Filed under: Civil Liberties, Economy, FreeBritain, Health, Laws & Regulations, News, Police State, Politics, Privacy | Tags: Big Brother, Bluetooth, Britain, Cityware, Daily Mail, Freedom, Liberty, Life, Privacy International, Surveillence, Technology, Totalitarianism, Tracking, UK
Source: Daily Mail
Hello operator? I'm a slave!
Thousands of Britons’ movements have been covertly tracked by scanners placed in streets, pubs and offices for a technology experiment.
The Cityware project run by the University of Bath has secretly placed scanners around the Somerset city, with the first 10 installed 2006. The scanners pick up bluetooth radio signals transmitted from mobile phones and laptops.
In a scene reminiscent of the Will Smith thriller Enemy of the State, it has allowed researchers to map the journeys of individuals without their knowledge or consent.
The data is being used in a project called ‘Radio City’ to survey the ‘mobile computing landscape’. The researchers hope it will help them understand how and why people move around urban environments.
As many as 3,000 Bluetooth devices are tracked every weekend and one recent study monitored the movements of 10,000 people around Bath.
On the Cityware website, the researchers said the survey would cover ‘all phenomena associated with the carrying and use of mobile devices.’
This includes where and why users make mobile phone calls and even how people orientate their laptops in cafes.
The leaders of the £1.6million initiative claim their study looks at the city as a whole and the scanners do not have access to the identities of those they track.
‘The notion that an agency would serious consider Bluetooth scanning as a surveillance technique is ludicrous,’ Cityware director Eamonn O’Neill told The Guardian. Continue reading
Filed under: Civil Liberties, Crime, FreeBritain, Laws & Regulations, Police State, Privacy | Tags: BBC, Data Protection, Government, Ministry of Defence, Technology, Theft
Source: BBC
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) admitted more than 650 laptops had been stolen over the past four years – nearly double the figure previously claimed.
The department also said that 26 portable memory sticks containing classified information had been either stolen or misplaced since January.
The Lib Dems condemned the latest security breaches as evidence of “shocking incompetence”.
But the MoD insisted that its policies were “generally fit for purpose”,
Previously the MoD had confessed to 347 laptops being stolen between 2004 and 2007.
But Defence Secretary Des Browne was forced to issue revised figures after “anomalies in the reporting process” were discovered.
The official total is now 658 laptops stolen, with another 89 lost. Just 32 have been recovered.
In a separate response, ministers said that 131 of the department’s USB memory sticks had been taken or misplaced since 2004.
Some 26 of those went this year – including three which contained information classified as “secret” and 19 which were “restricted”.
Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather discovered the information after tabling a question in parliament.
Ms Teather said: “It seems that this government simply cannot be trusted with keeping sensitive information safe.
“This shows a shocking degree of incompetence across the entire government.”
And you think you can trust the Government (more than yourself) with the vast amounts of data it will acquire and centralise with the ID Card?
Free Britain 