Just INTERCHANGE the COUNTRY and CITIES from one article to the other!
They are BOTH the SAME! TOTALITARIAN!!!!
U.S.A.
"US doles out millions for street cameras; Local efforts raise privacy alarms" by Charlie Savage/Boston Globe August 12, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Homeland Security is funneling millions of dollars to local governments nationwide for purchasing high-tech video camera networks, accelerating the rise of a "surveillance society" in which the sense of freedom that stems from being anonymous in public will be lost, privacy rights advocates warn.
Since 2003, the department has handed out some $23 billion in federal grants to local governments for equipment and training to help combat terrorism. Most of the money paid for emergency drills and upgrades to basic items, from radios to fences. But the department also has doled out millions on surveillance cameras, transforming city streets and parks into places under constant observation.
[The POINT of this whole FALSE WAR on "terror!"]
The department will not say how much of its taxpayer-funded grants have gone to cameras. But a Globe search of local newspapers and congressional press releases shows that a large number of new surveillance systems, costing at least tens and probably hundreds of millions of dollars, are being simultaneously installed around the country as part of homeland security grants.
In the last month, cities that have moved forward on plans for surveillance networks financed by the Homeland Security Department include St. Paul, which got a $1.2 million grant for 60 cameras for downtown; Madison, Wis., which is buying a 32-camera network with a $388,000 grant; and Pittsburgh, which is adding 83 cameras to its downtown with a $2.58 million grant.
[To catch "terrorists," but NO MONEY for Health, Bridges, nothing!]
Small towns are also getting their share of the federal money for surveillance to thwart crime and terrorism.
[Oh, now they are for CRIME, too, huh?
Yup, SAY it is for ONE THING, but USE for ALL THINGS as USUAL from GOVERNMENT!!
STINKS of a TOTALITARIAN POLICE STATE!]
Recent examples include Liberty, Kan. (population 95), which accepted a federal grant to install a $5,000 G2 Sentinel camera in its park, and Scottsbluff, Neb. (population 14,000), where police used a $180,000 Homeland Security Department grant to purchase four closed-circuit digital cameras and two monitors.
[Talk about fucking WASTING MONEY over a FALSE-FLAG OPERATION on 9/11!!!]
Police Captain Brian Wasson told the Scottsbluff Star-Herald:
"We certainly wouldn't have been able to purchase this system without those funds."
Other large cities and small towns have also joined in since 2003. Federal money is helping New York, Baltimore, and Chicago build massive surveillance systems that may also link thousands of privately owned security cameras. Boston has installed about 500 cameras in the MBTA system, funded in part with homeland security funds.
Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Homeland Security Department is the primary driver in spreading surveillance cameras, making their adoption more attractive by offering federal money to city and state leaders.
[Driving the POLICE STATE!]
Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said that it is difficult to say how much money has been spent on surveillance cameras because many grants awarded to states or cities contained money for cameras and other equipment. Knocke defended the funding of video networks as a valuable tool for protecting the nation:
"We will encourage their use in the future."
But privacy rights advocates say that the technology is putting at risk something that is hard to define but is core to personal autonomy. The proliferation of cameras could mean that Americans will feel less free because legal public behavior -- attending a political rally, entering a doctor's office, or even joking with friends in a park -- will leave a permanent record, retrievable by authorities at any time.
Businesses and government buildings have used closed-circuit cameras for decades, so it is nothing new to be videotaped at an ATM machine. But technology specialists say the growing surveillance networks are potentially more powerful than anything the public has experienced.
[It's coming! The PRISON PLANET!]
Until recently, most surveillance cameras produced only grainy analog feeds and had to be stored on bulky videotape cassettes. But the new, cutting-edge cameras produce clearer, more detailed images. Moreover, because these videos are digital, they can be easily transmitted, copied, and stored indefinitely on ever-cheaper hard-drive space.
In addition, police officers cannot be everywhere at once, and in the past someone had to watch a monitor, limiting how large or powerful a surveillance network could be.
But technicians are developing ways to use computers to process real-time and stored digital video, including license-plate readers, face-recognition scanners, and software that detects "anomalous behavior."
[Translation: "READS YOUR MIND!"]
Although still primitive, these technologies are improving, some with help from research grants by the Homeland Security Department's Science and Technology Directorate.
Jennifer King, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies privacy and technology:
"Being able to collect this much data on people is going to be very powerful, and it opens people up for abuses of power. The problem with explaining this scenario is that today it's a little futuristic. [A major loss of privacy] is a low risk today, but five years from now it will present a higher risk."
[Privacy is ALREADY GONE!]
As this technological capacity evolves, it will be far easier for individuals to attract police suspicion simply for acting differently and far easier for police to track that person's movement closely, including retracing their steps backwards in time. It will also create a greater risk that the officials who control the cameras could use them for personal or political gain, specialists said.
The expanded use of surveillance in the name of fighting terrorism has proved controversial in other arenas, as with the recent debate over President Bush's programs for eavesdropping on Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without a warrant.
[Controversy? Really? Where? Certainly not in my shit MSM that I'm fed daily?]
But public support for installing more surveillance cameras in public places, both as a means of fighting terrorism and other crime, appears to be strong. Last month, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 71 percent of Americans favored increased use of surveillance cameras, while 25 percent opposed it.
[Yeah, we are ALL in FAVOR of OUR ENSLAVEMENT!!
Stoo-pid fucking Amurkns!]
Still, some homeland security specialists point to studies showing that cameras are not effective in deterring crime or terrorism. Although video can be useful in apprehending suspects after a crime or attack, the specialists say that the money used to buy and maintain cameras would be better spent on hiring more police.
[Not when you want to WAR PROFIT off a LIE!]
That view is not universal. David Heyman, the homeland security policy director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointed out that cameras can help catch terrorists before they have time to launch a second attack. Several recent failed terrorist attacks in England were followed by quick arrests due in part to surveillance video.
Earlier this month, Senator Joe Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, proposed an amendment that would require the Homeland Security Department to develop a "national strategy" for the use of surveillance cameras, from more effectively using them to thwart terrorism to establishing rules to protect civil liberties.
Lieberman: "A national strategy for [surveillance cameras] use would help officials at the federal, state, and local levels use [surveillance] systems effectively to protect citizens, while at the same time making sure that appropriate civil liberties protections are implemented for the use of cameras and recorded data."
[Yeah, Joe the Zionist Jew will take care of our rights for us! Pfffffttt!!]
China
"China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People" by KEITH BRADSHER
SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 9 — At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.
[The MARK of the BEAST -- coming at you from AmeriKa!]
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
Security experts describe China’s plans as the world’s largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with police work to track the activities of a population and fight crime. But they say the technology can be used to violate civil rights.
The Chinese government has ordered all large cities to apply technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency cards to 150 million people who have moved to a city but not yet acquired permanent residency.
Both steps are officially aimed at fighting crime and developing better controls on an increasingly mobile population, including the nearly 10 million peasants who move to big cities each year. But they could also help the Communist Party retain power by maintaining tight controls on an increasingly prosperous population at a time when street protests are becoming more common.
Michael Lin, the vice president for investor relations at China Public Security Technology, the company providing the technology:
“If they do not get the permanent card, they cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way for the government to control the population in the future.”
Incorporated in Florida, China Public Security has raised much of the money to develop its technology from two investment funds in Plano, Tex., Pinnacle Fund and Pinnacle China Fund. Three investment banks — Roth Capital Partners in Newport Beach, Calif.; Oppenheimer & Company in New York; and First Asia Finance Group of Hong Kong — helped raise the money.
[Turning not just AmeriKa, but the WORLD into a PRISON PLANET -- just like Alex Jones has warned!]
Shenzhen, a computer manufacturing center next to Hong Kong, is the first Chinese city to introduce the new residency cards. It is also taking the lead in China in the large-scale use of law enforcement surveillance cameras — a tactic that would have drawn international criticism in the years after the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989.
But rising fears of terrorism have lessened public hostility to surveillance cameras in the West. This has been particularly true in Britain, where the police already install the cameras widely on lamp poles and in subway stations and are developing face recognition software as well.
New York police announced last month that they would install more than 100 security cameras to monitor license plates in Lower Manhattan by the end of the year. Police officials also said they hoped to obtain financing to establish links to 3,000 public and private cameras in the area by the end of next year; no decision has been made on whether face recognition technology has become reliable enough to use without the risk of false arrests.
Shenzhen already has 180,000 indoor and outdoor closed-circuit television cameras owned by businesses and government agencies, and the police will have the right to link them on request into the same system as the 20,000 police cameras, according to China Public Security.
Some civil rights activists contend that the cameras in China and Britain are a violation of the right of privacy contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Large-scale surveillance in China is more threatening than surveillance in Britain, they said when told of Shenzhen’s plans.
Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel of Human Rights Watch in New York:
“I don’t think they are remotely comparable, and even in Britain it’s quite controversial.”
China has fewer limits on police power, fewer restrictions on how government agencies use the information they gather and fewer legal protections for those suspected of crime, she noted.
[What world is she living in?
Here in AmeriKa, there IS NO LAW, save for Der Fuhrer's decrees!]
While most countries issue identity cards, and many gather a lot of information about citizens, China also appears poised to go much further in putting personal information on identity cards, Ms. PoKempner added.
Every police officer in Shenzhen now carries global positioning satellite equipment on his or her belt. This allows senior police officers to direct their movements on large, high-resolution maps of the city that China Public Security has produced using software that runs on the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Robin Huang, the chief operating officer of China Public Security:
“We have a very good relationship with U.S. companies like I.B.M., Cisco, H.P., Dell. All of these U.S. companies work with us to build our system together.”
The role of American companies in helping Chinese security forces has periodically been controversial in the United States. Executives from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems testified in February 2006 at a Congressional hearing called to review whether they had deliberately designed their systems to help the Chinese state muzzle dissidents on the Internet; they denied having done so.
China Public Security proudly displays in its boardroom a certificate from I.B.M. labeling it as a partner. But Mr. Huang said that China Public Security had developed its own computer programs in China and that its suppliers had sent equipment that was not specially tailored for law enforcement purposes.
The company uses servers manufactured by Huawei Technologies of China for its own operations. But China Public Security needs to develop programs that run on I.B.M., Cisco and Hewlett-Packard servers because some Chinese police agencies have already bought these models, Mr. Huang said.
Mr. Lin said he had refrained from some transactions with the Chinese government because he is the chief executive of a company incorporated in the United States:
“Of course our projects could be used by the military, but because it’s politically sensitive, I don’t want to do it.”
Western security experts have suspected for several years that Chinese security agencies could track individuals based on the location of their cellphones, and the Shenzhen police tracking system confirms this.
When a police officer goes indoors and cannot receive a global positioning signal from satellites overhead, the system tracks the location of the officer’s cellphone, based on the three nearest cellphone towers. Mr. Huang used a real-time connection to local police dispatchers’ computers to show a detailed computer map of a Shenzhen district and the precise location of each of the 92 patrolling officers, represented by caricatures of officers in blue uniforms and the routes they had traveled in the last hour.
All Chinese citizens are required to carry national identity cards with very simple computer chips embedded, providing little more than the citizen’s name and date of birth. Since imperial times, a principal technique of social control has been for local government agencies to keep detailed records on every resident.
The system worked as long as most people spent their entire lives in their hometowns. But as ever more Chinese move in search of work, the system has eroded. This has made it easier for criminals and dissidents alike to hide from police, and it has raised questions about whether dissatisfied migrant workers could organize political protests without the knowledge of police.
Little more than a collection of duck and rice farms until the late 1970s, Shenzhen now has 10.55 million migrants from elsewhere in China, who will receive the new cards, and 1.87 million permanent residents, who will not receive cards because local agencies already have files on them. Shenzhen’s red-light districts have a nationwide reputation for murders and other crimes."
The Nexus Point
"A Chinese Tycoon, Inspired to Create Police Technology" by KEITH BRADSHER
SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 9 — Behind Shenzhen’s aggressive introduction of new police technologies is an unusual computer software company that has won some of the initial government contracts, China Public Security Technology, and the wealthy tycoon who runs it, Lin Jiang Huai.
China Public Security is traded in the United States on the obscure over-the-counter bulletin board market, but has a market capitalization of $185.3 million. It is preparing to seek a Nasdaq listing next year, Mr. Lin said.
Mr. Lin, 38, who holds more than $100 million worth of China Public Security stock, said that he dreamed as a boy of becoming a police officer to fight crime and defend the helpless. A powerfully built amateur weightlifter who is also a devout Buddhist, he made his first fortune as a manufacturer of an important component for DVD players.
Mr. Lin said the success of American technology during the invasion of Iraq inspired him to acquire the predecessor company for China Public Security and turn it to police work:
“I really felt strongly that the police would absolutely benefit from such technology. Bush helped me get my vision.”
[Ya gonna salute him with a "Seig Heil," then?]
Mr. Lin bought an obscure e-commerce business here three years ago and changed its business focus. He then did a so-called reverse merger, in which he bought a tiny Florida printing company with sparsely traded stock, renamed it China Public Security, and turned the software business here into a subsidiary of the American company.
Helping Chinese police agencies has been profitable for China Public Security and its investors. The company estimated in May that it would earn an after-tax profit of $12.5 million on sales of $27 million this year. Two hedge funds that bought stakes have more than doubled their money since investing in early February."
[So the cameras are NOT ABOUT "TERROR."
This about WAR PROFITEERING and CONTROLLING the MASSES!!!
WAKE the FUCK UP, AmeriKa (and World) BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!
WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!]
