Quotulatiousness

November 21, 2012

Upgrading the Coyote

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

Strategy Page has a bit of Canadian content now and again:

Canada has ordered upgrades for another of its 66 LAV III wheeled armored vehicles. These 66 will be equipped for reconnaissance as was its predecessor the LAV II Coyote. This vehicle went to Afghanistan a decade ago and proved enormously useful by doing long range surveillance of Taliban and al Qaeda suspects. The Coyote reconnaissance system mounted on a wheeled armored vehicle. The recon gear consists of a nine meter (30 foot) telescoping mast that contains a Doppler radar, laser rangefinder, thermal imaging sensor and video camera. The mast mounted sensors can see clearly out to 15 kilometers and identify targets (day or night) for artillery or air attack. The radar can spot targets out to 24 kilometers, but can only distinguish vehicle types (wheeled, tracked) beginning at about 12 kilometers.

[. . .]

The Coyote was originally conceived as an inexpensive replacement for air reconnaissance. But the ability of a Coyote vehicle to stay in one place and carefully track movements over a wide area for days, or weeks proved very useful for intelligence work. Five years ago Canada began a $5 billion to upgrade and expand its fleet of LAV III wheeled armored vehicles. Over the last decade, Canada has replaced its 1980s era MOWAG and older LAV II vehicles with the locally built LAV IIIs. Canada donated many of the older wheeled armored vehicles (mostly 11 ton Grizzly personnel carriers) to nations performing peacekeeping duties.

May 24, 2012

Giving up Canadian sovereignty: RCMP “to ease Canadians into the idea”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Under proposed new rules, US law enforcement could pursue suspects across the Canadian border and exercise police powers on Canadian soil:

According to an article in Embassy Magazine, the Harper government is moving forward on several initiatives that could give U.S. FBI and DEA agents the ability to pursue suspects across the land border and into Canada.

But, according to a RCMP officer, they’re doing it in “baby steps.”

“We recognized early that this approach would raise concerns about sovereignty, of privacy, and civil liberties of Canadians,” RCMP Chief Superintendent Joe Oliver, the Mounties’ director general for border integrity, told the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence on May 14.

“We said ‘Let’s take baby steps, let’s start with two agencies to test the concept, let’s demonstrate to Canadians and Americans that such an approach might work.”

Apparently the problem of suspected criminals fleeing into Canada has become so frequent that Stephen Harper has been persuaded to allow US officials to ignore the international boundary while in pursuit. Or perhaps it’ll only be used in “hot pursuit”. Or — rather more likely — any time a US official decides to exercise the rule. Oh, and the article also mentions that aerial surveillance of Canadian territory is also on the table. One has to assume that drone strikes will soon follow.

April 5, 2012

A useful idiot wants even more state surveillance, more Big Brother

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

Dan Hodges on his love affair with the surveillance state, and his overwhelming desire for even more government snooping:

I want to live in a surveillance state. Big Brother, come cast your watchful eye over me and mine. I love you, bro.

Seriously, when I saw the outcry over Government plans to gain access to telephone, email and internet, my initial reaction was: “You mean they can’t do that already?”

I assumed, somewhat stupidly, that everything we said, typed or viewed was routinely monitored, and then filtered by some giant, super-secret computer tucked away in a heavily guarded subterranean basement of GCHQ: “Hodges has just said he wants to shoot another Liverpool player, sir.” “Oh, he’s always saying that, Jones. Ignore him.”

I don’t want less surveillance, I want more of the stuff. My idea of the perfect society is one where every street corner has a CCTV camera, everyone has a nice shiny ID card tucked in their wallet and no extremist can even think of logging onto a dodgy website without an SAS squad abseiling swiftly through their window.

March 2, 2012

The ugly twins: censorship and surveillance

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

Cory Doctorow in the Guardian:

There was a time when you could censor without spying. When Britain banned the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the 1920s and 1930s, the ban took the form on a prohibition on the sale of copies of the books. Theoretically, this entailed opening some imported parcels, and it certainly imposed a constraint on publishers and booksellers. It was undoubtedly awful. But we’ve got it worse today.

Jump forward 80 years. Imagine that you want to ban www.jamesjoycesulysses.com due to a copyright claim from the Joyce estate. Thanks to the Digital Economy Act and the provision it makes for a national British copyright firewall, we’re headed for a system where entertainment companies can specify URLs that have “infringing” websites, and a national censorwall will block everyone in the country from visiting those sites.

In order to stop you from visiting www.jamesjoycesulysses.com, the national censorwall must intercept all your outgoing internet requests and examine them to determine whether they are for the banned website. That’s the difference between the old days of censorship and our new digital censorship world. Today, censorship is inseparable from surveillance.

February 29, 2012

NY Police domestic spy operation in Muslim neighbourhoods gets little press attention

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:11

Natalie Rothschild on the rather disturbing use of NYPD resources to conduct surveillance operations in Muslim areas of New York City and New Jersey:

It has emerged that the White House has funded the New York Police Department’s surveillance of entire Muslim neighbourhoods with money earmarked for fighting drug crime. The revelations were detailed in reports by the Associated Press this week. In response, senior law enforcement officials and politicians have been either unapologetic or silent. Most tellingly, the Obama administration, which has championed Muslim outreach and has said law enforcement should not put entire communities under suspicion, said on Monday that it has no opinion on the matter.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the Bush and Obama administrations have provided $135million to the New York and New Jersey region through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area programme (HIDTA). It’s unclear exactly how much of that money was spent on surveillance of Muslims because the programme has little oversight. But the AP discovered that the White House money has paid for cars that plainclothes NYPD officers used to conduct surveillance of Muslim neighbourhoods in New York and New Jersey, and for computers that stored information about Muslim college students, mosque sermons and social events. It also helps pay rent for the NYPD’s intelligence unit.

This is, effectively, a spying programme used to monitor American Muslims as they shop, work, socialise, pray and study. Police have photographed and mapped mosques and recorded license plates of worshippers. They have compiled lists of Muslims who took new, Americanised names, eavesdropped on conversations inside businesses owned or frequented by Muslims, infiltrated Muslim student groups and monitored websites of universities across north-east US. In the name of counterterrorism, Muslim American citizens have been catalogued, their private conversations and everyday activities recorded and stored in databases.

[. . .]

On Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration has no opinion on how the HIDTA grant money was spent and that the White House has no authority to direct, manage or supervise any law-enforcement operations. If the administration truly has no power to influence a NYPD programme used for intrusive monitoring of scores of American citizens, then that would indicate great political impotence. After all, both in the domestic and international arenas, the Obama administration has warned against demonising and singling out Muslims in America and turned Muslim outreach into a priority. Well, it is hard to think of any starker way of ‘singling out’ a group than by stalking anyone who looks or sounds like they belong to it.

February 16, 2012

Are you for Orwellian surveillance by government thugs or are you with the child pornographers?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

Margaret Wente in the Globe & Mail:

Where do you stand on the new online surveillance bill? Are you with the government? Or are you with the child pornographers? According to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, you have to choose.

In case you fail to get the point, the new legislation is being subtly marketed as the Protecting Children From Internet Predators Act. Of course, maybe you don’t really care about protecting children from Internet predators. Maybe you don’t care that without this law, filthy perverts will continue to roam free. Really, it’s your choice.

I am scarcely the first person to point out that Stephen Harper’s government likes to demonize its opponents, or that it has a nasty authoritarian streak. But in this case, the dissent is unusually widespread. Those with doubts about the bill include opposition politicians, civil libertarians, privacy commissioners and Internet experts — plus more than a few small-c conservatives who wonder why our government insists on whipping up unnecessary moral panic when it doesn’t have to.

[. . .]

So why do I stand with the child pornographers here? Because I’m not convinced the police need new powers to root out online child molesters. Judging by the recent highly publicized busts of child-porn rings, their existing powers seem to be working fine. Nor am I convinced that the police will never abuse their power. History shows they usually do. That’s why they need civilian oversight. That’s not liberal, in my view. That’s prudent.

February 10, 2012

Before Watergate the FBI had to put together files using wiretaps, informants, and detective work

Filed under: Government, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:03

Nowadays, of course, they wouldn’t need to do any of that: most of what they collected then could be gathered by looking you up on Facebook:

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are perhaps best known for their comedy sketch Who’s on First?

But in the 1950s, the duo caught the FBI’s attention for other reasons.

“A police informant furnished information to the effect that Bud Abbott, the well-known motion picture and television star, is a collector of pornography, and alleged he has 1,500 reels of obscene motion pictures,” an agent wrote in an FBI file.

Of Costello, agents reported: “Information was secured reflecting that two prostitutes put on a lewd performance for Lou Costello,” for which they were paid $50 each.

[. . .]

During the era of legendary FBI director J Edgar Hoover, “you could find a reason to open a file on anyone”, says Steve Rosswurm, a historian at Lake Forest College in Illinois and author of a book about the FBI’s dealings with the Catholic Church.

“The reasons for the surveillance are as varied as the people being watched,” said British writer Nicholas Redfern, author of Celebrity Secrets: Official Government Files on the Rich and Famous

“It was very much dependent upon the character or the situation the subject of the file was in.”

Today, the bureau’s Cold War-era fears of communist infiltration, obscenity and homosexuality sound almost quaint..

January 25, 2012

A unanimous Supreme Court decision against GPS tracking that still leaves wiggle room for the police

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:08

Jacob Sullum on the very narrow grounds used by the majority to decide US v. Jones:

“If you win this case,” Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben during oral argument in U.S. v. Jones last fall, “there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States.” That prospect, Breyer said, “sounds like 1984.”

Fortunately, the government did not win the case. But the Court’s unanimous decision, announced on Monday, may not delay Breyer’s 1984 scenario for long. Unless the Court moves more boldly to restrain government use of new surveillance technologies, the Framers’ notion of a private sphere protected from “unreasonable searches and seizures” will become increasingly quaint.

[. . .]

The majority therefore concluded that it was unnecessary to resolve the question of whether Jones had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” regarding his travels on public roads. By contrast, the four other justices, in an opinion by Samuel Alito, said he did, given that investigators tracked all his movements for a month — a kind of surveillance that can reveal a great deal of information about sensitive subjects such as medical appointments, psychiatric treatment, and political, religious, or sexual activities.

While Scalia’s approach draws a clear line that cops may not cross without a warrant, it does not address surveillance technologies that involve no physical intrusion, such as camera networks, satellites, drone aircraft, and GPS features in cars and smart phones. If police had tracked Jones by activating an anti-theft beacon or following his cell phone signal, they could have obtained the same evidence without touching his property.

January 17, 2012

The new face of battlefield surveillance

Filed under: Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:51

Strategy Page discusses the Raven UAV, which has become a very popular tool with US troops in Afghanistan:

Just as the first recon aircraft a century ago changed the way armies fought, the micro-UAVs have changed the way small units of soldiers fight. A century ago the aerial observers reported to generals and their staffs. UAV video goes to platoon or company commanders, or the leader of a small Special Forces team.

The lightweight, hand launched Raven UAV can only stay airborne about an hour per sortie, but troops have found that this is enough time to do all sorts of useful work, even when there’s no fighting going on. This is most of the time.

[. . .]

The current model, the Raven B (RQ-11B), was introduced five years ago, a year after the original Raven entered service in large numbers. This UAV is inexpensive ($35,000 each) and can stay in the air for 80 minutes at a time. The Raven is battery powered (and largely silent unless flown close to the ground). It carries a color day vidcam, or a two color infrared night camera. It can also carry a laser designator. Both cameras broadcast real time video back to the operator, who controls the Raven via a handheld controller, which uses a hood to shield the display from direct sunlight (thus allowing the operator to clearly see what is down there). The Raven can go as fast as 90 kilometers an hour, but usually cruises at between 40 and 50. It can go as far as 15 kilometers from its controller, and usually flies a preprogrammed route, using GPS for navigation.

The Raven is made of Kevlar, the same material used in helmets and protective vests. On average, Raven can survive about 200 landings before it breaks something. While some Ravens have been shot down, the most common cause of loss is losing the communications link (as the aircraft flies out of range) or a software/hardware failure on the aircraft. Combat losses have been high, as nearly 20,000 have been built and most of those have been lost in training or the battlefield.

From the very beginning, the Raven changed the way troops fight. With the bird’s eye view of the battlefield, commanders can move their troops more quickly, confident that they won’t be ambushed, and often with certain knowledge of where the unseen enemy is. The big advantage with Raven is that it’s simple, reliable, and it just works. A complete system (controller, spare parts and three UAVs) costs $250,000. The UAV can be quickly taken apart and put into a backpack. It takes off by having the operator start the motor, and then throwing it. This can be done from a moving vehicle, and the Raven is a popular recon tool for convoys. It lands by coming in low and then turning the motor off. Special Forces troops like to use it at night, because the enemy can’t see it, and often can’t hear it either.

A soldier with the 25th Infantry Division prepares to launch a Raven unmanned aerial vehicle in Paktika province, Iraq.
(Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Michael Guillory / Army)

« Newer Posts

Powered by WordPress