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67-584: Originally titled Human Augmentation Teams , the Strategic Support Branch was established to give DoD an increase of human intelligence capabilities and what was considered by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld an end to "near total dependence on the CIA" for human intelligence. Although the SSB was designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, it

134-578: 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

201-554: 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

268-731: 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)

335-471: 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

402-454: 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

469-680: 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

536-413: 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

603-413: 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

670-604: 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

737-670: 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

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804-401: 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

871-481: 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

938-593: 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

1005-766: Is commanded by high-ranking military officials. Strategic Support teams have about 10 members each, consisting of case officers, linguists, interrogators and other specialists from the Defense Human Intelligence Service , a branch of the DIA . The missions they undertake are secret, but members do not use covert methods like false identities or nationalities. The unit operated secretly in Iraq, Afghanistan and several classified locations for two years. The SSB works directly with United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to add missing capabilities such as

1072-726: Is distinct from more technical intelligence-gathering disciplines, such as signals intelligence (SIGINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT), and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT). HUMINT can be conducted in a variety of ways, including via espionage , reconnaissance , interrogation , witness interviews, or torture . Although associated with military and intelligence agencies , HUMINT can also apply in various civilian sectors such as law enforcement . NATO defines HUMINT as "a category of intelligence derived from information collected and provided by human sources." A typical HUMINT activity consists of interrogations and conversations with persons having access to information. As

1139-553: 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

1206-405: 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

1273-404: 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

1340-414: Is spotting and assessing a target. Surveillance of targets (e.g., military or other establishments, open source or compromised reference documents) sometimes reveals people with potential access to information, but no clear means of approaching them. With this group, a secondary survey is in order. Headquarters may be able to suggest an approach, perhaps through a third party or through resources not known to

1407-626: 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 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

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1474-399: 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

1541-679: 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,

1608-538: 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

1675-733: 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

1742-599: 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

1809-581: 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

1876-458: 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

1943-517: 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

2010-421: The "War on Terror" as ongoing, indefinite, and global in scope. That analysis effectively discards the limitation of the defense secretary's war powers to times and places of imminent combat. Human intelligence (espionage) Human intelligence ( HUMINT , pronounced / ˈ h j uː m ɪ n t / HEW -mint ) is intelligence-gathering by means of human sources and interpersonal communication . It

2077-615: 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,

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2144-566: The Defense Department must report to Congress all "deployment orders", or formal instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to position U.S. forces for combat. But guidelines issued by former Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone state that special operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations... before publication" of a deployment order, rendering notification unnecessary. Pentagon lawyers also define

2211-478: 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

2278-498: 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

2345-710: 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

2412-597: 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

2479-412: 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

2546-459: 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

2613-580: 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

2680-421: 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

2747-501: The context of the United States Armed Forces ' military intelligence , HUMINT activity may involve clandestine activities, however these operations are more closely associated with CIA projects. Both counterintelligence and HUMINT include clandestine human intelligence and its associated operational techniques . Typically, sources of HUMINT generally include: The first steps for recruiting HUMINT sources

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2814-465: 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

2881-599: 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

2948-516: The establishment of the SSB. DoD has decided that it will coordinate its human intelligence missions with the CIA but will not, as in the past, await consent. The Strategic Support Branch was financed using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit authority or appropriation of the United States Congress . The Pentagon hadn't released any details of the unit's operations or even of its existence to Congress until after an article about

3015-946: 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

3082-538: The field station. Italy's AISE uses mainly human intelligence. Covert surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for 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

3149-513: 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

3216-421: 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

3283-448: 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

3350-691: 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 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

3417-420: The name suggests, human intelligence is mostly collected by people and is commonly provided via espionage or some other form of covert surveillance . However, there are also overt methods of collection, such as via interrogation of subjects or simply through interviews. The manner in which HUMINT operations are conducted is dictated by both official protocol and the nature of the source of the information. Within

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3484-690: 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

3551-434: 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

3618-472: 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

3685-402: 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

3752-403: 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

3819-565: 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

3886-438: 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 a form of surveillance. A byproduct of surveillance

3953-434: 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 is used by citizens, for instance for protecting their neighborhoods. It is widely used by governments for intelligence gathering, including espionage, prevention of crime,

4020-459: The secret unit was released by The Washington Post . Pentagon officials emphasized their intention to remain accountable to Congress, but they also asserted that Defense intelligence missions are subject to fewer legal constraints than believed. That assertion involves new interpretations of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which governs the armed services, and Title 50, which governs, among other things, foreign intelligence. Under Title 10, for example,

4087-525: 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

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4154-487: The skill to establish local spy networks and the technology for direct access to national intelligence databases to USSOCOM's special operations units, specifically the special missions units of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Also USSOCOM previously had to receive permission from the CIA to conduct clandestine operations in certain countries, but that was no longer necessary after

4221-429: 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

4288-480: 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

4355-455: 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

4422-407: 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

4489-510: 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,

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