geekosystem

Want some creepy, Big Brother flavored news? The British government is mulling a plan that would riddle its telecommunication infrastructure with "probes" that could surreptitiously read and glean information from citizens' emails and Facebook messages. Any other day, that would be the most offensive and invasive thing done by any major world power to their citizens. The United Kingdom got a stroke of luck, though, releasing the report in the wake of a leak from the U.S. Department of Justice that outlined the circumstances in which the United States government can use a robot to rain fire from the sky on a U.S. citizen without due process. Which is...probably worse? Yeah, probably worse. No one is having a great day here, though.

Have you always wanted a tiny robot that hovers behind you, documenting your every move, but don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a lumbering UAV or a quadcopter so noisy it can't join you inside fancy restaurants? Of course you have, because it's pretty clearly the coolest part of living in a self-inflicted Orwellian police state. Well, your long wait is getting close to over with the announcement of MeCam, a tiny, digital camera-equipped quadcopter that will follow you around and upload pictures and videos of you to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and more in real time. Even better? The MeCam is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, and should retail for just $50 when it comes to market early next year, meaning you'll never again have to worry about living an unexamined life.

Because berserk homeless people and the combined smell of the passengers' rancid body odor didn't make riding the bus enough of a horrible experience, government officials are currently in the process of installing surveillance devices to record any and all conversations during bus rides -- and we mean from everybody on board. The plan will be put into action in a number of major city transit hubs across the nation ranging from San Francisco, California to Baltimore, Maryland. Advocates say that this system of audio surveillance will aid in law enforcement and resolving service issues, but, frankly the public would probably rather not have the government hear their thoughts on last night's episode of American Horror Story.

Tired of walking your kid to the bus stop every morning? Inventive dad Paul Wallich was. That's why he outsourced the gig to a quadcopter keyed in to track a GPS beacon stashed in his son's backpack. The result is a pretty amazing piece of high-tech parenting -- a flying drone that can follow his child from a set distance and make sure the kid stays out of trouble.

Search and surveillance has always been a part of criminal investigation and to keep things from going too far, searches generally require warrants. That's how it works in the physical world, and for the most part, that's how it works in the cyberworld too. There's one big difference though: In the real world, police sometimes come to your door with the warrant, letting you know something is up; whereas in cyberland searches and surveillance are secret by default. As such, many of those surveilled in investigations that never turn into cases will never know they were being watched. U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith sees this as a problem.

Step one of achieving a dystopia  is having the physical infrastructure to monitor large amounts of people at all times. Step two is having the software (or manpower I guess) to parse it all. A Japanese surveillance company has just made huge strides in that second part. The company, Hitachi Kokusai Electric, is just finishing development of a facial recognition system that, given enough footage, can scan and index around 36 million faces in just around 1 second. You'd need a pretty insane amount of footage before that calculation time became non-trivial.

Consumer electronics giant Cisco is facing down a lawsuit brought by 11 members of the Chinese religious group Falun Gong which claim that the company was complicit in the Chinese crackdown on the religion. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong grew to massive popularity in China until it was outlawed by the government in 1999. Since then, members of the group have reportedly been the victims of numerous human rights abuses. The suit claims that Cisco competed forcefully for a contract with the Chinese government, knowing full well that their surveillance technology "Policenet" would be used to monitor and repress Falun Gong online activities. Falun Gong claims that as a result of Cisco's successful contract bid, over 5,000 members of their religion were arrested, possibly tortured or killed. Cisco has stated that they are not at fault, and will fight the suit "vigorously" in American courts. A Cisco representative has stated that the company operates no networks in China and followed U.S. export policies for technology and did not customize the Policenet system -- which Falun Gong refers to as "Golden Shield" -- in any way for use by the Chinese government. The suit was filed in San Jose, California, and there is no word as to when it is expected to go to trial. (CNET via Slashdot)

This February, parents of Lower Marion high school students brought suit against the school district for covertly spying on students using the webcameras of school issued MacBooks.  The LMSD said that the cameras, equipped with remote access software, were simply a security feature to be used in the case that the laptops were stolen or misplaced.  Parents say that they were never informed about this possible use of the cameras, and that some were activated without the computer being reported lost.  Michael and Holly Robbins found out about the cameras when pictures from their son's computer were used as evidence in disciplinary action against him. Now comes the information that the webcams took "thousands" of secret pictures of students in their homes.