[ExI] EU institutes massive program to monitor "abnormal" behavior

[Stefano Vaj]

2009/9/24 Robert Masters <rob4332000 at yahoo.com>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6210255/EU-funding-Orwellian-artificial-intelligence-plan-to-monitor-public-for-abnormal-behaviour.html
>
> From the UK Telegraph:
> A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.
> Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence".

Let me put on for once - but the opportunities to do so are becoming
so frequent that I am concerned about my political identity... :-) -
my "libertarian" hat.

I am not deluded that we have any chance in a fight against increasing
pervasive surveillance and exposure. In fact, I am persuaded that any
privacy we used to have has already been irremediably lost, even
though we can still hope to some extent for the protection offered by
the "background noise" generated by a too huge amount of data to be
thoroughly investigated. And I suspect that any kind of measure
theoretically aimed at fighting such evolution would end up in even
more restrictive regulations and social control, not to mention
policies with neoluddite undertones.

The real issue here is that first such project should be financed as a
matter of course by taxpayers who presumably in their vast majority
would be more or less radically opposed, or at the very least
uninterested,  thereto; and secondly, that legislation exists, namely
the so-called EU directive on "privacy" (!), that has enacted a
de-facto State monopoly on the automatic collection and processing of
personal data, let alone "sensitive" data, a practical ban existing on
such activities as far as private companies, NGOs, political
movements, media, citizens' organisations, etc., including for
"defensive" purposes.

--
Stefano Vaj