Smartphone surveillance makes spies of all citizens
CITIZEN COP or State Spy — within five years you could be playing your part in the fight against crime.
The technology being packed onto your smart phone and your car will make you a virtual Inspector Gadget and a handy ally for law enforcement agencies.
But like all technology, it may come at a price, your privacy being one.
Moreover, there is the danger that criminals will be able to hack into your smart phone, access this technology and abuse it.
The new generation of smart phones coming on the markets will help police catch criminals or terrorists and identify risks to public safety.
Networking individual smart phones together could provide state agencies with thousands of eyes and ears on the streets at any one time.
This prospect has led some privacy lobbyists to warn of a level of surveillance akin to George Orwell’s Big Brother or East Germany’s Stasi regime.
Smart phones grouped together will soon allow authorities to locate criminals and terrorists jamming GPS systems in critical civilian infrastructure such as airports.
GPS technology and gyroscope technology in phones will allow police, customs and other agencies to track, to a high degree of accuracy, the movement of a phone or a car fitted with the technology.
Chips in phones will be able to detect dangerous gases and chemicals and automatically contact the emergency services.
Cameras in cars will be able to record the licence plates of other vehicles and assist police trying to track a vehicle used in crimes such as Tiger kidnappings.
All sound a bit like science fiction? Perhaps, but not for long.
US-based technology research company ABI recently predicted that, by 2013, 85% of smart phones will have GPS and around 50% will have accelerometers and gyroscopes.
Advances in accelerometers, which detect linear acceleration, and gyroscopes, which detect rotation are being driven by applications such as gaming, location awareness and augmented reality.
The iPhone4 was the first smart phone to have both features built in.
As well as gaming functions, these can provide telecommunication firms and law enforcement agencies with a tracking function beyond the capability of GPS systems.
Even where there is no reception, they will still be able to track the exact position of phones without GPS.
A recent article in New Scientist reported that a whole host of research agencies attached to various US intelligence services are very interested in this area.
These include projects that will enable them to use GPS systems in phones to locate jammers.
There is also the possibility of including software in phones that will automatically send a message to a central control whenever a jammer is identified.
This touches on the issue of whether or not users will have a choice in their phone providing such a service.
Last week, the European Commission directed that, from 2013, all cars would have to be fitted with technology that automatically alerts emergency services in the event of an accident.
The so-called eCall will be linked to the airbags and would automatically call the emergency services once they are triggered. They will be able to give the services the vehicle’s exact location, and even which way it is facing.
“These technologies are possible, if not right now then in the near future,” said Dr Pavel Gladyshev of the UCD Centre for Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Investigation.
“These technologies are not so much about computer forensics as sensor technologies — it is one of the buzz words at the moment.”
He said he could see possible uses to many of them, particularly with GPS in identifying jammers, as well as cameras in cars recording licence plates and detection devices in smart phones.
A key feature of smart phones is their ability to sense the outside world, said Dr Gladyshev. “The first mobile phones allowed you to phone and text. The programmability of modern devices is what sets them apart, they can download all sorts of applications.”
Other Irish experts see these developments coming fairly rapidly: “I think they are a five-year extrapolation from where we are,” said TJ McIntyre, lecturer in law in UCD and chairman of Digital Rights Ireland, a privacy and information technology watchdog.
He said the positive technological developments of the last decade — such as the provision of cameras in mobile phones — enabled ordinary citizens to “hold state authorities to account”, including police forces.
He said there were now trends reversing this.
“Governments are trying to force private companies to do surveillance for them,” he said.
He said governments had already done this in terms of retaining data on phone transactions. “Once you have that it is easy to roll it out to other technologies,” said Mr McIntyre.
In addition, governments were now trying to “get individuals to do surveillance for them”.
Mr McIntyre said it was not a question of striking a balance between the interests of the state and that of the citizen.
“As a point of principle, we should never accept a system of ubiquitous surveillance where everyone is treated as a criminal.”
He said Germany brought in strong privacy laws after the revelations of the “Stasi culture” in former East Germany, where an army of citizens spied on fellow citizens.
“It is undesirable to turn an entire population into suspects, or an entire population into informers through the monitoring of other people,” said Mr McIntyre.
A senior Garda source told the Irish Examiner that this analysis did not match reality. “This whole Big Brother thing is just scare-mongering,” he said. “What we actually do is when we are carrying out investigations is we look for evidence from CCTVs, mobile phones, or whatever. We are only able to seize in accordance with the law.
“We just can’t hack into people’s phones wholesale. We can only do it if the power is there to do it. Not in a million years would we use technology that we are not able to use and is not admissible in court.”
Dr Gladyshev says there are privacy issues with these new technologies, primarily in relation to the safe and secure retention of data held on smart phones and control centres.
“The danger is if someone else gets access to data and misuses it. Collecting data on a mass scale is hazardous, so determining ways to protect identities should be a priority.”
He added: “One of the real threats is [that] the security of smart phones is not on a par with personal computers.
“There is a perception in the information security community that mobile phones are less secure than personal computers.”
He said by sending and receiving information enabled by these new technologies, the identity and location of the smart phone, and its user, will also be recorded.
“This has the potential to track individuals. So if you are planning to murder someone you could go to the exact location of the individual,” said Dr Galdyshev.
He said determined hackers with enough resources could break into these systems and track someone’s movement.
They could also tap into phones.
The senior garda agrees: “Instead of being worried about police accessing people’s phones, I would be more worried about criminals getting access to the technology.”
- GPS — detect jammers which are disabling GPS systems and also locate phones or vehicles with GPS technology.
- Gyroscopes and accelerometers — highly accurate motion-sensing technology which can be used to track movements of a handset.
- Detection devices — these could detect dangers like carbon monoxide, gas leaks or possible chemical attacks.
- Cameras — can record vehicle licence plates and help track wanted vehicles.
