__NOTOC__ __NOEDITSECTION__ A report accidentally published on the Internet provides insight into a secretive European Union surveillance project designed to monitor its citizens, as reported by Wikileaks earlier this month. Project INDECT aims to mine data from television, internet traffic, cellphone conversations, p2p file sharing and a range of other sources for crime prevention and threat prediction. The €14.68 million project began in January, 2009, and is scheduled to continue for five years under its current mandate. 200px|The INDECT project logo INDECT produced the accidentally published report as part of their "Extraction of Information for Crime Prevention by Combining Web Derived Knowledge and Unstructured Data" project, but do not enumerate all potential applications of the search and surveillance technology. Police are discussed as a prime example of users, with Polish and British forces detailed as active project participants. INDECT is funded under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), and includes participation from Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Indicated in the initial trial's report, the scope of data collected is particularly broad; days of television news, radio, newspapers, and recorded telephone conversations are included. Several weeks of content from online sources were agglomerated, including mining Wikipedia for users' and article subjects' relations with others, organisations, and in-project movements. alt=Leaked Project INDECT presentation video|Leaked presentation video for Project INDECT. Watermarking of published digital works such as film, audio, or other documents is discussed in the Project INDECT remit; its purpose is to integrate and track this information, its movement within the system and across the Internet. An unreleased promotional video for INDECT located on YouTube is shown to the right. The simplified example of the system in operation shows a file of documents with a visible INDECT-titled cover taken from an office and exchanged in a car park. How the police are alerted to the document theft is unclear in the video; as a "threat", it would be the INDECT system's job to predict it. Throughout the video use of CCTV equipment, facial recognition, number plate reading ,  and aerial surveillance give friend-or-foe information with an overlaid map to authorities. The police proactively use this information to coordinate locating, pursuing, and capturing the document recipient. The file of documents is retrieved, and the recipient roughly detained. Technology research performed as part of Project INDECT has clear use in countering industrial and international espionage, although the potential use in maintaining any security and predicting leaks is much broader. Quoted in the UK's Daily Telegraph, Liberty 's director, Shami Chakrabarti, described a possible future implementation of INDECT as a "sinister step" with "positively chilling" repercussions Europe-wide. "It is inevitable that the project has a sensitive dimension due to the security focussed goals of the project," Suresh Manandhar, leader of the University of York researchers involved in the "Work Package 4" INDECT component, responded to Wikinews. "However, it is important to bear in mind that the scientific methods are much more general and has wider applications. The project will most likely have lot of commercial potential. The project has an Ethics board to oversee the project activities. As a responsible scientists [sic] it is of utmost importance to us that we conform to ethical guidelines." When approached by Wikinews about the implications of using INDECT, a representative of the U.K.'s Attorney General declined to comment on legal checks and balances such a system might require. Further U.K. enquiries were eventually referred to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who have not yet responded. Wikinews Brian McNeil contacted Eddan Katz, the International Affairs Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (E.F.F.). Katz last spoke to Wikinews in early 2008 on copyright, not long after taking his current position with the E.F.F. He was back in Brussels to speak to EU officials, Project INDECT was on his agenda too — having learned of it only two weeks earlier. Katz linked Project INDECT with a September report, NeoConopticon — The EU Security-Industrial Complex, authored by Ben Hayes for the Transnational Institute . The report raises serious questions about the heavy involvement of defence and IT companies in "security research". The E.U. report Katz refers to was ratified just six days before the September 11 attacks that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center . In their analysis of the never-officially-recognised U.S. Echelon spy system it states, "[i]n principle, activities and measures undertaken for the purposes of state security or law enforcement do not fall within the scope of the EC Treaty." On privacy and data-protection legislation enacted at E.U. level it comments, "[such does] not apply to 'the processing of data/activities concerning public security, defence, state security (including the economic well-being of the state when the activities relate to state security matters) and the activities of the state in areas of criminal law'".
__NOTOC__ __NOEDITSECTION__ A report accidentally published on the Internet provides insight into a secretive European Union surveillance project designed to monitor its citizens, as reported by Wikileaks earlier this month. Project INDECT aims to mine data from television, internet traffic, cellphone conversations, and a range of other sources for crime prevention and threat prediction. The €14.68 million project began in January, 2009, and is scheduled to continue for five years under its current mandate. 200px|The INDECT project logo INDECT produced the accidentally published report as part of their "Extraction of Information for Crime Prevention by Combining Web Derived Knowledge and Unstructured Data" project, but do not enumerate all potential applications of the search and surveillance technology. Police are discussed as a prime example of users, with and forces detailed as active project participants. INDECT is funded under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), and includes participation from Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Indicated in the initial trial's report, the scope of data collected is particularly broad; days of television news, radio, newspapers, and recorded telephone conversations are included. Several weeks of content from online sources were agglomerated, including mining Wikipedia for users' and article subjects' relations with others, organisations, and in-project movements. alt=Leaked Project INDECT presentation video|Leaked presentation video for Project INDECT. of published digital works such as film, audio, or other documents is discussed in the Project INDECT remit; its purpose is to integrate and track this information, its movement within the system and across the Internet. An unreleased promotional video for INDECT located on YouTube is shown to the right. The simplified example of the system in operation shows a file of documents with a visible INDECT-titled cover taken from an office and exchanged in a car park. How the police are alerted to the document theft is unclear in the video; as a "threat", it would be the INDECT system's job to predict it. Throughout the video use of equipment , , , and aerial surveillance give information with an overlaid map to authorities. The police proactively use this information to coordinate locating, pursuing, and capturing the document recipient. The file of documents is retrieved, and the recipient roughly detained. Technology research performed as part of Project INDECT has clear use in countering industrial and international espionage, although the potential use in maintaining any security and predicting leaks is much broader. Quoted in the UK's , 's director, Shami Chakrabarti, described a possible future implementation of INDECT as a "sinister step" with "positively chilling" repercussions Europe-wide. "It is inevitable that the project has a sensitive dimension due to the security focussed goals of the project," Suresh Manandhar, leader of the researchers involved in the "Work Package 4" INDECT component, responded to Wikinews. "However, it is important to bear in mind that the scientific methods are much more general and has wider applications. The project will most likely have lot of commercial potential. The project has an Ethics board to oversee the project activities. As a responsible scientists [sic] it is of utmost importance to us that we conform to ethical guidelines." When approached by Wikinews about the implications of using INDECT, a representative of the U.K.'s declined to comment on legal checks and balances such a system might require. Further U.K. enquiries were eventually referred to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who have not yet responded. Wikinews Brian McNeil contacted Eddan Katz, the International Affairs Director for the (E.F.F.). Katz last spoke to Wikinews in early 2008 on copyright, not long after taking his current position with the E.F.F. He was back in to speak to EU officials, Project INDECT was on his agenda too — having learned of it only two weeks earlier. Katz linked Project INDECT with a September report, NeoConopticon — The EU Security-Industrial Complex, authored by Ben Hayes for the . The report raises serious questions about the heavy involvement of defence and IT companies in "security research". The E.U. report Katz refers to was ratified just six days before the that brought down the twin towers of the . In their analysis of the never-officially-recognised U.S. spy system it states, "[i]n principle, activities and measures undertaken for the purposes of state security or law enforcement do not fall within the scope of the EC Treaty." On privacy and data-protection legislation enacted at E.U. level it comments, "[such does] not apply to 'the processing of data/activities concerning public security, defence, state security (including the economic well-being of the state when the activities relate to state security matters) and the activities of the state in areas of criminal law'".
D
p2p file sharing
R
Polish and British
and
D
Watermarking
R
CCTV equipment, facial recognition, number plate reading
equipment
A
, ,
D
friend-or-foe
R
Daily Telegraph, Liberty
,
D
University of York
D
Attorney General
D
Electronic Frontier Foundation
D
Brussels
D
Transnational Institute
D
September 11 attacks
D
World Trade Center
D
Echelon