Broadband Tech > Security > Security > EU Funding 'Orwellian' Artificial Intelligence Plan (INDECT)

EU Funding 'Orwellian' Artificial Intelligence Plan (INDECT)

said by Ian Johnston :

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EU funding 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour"

The European Union is spending millions of pounds developing "Orwellian" technologies designed to scour the internet and CCTV images for "abnormal behaviour".

A five-year research programme, called Project Indect*, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.

Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence".

Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and computer scientists at York University, in addition to colleagues in nine other European countries.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a "sinister step" for any country, adding that it was "positively chilling" on a European scale.

The Indect research, which began this year, comes as the EU is pressing ahead with an expansion of its role in fighting crime, terrorism and managing migration, increasing its budget in these areas by 13.5% to nearly £900 million.

The European Commission is calling for a "common culture" of law enforcement to be developed across the EU and for a third of police officers – more than 50,000 in the UK alone – to be given training in European affairs within the next five years.

According to the Open Europe think tank, the increased emphasis on co-operation and sharing intelligence means that European police forces are likely to gain access to sensitive information held by UK police, including the British DNA database. It also expects the number of UK citizens extradited under the controversial European Arrest Warrant to triple.

Stephen Booth, an Open Europe analyst who has helped compile a dossier on the European justice agenda, said these developments and projects such as Indect sounded "Orwellian" and raised serious questions about individual liberty.

"This is all pretty scary stuff in my book. These projects would involve a huge invasion of privacy and citizens need to ask themselves whether the EU should be spending their taxes on them," he said.

"The EU lacks sufficient checks and balances and there is no evidence that anyone has ever asked 'is this actually in the best interests of our citizens?'"

Miss Chakrabarti said: "Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society.

"It's dangerous enough at national level, but on a Europe-wide scale the idea becomes positively chilling."

According to the official website for Project Indect, which began this year, its main objectives include "to develop a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence".

It talks of the "construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, usenet groups, file servers, p2p [peer-to-peer] networks as well as individual computer systems, building an internet-based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive".

York University's computer science department website details how its task is to develop "computational linguistic techniques for information gathering and learning from the web".

"Our focus is on novel techniques for word sense induction, entity resolution, relationship mining, social network analysis [and] sentiment analysis," it says.

A separate EU-funded research project, called Adabts [pdf] – the Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in crowded Spaces – has received nearly £3 million. Its is based in Sweden but partners include the UK Home Office and BAE Systems.

[For more information about this and other programs see "Towards A More Secure Society And Increased Industrial Competitiveness" (pdf)]

It is seeking to develop models of "suspicious behaviour" so these can be automatically detected using CCTV and other surveillance methods. The system would analyse the pitch of people's voices, the way their bodies move and track individuals within crowds.

Project coordinator Dr Jorgen Ahlberg, of the Swedish Defence Research Agency, said this would simply help CCTV operators notice when trouble was starting.

"People usually don't start to fight from one second to another," he said. "They start by arguing and pushing each other. It's not that 'oh you are pushing each other, you should be arrested', it's to alert an operator that something is going on.

"If it's a shopping mall, you could send a security guard into the vicinity and things [a fight] maybe wouldn't happen."

Open Europe believes intelligence gathered by Indect and other such systems could be used by a little-known body, the EU Joint Situation Centre (SitCen), which it claims is "effectively the beginning of an EU secret service". Critics have said it could develop into "Europe's CIA".

The dossier says: "The EU's Joint Situation Centre (SitCen) was originally established in order to monitor and assess worldwide events and situations on a 24-hour basis with a focus on potential crisis regions, terrorism and WMD-proliferation.

"However, since 2005, SitCen has been used to share counter-terrorism information.

"An increased role for SitCen should be of concern since the body is shrouded in so much secrecy.

"The expansion of what is effectively the beginning of an EU 'secret service' raises fundamental questions of political oversight in the member states."

Superintendent Gerry Murray, of the PSNI, said the force's main role would be to test whether the system, which he said could be operated on a countrywide or European level, was a worthwhile tool for the police.

"A lot of it is very academic and very science-driven [at the moment]. Our budgets are shrinking, our human resources are shrinking and we are looking for IT technology that will help us five years down the line in reducing crime and combating criminal gangs," he said.

"Within this Project Indect there is an ethical board which will be looked at: is it permissible within the legislation of the country who may use it, who oversees it and is it human rights compliant."

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quote:

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Project description

The main objectives of the INDECT project are: to develop a platform for: the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence, to develop the prototype of an integrated, network-centric system supporting the operational activities of police officers, providing techniques and tools for observation of various mobile objects, to develop a new type of search engine combining direct search of images and video based on watermarked contents, and the storage of metadata in the form of digital watermarks, to develop a set of techniques supporting surveillance of internet resources, analysis of the acquired information, and detection of criminal activities and threats.

The main expected results of the INDECT project are: piloting installation of the monitoring and surveillance system in various points of city agglomeration and demonstration of the prototype of the system with 15 node stations, implementation of a distributed computer system that is capable of acquisition, storage and effective sharing on demand of the data as well as intelligent processing, construction of a family of prototypes of devices used for mobile object tracking, construction of a search engine for fast detection of persons and documents based on watermarking technology and utilising comprehensive research on watermarking technology used for semantic search, construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, usenet groups, file servers, p2p networks as well as individual computer systems, building an Internet based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive, and demonstrating its efficiency in a measurable way.

Project details

Project Acronym: INDECT
Project Reference: 218086
Start Date: 2009-01-01
Duration: 60 months
Project Cost: 14.86 million euro
Contract Type: Collaborative project (generic)
End Date: 2013-12-31
Project Status: Execution
Project Funding: 10.91 million euro

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quote:

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Project Description:

Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment.

The main objectives of the INDECT project are:

• to develop a platform for: the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence,

• to develop the prototype of an integrated, network-centric system supporting the operational activities of police officers, providing techniques and tools for observation of various mobile objects,

• to develop a new type of search engine combining direct search of images and video based on watermarked contents, and the storage of metadata in the form of digital watermarks,

The main expected results of the INDECT project are:

• to realise a trial installation of the monitoring and surveillance system in various points of city agglomeration and demonstration of the prototype of the system with 15 node stations,

• implementation of a distributed computer system that is capable of acquisition, storage and effective sharing on demand of the data as well as intelligent processing,

• construction of a family of prototypes of devices used for mobile object tracking,

• construction of a search engine for fast detection of persons and documents based on watermarking technology and utilising comprehensive research on watermarking technology used for semantic search,

• construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, UseNet groups, file servers, p2p networks as well as individual computer systems,

• elaboration of Internet based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive, and demonstrating its efficiency in a measurable way.

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One really minor niggle

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"This is all pretty scary stuff in my book. These projects would involve a huge invasion of privacy and citizens need to ask themselves whether the EU should be spending their taxes on them," he said.

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Yes, and houses already have windows that allow a view inside from out, therefore installing telescreens (a la Orwell) in all houses essentially changes nothing.

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The point, I think, is that high-speed automatic processing combined with huge reach and data access results in qualitatively different capabilities, rather than just making things "more efficient".

Things which were previously 'public' did not necessarily end up accessible to anyone other than a file clerk front-ended by a week-long access request. When that takes a millisecond, it becomes possible to do a lot more data-mining and hence profiling.

reply to JohnInSJ

reply to SUMware
I'm chilled.

I already assume anything I do on-grid is monitored 24/7. I feel really bad for the intense boredom this may cause for my government minder.

Seriously, these people can't seem to see crap when its right under their noses. You're worried they'll somehow discover something when buried in even more data?

Honestly, really really, the internet is not private.
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My place : »www.schettino.us

reply to SUMware
Besides, isn't this more like Minority Report - Orwell was so last century.
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My place : »www.schettino.us

reply to SUMware

said by Paul Joseph Watson :

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New incarnation of Echelon is a huge lurch forward in the creation of the prison planet based on social theorist Jeremy Bentham’s 18th century concept of keeping slaves oppressed

The European Union is developing a 21st century panopticon

Project Indect is a huge lurch forward in the agenda to construct a mammoth surveillance pen within which the population of the entire planet is imprisoned.

The methods being employed to do this are a technologically advanced throwback to social theorist Jeremy Bentham’s 1785 concept of The Panopticon, a specially constructed prison building designed “to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the “sentiment of an invisible omniscience.”

Bentham described the Panopticon as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”

The notion that the individual does not know when they are being watched by the authorities is key in achieving the ultimate goal, to keep the population in a constant state of subjugation, unease and fear, leading them to self-regulate their own behavior.

According to Danish Institute for Human Rights researcher Peter Scharff, the Panopticon was intended to promote “self-regulation that was to be provoked by the constant surveillance”. The concept was eventually incorporated into many prisons that continue today as “podular” designs, which also maximizes the amount of people that can be controlled by one person. The fact that authorities are building societal prisons around us all today using the same basic methods of control is enough to send a chill down anyone’s spine and remind us once again that freedom is a myth.

This has nothing to do with catching criminals – as recent figures in the UK have proven, CCTV cameras have virtually no impact on crime whatsoever. This is all about letting the slaves know who their bosses are, it’s a psychological mind game set up to distinguish and reinforce the master-servant relationship between the state and the individual.

The endgame is to convince the individual that to express their freedom in public, to engage in any kind of protest or merely to question the power structure that surrounds them, is a “suspicious” act detrimental to society and that negative consequences will follow for any slave who dares to step outside of this invisible yet oppressive jail cell.

This is Echelon on steroids, a new version of the decades old NSA-run program that has already been spying on citizens for years, updated and expanded for the technological applications of the early 21st century. In 1999, the Australian government admitted that they were part of an NSA-led global intercept and surveillance grid in alliance with the US and Britain that could listen to “every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission,” on the planet. Project Indect is merely a new incarnation of the same beast surveillance system.

Open Europe analyst Stephen Booth described the project as “Orwellian” and a “huge invasion of privacy,” noting that European citizens’ own taxes will go towards a program that treats them all as guilty until proven innocent.

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quote:

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The U.S.S.R.: Big Brother Is Everywhere

The KGB is watching, watching, watching every minute ... the agency continues to keep stern watch over every aspect of Soviet citizens' lives.

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"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."
"Don't worry, be happy."

"A gramme is better than a damn," said Lenina mechanically from behind her hands. "I wish I had my soma!" "
"Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds."
"By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles."

said by JohnInSJ :

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"So what if the grid monitors us? We're born into it, we'll die in it."

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reply to SUMware

reply to SUMware

quote:

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The notion that the individual does not know when they are being watched by the authorities is key in achieving the ultimate goal, to keep the population in a constant state of subjugation, unease and fear, leading them to self-regulate their own behavior.

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reply to SUMware
Thank you SUMware for this. You will always get the "let them watch me - I've got nothing to hide" crowd. Pity. Gonna hurt us in the end. Badly.

Wanna know where we're heading? Read this:
"Blueprint for a Prison Planet"
»www.nick2211.yage.net/chips.htm

You honestly don't care? Then at least stop using terms like "democracy", "freedom", "liberty", and "rights" like you know what they mean.

reply to SUMware
"The endgame is to convince the individual that to express their freedom in public, to engage in any kind of protest or merely to question the power structure that surrounds them, is a “suspicious” act detrimental to society and that negative consequences will follow..."

This is already in action here.
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To equate judgment and wisdom with occupation is insulting.

reply to BB1984

reply to SUMware
»www.indect-project.eu/

Yes they will even keep an eye on your posts cause they could be terrorist related but then again we know this is the future that some of us didn't ask for but if your really smart you already know the control grid exists.

It will be expanded but the cost will come to an end eventually by something not expected.
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I'm like the "one" in ways you don't understand.

It is absolutely astonishing to see people (some Americans in particular) welcoming and trivializing this 24/7 - USSR / KGB style surveillance. The US & Europe supposedly fought both hot and cold wars to expose and eliminate this tyrannical governmental/corporate spying on citizens. Many people died attempting to stop this authoritarianism & fascism and to prevent it from spreading.

Now there are some members here, along with self-proclaimed western 'democratic' politicians, military, and citizens who accept it, and encourage others to welcome it into their lives as a 'normal' part of westernized existence. No thanks, comrades.

Unbelievable, ignorant and insane.

reply to SUMware
^ Orwell was a prophet.

reply to JohnInSJ

I recall that the Pledge of Allegiance uses the phrase "and the Republic for which it stands" and that the words democratic and democracy are not mentioned. I don't believe they are in the Constitution, either, but I could be wrong.
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In reality, there is no such thing as a clean human being.

I was almost correct. I left out "to" in the quote. Oh well.

I do remember when "under God" was added. I remember reciting the pledge before that.
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In reality, there is no such thing as a clean human being.