Copyright Roger Clarke, Xamax Consultancy, Canberra Visiting Professor, UNSW, ANU, Uni. of Hong Kong Chair, Australian Privacy Foundation 2nd RNSA Workshop The Social Implications of National Security From Dataveillance to Überveillance 29 October RNSA07 {.html,.ppt} What 'Überveillance' Is And What To Do About It

Copyright What 'Überveillance' Is & What To Do About It AGENDA What's 'Surveillance'? Fundamentals Vignettes Categorisation What's Überveillance? Omni-Surveillance Exaggerated Surveillance Master-Surveillance What Do We Do About Überveillance?

Copyright Surveillance The systematic monitoring or investigation of the actions or communications of one or more persons, directly, or through the monitoring of space or objects Personal Surveillance Focus on an identified person: because of suspicion about that individual for activity deterrence / behaviour repression Mass Surveillance Focus on groups or spaces: to generate suspects for activity deterrence / behaviour repression

Copyright PHYSICAL Surveillance Localised Observation, Listening At Distance (Enhanced Observation, Listening) Image-Amplification Devices (field glasses, infrared binoculars, light amplifiers, satellite cameras) Sound-Amplification Devices (directional microphones) Auto (by means of the Self) Devices that are attached to the person: loosely but reliably ('mil dog-tags', mobile phone) tightly (anklet) embedded

Copyright 'ELECTRONIC' Surveillance 'Speech Surveillance' Mail ‘Covers’, Telephone Interception, Interception: connections monitoring / traffic analysis (who is talking with whom) communications surveillance (who is saying what to whom) 'Experience Surveillance' / 'Behaviour Surveillance' The Web since the early-to-mid-1990s also supports the equivalents of buying books and going to the library The monitoring now being conducted by employers and governments is far more intrusive than before, because it provides access to peoples interests &, by inference, thoughts

Copyright From the Observation of Ephemera To Recording and Analysis What was 'NOW OR NEVER' is now 'SOONER OR LATER' ENABLERS: Image-Recording Sound-Recording Speech-Traffic-Recording Transaction-Recording FACILITATORS : Trail-Generation Trail-Correlation NEW CAPABILITIES: Retrospective Analysis Real-Time Location Real-Time Tracking Predictive Tracking

Copyright Dataveillance The systematic use of personal data systems in the monitoring or investigation of the actions or communications of one or more persons Term first published in Commun. ACM in 1988 Now 22,200 hits on Google 581 hits on Googe Scholar (at least 166 of which do not contain 'Clarke')

Copyright The Modern Forms of Surveillance are Inherently Surreptitious Physical Surveillance at Distance Electronic Speech Surveillance Electronic Experience/Behaviour Surveillance Dataveillance Auto-Surveillance (Apparent but quickly becomes habituated)

Copyright A Surveillance Explosion Was Inevitable Earlier Forms of Surveillance: Labour-Intensive Time-Consuming Expensive =>Economic Disincentive Against Wide Use Modern Forms of Surveillance: Automated Cheaper More Reliable =>The Economic Disincentive Was Overcome

Copyright Surveillance of a PLACE or Location Private Places Where an individual, or two, or perhaps a few, could reasonably expect not to be subject to surveillance by other parties (bedroom, home, toilets,...) Controlled Places Control rooms of nuclear power stations and air traffic; footpaths outside government agencies? at ATMs? railway stations platforms? cinema precincts?? Public Places When behaving in a manner intended to be private (e.g. in the company of family, rather than projecting themselves or their 'public persona' to some kind of 'public')

Copyright Surveillance of SPACES rather than PLACES Electronic surveillance broke the nexus with Place First it became a multi-location phenomenon, e.g. monitoring of both ends of a phone conversation But now many actions and many communications occur in a 'space' rather than 'place' The Space may be Physical The Space may be Figurative: a particular eCommunity (eList, chat, forum) 'cyberspace', 'the blogosphere' the web of ideas inherent in published text, uttered words and recorded behaviour

Copyright Surveillance Vignettes Baby-Monitoring Acute Health Care Staff Movement Monitoring Vehicle Monitoring 'Speed Cameras' Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) Toll-Road Anonymity Denial CCTV... Goods Monitoring Freight Interchange-Points Financial Transaction Tracking Consolidation of Agencies and Databases National Identification Schemes Human-Attached Chips Human-Embedded Chips Continuous Monitoring of Chips Biometrics and Foreigners Biometrics and Australians International Travel Domestic Travel Service Denial Identity Denial

Copyright Categorisation of Surveillance (1)Of What? Person, Object, Space (2)For Whom? Person, Involved Party, Third Party (3) By Whom? Person, Involved Party, Third Party (4) Why? Wellbeing, Evidence, Deterrence (5) How? Physical (visual, aural, at distance, auto-surveillance); Dataveillance (retrospective, real-time, predictive); Communications / Experience; Personal / Mass surveillance (6) Where? Physical, Virtual, Intellectual (7) When? Once, Recurrent, Scattered, Continuous

Copyright 'Überveillance' French 'surveiller' In English since c. 1799, with sinister connotations The Workshop Organisers have combined it with the German prefix ‘über’ Alternative Interpretations Omni-Surveillance Exaggerated Surveillance Master-Surveillance

Copyright Üv as Omni-Surveillance An apocalyptic vision Surveillance across all space and all time (and hence ‘omni-present’) To enable some organisation to be all-seeing and/or all-knowing (and hence ‘omniscient’) To serve the organisation’s desire to be all-powerful (and hence ‘omnipotent’) Personal Überveillance is specific to a person / object Mass Überveillance is a suspicion-generator and a deterrent / behaviour chiller

Copyright Üv as Exaggerated Surveillance Key Examples of exaggerated justification: excessively broad scope instigated for reasons that are minor in comparison with its negative impacts Very substantial real and potential dangers But a breakdown in ‘intrinsic controls’ and seriously deficient ‘extrinsic controls’ 'Business Cases' rather than Cost/Benefit Analyses: one-dimensional, ignoring key stakeholders a justification of a policy position that has already been adopted, cf. an analytical tool

Copyright Terrorism as a Gilt-Edged Excuse for Exaggeration Avoidance of Scrutiny A pseudo-national-security imperative using as catch-cries ‘money-laundering', 'counter-terrorism', 'homeland', 'critical infrastructure protection' The worst form of policy-formation – knee-jerk reaction, bandwagon effect, and sacred cow Ongoing Examples: Mythologies of Biometrics, e.g. US Govt – FRVT (Face Recognition Vendor Test) Aust Govt – ‘Biometrics Institute’ 'Anti-Money-Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing' (AML-CTF) legislation

Copyright Üv as Master Surveillance 'über' translated as 'meta', 'supra' or 'master'-surveillance 1.Consolidation BUT diversity in objectives, data sources, data meaning, data quality 2.Coordination Pressure for harmonisation, e.g. U.S. ‘DHS’ 3.Centralisation Data-flows designed to feed into a single 'master'

Copyright Centralisation The Conventional Free-World Perspective – 'Central Planning' approaches were derided France post-WWII, countries behind the Iron Curtain, Cuba, East Asian Communist regimes The Last Hurrah of Centralised Economic Management Stafford Beer's Cybersyn (Allende’s Chile – ) Inevitable Outcomes: Economic Systems that are ineffective, inefficient and in most cases downright stagnant Social Stasis

Copyright Centralisation as Self-Denying Prophecy Lessons of General Systems Theory Up to a point, many systems exhibit efficiencies of scale, and efficiencies of scope Beyond that point, they become unwieldy, excessively complex, inherently unmanageable Systems of the complexity of national societies and economies are well beyond the flex-point Survival requires flexibility and adaptability They in turn require: loosely coupled elements control through interplay of elements not simple-minded centralised control

Copyright The ‘Free World’ Malaise National Security Extremism Religious Fundamentalist Extremism is real, but matters but far, far less than is pretended ‘Osama bin Laden’ and ‘Al Qaeda’ have triumphed Limited, sporadic attacks in their names stimulated the 'Western', 'democratic' world to eat itself Powerful right-wing institutions have manipulated Parliaments in order to deny the very freedoms on which our world was supposed to be built. Human values have been trampled. Surveillance is rampant We need an antidote to National Security Extremism

Copyright What To Do About 'Überveillance? Bring the surveillance mania back under control Generate countervailing power against the extremism of the national security agencies Both 'countervaillance and 'counterveillance’ Tenets, and Principles

Copyright Counterveillance Tenets Terrorism is not new, and not unusual The 'power to weight ratio' of a single strike has increased (because fewer terrorists can deliver a bigger payload), but this has only limited implications for public policy Reactionary Extremism must not be accepted at face value National security and law enforcement interests must not be granted carte blanche to do whatever they wish Secrecy is not a necessary pre-condition of security It is illegitimate to treat what are really 'public safety' issues as though they were 'national security' matters Counter-Terrorism is not dependent on everyone being limited to a single State-managed identity

Copyright Counterveillance Principles 1.Independent Evaluation of Technology 2.A Moratorium on Technology Deployments 3.Open Information Flows 4.Justification for Proposed Measures 5.Consultation and Participation 6.Evaluation 7.Design Principles 1.Balance 2.Independent Controls 3.Nymity and Multiple Identity 8.Rollback

Copyright Roger Clarke, Xamax Consultancy, Canberra Visiting Professor, UNSW, ANU, Uni. of Hong Kong Chair, Australian Privacy Foundation 2nd RNSA Workshop The Social Implications of National Security From Dataveillance to Überveillance 29 October RNSA07 {.html,.ppt} What 'Überveillance' Is And What To Do About It