal do it then give you the ill gotten gains.
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Any argument that there might be privacy implications to voluntarily sharing data between allies, or that simply building the infrastructure and capability to do so creates an opportunity for abuse (with the implication that it should therefore not be done) are very weak arguments.
They aren't weak at all. They are quite valid considering the fact that there isn't any such thing as a world government that can intervene when things go wrong. And humans being what they are, things WILL go wrong eventually. This isn't like Texas and Arkansas sharing information, as those belong to the same greater nation. Likewise, there exists a European Union across the pond. If you can't imagine the issues
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When you consider that there exist "webs of trust" between governments together with all sorts of spying activities it might be better to ask "who arn't they trading this information with". Most people don't even know who their own government trusts.
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Putting in the infrastructure to share this information does raise concerns about who will have access to this data and what it will be used for. For example the DNA information the UK police currently collect i
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So far as I am aware that information is handled in accordance with the UK rules governing the collection and maintenance of peoples records...
The UK government has only one rule, to sell your personal data to anyone willing to buy it to make the government a quick buck. Just look at the driver records sold to any any criminal posing as a legit car parking enforcement company, look at the DNA data taken - sold to any company wanting the information (for now mostly life assurance companies), the local voting register - sold to any junk mailing company willing to buy the list with lovely names and addresses, passenger data if you fly - along with
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It's possible to maintain security without tracking everything about ordinary, law-abiding citizens -- which is most of us. It's just not convenient to do so.
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Now why did I read that as Yakuza community ?
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- internationally recognised terrorists and felons
- major felons and suspected terrorists
- subjects of terrorist investigations or criminals with international links
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As a DNI official recently noted, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"
That is some seriously faulty thinking! There are many things that invade privacy that do not increase security. There are also many things that increase security which do not impact privacy. Putting the two together is a marketing campaign to make it seem like this is the choice we are facing: privacy vs. security. In fact, that has absolutely nothing to do with the social questions at hand.
Repeating the tired strawman of "privacy vs. security" only serves to dominate the social discourse
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I am glad that I am not the only one who saw IDENT1 as just another name for ECHELON [wikipedia.org].
Let me tell you a story (Score:5, Insightful)
As some folk on the net know I come from a political family. My cousin was chairman of the UK Conservative party. Other members of the family have been in pretty much every movement you can imagine. One of my great aunts chained herself to the gates of Greenham common at the age of 80 or so.
When I arrived at University I knew a couple of things. First I distrusted the jingoism of the Tory party, I thought their economic policy sucked but I thought that whatever their intentions might be on the cold war they did at least stand up for freedom.
First week a member of SUCA, Southampton University conservative Association tells me about the blacklist the party ran through an organization called the Economic League. Circulated to employers in the engineering and defense industries. Anyone who signed up for radical politics would be on it.
Fuck you I thought. Joined the Labour party the same day. When you have a political party resorting to Stalinist tactics its time to get rid of them. Lets have denouncement boxes at every corner like they had in East Germany.
I found out later, when the FCS was wound up by the Tory central office, that this particular Stalinist scheme was one of the reasons. I have no way of knowing if my particular complaint made it through but there were many others.
The list became public after Robert Maxwell bought a copy and dumped it at the Labour party conference. I was not on it, which of course I took as an insult. But every member of the SUCA committee was. They had basically been reporting on each other during their perpetual faction fights.
When a government has as much power as the Bush administration has claimed, when it considers the first ammendment and compliance with the Geneva Conventions optional extras rather than the law of the land, when it starts wars on stovepiped intelligence and dismisses real intelligence that does not comply with its opinions, when prosecutors who charge corrupt politicians of the President's party or refuse to bring trumped up charges against the opposition are dismissed, when other prosecutors who do the reverse keep their jobs, when no member of the Cabinet can give a straight definition of torture, when all of these are true and more, it is time to say that this is a government that must have less power and not more. We must fear the Bush administration far more than any of the bogeymen they keep to scare us.
Re:Let me tell you a story (Score:4, Funny)
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You managed to tell a story about England and a wacko grandmother, how the people protecting you from freedom had held you back except that you didn't really have proof because your name wasn't on the list, You even managed to bash Bush and the US in the process which is something I think you don't know enough about, And you did it all based off of emotion over facts.
Nicely done, if it wasn't prepared so well, I would have insisted you were a troll. Instead, I think I would resi
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Coming up next on UBS-TV "When Authoritarians Attack"
Re:UKUSA Community (Score:4, Informative)
- LAMP (Linux, apache, PHP, MySQL) stacks to support a wide variety of applications, such as some below
- MediaWiki powers Intellipedia [wikipedia.org], the highly successful wikis that run on the three iterations of Intelink
- phpBB powers Intelink Forums [ncsi.com]
- WordPress MU enables the current generation of Intelink Blogs [ncsi.com]
- Jabber provides the IC-wide Intelink Instant Messaging
- tag|Connect is a social bookmarking tool [gd-ais.com] based on del.icio.us
- Zimbra powers the uGov Collaboration Suite
- RSS, XML, and other open standards are used extensively
-
These services are run in robust, highly available environments, and have gotten great support within various IC components. In fact, much of the social software movement within the IC is reliant on open source software and open standards, and they have been embraced. For a great overview of what the IC is doing with social software, see:
- 'The Intellipedians' The social software movement within the U.S. Intelligence Community [fcw.com], Federal Computer Week, 16 August 2007
And if you don't want to sit through the presentation (it is a bit long, though quite good), see:
- Open-Source Spying [nytimes.com], New York Times Magazine, 3 December 2006
- A Wikipedia of Secrets [washingtonpost.com], Washington Post, 5 November 2006
And on the newest initiative, A-Space:
- Logged In and Sharing Gossip, er, Intelligence [nytimes.com], New York Times, 2 September 2007
- Classified social-networking system promises to help U.S. spies talk, collaborate [iht.com], Associated Press, 5 September 2007
Some of the articles are a little over-simplified, but the reality is that social software running on open source platforms and environments is taking off in the Intelligence Community.
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SELinux [nsa.gov] consists of modifications to Linux operating systems to conform to certain guidelines.
But yes, the government has a history of willing participation in open source software and open standards. Today, it's even more defined. That much of the government involved in routine business and administrative operations still can't break away from the Windows paradigm isn't an indictment of
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Wanted criminals have always been second-class citizens. Captured criminals even moreso.
What, you mean an innocent person might end up wrongly accused? Oops, better scrap the whole criminal justice system then.
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What, you mean an innocent person might end up wrongly accused? Oops, better scrap the whole criminal justice system then.
The UK keeps fingerprints of everyone who's ever been arrested, even if not charged.
The US fingerprints everyone who enters the country.
Even TFS says "Many of the prints are either from a person with no criminal record".
The justice systems works by bring evidence, and determining if there is sufficien
Re:UKUSA Community (Score:4, Insightful)
The US no-fly list has already suffered from this. You can be fairly sure the NSA domestic spy program has done the same, since it's harder to pin them down as affecting the wrong people. Now, these governments are going to be notified overseas, so that the Anglophonic monoculture in which most Americans have been sheltered for generations provides nowhere to which you can expatriate if you decide the US is not for you because of problems like this. Even if the other countries enter into this program with honorable intent, if they're trusting data from an increasingly corrupt and heavy-handed member nation then their databases are the sentence whether or not you've committed any crime.
Both major parties in the US are in favor of this sort of thing, too. Don't imagine for a second that if the supposed small-government people in the Republican party want more government interference and more power over the people that the Democrats, who think government can solve everything, will get rid of it or clean it up. The only way to keep the government from controlling the people is if it's small enough for the people to control it.
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Non-Law Enforcement have always been second-class citizens. There, fixed it for you.
Yep, just linking the databases folks, nothing to see here.
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SKYNET says you are bad... (Score:2)
CSI is not the real world (Score:1)
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Or lockup a couple of innocent people for a few decades. Which seems more likely given that this program is run by the people or brought you (by the admission of the FBI's own inspector general) thousands of illegal misuses of "National Security Letters"
Greenbaum "Spirit in the Sky" (Score:1)
Surely somebody with talent can whip up some War on Terror lyrics for it...
Greenbaum "Spirit in the Sky" (Score:2, Interesting)
"Spirit in the Sky" by Norman bin Greenbaum:
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
When I lay me down to die
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
Prepare yourself you know it's a must
Gotta have a friend in Muhammad
So you know that when you die
He's gonna recommend you
To the spi
Is Sarah Connor on a watch list? (Score:1)
Is this legal in the UK? (Score:1)
Or does that not count because of the terrorismisticals?
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The DPA has a number of getouts:
- An organisation isn't obliged to give you information you request if doing so might compromise a criminal investigation.
- An organisation can't send data to countries without similar protections in place without your consent. Note that they are not obliged to have procedures (other than "Fine, you don't have to deal with us if you don't wan
"War on Terror" (Score:1)
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Already done! [wikipedia.org]
Why not Interpol? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Or you mean who Inspector Clouseau and Inspector Zenigata work for?
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Maybe that's why.
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That is precisely the reason. They don't trust that law enforcement in those countries isn't compromised (= has people whose true loyalties are terrorist organizations). We don't know if US and UK intelligence services trust Saudi Arabia. We do know that they don't trust Iran and Syria.
For the member list see http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/Members/default.asp [interpol.int]
they're trusting us with the database? (Score:3, Funny)
Not that I care. I'd be willing to bet that 99.9 percent of the contents of any anti terror database is crap kept in there to make it seem important. Or stuff they think is important, but when it comes down to it is worthless.
Really, if sending huge armies to stampede across the middle east didn't work, how is a database going to help? Are we going to send sql queries at them or something?
It's not 'international' (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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disclaimer: I needed the money
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U.S. government has killed 11,000,000 people... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Cooperative Research History Commons [cooperativeresearch.org] is very valuable for those wanting to do their own research.
The poorly edited but very interesting free movie Zeitgeist [zeitgeistmovie.com] explains in three parts that 1) People who believe in myths are easily manipulated. 2) It is common that people are manipulated through fear. 3) The U.S. monetary system is controlled for the profit of a few individuals. (Also see The Creature from Jekyll Island [amazon.com], an excellent but not perfect book about financial corruption.)
The U.S. government has killed directly or indirectly caused the death of an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the Second World war, partly by invading or bombing 25 countries.
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http://www.militaryfix.com/videos/b-52-carpet-bombing/ [militaryfix.com]
Then again, the only people that got carpet bombed recently were the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican guard, so it's not like they were innocent victims or even hapless conscripts. They were true believers who volunteered to fight for an evil regime. Not sure where you get your 11m figure from BTW, presumably one of those websites that includes all the people the Iraqi insurgents killed in
For the People, By the People? (Score:3, Insightful)
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So, bend your head down to the work and produce,
Downmodding proves veracity beyond question.
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CDs in the mail (Score:1)
where the data is that widely dispersed the security is only as strong as it's weakest link (goodbye!) so let's hope lessons are learned by recent events and agencies implement a good clear and concise security methodology to protect the data.
Well, that's assuming it ever takes place.
Just remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
IFF [sic] they keep to their mandate of tracking only international criminal suspects, then this is a good thing and merely links DBs that already exist. It's the potential expansion of sharing all data for any reason that may be cause for worry.
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War on terror? (Score:2)
So what are the "warriers" fighting the "war on terror" on? Terror?
War on terror: "Be afraid. Be very afraid!"
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So Canada's an ally in the War on Terror now? (Score:2)
Write your MP [parl.gc.ca] and express your views.
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nothing to hide? (Score:4, Funny)
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Ironically, it's the opposition to abusive violation of privacy does that:
http://trackingtransience.net/ [trackingtransience.net]
Creation (Score:1)
I am curious world, what do you generally term a grouping of people that insinuate and threaten based on speculation? Further, maim and kill based on that speculation? I know the human shield of buzzword "american" has been tossed around a bit.
What o wordie could you use there??
BTW, what ever happened to North Korea? They have publicly claimed nuclear weapon capacity. Saddam publicly claimed non capacity. Guess North Korea has not g
perhaps we've entered a new era on privacy (Score:2)
regardless of how you feel about privacy or copyright, the point is simply that the notions are unenforceable in today's world
and not just from the government, but from your own fellow citizens. forget big brother, little brother destroys you
There is no war on terror (Score:2)
the sky? (Score:1)
War on^Wof Terror (Score:2)
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now pardon me while i ride my kangaroo to work..
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When I cry and I'm under arrest
Get put on the database that's best
Where they store name, prints and eyes
Going on file with the server in the sky
They're all logging on to the server in the sky,
that's where the spies go when they scry.
When they're looking out for potential unrest
The feds log on to the server that's the best
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It was orignally a Norman Greenbaum song from the late 60's... was a chart toppper here in 1970 i believe.
Having said that the Dr and the Medics cover is the one i automatically have in my head too
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by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15, @08:45AM (#22049314)
The Jew has emerged from his well appointed layer, ready for blood...
Yeah, but I'll bet that he at least knows how to spell lair.
Oh, by the way, it really should be "well-appointed".