117-401: Stalking is unwanted and/or repeated surveillance or contact by an individual or group toward another person. Stalking behaviors are interrelated to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person or monitoring them. The term stalking is used with some differing definitions in psychiatry and psychology , as well as in some legal jurisdictions as a term for
234-547: A U.S. Department of Justice special report a significant number of people reporting stalking incidents claim that they had been stalked by more than one person, with 18.2% reporting that they were stalked by two people, 13.1% reporting that they had been stalked by three or more. The report did not break down these cases into numbers of victims who claimed to have been stalked by several people individually, and by people acting in concert. A question asked of respondents reporting three or more stalkers by polling personnel about whether
351-402: A criminal offense . According to a 2002 report by the U.S. National Center for Victims of Crime , "virtually any unwanted contact between two people that directly or indirectly communicates a threat or places the victim in fear can be considered stalking", although the rights afforded to victims may vary depending on jurisdiction. A 1995 research paper titled "Stalking Strangers and Lovers"
468-578: A $ 350 million grant towards the development of the Domain Awareness System , which is an interconnected system of sensors including 18,000 CCTV cameras used for continual surveillance of the city by both police officers and artificial intelligence systems . In the United Kingdom , the vast majority of video surveillance cameras are not operated by government bodies, but by private individuals or companies, especially to monitor
585-554: A bank machine, payment by credit card, use of a phone card, call from home, checked out library book, rented video, or otherwise complete recorded transaction generates an electronic record. Public records—such as birth, court, tax and other records—are increasingly being digitized and made available online. In addition, due to laws like CALEA , web traffic and online purchases are also available for profiling. Electronic record-keeping makes data easily collectable, storable, and accessible—so that high-volume, efficient aggregation and analysis
702-731: A centralized database and monitoring station, which will, upon completion of the project, contain a picture of the face of every person in China: over 1.3 billion people. Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China's "Information Security Technology" office (which is in charge of the project), credits the surveillance systems in the United States and the U.K. as the inspiration for what he is doing with the Golden Shield Project. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
819-431: A certain response. While the vengeance stalker's motive is "to get even" with the other person whom he/she perceives has done some wrong to them (e.g., an employee who believes is fired without justification from a job by a superior), the political stalker intends to accomplish a political agenda, also using threats and intimidation to force the target to refrain or become involved in some particular activity regardless of
936-471: A common belief that monitoring can increase productivity, it can also create consequences such as increasing chances of deviant behavior and creating punishments that are not equitable to their actions. Additionally, monitoring can cause resistance and backlash because it insinuates an employer's suspicion and lack of trust. Data mining is the application of statistical techniques and programmatic algorithms to discover previously unnoticed relationships within
1053-454: A complex mathematical algorithm that is unique to an individual phone, and is inaccessible to Apple. The encryption feature on the iPhone 6 has drawn criticism from FBI director James B. Comey and other law enforcement officials since even lawful requests to access user content on the iPhone 6 will result in Apple supplying "gibberish" data that requires law enforcement personnel to either break
1170-680: A database known as " Pinwale ", which stores and indexes large numbers of emails of both American citizens and foreigners. Additionally, the NSA runs a program known as PRISM , which is a data mining system that gives the United States government direct access to information from technology companies . Through accessing this information, the government is able to obtain search history, emails, stored information, live chats, file transfers, and more. This program generated huge controversies in regards to surveillance and privacy, especially from U.S. citizens. The official and unofficial tapping of telephone lines
1287-411: A form of surveillance. A byproduct of surveillance is that it can unjustifiably violate people's privacy and is often criticized by civil liberties activists. Democracies may have laws that seek to restrict governmental and private use of surveillance, whereas authoritarian governments seldom have any domestic restrictions. Espionage is by definition covert and typically illegal according to
SECTION 10
#17327808659231404-572: A further compensation scheme for those affected, and a wider debate on the Home Office hostile environment policy . Aderonke Apata , a Nigerian LGBT activist , made two asylum claims that were both rejected by the Home Office in 2014 and on 1 April 2015 respectively, due to her previously having been in a relationship with a man and having children with that man. In 2014, Apata said that she would send an explicit video of herself to
1521-407: A lifetime prevalence of 11% (women: 17%, men: 3%). Further results include: 86% of stalking victims were female, 81% of the stalkers were male. Women were mainly stalked by men (88%) while men were almost equally stalked by men and women (60% male stalkers). 19% of the stalking victims reported that they were still being stalked at the time of study participation ( point prevalence rate: 2%). To 70% of
1638-553: A lifetime prevalence of 12% in England and Wales (16% female, 7% males). In 2010/11, 57% of stalking victims were found to be female, and 43% were male. According to a paper by staff from the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre , a unit established to deal with people with fixations on public figures, 86% of a sample group of 100 people assessed by them appeared to them to have a psychotic illness ; 57% of
1755-628: A member of the Stalking Case Assessment Team (SCAT), special unit within the San Diego District Attorney's Office, hundreds of cases involving what he called and typed "terrestrial" and " cyberstalking " between 1995 and 2002. This research culminated in one of the most comprehensive books written to date on the subject. Published by CRC Press, Inc. in August 2001, it is considered the "gold standard" as
1872-526: A mistaken belief that another person loves them ( erotomania ), or that they need rescuing. Stalking can consist of an accumulation of a series of actions which, by themselves, can be legal, such as calling on the phone, sending gifts, or sending emails. Stalkers may use overt and covert intimidation, threats and violence to frighten their victims. They may engage in vandalism and property damage or make physical attacks that are meant to frighten. Less common are sexual assaults . Intimate-partner stalkers are
1989-413: A mobile phone (and thus the person carrying it) can be determined easily even when the phone is not being used, using a technique known as multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone. The legality of such techniques has been questioned in the United States, in particular whether a court warrant
2106-463: A more traditional conjunctive dating relationship. Based on work with stalking victims for eight years in Australia, Mullen and Pathé identified different types of stalking victims, characterized by prior relationship with the stalker. These are: Although stalking is a gender-neutral behavior, studies confirm that the majority of victims are female and that the primary perpetrators are male. As for
2223-435: A person or a place or an idea—comprise a wider group of persons that may be problematic in ways that seem similar to stalking. Some of these people get extruded from their organizations—they may get hospitalized or fired or let go if their behavior is defined in terms of illegal stalking, but many others do good or even excellent work in their organizations and appear to have just one focus of tenacious obsession. Cyberstalking
2340-413: A person's emotional state based on an analysis of their facial expressions, how fast they are talking, the tone and pitch of their voice, their posture, and other behavioral traits. This might be used for instance to see if a person's behavior is suspect (looking around furtively, "tense" or "angry" facial expressions, waving arms, etc.). A more recent development is DNA profiling , which looks at some of
2457-604: A person's facial features to accurately identify them, usually from surveillance video. Both the Department of Homeland Security and DARPA are heavily funding research into facial recognition systems. The Information Processing Technology Office ran a program known as Human Identification at a Distance which developed technologies that are capable of identifying a person at up to 500 ft (150 m) by their facial features. Another form of behavioral biometrics, based on affective computing , involves computers recognizing
SECTION 20
#17327808659232574-471: A reference to stalking crimes, victim protection, safety planning, security and threat assessment. The 2002 National Victim Association Academy defines an additional form of stalking: The vengeance/terrorist stalker . Both the vengeance stalker and terrorist stalker (the latter sometimes called the political stalker) do not, in contrast with some of the aforementioned types of stalkers, seek a personal relationship with their victims but rather force them to emit
2691-470: A representative survey in Mannheim , a middle-sized German city, and reported a lifetime prevalence of having been stalked of almost 12%. In India, a stalking case is reported every 55 minutes. Most cases are not reported as they are not considered criminal enough. Tjaden and Thoennes reported a lifetime prevalence (being stalked) of 8% in females and 2% in males (depending on how strict the definition) in
2808-670: A searchable database , and by video analysis software (such as VIRAT and HumanID ). The amount of footage is also drastically reduced by motion sensors which record only when motion is detected. With cheaper production techniques, surveillance cameras are simple and inexpensive enough to be used in home security systems, and for everyday surveillance. Video cameras are one of the most common methods of surveillance. As of 2016, there are about 350 million surveillance cameras worldwide. About 65% of these cameras are installed in Asia. The growth of CCTV has been slowing in recent years. In 2018, China
2925-627: A variety of personality disorders (such as antisocial , borderline , or narcissistic ). The nonpsychotic stalkers' pursuit of victims is primarily angry, vindictive, focused, often including projection of blame , obsession , dependency , minimization , denial , and jealousy . Conversely, only 10% of stalkers had an erotomanic delusional disorder. In "A Study of Stalkers" Mullen et al. (2000) identified five types of stalkers: In addition to Mullen et al., Joseph A. Davis, Ph.D., an American researcher, crime analyst, and university psychology professor at San Diego State University investigated, as
3042-449: A variety of behaviour such as domestic and inter-neighbour disputes. It is rarely used for stalking as portrayed by the media since only a small minority of cases in the survey involved such behaviour." Disruptions in daily life necessary to escape the stalker, including changes in employment , residence and phone numbers, take a toll on the victim's well-being and may lead to a sense of isolation. According to Lamber Royakkers: Stalking
3159-411: Is a form of mental assault, in which the perpetrator repeatedly, unwantedly, and disruptively breaks into the life-world of the victim, with whom they have no relationship (or no longer have). Moreover, the separated acts that make up the intrusion cannot by themselves cause the mental abuse, but do taken together (cumulative effect). Stalking has also been described as a form of close relationship between
3276-401: Is a technology that measures and analyzes human physical and/or behavioral characteristics for authentication, identification, or screening purposes. Examples of physical characteristics include fingerprints, DNA, and facial patterns. Examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include gait (a person's manner of walking) or voice. Facial recognition is the use of the unique configuration of
3393-481: Is able to install software, such as the FBI's Magic Lantern and CIPAV , on a computer system, they can easily gain unauthorized access to this data. Such software could be installed physically or remotely. Another form of computer surveillance, known as van Eck phreaking , involves reading electromagnetic emanations from computing devices in order to extract data from them at distances of hundreds of meters. The NSA runs
3510-593: Is an example of such a network. One common form of surveillance is to create maps of social networks based on data from social networking sites such as Facebook , MySpace , Twitter as well as from traffic analysis information from phone call records such as those in the NSA call database , and others. These social network "maps" are then data mined to extract useful information such as personal interests, friendships & affiliations, wants, beliefs, thoughts, and activities. Many U.S. government agencies such as
3627-448: Is due in part to overlapping between accepted courtship behaviors and stalking behaviors. Context must be relied on to determine if a specific action is a stalking behavior. Having been used since at least the 16th century to refer to a prowler or a poacher ( Oxford English Dictionary ), the term stalker was initially used by media in the 20th century to describe people who pester and harass others, initially with specific reference to
Stalking - Misplaced Pages Continue
3744-628: Is far too much data on the Internet for human investigators to manually search through all of it. Therefore, automated Internet surveillance computers sift through the vast amount of intercepted Internet traffic to identify and report to human investigators the traffic that is considered interesting or suspicious. This process is regulated by targeting certain "trigger" words or phrases, visiting certain types of web sites, or communicating via email or online chat with suspicious individuals or groups. Billions of dollars per year are spent by agencies, such as
3861-553: 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.). At Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, police in Tampa, Florida, used Identix's facial recognition software, FaceIt, to scan
3978-405: Is installing automated facial recognition and license plate recognition devices in its squad cars, and providing handheld face scanners, which officers will use to identify people while on patrol. Facial thermographs are in development, which allow machines to identify certain emotions in people such as fear or stress, by measuring the temperature generated by blood flow to different parts of
4095-732: Is possible at significantly lower costs. UK Home Office The Home Office ( HO ), also known (especially in official papers and when referred to in Parliament) as the Home Department , is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom . It is responsible for immigration , security , and law and order . As such, it is responsible for policing in England and Wales, fire and rescue services in England, Border Force , visas and immigration , and
4212-404: Is required. Records for one carrier alone (Sprint), showed that in a given year federal law enforcement agencies requested customer location data 8 million times. In response to customers' privacy concerns in the post Edward Snowden era, Apple's iPhone 6 has been designed to disrupt investigative wiretapping efforts. The phone encrypts e-mails, contacts, and photos with a code generated by
4329-399: Is the monitoring of a person or group's behavior by a corporation. The data collected is most often used for marketing purposes or sold to other corporations, but is also regularly shared with government agencies. It can be used as a form of business intelligence , which enables the corporation to better tailor their products and/or services to be desirable by their customers. Although there is
4446-492: Is the use of computers or other electronic technology to facilitate stalking. In Davis (2001), Lucks identified a separate category of stalkers who instead of a terrestrial means, prefer to perpetrate crimes against their targeted victims through electronic and online means. Amongst college students, Ménard and Pincus found that male stalkers were likely to have a high score of sexual abuse as children and narcissistic vulnerability. Men were more likely to become stalkers. Out of
4563-558: Is used by citizens, for instance for protecting their neighborhoods. It is widely used by governments for intelligence gathering, including espionage, prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or object, or the investigation of crime. It is also used by criminal organizations to plan and commit crimes, and by businesses to gather intelligence on criminals, their competitors, suppliers or customers. Religious organizations charged with detecting heresy and heterodoxy may also carry out surveillance. Auditors carry out
4680-679: Is widespread. In the United States for instance, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires that all telephone and VoIP communications be available for real-time wiretapping by Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Two major telecommunications companies in the U.S.— AT&T Inc. and Verizon —have contracts with the FBI, requiring them to keep their phone call records easily searchable and accessible for Federal agencies, in return for $ 1.8 million per year. Between 2003 and 2005,
4797-538: Is working on plans to build up a fleet of surveillance UAVs ranging from micro-aerial vehicles to full-size drones , to be used by police forces throughout the U.K. In addition to their surveillance capabilities, MAVs are capable of carrying tasers for " crowd control ", or weapons for killing enemy combatants. Programs such as the Heterogeneous Aerial Reconnaissance Team program developed by DARPA have automated much of
Stalking - Misplaced Pages Continue
4914-616: The Criminal Code , titled "criminal harassment", addresses acts which are termed "stalking" in many other jurisdictions. The provisions of the section came into force in August 1993 with the intent of further strengthening laws protecting women. It is a hybrid offence , which may be punishable upon summary conviction or as an indictable offence , the latter of which may carry a prison term of up to ten years. Section 264 has withstood Charter challenges. The Chief, Policing Services Program, for Statistics Canada has stated: ... of
5031-733: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are investing heavily in research involving social network analysis. The intelligence community believes that the biggest threat to U.S. power comes from decentralized, leaderless, geographically dispersed groups of terrorists , subversives , extremists , and dissidents . These types of threats are most easily countered by finding important nodes in
5148-702: The Great Offices of State ; it has been held by Yvette Cooper since July 2024. The Home Office is managed from day to day by a civil servant , the Permanent Under-Secretary of State of the Home Office . The expenditure, administration, and policy of the Home Office are scrutinised by the Home Affairs Select Committee . The Home Office is headed by the Home Secretary , a Cabinet minister, supported by
5265-535: The Information Awareness Office , or companies such as Verint , and Narus , which search for certain words or phrases, to decide whether to dedicate a human agent to the call. Law enforcement and intelligence services in the United Kingdom and the United States possess technology to activate the microphones in cell phones remotely, by accessing phones' diagnostic or maintenance features in order to listen to conversations that take place near
5382-581: The NSA has been taking advantage of this ambiguity in the law by collecting metadata on "at least hundreds of millions" of "incidental" targets from around the world. The NSA uses an analytic tool known as CO-TRAVELER in order to track people whose movements intersect and to find any hidden connections with persons of interest. The Snowden leaks have also revealed that the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) can access information collected by
5499-458: The NSA , the FBI and the now-defunct Information Awareness Office , to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems such as Carnivore , NarusInsight , and ECHELON to intercept and analyze all of this data to extract only the information which is useful to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Computers can be a surveillance target because of the personal data stored on them. If someone
5616-461: The NSA call database , and extract "communities of interest"—groups of people who call each other regularly, or groups that regularly visit certain sites on the Internet. AT&T originally built the system to develop "marketing leads", but the FBI has regularly requested such information from phone companies such as AT&T without a warrant, and, after using the data, stores all information received in its own databases, regardless of whether or not
5733-623: The Security Service (MI5) . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs , counterterrorism , and immigration . It was formerly responsible for His Majesty's Prison Service and the National Probation Service , but these have been transferred to the Ministry of Justice . The Cabinet minister responsible for the department is the Home Secretary , a post considered one of
5850-584: The United States Department of Justice also reports that "Males were as likely to report being stalked by a male as by a female offender. 43% of male stalking victims stated that the offender was female, while 41% of male victims stated that the offender was another male. Female victims of stalking were significantly more likely to be stalked by a male (67%) rather than a female (24%) offender." This report provides considerable data by gender and race about both stalking and harassment, obtained via
5967-705: The 10,756 incidents of criminal harassment reported to police in 2006, 1,429 of these involved more than one accused. In China, simple stalking was treated as a kind of minor offence when it amounted to harassment, so stalkers were usually punished by a small fine or less than 10 days detention under the Public Security Administration Punishment Law. According to the Tort Liability Law, infringement of citizens' privacy shall be subject to tort liability. For stalkers to spy on, secretly photograph, eavesdrop on or spread
SECTION 50
#17327808659236084-615: The 1950s. The United States Department of Homeland Security is in the process of testing UAVs to patrol the skies over the United States for the purposes of critical infrastructure protection , border patrol, " transit monitoring ", and general surveillance of the U.S. population. Miami-Dade police department ran tests with a vertical take-off and landing UAV from Honeywell , which is planned to be used in SWAT operations. Houston's police department has been testing fixed-wing UAVs for use in "traffic control". The United Kingdom , as well,
6201-416: The 2006 Supplemental Victimization Survey (SVS), by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Department of Justice . In an article in the journal Sex Roles , Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling discusses how gender plays a role in the difference between stalkers and victims. She says, "gender is associated with the types of emotional reactions that are experienced by recipients of stalking related events, including
6318-478: The FBI sent out more than 140,000 " National Security Letters " ordering phone companies to hand over information about their customers' calling and Internet histories. About half of these letters requested information on U.S. citizens. Human agents are not required to monitor most calls. Speech-to-text software creates machine-readable text from intercepted audio, which is then processed by automated call-analysis programs, such as those developed by agencies such as
6435-584: The Home Office had its offices in what is now the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Main Building on King Charles Street, off Whitehall . From 1978 to 2004, the Home Office was then located at 50 Queen Anne's Gate , a Brutalist office block in Westminster designed by Sir Basil Spence , close to St James's Park tube station . Many functions, however, were devolved to offices in other parts of London, and
6552-411: The Home Office to prove her sexuality. This resulted in her asylum bid gaining widespread support, with multiple petitions created in response, which gained hundreds of thousands of signatures combined. On 8 August 2017, after a thirteen-year legal battle and after a new appeal from Apata was scheduled for late July, she was granted refugee status in the United Kingdom by the Home Office. Until 1978,
6669-567: The Home Office. The initial responsibilities were: Responsibilities were subsequently changed over the years that followed: The Home Office retains a variety of functions that have not found a home elsewhere and sit oddly with the main law-and-order focus of the department, such as regulation of British Summer Time . On 18 July 2012, the Public and Commercial Services Union announced that thousands of Home Office employees would go on strike over jobs, pay and other issues. The union called off
6786-498: The Metropolitan Police Department, so they could perform "day-to-day monitoring". The development of centralized networks of CCTV cameras watching public areas—linked to computer databases of people's pictures and identity ( biometric data), able to track people's movements throughout the city, and identify whom they have been with—has been argued by some to present a risk to civil liberties . Trapwire
6903-710: The NSA on American citizens. Once the data has been collected, the GCHQ can hold on to it for up to two years. The deadline can be extended with the permission of a "senior UK official". Surveillance cameras, or security cameras, are video cameras used for the purpose of observing an area. They are often connected to a recording device or IP network , and may be watched by a security guard or law enforcement officer . Cameras and recording equipment used to be relatively expensive and required human personnel to monitor camera footage, but analysis of footage has been made easier by automated software that organizes digital video footage into
7020-501: The National Violence Against Women Survey. Every Australian state enacted laws prohibiting stalking during the 1990s, with Queensland being the first state to do so in 1994. The laws vary slightly from state to state, with Queensland's laws having the broadest scope, and South Australian laws the most restrictive. Punishments vary from a maximum of 10 years imprisonment in some states, to a fine for
7137-597: The UK at 4.2 million (of which 500,000 were in Greater London ). More reliable estimates put the number of private and local government operated cameras in the United Kingdom at around 1.85 million in 2011. In the Netherlands, one example city where there are cameras is The Hague. There, cameras are placed in city districts in which the most illegal activity is concentrated. Examples are the red-light districts and
SECTION 60
#17327808659237254-620: The United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, strangers are considered more dangerous when it comes to stalking than a former partner. Media also plays an important role due to portrayals of male stalking behavior as acceptable, influencing men into thinking it is normal. Since gender roles are socially constructed, sometimes men do not report stalking. She also mentions coercive control theory; "future research will be needed to determine if this theory can predict how changes in social structures and gender-specific norms will result in variations in rates of stalking for men versus women over time in
7371-445: The United States and across the world." Psychologists often group individuals who stalk into two categories: psychotic and nonpsychotic. Some stalkers may have pre-existing psychotic disorders such as delusional disorder , schizoaffective disorder , or schizophrenia . However, most stalkers are nonpsychotic and may exhibit disorders or neuroses such as major depression , adjustment disorder , or substance dependence , as well as
7488-412: The aerial surveillance process. They have developed systems consisting of large teams drone planes that pilot themselves, automatically decide who is "suspicious" and how to go about monitoring them, coordinate their activities with other drones nearby, and notify human operators if something suspicious is occurring. This greatly increases the amount of area that can be continuously monitored, while reducing
7605-597: The cases they studied there was more than one stalker, and 40% of the victims said that friends or family of their stalker had also been involved. In 15% of cases, the victim was unaware of any reason for the harassment. Over a quarter of all stalking and harassment victims do not know their stalkers in any capacity. About a tenth responding to the SVS did not know the identities of their stalkers. 11% of victims said they had been stalked for five years or more. In 1999, Pathe, Mullen and Purcell wrote that popular interest in stalking
7722-459: The city of Chicago , Illinois, recently used a $ 5.1 million Homeland Security grant to install an additional 250 surveillance cameras, and connect them to a centralized monitoring center, along with its preexisting network of over 2000 cameras, in a program known as Operation Virtual Shield . Speaking in 2009, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley announced that Chicago would have a surveillance camera on every street corner by 2016. New York City received
7839-580: The code themselves or to get the code from the phone's owner. Because the Snowden leaks demonstrated that American agencies can access phones anywhere in the world, privacy concerns in countries with growing markets for smart phones have intensified, providing a strong incentive for companies like Apple to address those concerns in order to secure their position in the global market. Apple has made several moves to emphasize their concern for privacy, in order to appeal to more consumers. In 2011, Apple stopped
7956-421: The context of automatic decision-making. Aerial surveillance is the gathering of surveillance, usually visual imagery or video, from an airborne vehicle—such as an unmanned aerial vehicle , helicopter , or spy plane . Military surveillance aircraft use a range of sensors (e.g. radar) to monitor the battlefield. Digital imaging technology, miniaturized computers, and numerous other technological advances over
8073-638: The country, notably the headquarters of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate in Croydon. In 2005, the Home Office moved to a new main office designed by Sir Terry Farrell at 2 Marsham Street , Westminster, on the site of the demolished Marsham Towers building of the Department of the Environment . For external shots of its fictional Home Office, the TV series Spooks uses an aerial shot of
8190-465: The crowd for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event (it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants). 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 5,000 "traffic" cameras installed under this premise, and then after they were all in place, networked them all together and then granted access to
8307-399: The current judicial system in mainland China, there is a lack of judicial protection for individuals facing illegal stalking, harassment, surveillance, and other stalking behaviors. Even celebrities may not be able to solve it for a long time when faced with stalking of illegitimate meals. Many cases across China have shown that ordinary people who have been stalked may still be unable to solve
8424-599: The data. Data profiling in this context is the process of assembling information about a particular individual or group in order to generate a profile — that is, a picture of their patterns and behavior. Data profiling can be an extremely powerful tool for psychological and social network analysis . A skilled analyst can discover facts about a person that they might not even be consciously aware of themselves. Economic (such as credit card purchases) and social (such as telephone calls and emails) transactions in modern society create large amounts of stored data and records. In
8541-412: The degree of fear experienced by the victim." In addition, she hypothesizes that gender may also affect how police handle a case of stalking, how the victim copes with the situation, and how the stalker might view their behavior. She discusses how victims might view certain forms of stalking as normal because of gender socialization influences on the acceptability of certain behaviors. She emphasizes that in
8658-968: The department's senior civil servant, the permanent secretary . The Home Office comprises eleven directorates that help fulfil the department's responsibilities. As of April 2024, the Home Office works with the following agencies and public bodies: In the financial year 2022-2023, the Home Office had a total budget of £20.3 billion. The Home Office ministers are as follows, with cabinet ministers in bold. King Charles III [REDACTED] William, Prince of Wales [REDACTED] Charles III ( King-in-Council ) [REDACTED] Starmer ministry ( L ) Keir Starmer ( L ) Angela Rayner ( L ) ( King-in-Parliament ) [REDACTED] Charles III [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] The Lord Reed The Lord Hodge Andrew Bailey Monetary Policy Committee The Department outlined its aims for this Parliament in its Business Plan, which
8775-597: The entitlement of the narcissistic personality, and the persistent jealousy of the paranoid personality. In contrast, resentful stalkers demonstrate an almost "pure culture of persecution ", with delusional disorders of the paranoid type, paranoid personalities, and paranoid schizophrenia . One of the uncertainties in understanding the origins of stalking is that the concept is now widely understood in terms of specific behaviors which are found to be offensive or illegal. As discussed above, these specific (apparently stalking) behaviors may have multiple motivations. In addition,
8892-946: The face. Law enforcement officers believe that this has potential for them to identify when a suspect is nervous, which might indicate that they are hiding something, lying, or worried about something. In his paper in Ethics and Information Technology , Avi Marciano maps the harms caused by biometric surveillance, traces their theoretical origins, and brings these harms together in one integrative framework to elucidate their cumulative power. Marciano proposes four types of harms: Unauthorized use of bodily information, denial or limitation of access to physical spaces, bodily social sorting, and symbolic ineligibility through construction of marginality and otherness. Biometrics' social power, according to Marciano, derives from three main features: their complexity as "enigmatic technologies", their objective-scientific image, and their increasing agency, particularly in
9009-482: The harassment of celebrities by strangers who were described as being "obsessed". This use of the word appears to have been coined by the tabloid press in the United States . With time, the meaning of stalking changed and incorporated individuals being harassed by their former partners. Pathé and Mullen describe stalking as "a constellation of behaviours in which an individual inflicts upon another repeated unwanted intrusions and communications". Stalking can be defined as
9126-513: The information was ever useful in an investigation. Some people believe that the use of social networking sites is a form of "participatory surveillance", where users of these sites are essentially performing surveillance on themselves, putting detailed personal information on public websites where it can be viewed by corporations and governments. In 2008, about 20% of employers reported using social networking sites to collect personal data on prospective or current employees. Biometric surveillance
9243-421: The interiors of shops and businesses. According to 2011 Freedom of Information Act requests, the total number of local government operated CCTV cameras was around 52,000 over the entirety of the UK. The prevalence of video surveillance in the UK is often overstated due to unreliable estimates being requoted; for example one report in 2002 extrapolated from a very small sample to estimate the number of cameras in
9360-440: The legal definition of harassment (e.g., an action such as sending a text is not usually illegal, but is illegal when frequently repeated to an unwilling recipient). In fact, United Kingdom law states the incident only has to happen twice when the harasser should be aware their behavior is unacceptable (e.g., two phone calls to a stranger, two gifts, following the victim then phoning them, etc.). Cultural norms and meaning affect
9477-418: The lowest severity of stalking in others. Australian anti-stalking laws have some notable features. Unlike many US jurisdictions they do not require the victim to have felt fear or distress as a result of the behaviour, only that a reasonable person would have felt this way. In some states, the anti-stalking laws operate extra-territorially, meaning that an individual can be charged with stalking if either they or
9594-448: The major markers in the body's DNA to produce a match. The FBI is spending $ 1 billion to build a new biometric database, which will store DNA, facial recognition data, iris/retina (eye) data, fingerprints, palm prints, and other biometric data of people living in the United States. The computers running the database are contained in an underground facility about the size of two American football fields . The Los Angeles Police Department
9711-472: The most dangerous type. In the UK, for example, most stalkers are former partners, and evidence indicates that stalking facilitated by mental illness (often covered by the media) accounts for only a minority of cases of alleged stalking. A UK Home Office research study on the use of the Protection from Harassment Act stated: "The study found that the Protection from Harassment Act is being used to deal with
9828-690: The network, and removing them. To do this requires a detailed map of the network. Jason Ethier of Northeastern University, in his study of modern social network analysis, said the following of the Scalable Social Network Analysis Program developed by the Information Awareness Office : The purpose of the SSNA algorithms program is to extend techniques of social network analysis to assist with distinguishing potential terrorist cells from legitimate groups of people.... In order to be successful SSNA will require information on
9945-434: The number of human operators required. Thus a swarm of automated, self-directing drones can automatically patrol a city and track suspicious individuals, reporting their activities back to a centralized monitoring station. In addition, researchers also investigate possibilities of autonomous surveillance by large groups of micro aerial vehicles stabilized by decentralized bio-inspired swarming rules. Corporate surveillance
10062-429: The opponent broke into the home with arms and was killed by victim's parents. In the social culture of mainland China, the "stalker" type of courtship is highly respected, that is, as the saying goes, "good women (martyrs) are afraid of stalkers". Literary works also publicly promote such behaviors, and stalking between opposite sexes is thus beautified as courtship. In real life, this type of behavior may even occur when
10179-450: The parties, albeit a disjunctive one where the two participants have opposing goals rather than cooperative goals. One participant, often a woman, likely wishes to end the relationship entirely, but may find herself unable to easily do so. The other participant, often but not always a man, wishes to escalate the relationship. It has been described as a close relationship because the duration, frequency, and intensity of contact may rival that of
10296-472: The past decade have contributed to rapid advances in aerial surveillance hardware such as micro-aerial vehicles , forward-looking infrared , and high-resolution imagery capable of identifying objects at extremely long distances. For instance, the MQ-9 Reaper , a U.S. drone plane used for domestic operations by the Department of Homeland Security , carries cameras that are capable of identifying an object
10413-402: The past, this data was documented in paper records, leaving a " paper trail ", or was simply not documented at all. Correlation of paper-based records was a laborious process—it required human intelligence operators to manually dig through documents, which was time-consuming and incomplete, at best. But today many of these records are electronic, resulting in an " electronic trail ". Every use of
10530-403: The person who holds the phone. The StingRay tracker is an example of one of these tools used to monitor cell phone usage in the United States and the United Kingdom. Originally developed for counterterrorism purposes by the military, they work by broadcasting powerful signals that cause nearby cell phones to transmit their IMSI number , just as they would to normal cell phone towers. Once
10647-427: The personality characteristics that are often discussed as antecedent to stalking may also produce behavior that is not conventionally defined as stalking. Some research suggests there is a spectrum of what might be called "obsessed following behavior." People who complain obsessively and for years, about a perceived wrong or wrong-doer, when no one else can perceive the injury—and people who cannot or will not "let go" of
10764-565: The phone is connected to the device, there is no way for the user to know that they are being tracked. The operator of the stingray is able to extract information such as location, phone calls, and text messages, but it is widely believed that the capabilities of the StingRay extend much further. A lot of controversy surrounds the StingRay because of its powerful capabilities and the secrecy that surrounds it. Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. The geographical location of
10881-400: The privacy of others, under Article 42 of the Public Security Administration Punishment Law clearly stipulates that they can be detained for not more than five days or fined not more than five hundred yuan, and if the circumstances are more serious, they can be detained for not less than five days and not more than ten days, and can be fined not more than five hundred yuan. Unfortunately, under
10998-564: The problem after they seek help from the judicial authorities. In the case of Wuhu, Anhui in March 2018, the entangled woman repeatedly rescued the police to no avail and was eventually killed. In the homicide case in Laiyuan, Hebei in July of the same year, women and their families who had been stalked and harassed for a long time also helped the police repeatedly to no avail. It did not end until
11115-533: The proportion of false reports that were due to delusions as 64%. A 2020 study by Sheridan et al. gave figures for lifetime prevalence of perceived gang-stalking at 0.66% for adult women and 0.17% for adult men. According to a study conducted by Purcell, Pathé and Mullen (2002), 23% of the Australian population reported having been stalked. Stieger, Burger and Schild conducted a survey in Austria, revealing
11232-612: The purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing , or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), or interception of electronically transmitted information like Internet traffic . Increasingly, governments may also obtain consumer data through the purchase of online information, effectively expanding surveillance capabilities through commercially available digital records. It can also include simple technical methods, such as human intelligence gathering and postal interception . Surveillance
11349-796: The rules of the observed party, whereas most types of surveillance are overt and are considered legal or legitimate by state authorities. International espionage seems to be common among all types of countries. The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the Internet . In the United States for example, under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act , all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc.) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by federal law enforcement agencies. There
11466-558: The sample group were subsequently admitted to hospital, and 26% treated in the community. A similar retrospective study published in 2009 in Psychological Medicine , based on a sample of threats to the royal family kept by the Metropolitan Police Service over a period of 15 years, suggested that 83.6% of these letter-writers had a serious mental illness. Dressing, Kuehner and Gass conducted
11583-525: The size of a milk carton from altitudes of 30,000 feet (9.1 km), and has forward-looking infrared devices that can detect the heat from a human body at distances of up to 60 kilometers (37 mi). In an earlier instance of commercial aerial surveillance, the Killington Mountain ski resort hired 'eye in the sky' aerial photography of its competitors' parking lots to judge the success of its marketing initiatives as it developed starting in
11700-498: The social interactions of the majority of people around the globe. Since the Defense Department cannot easily distinguish between peaceful citizens and terrorists, it will be necessary for them to gather data on innocent civilians as well as on potential terrorists. AT&T developed a programming language called "Hancock", which is able to sift through enormous databases of phone call and Internet traffic records, such as
11817-452: The stalking was related to co-workers, members of a gang, fraternities, sororities, etc., did not have its responses indicated in the survey results as released by the DOJ. The data for this report was obtained via the 2006 Supplemental Victimization Survey (SVS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Department of Justice. According to a United Kingdom study by Sheridan and Boon, in 5% of
11934-558: The strike; it claimed the department had, consequent to the threat of actions, announced 1,100 new border jobs. The first allegations about the targeting of pre-1973 Caribbean migrants started in 2013. In 2018, the allegations were put to the Home Secretary in the House of Commons , and resulted in the resignation of the then Home Secretary. The Windrush scandal resulted in some British citizens being wrongly deported, along with
12051-480: The train stations. As part of China's Golden Shield Project , several U.S. corporations, including IBM , General Electric , and Honeywell , have been working closely with the Chinese government to install millions of surveillance cameras throughout China , along with advanced video analytics and facial recognition software, which will identify and track individuals everywhere they go. They will be connected to
12168-431: The two parties do not know each other and the stalked person does not know in advance. Through online platforms and other social media, with the help of the convenience of online communication, individuals and institutions directly participate in, promote, and support various "courtship-style" tracing and stalking cases. Surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for
12285-455: The use of permanent device identifiers, and in 2019, they banned the ability of third parties to track on children’s apps. Although the CALEA requires telecommunications companies to build into their systems the ability to carry out a lawful wiretap, the law has not been updated to address the issue of smart phones and requests for access to e-mails and metadata . The Snowden leaks show that
12402-416: The victim are in the relevant state. Most Australian states provide the option of a restraining order in cases of stalking, breach of which is punishable as a criminal offence. There has been relatively little research into Australian court outcomes in stalking cases, although Freckelton (2001) found that in the state of Victoria , most stalkers received fines or community based dispositions. Section 264 of
12519-456: The victim's consent. For example, most prosecutions in this stalking category have been against anti-abortionists who stalk doctors in an attempt to discourage the performance of abortions. Stalkers may fit categories with paranoia disorders . Intimacy-seeking stalkers often have delusional disorders involving erotomanic delusions. With rejected stalkers, the continual clinging to a relationship of an inadequate or dependent person couples with
12636-424: The victims, a January 2009 report from the United States Department of Justice reported the rate of stalking victimization for female was approximately 2% and for male was approximately 0.7%. As for the perpetrators, many studies have shown that approximately 80-90% of stalking perpetrators are male. According to one study, women often target other women, whereas men primarily stalk women. A January 2009 report from
12753-484: The victims, the stalker was known, being a prior intimate partner in 40%, a friend or acquaintance in 23% and a colleague at work in 13% of cases. As a consequence, 72% of the victims reported having changed their lifestyle. 52% of former and ongoing stalking victims reported having a currently impaired ( pathological ) psychological well-being . There was no significant difference between the incidence of stalking in rural and urban areas. In 1998, Budd and Mattinson found
12870-497: The way stalking is defined. Scholars note that the majority of men and women admit engaging in various stalking-like behaviors following a breakup, but stop such behaviors over time, suggesting that "engagement in low levels of unwanted pursuit behaviors for a relatively short amount of time, particularly in the context of a relationship break-up, may be normative for heterosexual dating relationships occurring within U.S. culture." People characterized as stalkers may be accused of having
12987-473: The willful and repeated following, watching or harassing of another person. Unlike other crimes, which usually involve one act, stalking is a series of actions that occur over a period of time. Although stalking is illegal in most areas of the world, some of the actions that contribute to stalking may be legal, such as gathering information, calling someone on the phone, texting, sending gifts, emailing, or instant messaging . They become illegal when they breach
13104-454: The women who participated in their study, 9% were cyberstalkers meanwhile only 4% were overt stalkers. In addition, the male participants revealed the opposite, 16% were overt stalkers while 11% were cyberstalkers. Alcohol and physical abuse both played a role in predicting women's cyberstalking and in men, " preoccupied attachment significantly predicted cyber stalking" while the victims were likely to have an "avoidant attachment". According to
13221-435: Was among the first places to use the term "stalking" to describe the common occurrence of males after a breakup who aggressively pursue their female former partner. Prior to that paper instead of the term "stalking", people more commonly used the terms "female harassment", "obsessive following" or "psychological rape". The difficulties associated with defining this term exactly (or defining it at all) are well documented. This
13338-466: Was promoting false claims. In 2004, Sheridan and Blaauw said that they estimated that 11.5% of claims in a sample of 357 reported claims of stalking were false. According to Sheridan and Blaauw, 70% of false stalking reports were made by people experiencing delusions , stating that "after eight uncertain cases were excluded, the false reporting rate was judged to be 11.5%, with the majority of false victims suffering delusions (70%)." Another study estimated
13455-542: Was published in May 2011, and superseded its Structural Reform Plan. The plan said the department will: The Home Office publishes progress against the plan on the 10 Downing Street website. On 27 March 1782 ; 242 years ago ( 1782-03-27 ) , the Home Office was formed by renaming the existing Southern Department , with all existing staff transferring. On the same day, the Northern Department
13572-740: Was renamed the Foreign Office . To match the new names, there was a transferring of responsibilities between the two Departments of State. All domestic responsibilities (including colonies, previously administered under the Board of Trade ) were moved to the Home Office, and all foreign matters (including the administration of British protectorates ) became the concern of the Foreign Office. Most subsequently created domestic departments (excluding, for instance, those dealing with education) have been formed by splitting responsibilities away from
13689-510: Was reported to have a huge surveillance network of over 170 million CCTV cameras with 400 million new cameras expected to be installed in the next three years, many of which use facial recognition technology . In the United States , the Department of Homeland Security awards billions of dollars per year in Homeland Security grants for local, state, and federal agencies to install modern video surveillance equipment. For example,
#922077