Eazy as fo sizzle.
Posted on 08/26/2008 11:58:07 AM PDT by BGHater
"THIS data allows investigators to identify suspects, examine their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time."
So said the UK Home Office last week as it announced plans to give law-enforcement agencies, local councils and other public bodies access to the details of people's text messages, emails and internet activity. The move followed its announcement in May that it was considering creating a massive central database to store all this data, as a tool to help the security services tackle crime and terrorism.
Meanwhile in the US the FISA Amendments Act, which became law in July, allows the security services to intercept anyone's international phone calls and emails without a warrant for up to seven days. Governments around the world are developing increasingly sophisticated electronic surveillance methods in a bid to identify terrorist cells or spot criminal activity.
However, technology companies, in particular telecommunications firms and internet service providers, have often been criticised for assisting governments in what many see as unwarranted intrusion, most notably in China.
Now German electronics company Siemens has gone a step further, developing a complete "surveillance in a box" system called the Intelligence Platform, designed for security services in Europe and Asia. It has already sold the system to 60 countries.
According to a document obtained by New Scientist, the system integrates tasks typically done by separate surveillance teams or machines, pooling data from sources such as telephone calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions and insurance records. It then sorts through this mountain of information using software that Siemens dubs "intelligence modules".
(Excerpt) Read more at technology.newscientist.com ...
Shades of George Orwell.
For about 160,000 Euro in start up costs, you can set up a anonymous proxy server company in Holland with one of the large data centers.
Will pay for itself in spades if you can bring the UK’s corporate internet users on as clients.
I was once told by a Brit Freeper that he was just as Free as any American. I didn’t have the heart to ask where he kept his knives, much less his guns...
The only way to prevent government abuse of data is to prevent government from having the data in the first place.
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