Mobiles used to surveil shoppers..

Times Online: "Customers in shopping centres are having their every move tracked by a new type of surveillance that listens in on the whisperings of their mobile phones.

The technology can tell when people enter a shopping centre, what stores they visit, how long they remain there, and what route they take as they walked around.

The device cannot access personal details about a person’s identity or contacts, but privacy campaigners expressed concern about potential intrusion should the data fall into the wrong hands."


Seems like this would be easy enough to correlate with time-coded surveillance video on premises... Speaking of which, aren't they already doing this with the cameras?

Windows Vista streams personal data to Microsoft

Softpedia: "Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft. In this context, a program such as the Windows Genuine Advantage is the last of your concerns. In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company. "

So on the plus side, Microsoft is pretty open about the fact that they're watching you - although we'd wager that most Vista users are utterly unaware that a steady stream of personal info is phoning home. Is it a spyware OS? Maybe. Maybe not. We're not using it, so we don't really care.

The real question is "who does your computer, your property, serve? You, or others?"

AT&T expands domestic surveillance to include 'copyright violations'...

Via 27BStroke6: "AT&T, one of the nation's largest ISPs and internet backbone providers, is now working with Hollywood and the recording industry to create a network-based solution to police copyright infringement, according to the Los Angeles Times."

Well, since they have the deep packet inspection technologies riding on the backbone, and since their collaboration with the NSA (and the tech used) is in the open, why not resell the service... Discounting the invasive nature of sniffing customer's (and potentially non-customer's) internet traffic, there's the issue of privacy, security, false positives, and of course, the ever-present issue that an IP address doesn't equal identity. Will they start filtering porn next? Or spam? Or offers from competing ISPs?

Once they've demonstrated the capability, will they be compelled to try to identify and block fraud, threats, or other activities? What about corporate data? What about legitimate fair use of copyright works (e.g. streaming MP3s of CDs you own from your home PC to your work PC? Or, god forbid Trent Reznor tries to upload one of his own tracks to his web site)...

And will it all be moot once this hits the public eye, and session encryption tools like Tor become more mainstream? Blah.

AT&T sucks. Seriously. They should be ashamed of spying on their own customers - and AT&T customers suck too. At least the ones who continue to subscribe to AT&T services knowing the open hostility that AT&T exhibits toward its customers.


Oh, and in related AT&T wholesale surveillance news, The SpyRoom docs have been released. Also from Wired: "A civil liberties group suing telecom giant AT&T for allegedly installing illegal secret surveillance rooms in its internet facilities at the behest of the National Security Agency published substantial portions of long-sealed case documents Tuesday."