huridocs-tech Watching me, watching you

FYI
Harsh Kapoor
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BBC News | UK |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_590000/590696.stm
Tuesday, 4 January, 2000, 16:37 GMT

WATCHING ME, WATCHING YOU
You know where you are - but does someone else?

A proposal to install satellite actuated speed-limiters in cars may or may
not be a major contribution to road safety, but it does raise issues of
privacy.

 Quite apart from controlling our cars, will the authorities be able to
track our every movement? And how else may Big Brother be watching us?

 In fact, the risk of anyone tracing a car through the proposed
speed-limiter is remote, according to experts.

 The Global Positioning System used to locate a car's position simply picks
up signals from up to six satellites and compares them to work out where it
is on the globe. The unit doesn't actually talk to the satellites.

 "GPS systems don't tell anyone - except you - where you are.  And if they
could I can't see anyone being able to monitor the position of 22m vehicles
every day," says Andrew Howard, road safety chief at the AA.

 Leaving aside James Bond-type surveillance equipment such as bugging
devices, the most serious candidates for Big Brother technology are spy
satellites, and communication systems such as mobile phones.

 Spy in the sky

The size of a bus, spy satellites are actually huge telescopes, similar to
the Hubble Space Telescope, but in this case pointed towards the earth and
not the depths of outer space.

 Orbiting at altitudes of several hundred kilometres, spy satellites can
readily identify and distinguish differing types of vehicles and equipment
with resolutions better than 10 centimetres.

 But these optical imaging satellites suffer a common shortcoming -- the
inability to see through clouds.

 There's a lot of exciting technology out there with enormous potential to
infringe people's liberties.  Whether it does is up to us.
Liz Parratt, Liberty
	  	As their operation is highly classified it is very
difficult to say precisely in what circumstances spy satellites are used
for visual monitoring in peacetime.

 It is reasonable to assume that with only a handful in orbit their
attentions are turned to tracking high profile criminal and terrorist
activities.

 But commercial spy satellites could change all that.

 As of 1 January 2000 a US company, Space Imaging, is offering detailed
pictures of virtually anything at a resolution down to one metre for prices
ranging between $30  and $500.

 The satellite, called Ikonos, orbits the earth every 90 minutes at a
height of 425 miles and can store up to 100 pictures at a time.

 Fancy a quick one?

 Mobile phones can be tracked down to within a few hundred metres of where
the call is made.

 The mobile cellular network works by checking to see which "cell" the user
is calling from and then transferring the call to a neighbouring cell as
the user moves.



	Cellular networks let you run, but not hide
Last month it was announced that BT Cellnet is linking up with a national
pub chain to send "electronic vouchers" over the mobile-phone network to
its 6 million subscribers, alerting them of special offers in the area they
are calling from.

 Users will be alerted by a different ringing tone telling them they have a
message, which will then say which pub they are near, the address and what
is on offer.

 "There's a lot of exciting technology out there with enormous potential to
infringe people's liberties.  Whether it does is up to us," says Liz
Parratt, from the civil rights campaign group Liberty.

 "Technology is outstripping regulation and we need a public debate on
these issues.  Otherwise we may  one day wake up and ask what sort of
society it is that we have accidentally created."



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