Automated Social Networking Surveillance Systems

Last week, I noticed the existence of an EU surveillance project called "Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment" better known as "INDECT". You can have a look at their official website.

According to Wikileaks, INDECT’s “Work package 4″ is designed “to comb web blogs, chat sites, news reports, and social-networking sites in order to build up automatic dossiers on individuals, organizations and their relationships.” Ponder that phrase again: “automatic dossiers.” (source)

Automatic dossiers? Doesn't that give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside? There are a lot more reports and articles mentioned about similar projects (including network monitoring and data mining suites designed by Nokia Siemens, Ericsson and Verint) on this website.

I enjoy and believe in the benefits of social networks as long as commons sense prevails about what you publish. But how many people are aware of the potential issues? Not that mass surveillance should be expected and allowed.
Say a word online out of context and be labeled a potential 'problem' case. I don't believe in a technological magic wand who will correctly filter information. Too much possible false positives. Hasn't the world of IDS taught us that? Question is, who is making the alert filters for this systems? Who is going to watch the watchers?

Some time ago, the Social Media Security blog and podcast was founded. While I haven't really had time to spend some time on it, I highly advice to have a closer look at it.

So apart from cybercriminals, must we also fear our governments?

Related posts:

• International Action Day “Freedom not Fear 2009 – Stop the Surveillance Mania!” on 12th September 2009
• According to Child Support groups, Net filtering is a waste of money
• Big Brother 2009: Has the rebellion started?
• Privacy matters: A movie by XS4ALL to raise user awareness to data surveillance
• ENISA's New Paper: "Inside the matrix: Privacy & data protection challenges".
• Dress good! Google Streetview driving around in Belgium.
• ENISA releases paper on Security and Privacy in online games and social and corporate virtual worlds
• Skype backdoor speculation and Data surveillance of today
• FBI Wiretapping: Just point and click
• China's golden shield, a citizen mass surveillance system
• The dangers of social networking and some countermeasures
• German ID card won't include fingerprints
• Billion pound UK CCTV solves 3% of crimes. Efficient?
• When technology takes over our life
• Airport Security: All your data are belong to us
• Dutch government wants fingerprints of every dutchman in national database
• Wikileaks releases details on German police Trojan
• EU might decide that an IP is personal information

(Photo under creative commons from matthileo's photostream)