-Caveat Lector- http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/16507.html This is old but worth a read and has some links on the url. Deconstructing Public Enemy by Judy DeMocker 3:00 a.m. 26.Nov.98.PST The scariest implication in conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State is that technology isn't what's holding the US government back from spying on its citizens. Laws are. Pretty much every whiz-bang spying technology depicted in the movie, which opened in US theaters on 20 November, is possible today -- sophisticated satellite surveillance systems, accessibility of bank records, phone taps without warrants. And the movie's premise that national security can take precedence over the civil rights of law-abiding citizens, has hit a chord with viewers and filmmakers alike. "I want the audience when they leave the theater to be looking over their shoulders thinking, can this really happen? And I want them to believe that it can happen," said director Tony Scott in a prerecorded interview. The scenario of an innocent man being digitally hounded through tunnel and building, traced to pay phones and 7-Eleven surveillance systems, and exposed by a digital trail of personal information, is overblown. Most store cameras are not hooked up to outside systems, and databases are not so rapidly accessible that a government agent could pull up a suspect's past addresses, personal history, bank, and telephone records in the blink of an eye. "Overall, I think the movie overestimates how well databases are linked together, and the possibility of real-time record retrieval," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "But someday, it will be possible to conduct that type of constant surveillance of a target." The law protects citizens from being spied on in their homes. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution establishes search and seizure limits. But as the world increasingly uses telecommunications and Internet technologies, the digital line between public and private has blurred. "The Fourth Amendment says we have a right to be free in our homes and our papers, but in terms of informational privacy, there's not explicit constitutional protection," said Cassidy Seghal, staff counsel on information issues for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Digital telephony creates the possibility for increased portals, so government can acquire the data much faster. Certainly real-time transmissions and interceptions are possible." Legal protection from surveillance is guaranteed under Title 3 laws, passed in 1968. But those laws haven't kept up with technological advances. For instance, government agencies can track people using low-level transmitters via satellite, as seen in the movie, and there are no laws governing it. And the laws around wiretapping have been weakened of late. "The laws are awful right now," said Lisa Dean, vice president for technology policy at the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, in Washington. "Congress just passed a roving wiretap proposition that allows them to tap anyone in the vicinity of the person they've targeted." With telephone companies converting their systems from analog to digital, wiretapping has gotten faster and easier. Law enforcement agents no longer need to physically tap phone lines, and if they bypass the warrant process in the interests of national security, they can be listening in minutes, said the ACLU's Seghal. The know-it-all, ex-National Security Agency man in the movie, Brill, made a number of assertions that cross the line between reality and conspiracy theory. "There are 14 acres of mainframes under Fort Meade automatically taping and analyzing telephone conversations," said Brill, played by Gene Hackman. "The NSA may have acres of computers, but they're crunching numbers, not taping phone calls. The movie's marrying two facts together to make a false conclusion," said James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace, the authoritative history and profile of the National Security Agency. It's unlikely the NSA is taping phone calls within the country, Bamford said. The agency used to do some illegal taping in the '70s, but they've cleaned up their act since then, he said. "Technically, the government does have the capability to record and analyze the large percentage of the world's telecommunications. That's the NSA's main function," said James Dempsey, senior staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, in Washington. Within the United States, however, it is illegal for the government to do blanket recording of domestic conversations, and so they focus most of their eavesdropping efforts overseas, Dempsey said. Fort Meade is the hub of the Echelon satellite surveillance system, and its goal is to intercept fax, email, and voice communications, said Dean, of the Free Congress Foundation. "It probably is illegal, but they can do it," she said. "The NSA can read the time off your watch," Brill claimed in the film. The National Reconnaissance Office, which maintains the satellite network for the NSA, declined to comment on the resolution capabilities of its satellite surveillance. And spokesman Art Haubold pointed out that, legally, his organization is not allowed to turn its surveillance systems on the United States. But it's likely that military's current satellite surveillance can track people and cars from place to place, as shown in the film, and even to give a digital download that would run like a 10-frame-per-second video, according to Tom Herring, a geophysics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The satellites he uses for research can resolve images up to 1 meter, based on technology that's 10 to 15 years old. "My best guess is that the military could do a factor of 10 better than that," Herring said. "With an imaging capability of 10 cm, detecting a person would be possible, and it's plausible that you could see facial characteristics." Probably not a watch face, though. And, in case you were wondering, there are no spy satellites attached to the Hubble Space telescope. Related Wired Links: FBI's Wish Is Granted 9.Oct.98 Spying on the Spies 27.Oct.98 DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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