ghosts in the machine: United States

Showing posts with label United States. Show all posts

Monday, August 27, 2007

This is Privacy Awareness Week

Privacy Awareness Week is a promotional campaign first initiated by Privacy Victoria (Australia) in 2001. This year, for the first time, Privacy Awareness Week has gone international.

The week is an opportunity for organizations and agencies covered by privacy legislation to promote privacy awareness to their staff, customers, and to the wider community. The theme for Privacy Awareness Week 2007 is ‘Privacy is your business'.

Do you know your rights and obligations with respect to privacy? Organizations, governments, and government agencies in many countries are bound by a variety of privacy laws. As consumers, each of us is responsible to understand what our rights and responsibilities are under those laws.

Learn more about your rights!

International: Privacy International and Electronic Frontier Foundation

In the U.S.: Office of Information and Privacy, U.S. Department of Justice and American Civil Liberties Union

In Canada: Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and CAPAPA

In the U.K.: Information Commissioner's Office

In Australia: Privacy Victoria

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Privacy Rights and Terror Investigations

Two recent developments on the international cooperation front provide some redress to concerns about privacy and information-sharing between governments. The introduction of no-fly lists in the U.S., Canada and the E.U., as well as the increasingly globalised nature of personal information in data banks has raised questions about how this information will be shared with and used by foreign governments.

A tragic example of the failure to provide protection to citizens in these areas is the story of Maher Arar, a story familiar to most Canadians:

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 on his way home to his family in Canada. He was held in solitary confinement in the U.S. for nearly two weeks, interrogated, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer. The Bush administration labeled him a member of Al Qaeda and rendered him, not to Canada, his home and country of citizenship, but to Syrian intelligence authorities, known by the U.S. government to practice torture.While in Syria, he was regularly tortured for almost a year before being released to Canada. Both the Canadian and Syrian governments have publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism. The United States government, however, refuses to clear Arar’s name and continues to have both him and his family on a watchlist.

Mr. Arar’s incarceration was the result, in part, of misleading information provided by the RCMP, which eventually led to the resignation of the RCMP commissioner. Following Mr. Arar’s return to Canada, there were several intentional disclosures to the public from his file, which appeared to be made in order to justify the actions of the security agencies involved. These disclosures were in violation of Mr. Arar’s privacy rights.

In our increasingly globalised economy, the volume of personal data crossing borders represents a growing threat to personal privacy. In an effort to counter the threat, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has issued a report proposing amendments to data privacy legislation as well as enhancements to international cooperation in the field of privacy protection:

When personal information moves across borders it may put at increased risk the
ability of individuals to exercise privacy rights to protect themselves from the
unlawful use or disclosure of that information. At the same time, the authorities charged with enforcing privacy laws may find that they are unable to pursue complaints or conduct investigations relating to the activities of organisations outside their borders. Their efforts to work together in the cross-border context may also be hampered by insufficient preventative or remedial powers, inconsistent legal regimes, and practical obstacles like resource constraints. In this context, a consensus has emerged on the need to promote closer co-operation among privacy law enforcement authorities to help them exchange information and carry out investigations with their foreign counterparts.

While most OECD member countries have enacted privacy legislation, Canada's Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard has pointed out that different rules in different countries were not only causing unease among citizens and companies, but were also leading to more red tape and higher costs.

Meanwhile, The European Union and the U.S. have reached a provisional deal on exchanging information about transatlantic air passengers. According to a TechWorld News story, the U.S. will be required to adhere to "strict data retention obligations," including retaining both used and unused data for no more than five years.

The United States and European Union share views on combating terrorism but
"these activities should be done in full respect for fundamental rights," said
Franco Frattini, the EU's justice and home affairs commissioner.

While privacy protections need to go even further than these two initiatives, it is encouraging to see some developments that attempt to preserve individual privacy rights and hopefully prevent a recurrence of the nightmare that Maher Arar experienced.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

More Local Reaction to the Arivaca Tower

A tip of the hat to Otto at Otto's Random Thoughts, who alerted me to Southwind Dancer, a blog by local Arivacans about the Arivaca Tower. Along with Arivaca AZ Online , this blog provides good insight to the issues facing residents living in the shadow of the Tower. The image at right is a copy of a poster from the Arivaca AZ Online site, which I hope they won't mind me reproducing here. Arivacans appear to be well-organized in their protest against this Department of Homeland Security pilot project (click the "Secure Border Initiative" label at the end of this entry to see all of my previous posts on this topic).

As Otto is leaving Arivaca soon to take the post of Associate Professor of International and Comparative Politics at American University of Central Asia, I wanted to thank him for pointing me to these local resources and wish him all the very best in his exciting new role. I'll be continuing to follow developments on the Arivaca Tower in future posts.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Biometrics and DNA-enabled passports

About 10 years ago, a large brown envelope arrived in my mailbox from my old alma mater. It contained a request for me to participate in a long-term research study that the university was undertaking on the effects of drinking water from Lake Ontario, which I had been drinking for most of my life. The large brown envelope also contained a much tinier brown envelope into which I was to deposit the clippings of all ten of my toenails. Once I got past the "ew…gross" factor, I began to ponder the implications of sending away little pieces of my DNA that were to go on file for a decades-long study. Despite the assurances from this well-respected university that my toenail clippings would be kept secure and not used for any other purpose, I opted not to participate, as I just did not feel comfortable with the prospect.

Fast-forward a decade and it appears that our governments will eventually be forcing us to provide DNA samples, if we ever want to travel outside the country, that is. According to a CanWest News report:

Canadians will inevitably have to carry travel documents with their DNA,
biometrics or other biological identifiers in order to ensure secure border
travel to the United States, according to a new white paper to be revealed to
government officials in Ottawa Monday.

Although some technology, such as DNA-enabled passports or driver's
licences, may be a long way off, terror threats and other looming risks mean
governments must begin to seriously consider how they will introduce those
measures in the future, [said Michael Hawes, executive director of the
Foundation for Educational Exchange between Canada and the United States of
America.]

The white paper will outline the implications of the U.S.’s Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which earlier this year required Canadians flying into the U.S. to carry a passport and which will require all Canadians driving or walking across the border to have a passport by 2008.

A few toenail clippings in a university researcher’s file cabinet are a minor concern compared to a DNA profile being available in electronic format to my own government, let alone a foreign government. While the purpose is to guarantee that I am who I say I am when traveling in and out of my country, what would happen if the electronic representation of my DNA were stolen? Just ask someone who shares a similar name to someone on the U.S. "no-fly" list how easy it is to prove who they are: how much more difficult and dangerous will it be if your DNA profile is stolen or altered?

It raises the question of ownership of the data and informed consent to citizens about how it will be used. Citizens should have assurances that their DNA profile will not be collected or saved by foreign governments and that the information will not be made available to other government agencies or third parties. Genetic information from DNA and other biometric information can be dangerous not only if it is used to assume someone’s identity, but also if it reveals health or social information that could be used in a negative way against the owner.

The use of biometrics and DNA seems inevitable in an increasingly security-obsessed world. As citizens we need to pay very close attention to these initiatives and the laws in place to protect our identity.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Unmanned drones secure U.S. borders

It seems the more I read about the U.S. Secure Border Initiative, the less I want to know.

In addition to the networks of towers with radar, video cameras and GPS tracking, Homeland Security will be patrolling sections of the Canadian border with unmanned drones. The Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), known as the MQ-9 Predator "B" or the "Reaper," is a significantly improved version of a variation of the MQ-1 Predator used by the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan and Iraq. The first will be deployed along the border between North Dakota and Manitoba before the end of 2007.

While fewer than 10,000 people were detained for entering the U.S. illegally via Canada in 2004, U.S. officials are concerned about drug smuggling, terrorist risks and the smuggling of Asian migrants via the northern border.

"What we are looking to build is a virtual fence, a 21st-century virtual fence,"
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

In 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and admonished Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. Thirty years later, a virtual wall of surveillance is being constructed along the 49th parallel.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Local Reaction to the Arivaca Tower and SBInet

Imagine the government is planning to build a 98 foot (30 metre) tower on the edge of your small town, where guards monitoring the adjacent national border will use radar and live video streaming to transmit the images and GPS locations of people crossing the border illegally to the laptops of guards waiting on the ground. At any time in this rural area, a 130 decibel "hailer-horn" could sound, disrupting the peace of your day, startling horses and their riders and scattering local birds and wildlife. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

This is the reality facing the residents of Arivaca, Arizona, the town which will serve as the pilot project for U.S. Homeland Security’s Secure Border Initiative or SBInet. The tower is scheduled to be erected this week. I wrote a few days ago about the privacy concerns this may raise for Canadian and Mexican citizens living near the U.S. borders and the proposed network of 10,000 kilometres (6,213 miles) of towers. J. Otto Pohl, a resident of Arivaca who has been writing about the tower in his blog Otto’s Random Thoughts pointed me to several local articles about the tower and the reaction of local residents. This is an enormous intrusion in their lives and they have been given very little notice and no real consultation by Homeland Security or Boeing.

What is more discouraging is the tremendous cost and apparent failure of this kind of technology in securing the borders. One year ago, The Washington Post wrote about SBI net and the checkered record of similar kinds of multi-billion dollar surveillance technologies:

If the military could seal a 6,000-mile border for $2 billion, Iraq's borders would have been sealed two years ago," said Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank.

The small town of Arivaca will serve as the proving ground for SBInet and local residents appear to have an uphill battle in ensuring their concerns are heard. Hopefully the amount of international attention given this story will not disappear once the tower goes up.

--------------

Meanwhile, under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), Canadians are facing huge line-ups at Passport Offices, as under the new American law every Canadian is now expected to produce a passport when flying across the border and a year from now, in order to cross the border by land. Until recently, a driver’s licence was adequate, particularly for a daytrip of cross-border shopping or visiting family and friends. The United States is implementing the WHTI to increase border security. The initiative stems from the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which is based on the 9/11 Commission Report.

Politicians in Canada and the U.S. have often boasted about sharing the longest, undefended border; those days are about to become a distant memory as a vast network of towers and surveillance equipment is erected along the border over the next few years.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

U.S. Border Surveillance Goes High Tech

A high-tech network of nine surveillance towers in Arizona is the first of many more like it to be erected as part of the U.S.’s Secure Border Initiative, the National Post reported today. Residents of the small town with the dubious distinction of serving as a pilot for this initiative are up in arms about the government’s ability to observe and record every public activity in their ordinary lives.

"It's like Big Brother. It will place the whole town under surveillance," said C Hues, a community activist, as residents gathered for a meeting late Tuesday with customs and border patrol representatives.

"The government will be able to watch and record every movement we make, 24 hours a day. It will be like living in a prison yard," she added.

In 2006, over 1 million people were arrested for illegally attempting to cross the Mexican border into the United States. One of the towers to be constructed just south of the town will be 30-metres (98 feet) high and topped with cameras and radar. Images and video captured at the tower will be streamed live to troupers on the ground, along with GPS coordinates.

The ability to monitor the activities of the residents of one town of 1500 may not be a big concern to many people. But the Secure Border Initiative isn’t limited to the little town of Arivaca, Arizona. Over the next few years, similar networks of towers, with cameras and radar will be constructed along over 10,000 kilometres (6,213 miles) of the Mexican and Canadian borders. Conceivably, hundreds of thousands of residents along the borders of all three countries may come under the scrutiny of these cameras.

It isn’t a stretch to be concerned about how this recorded information could be used, given the recent experience of Andrew Feldmar who was barred from entering the U.S. after a border guard googled his name and didn’t like what he read. The residents of Arivaca, Arizona are fighting the construction of the massive surveillance network in their town and I hope that other Americans will be just as alarmed about this attack on privacy.

In the meantime, how will the Mexican and Canadian governments respond to cross-border surveillance of their citizens? Will our right to privacy be traded away in the name of U.S. national security?

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Google Search Blocks Canadian's Entry into U.S.

An alarming report from Tuesday’s Globe and Mail:

Nearly 40 years ago, a young psychotherapist embraced two-thirds of LSD guru Timothy Leary's advice to the Sixties generation to "turn on, tune in and drop out." Curious how LSD and other hallucinogens might be used in treating patients, Andrew Feldmar turned on and tuned in himself. But he never dropped out. And, no fan of the late Dr. Leary, Mr. Feldmar took his last hit of acid in 1974.
Thirty-two years, however, turned out to be but an instant in the long, unrelenting U.S. war on drugs. Last summer, in an incident that has just come to light, Mr. Feldmar, now 66, was banned from entering the United States because of his long-ago use of LSD. Because Mr. Feldmar had never been charged with possession of the once-popular illegal drug, privacy advocates are even more alarmed by the way U.S. border guards at the busy Peace Arch crossing near Vancouver found out about it.

The guards simply looked up Mr. Feldmar on the Internet and discovered his own article about using LSD, written for the scholarly, peer-reviewed journal Janus Head.
Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa lawyer involved in privacy issues for 20 years, said the incident sends a frightening message to Internet users, particularly those who bare their souls online. "Don't ever put anything about any illegal activity on the Internet," Mr. Oscapella warned yesterday. "It leaves a digital footprint for all to see, and it's there forever. "We've gone beyond Orwellian measures. The state can now do things with a flick of the switch that used to be incredibly labour intensive."

In an earlier posting, I discussed the many risks that bloggers take in exposing personal information on the Internet with respect to employment and personal relationships. What’s most shocking about this incident is that Mr. Feldmar has never been convicted of a criminal offence and has crossed the border into the United States numerous times without issue. More disturbing than the power that border guards seem to wield is the fact that Mr. Feldmar felt compelled out of fear to sign a confession:

Mr. Feldmar was held at the border for five hours, before being allowed to return to Canada after signing an admission that he had once violated the U.S. Controlled Substance Act. He said he signed out of fear that he might be kept in custody even longer if he refused.
Willie Hicks, public affairs officer for the border crossing, said yesterday that Mr. Feldmar admitted violating U.S. drug laws "in a sworn statement. "I don't make the laws. That's the policy, and we enforce the laws at the border. It is up to the discretion of our officers who gets to go across."

A major blow to free speech and another reason to think twice before putting any of your personal information on the Internet.