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So why the cookies? Since the images recorded using the system are likely to be saved and recorded in a facial recognition database, it’s probably a good idea to pre-empt being given the wrong label and get on the cops’ “good side.”

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The Carmiel CCTV system is part of a nationwide effort called “City Without Violence” that is being implemented in cities around the country. Modeled on similar programs in the U.S. and Europe (Britain is considered the current “world champion” in CCTV use), the cameras will enable security officers to keep an eye on crowds, sensitive installations, and high-crime areas and situations, allowing police to dispatch officers.

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The program was actually first implemented in Israel several years ago, but it was deployed in cities in the north and south near the borders, as well as in several high-crime areas. Now the program is set to expand, and will include cameras, sensors, and other technology to be installed in cities in the center of the country – covering schools, public institutions, parks, and even residential neighborhoods. According to the Public Security Ministry, which came up with the idea, the program will make it easier for law enforcement authorities to catch troublemakers, as well as allow authorities “to collect information and real-time evidence needed to prevent violence, criminal activity, and public disorder,” the Ministry said in a statement.

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Well, nobody likes violence or criminal activity (I’m kind of fond of public disorder, though). And I know there are many people who, after reading this, are murmuring the words “police state.” But I’m betting that many of those people haven’t lived in high crime neighborhoods – where the residents are more than happy to have as many police and cameras as they can get. Only criminals would be opposed to figuring out better ways to stop crime, right? Besides, we have precedents; Britain has had surveillance cameras for years, and no one could accuse merry old England of being a police state!

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But there are apparently other problems with the British security surveillance system: According to this article, it doesn’t work. In some areas with lots of cameras, crime solving and prevention is lower than in other areas where there are relatively few cameras. Meaning that there are other factors involved, perhaps such as the skills of the police forces in those areas. Studies of other surveillance systems also show that surveillance systems don’t do a good job of stopping crime.

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Why? Perhaps, the bad guys in those neighborhoods came across sites like “How to Vanish ,” which supplies readers with tips on how to stay out of Big Brother’s way when sending e-mail, uploading or downloading files, keeping your money away from the government’s grasp, etc. – and keeping out of view of public security camera systems, as described here . It’s also possible that London has (or will have) a website like iSee , where you can map out a route that lets you avoid cameras. And, don’t underestimate the power of the cookie; if the good guys can get on the cops’ good side, why can’t the bad guys? Might buy them some time! Note, by the way, that all this information is readily available on-line, so it’s not like I’m giving away any secrets.

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And even though we (hope we can) trust police to use their powers only for truth and justice, using high technology for political purposes is not unheard of. The folks in the cited article are often involved in violent riots, so one could say that although their cause is political, their actions are criminal, so they deserve what they get – but it’s not too hard to imagine a scenario where police use technology to thwart non-violent sit-ins and marches, because “there is a potential for violence.”

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So besides being bad for democracy, camera surveillance systems aren’t very effective as crime-stoppers – or terror stoppers, either, since there’s no reason to believe the system will be any more effective for that kind of wrongdoing than it is for crime. Does that mean we’re fated to be sitting ducks? Not at all; there are all sorts of hi-tech ideas out there that are being developed by companies around the world (not a few of them in Israel) that use advanced technology to snuff out terrorists and criminals, while leaving the rest of us to live our lives unmolested.

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One such company is Israeli startup Genesis EW, which has developed a system to catch malefactors through their communication activity. The company makes an application that checks the profile of cellphone users, comparing it to activities terrorists and criminals typically engage in: for example, calling known criminals/terrorists, making many frequent short phone calls, or suspects moving outside their usual geographic area. If mobile communication activity fits the profile, law enforcement know they need to keep an eye on the subject (who can be located using cellphone or GPS technology).

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“Usually, authorities need to know the phone number of the suspect and/or be able to recognize him or her,” says Pini Birman, one of the founders of Genesis EW. “That often makes trailing suspects difficult. But our system examines a user’s communication profile,” Birman says, meaning that it will continue working even if a suspect removes and replaces a phone’s SIM card, a favorite tactic of crooks and terrorists. “The criminal or terrorist will be unable to confuse the system,” he says, adding that the closer the suspect’s behavior to the profile, the more likely an attack or a criminal act – but if the user veers away from the profile, the system realizes that it was mistaken, and takes the subject off the watch list.

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All of which means that only those truly worthy of security forces’ attention are observed – and that scarce security resources can be used more effectively. Like we said, we’re happy the police are keeping us safe – but, as the old saying goes, “respect them and suspect them.” If there is a better, more effective way to protect us without the use of intrusive cameras, why not use that?

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NOTE: The video below, in Hebrew, shows a violent attack in Ramle recorded by CCTV cameras there. According to the report, police arrived on the scene minutes after the attack and arrested the attackers.

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Related articles by Zemanta

• Iron Sky Provides Hawthorne Police with Wireless Video Surveillance (eon.businesswire.com)
• Spy cameras won’t make us safer (cnn.com)
• We don’t need secret surveillance cameras | SA Mathieson (guardian.co.uk)
• It doesn’t work. We didn’t ask for it. So why all the cameras? | Anna Minton (guardian.co.uk)

This logic can extend to other areas of life – but the slippery slope may have a deeper decline than most of us realize. Is there such a thing as too much security? For example – is it okay for the authorities to read our mail? After all, someone could be communicating plans for a terror attack. How about e-mail? We’ve all heard stories of how terrorists communicate with each other electronically. Cell phones conversations? Maybe they need to be monitored too.

Granting such wide-ranging authority to the authorities seems like an act that would make for an iffy socio-political experiment – to determine whether or not government can have near complete, on-demand access to personal communications, while still ensuring personal liberties. And it’s an experiment in which we Israelis are the guinea pigs, thanks to Israel’s version of the Patriot Act, the Communications Data Law (also known as the “Big Brother” law). The law passed in June, but hasn’t really been enforced yet – because specific procedures for collection of some of the data have not yet been authorized.

To those who grew up in western societies where the right to privacy was considered unassailable, the law’s tenets can seem disturbing, to say the least. Under the new law, police have the right to demand from service providers any information they deem necessary on your electronic communications habits and history. This includes a complete history of your Internet surfing, all the e-mail messages you send or get, the address of all your e-mail correspondents (and copies of their messages, too, if necessary), a list of all the phone calls into or out of your cell phone, and the names and phone numbers of all of your cell phone contacts, whether or not they have blocked their numbers from people they call.

Police can request any of this information on the basis of an investigation they are conducting, based on their own criteria – in other words, they do not have to get a court order, or consult with a judge or anyone else. All they have to do is show up with an order signed by an “authorized” police officer – and, according to the law, the ISP or phone company in question is required to comply. If the law has not been widely used yet, says Nirit Moskowitz, a spokesperson for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), it’s most likely because police have not yet built the databases and information management units to handle the flood of data.

It’s a heavy load of responsibility for anyone to be carrying, ACRI says. And, says Moskowitz, police were already been taken to task by Knesset members for abuse of power on using the law – with the ink barely dry! At a Knesset committee discussion last August to approve some of the procedural issues surrounding the law, Knesset members were astounded to learn that police had used the law to demand information from one of the cell phone companies that was not covered by the law; the cell phone company, thinking that police now had the right to ask for the data, willingly surrendered it. The Mks were so taken aback by the development that they cancelled the session – and last month cancelled a second session that had been scheduled to approve the procedures. Meaning, that major parts of the law are still in limbo.

ACRI, meanwhile, has been petitioning the High Court, seeking to insert adjustments to the law that would prevent some of the potential abuses Moskowitz says have already shown themselves. “Besides the issue with the cell phone company, the number of officers authorized to demand information has grown considerably in the year or so since the law was passed.” The original idea, said Moskowitz, was that police would appoint a coterie of high ranking officers to decide on a case by case basis whether use of the law’s mandate was necessary. But that list has grown, Moskowitz said, meaning that it’s more likely that police will make use of the law. A High Court session that was set to consider ACRI’s petition this week has been postponed until next February, when seven judges will hear the case, instead of the three who had dealt with it until now.

Regardless of whatever adjustments are made, however, law enforcement – that includes police, military police, border police, the tax authorities, Treasury enforcement, the Justice Ministry, and others – will still be carrying a huge stick. And for many of us who grew in Western cultures, that stick seems far too big for anyone to be carrying in what we hope can be considered a free society.

At first glance, that is. But in this age of super-databases, easy to access listening equipment, or hackers and crackers getting at our credit card records, is there really anything such as “privacy” anymore? Without knowing too much about us personally, for example, Google and Amazon knows exactly what ads to flash at us or what specials to tout in their e-mail offers. If once there was six degrees of separation between any two random people in the world, today there is one – your firewall, and when a hacker breaks it (as s/he can relatively easily), your data joins the rest of the world. Is it unreasonable for law enforcement to have access to the same information any dedicated 16 year old can get at? And if a 16 year old can operate under the radar, what about sophisticated terrorists?

Even ACRI, says Moskowitz, sees a need for the law. “We can understand the need for police to make their own decisions, to act quickly even without the authority of a judge, even without a specific threat or ’smoking gun.’” But, she says, “there needs to be a balance. We are giving police a lot of power and we are hoping they will do the right thing. We want to be sure this isn’t too much power for them to handle. But on the other hand, we don’t want the mafia to think we’re going to work to give them a free pass – in such circumstances, police should be free to act,” she says.

Security vs. freedom is a debate that has been ongoing around the world since 9/11 – but Israel’s Big Brother law is definitely one of the most “advanced” – meaning severe – anywhere in the free world. Can we handle it? Can our police handle it?

Maybe – hopefully – our past experience with heavy security will be a guide for us here, too. Visitors are often struck at how many guns – big ones – are displayed out in the open by IDF soldiers traveling on buses, hitching rides, or sitting in cafes. In other countries, most of us would get very nervous seeing a machine gun resting on the lap of a 20 year old napping while on a long-haul bus ride – but somehow, in Israel, we “know” that everything is going to turn out okay. Everyone’s a soldier, or at least everyone’s father, brother, sister, uncle, cousin, etc. is, or was. We know them; they certainly wouldn’t hurt the ones they love, and are in the army strictly to protect themselves, their family, and community. They can be trusted to walk around with an Uzi. Not everyone has a relative in the police department – but somehow, we consider them “mishpacha,” family, as well. And your relatives would never do anything to really hurt you, would they? Well, here’s hoping!

Now, in the age of digital danger, governments have been clamping down on electronic devices – such as laptop computers – that may contain illegal or otherwise illicit information. Can digital “information” be illegal or illicit? Sure. A terrorist could be carrying plans for constructing a bomb out of household materials, to be delivered to members of a sleeper cell somewhere; ditto for plans to rob a bank or engage in other criminal activity (that would be called “conspiracy to commit” in an indictment; and it’s also against the law to possess certain types of pornography, like child porn.

In most countries where the citizenry is free enough and wealthy enough to travel between destinations by plane carrying laptop computers or other electronic devices puts the issue of sacrificing liberties into much sharper focus. While citizens of specific countries are entitled to certain protections (such as police requiring a warrant in order to search your belongings), those protections don’t necessarily extend to citizens of other countries. After 9/11, no one wants to take chances when it comes to airline travel – hence all of the security regulations, from requirements to throw away all liquids to taking off shoes when passing through security inspections to demands that travelers turn on their computers – in order to be sure that it really is a computer, and not a bomb. And, as a matter of fact, laptop inspections are de rigeur when entering a number of countries, especially if you’ve been “profiled” as fitting a suspicious pattern.

Most law abiding people have no problem with any of these regulations. While they are inconvenient, it’s reasonable to expect governments to be concerned that terrorists may be trying to sneak onto a plane with weapons, or transmit sensitive documents or plans that could lead to death and destruction. And few of us would have much sympathy with people who abuse children, sexually or otherwise.

But there are other laws that apply to digital data – and a forced inspection at a border crossing that would reveal this information might prove to be very troublesome indeed. What about violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? You may have files on your computer that could get you detained and fined if you’re visiting the United States. What could happen? According to this helpful page from Oswego College in New York, violations of the DMCA “could impose civil and criminal penalties including fines, jail time, and lawyer’s fees. Note that the minimal per instance fine associated with copyright infringement for civil penalties is $750.00 and criminal penalties can go as high as $250,000 per instance and five years in prison.” Per instance of what? According to the page, the law applies to music files downloaded and shared with “(P2P) programs like Kazaa, Bit Torrent, Gnutella, or Limewire.”

Could it really happen? Would a visitor to the U.S. really be detained, fined, or worse for having music or movie files on their laptop? While it’s hard to imagine someone being arrested for such a thing, it’s not unthinkable that the offense could result in the seizure of a laptop as evidence. And it’s The Electronic Freedom Foundation has filed a lawsuit over border searches for individuals entering the U.S., and petitioned Congress to do something to stop it. With the RIAA suing dozens of people for violations of the DMCA, it’s not inconceivable that they would seek to set some examples among travelers with copyrighted files on their laptops or other devices – just to show everyone they mean business! Note that even U.S. citizens can be convicted for possession of illicit material discovered during a border search of a laptop; what chance do you have if you aren’t even an American?

Of course, you have nothing to worry about – because you have no such illicit files on your computer. You certainly acquired your music and movies legally. But try and prove that to the customs inspector! If you don’t carry copies of receipts with you, it’s your word against “the authorities” – and the chances that you may lose your device to the evidence bin while your story is checked out is not unthinkable. Not to mention the guffaws of inspectors as they read your e-mail or check out the silly sites cached by your Web browser. Or, if they find something they can zero in on (everyone wants to be a hero, after all), the embarrassment of being detained, or worse.

So what can you do? Well, there are tools you can use to hide – encrypt – portions of your hard drive. The EFF has a list of tips on how to ensure that agents don’t find stuff you don’t want them to when they investigate your device, although, the site reminds us, “that lying to a federal law enforcement officer about material facts is a crime, so if you choose to answer a question about whether there are additional encrypted partitions, you are obligated to answer truthfully.” The best encryption tool turns out to be Truecrypt, an encryption program that offers two levels of protection – encrypting a disk within an outer encryption, meaning that even if you are asked to de-encrypt a partition, your “real” partition remains encrypted, wrapped in the first de-encrypted partition.

Besides being free and multi-platform (Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux), it’s got a host of other features as well, such as the ability to encrypt a USB flash drive. Of course, the real “bad guys” could also take advantage of Truecrypt or other encryption programs to hide their secrets as well, which would be bad for the rest of us. But that’s a facile argument for repression; we don’t put people in jail in advance of their crimes, do we?