Personal privacy problems caused by abused of techniques

Firstly, I gave the definition of “Surveillance abuse” found from Wikipedia: “Surveillance abuse is the use of surveillance methods or technology to monitor the activity of an individual or group of individuals in a way which violates the social norms or laws of a society. Mass surveillance by the state may constitute surveillance abuse if not appropriately regulated. Surveillance abuse often falls outside the scope of lawful interception. It is illegal because it violates peoples’ right of privacy.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_abuse)

In order to have a better understanding of the word “surveillance” and different types, you can look at this website “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance”. There is also a wiki website concerning “Privacy law”:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy 

As a reply to Filip, I also checked European privacy law which says:

“Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

From “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights”

It’s clear from this declaration that there is still a long way to go with personal privacy in the law.

Like “Social networks analysis” mentioned by Karel in his previous post, such as data from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, it’s a huge amount of source for surveillance abuse. Some of the abuses you may know because they are photos, videos or characters, but most of abuse results from governmental or commercial organizations. See what can be extracted from them: Personal interests, friendships & affiliations, wants, beliefs, thoughts, and activities. I believe most of the time, these information is not related to public security.

Now I have to correct my statement in the post “Privacy issues”: The second and third type of privacy issues should be considered together, it’s obviously that some governmental organizations are the largest abuser of these techniques.

Again, I will discuss “Surveillance camerars” which was already heavily discussed in the previous post. There are three example I cited from the website of “Surveillance” which I mentioned above: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance)

“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a research project called Combat Zones That See that will link up cameras across a city to a centralized monitoring station, identify and track individuals and vehicles as they move through the city, and report “suspicious” activity (such as waving arms, looking side-to-side, standing in a group, etc).^[33]

At Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, police in Tampa Bay, Florida, used Identix’s facial recognition software, FaceIt, to scan the crowd for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event.^[34] (it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants)^[35]

Governments often initially claim that cameras are meant to be used for traffic control, but many of them end up using them for general surveillance. For example, Washington, D.C. had 5000 “traffic” cameras installed under this premise, and then after they were all in place, networked them all together and then granted access to the Metropolitan Police Department, so that they could perform “day-to-day monitoring”.^[36]”

Maybe you are just a bit uncomfortable if you see someone used Google Earth uploaded a photo showing you are naked in your swimming pool in the garden. But I’m sure you will feel violated when you know your telephone line is taped by someone you know, then what about someone you don’t know, that’s actually happening even daily.

I will finish this post with my statement: “As long as an observation technique is capable to surveil, with its technical and commercial evolving, it’s never far from being abused.”