constantly reminded “Big Brother is Watching You”. In 1948, when the story was written, it was pure science fiction.
It may have taken a little longer than he envisaged, but Orwell’s Big Brother dystopia has arrived. According to the latest studies, Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras – one for every fourteen people in the country. The average British citizen is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.
Surveillance cameras, however, are obvious and overt. Much of what government and big corporations is using to watch you is not.
In the summer of 2002, US President George W. Bush posited the setting up of a corps of civilian informants as a means of helping the War on Terror. Under “Operation TIPS” (Terrorism Information and Prevention Systems), Americans would be recruited to spy on Americans at work and in the neighbourhood. Dubya planned to have a million civilian snitches. Even TIPS backers, such as Attorney General John Ashcroft, could see the flaw in the system – there was no way for the public to know if they were being observed, or if any information gathered was accurate. Such a snoopers’ charter also opened the door to people laying false charges to settle personal grudges. Although straight from the pages of the training manual of the Stasi, the former East German secret police, the Bush government ploughed ahead with TIPS until Sydney Morning Herald journalist Ritt Goldstein reported on the operation, which then shrivelled and died in the light of public disquiet.
The demise of TIPS, however, did not leave the US Government unable to eavesdrop on its citizens, because it already had the InfraGard and ECHELON projects.
A private non-profit group, InfraGard was founded in 1996 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) office in Cleveland, Ohio, in an attempt to co-opt industry and academia as crime-busters in cyberspace. The scheme really took off after 9/11 , when InfraGard’s brief was broadened to protect America from physical as well as cyber-attack. InfraGard does this by, in the programme’s own words, promoting “ongoing dialogue and timely communication between members and the FBI. InfraGard members gain access to information that enables them to protect their assets and in turn give information to government that facilitates its responsibilities to prevent and address terrorism and other crimes.”
InfraGard is organized into individual, geographically based chapters, which meet with the local G-man. Members have access to an Eyes-Only InfraGard website that provides members with the hottest information on what domestic enemies are doing, the latest research on protective measures, and the ability to communicate securely with other members.
And who are the citizens who make up the secret, non-accountable InfraGard chapter? There’s the rub. Of the 32,000 InfraGard members the identities of few are known, although the best guess is that the majority are suits from Fortune 500 companies. In return for participation in InfraGard, its members receive extraordinary benefits. According to one InfraGard whistle-blower, members
get privileges, special phone numbers to call in times of emergency. They can get their family out maybe in times of an emergency or their friends, so they know about these threats. They’re getting secret intelligence on almost a daily basis that the American public isn’t getting, so they’re in the know in a way that we aren’t in the know.
Paranoid? You will be. InfraGard, however, is but the little brother of ECHELON.
ECHELON is the name given to the system of signal-collection and analysis networks run by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. ECHELON was created in 1947 during the Cold War to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its satellite countries. Initially, the project eavesdropped on wireless and telephone communications, but with the advent of the World Wide
It may have taken a little longer than he envisaged, but Orwell’s Big Brother dystopia has arrived. According to the latest studies, Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras – one for every fourteen people in the country. The average British citizen is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.
Surveillance cameras, however, are obvious and overt. Much of what government and big corporations is using to watch you is not.
In the summer of 2002, US President George W. Bush posited the setting up of a corps of civilian informants as a means of helping the War on Terror. Under “Operation TIPS” (Terrorism Information and Prevention Systems), Americans would be recruited to spy on Americans at work and in the neighbourhood. Dubya planned to have a million civilian snitches. Even TIPS backers, such as Attorney General John Ashcroft, could see the flaw in the system – there was no way for the public to know if they were being observed, or if any information gathered was accurate. Such a snoopers’ charter also opened the door to people laying false charges to settle personal grudges. Although straight from the pages of the training manual of the Stasi, the former East German secret police, the Bush government ploughed ahead with TIPS until Sydney Morning Herald journalist Ritt Goldstein reported on the operation, which then shrivelled and died in the light of public disquiet.
The demise of TIPS, however, did not leave the US Government unable to eavesdrop on its citizens, because it already had the InfraGard and ECHELON projects.
A private non-profit group, InfraGard was founded in 1996 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) office in Cleveland, Ohio, in an attempt to co-opt industry and academia as crime-busters in cyberspace. The scheme really took off after 9/11 , when InfraGard’s brief was broadened to protect America from physical as well as cyber-attack. InfraGard does this by, in the programme’s own words, promoting “ongoing dialogue and timely communication between members and the FBI. InfraGard members gain access to information that enables them to protect their assets and in turn give information to government that facilitates its responsibilities to prevent and address terrorism and other crimes.”
InfraGard is organized into individual, geographically based chapters, which meet with the local G-man. Members have access to an Eyes-Only InfraGard website that provides members with the hottest information on what domestic enemies are doing, the latest research on protective measures, and the ability to communicate securely with other members.
And who are the citizens who make up the secret, non-accountable InfraGard chapter? There’s the rub. Of the 32,000 InfraGard members the identities of few are known, although the best guess is that the majority are suits from Fortune 500 companies. In return for participation in InfraGard, its members receive extraordinary benefits. According to one InfraGard whistle-blower, members
get privileges, special phone numbers to call in times of emergency. They can get their family out maybe in times of an emergency or their friends, so they know about these threats. They’re getting secret intelligence on almost a daily basis that the American public isn’t getting, so they’re in the know in a way that we aren’t in the know.
Paranoid? You will be. InfraGard, however, is but the little brother of ECHELON.
ECHELON is the name given to the system of signal-collection and analysis networks run by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. ECHELON was created in 1947 during the Cold War to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its satellite countries. Initially, the project eavesdropped on wireless and telephone communications, but with the advent of the World Wide
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