UK police use powers to seize personal data at borders

UK police are using counter-terrorism laws to seize the mobile phones of people entering the UK and download their personal data, it has emerged.

This means police can stop anyone at random at UK air, sea and rail ports to seize and retain all the data on their mobiles phones, according to the Telegraph.

This can include call history, contact lists, photos and recent contacts, but not the content of any messages sent by text or email.

The reports say the powers are so broad that police do not even have to show reasonable suspicion for seizing a mobile phone and can retain the information for “as long as is necessary”.

The paper claims that up to 60,000 people a year are examined as they enter or return to the UK under powers contained in the Terrorism Act 2000, but said the number of data seizures is unknown.
The 2013 annual review of terrorism laws, due out this week, is expected to raise concerns over the broad powers granted by the Terrorism Act and call for proper checks and balances to prevent abuse.
Independent legal reviewer David Anderson QC said information downloaded from mobiles seized at ports has been useful in bringing terrorists to justice.

However, he said ordinary travellers need to know that their private information will not be taken without good reason, or retained by the police for any longer than is necessary.
Privacy International has raised concerns about the wide-ranging powers, saying nowhere in the UK do people have fewer rights than at the border.

“If you were on the other side of the border, the police would rightly have to apply for warrants and follow strict guidelines,” the group’s Gus Hosein told the Telegraph.

“Under law, seizing a mobile phone should be only when the phone is essential to an investigation, and even then certain rules should apply. Without these rules, everyone should be worried,” he said.

Privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is reviewing similar data seizure powers police can use within the UK, although they must have grounds for suspicion and the phone can be seized only if the owner is arrested.

Last year, it emerged that seven UK police forces had installed technology that allowed officers to download data from suspects’ phones, including London’s Metropolitan Police force.

At the time, police authorities said guidelines given to officers state that data extraction can happen only if there is sufficient suspicion that the mobile phone was used for criminal activity.

Tool Kit: A Guide to Personal Weather Stations

For people who want hyperlocal information — gardeners, golfers, sailors and just plain old weather geeks — there are personal weather stations, which have gotten technologically more sophisticated yet increasingly easy to set up and use.

David Kabal, a 41-year-old firefighter in Boulder, Colo., said he was always fascinated by the weather, so he put a personal weather station in his backyard in 2007. When his colleagues saw the specificity of the data he was posting online, they asked him to install weather stations at two distant firehouses to help them predict and fight wildfires. “When a fire breaks out, we check the closest station’s weather,” said Mr. Kabal, since wind direction and humidity are strong indicators of the course and intensity of a blaze.

Personal weather stations range from $150 to $2,500 depending on the quality and accuracy of the equipment. “It’s like a lot of things: you get what you pay for,” said George Bridgers, 39, an environmental scientist in Raleigh, N.C., who has a degree in meteorology. The personal weather station he installed in his backyard cost about $500, which he said was what you should expect to pay “if you want something that will last and will have a minimal amount of failure.”

Manufacturers of popular weather monitoring systems include Davis Instruments, Oregon Scientific, Peet Bros. and RainWise. If you want professional-grade equipment comparable to what is found at airports, check out more expensive rigs by Campbell Scientific, MetOne, Vaisala and Young.

Regardless of price, look for sturdy construction and materials; you want a unit that will survive foul as well as fair weather. Metal is the best option, but also the most costly. Basic systems measure temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, rainfall and humidity. Nice add-ons are sensors that detect ultraviolet intensity, soil moisture, soil temperature and lightning.

Try not to get too wowed by some of the technology, though. While there are clever rain-gathering and wind-measuring devices that rely on disruption of sound waves to arrive at totals, traditional spinning wind cups, weather vanes and rain gauges tend to be less prone to false disturbances, like a really loud cricket.

Weather hobbyists favor solar-powered systems because you don’t have to replace the batteries as often, and wireless units are handy so you won’t have electrical cords running across your yard, which “rodents like to chew on,” Mr. Kabal said.

Another nice feature is a receiver, or console, that will upload your weather data either directly to the Internet or to a home computer with a broadband connection.

This allows you to display the data on a personal Web site or maybe share it with weather networks like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Citizen Weather Observer Program (C.W.O.P.) and Weather Underground’s Personal Weather Station (P.W.S.) Network. More than 29,000 people contribute data to one or both of the networks, which use the information to improve the accuracy and specificity of weather reports issued to the general public.

“We have members contributing data from all continents except Antarctica,” said Russ Chadwick, a retired NOAA radar engineer who co-founded C.W.O.P. in 2000.

C.W.O.P. gives members feedback on how their data compares to other stations in their area. If the variance is suspiciously large, it might be time to recalibrate your system or perhaps move it to a site that allows for more accurate readings. C.W.O.P. as well as Weather Underground, which is owned by the Weather Channel, provide helpful tips on where to locate weather stations for best results. For example, wind sensors should be 33 feet above ground and temperature sensors should not be in direct sunlight.

C.W.O.P.’s feedback helped Theodore Zang, 87, a retired operations researcher at Merck, determine that locating his weather station on his apartment’s balcony overlooking Central Park on the Upper East Side wasn’t ideal. “It only had exposure from three directions,” he said. With the help of his building’s manager, he installed his weather station on the roof of his 32-story building.

The manager, Bill Martin, said he used the station’s data to manage temperatures in the building. It’s also an amenity for other tenants who regularly check Mr. Zang’s weather Web page.

“Some people spend a lot of time and energy on their Web sites,” said Philip Gladstone, 55, a software engineer and weather watcher in Carlisle, Mass., who has contributed much of the analytical software that drives the C.W.O.P. network. Some personal weather station sites listed on C.W.O.P. and Weather Underground have multiple weather webcams and elaborate compass roses to indicate wind speed and direction as well as colorful graphics indicating temperature and pressure trends.

Among the many choices of software for interpreting and displaying data transmitted from weather stations are WeatherLink, Weather Display, Cumulus and WeatherSnoop. The dashboards, color displays and arrangements vary and are very much a matter of taste if not budget, since prices range from free to $300.

If none of the commercially available programs suit you, several individuals have written their own software that they are eager to share. A good way to identify and assess all the different options is to look at wxforum.net, an accommodating community of weather enthusiasts.

“There are a lot of weather nuts online that are extremely helpful if you are polite,” said Sandy Wilson, 64, an intensive care unit nurse, who put a personal weather station on the roof of her cabin in Oakley, Utah. The data is uploaded every 10 seconds to her Web site, so a strangely mesmerizing digital wind vane flips around almost in real time.

“My neighbors like it because a lot of them are weekenders and they can look at what the weather is like before they leave to come up here,” she said.

Bits Blog: A Game That Deals in Personal Data

A demo of the Data Dealer game.
All kinds of companies and services – social networks, data brokers, loyalty card programs to name just a few – amass and analyze details about millions of consumers’ activities and preferences. But the inner workings of this surveillance economy remain largely opaque to the public despite the recent revelations of widespread government data-mining of people’s phone and e-mail records.

Now a group of Web developers in Austria has introduced an online game called Data Dealer that aims to make the business of consumer profiling more transparent. The animated game encourages players to amass and sell fictional profiles containing details like the names, birth dates, weight, height, shopping and dietary habits of imaginary consumers.

The idea behind this cartoon data collection ecosystem is to give players a visceral sense of the widespread trade in personal data, says Wolfie Christl, a co-creator of the game.

“If you tell people they should be a bit careful, nobody listens. It’s boring,” said Mr. Christl, 36, who lives in Vienna. The game, he said, is intended to help people “understand a few things – what kind of personal data exists, which attributes are collected, who is collecting this data, why and what they are using it for.”

A screen shot from Data Dealer, an online game that explores the personal data ecosystem on the Internet.
In Data Dealer, each player starts out with an avatar of a database, a gray anthropomorphic vault containing more than a million profiles and a budget of $5,000.

Players can buy additional profiles from a variety of sources like a dating Web site, a sweepstakes company – or even a disgruntled nurse named Mildred who is selling access to her hospital’s patient database.

Players can also earn money by selling their profiles to a fictional large employer called “Star Mart,” a health insurance company or an imaginary government entity referred to as “Central Security Agency.”

Each vendor lists the consumer details it has to sell.

The fictional dating site, for example, is selling the relationship status, sexual orientation and political attitudes of its members, along with their birth dates, genders, phone numbers and e-mail address. The cost to the player: $150 for 8,000 profiles.

Although hypothetical members of the dating site may think they are anonymous, the game suggests that data dealers could use such disparate details to connect people’s dating profiles to their real names.

“For the chance to find their soul mate, lonely souls will pour out their hearts to you and let you in on their deepest secrets,” the game says. “Once you line up e-mail addresses and pseudonyms with the real names, things start to get interesting.”

Data dealer also explains to players the value of different types of information.

Of e-mail addresses, for instance, the game says: “once you know someone’s e-mail address, you can pinpoint them anywhere, no matter which nickname or pseudonym they use. In addition, e-mail addresses can be sold quite profitably for marketing purposes.”

Although the first version of Data Dealer is meant only for individual players, the game’s developers are raising money on Kickstarter this week to finance an upgraded version that will let people play against one another – and hack each others’ databases.

Mr. Christl says he hoped the game inspired people to demand more control over the information collected and disseminated about them.

“I think at the moment all this data is being controlled by big companies and by government institutions and not by people themselves,” Mr. Christl says. “We need a self-determined usage of personal data in the future. Some changes are needed to achieve that.”

Although Data Dealer is only a game, the timing of its Kickstarter campaign seems fortuitous. Offline, federal regulators have been urging real data dealers to make their practices more transparent.

A few weeks ago, for instance, Julie Brill, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, proposed that data brokers — companies that gather and analyze information from multiple sources about millions of consumers — give the public more access to and control over details collected about them.

“Data brokers should develop online tools so consumers could see the information multiple companies have about them,” says, Ms. Brill. The name of her initiative: “Reclaim Your Name.”

High price of personal protection for top tech CEOs

Some tech boardrooms go to expensive lengths to protect the top brass, authorising company funds for cars, drivers, bodyguards, and home security systems to keep the CEO safe.

 

The cost is high, but proponents view safeguarding the CEO as a necessary business expense. The CEO is among a company's most valuable assets, and protecting that asset can minimise corporate risk and align with shareholder interests.

 

Network World analysed pay packages at 49 tech companies and found seven that itemised security-related perks received by the CEO. One of the most expensive programs is at Oracle, which paid $1.5 million to secure CEO Larry Ellison's primary residence.

 

"We require these security measures for Oracle's benefit because of Mr. Ellison's importance to Oracle, and we believe these security costs and expenses are appropriate and necessary," Oracle wrote in its proxy statement. Ellison paid for the procurement and installation of the security equipment, and he's responsible for maintaining the system. Oracle pays for the annual costs of security personnel.

 

At a time when executive perks in general are on the decline, CEO security is one that has staying power.

 

"We're definitely seeing a removal of perks, particularly the perks that would be considered shareholder irritants, like excise tax gross-ups," says Joe Sorrentino, managing director at Steven Hall & Partners, an executive compensation consulting firm in New York. "One perk that still has some staying power is corporate aircraft usage," Sorrentino says.

 

Companies often justify letting the CEO use corporate aircraft for personal travel because of security concerns -- the same reason they fund personal and residential security programs.

 

The security perk "is still pretty common for the very large, high-profile companies -- defense companies, major consumer goods companies ... financial services firms," Sorrentino says. "We're not seeing any increases in [security-related] perks. However for the big-name companies, it's not surprising to see it. I don't think it's a majority, but it's a healthy minority."

 

Salesforce.com worked with a security consulting firm to design CEO Marc Benioff's security program, which it deems "necessary and appropriate for the protection of our CEO given the history of direct security threats against the senior executives of major U.S. corporations and the likelihood of additional threats against these individuals in the future."

 

Salesforce.com established its security program in 2012 "in response to bona fide business-related security concerns for our CEO," the company stated. Last year's security costs for Benioff came to $648,456, which included physical and personal security services, including on-site residential security.

 

"As our founder who has led the Company for more than 13 years, our CEO has overall responsibility for our business strategy, operations, and corporate vision. The Compensation Committee not only believes that ensuring his personal safety is vital to our success as an organisation going forward, but that establishing such a program would be a prudent action in light of its overall risk management responsibilities," Salesforce.com asserted.

 

As part of Marissa Mayer's employment agreement, Yahoo agreed to reimburse her for up to $50,000 of security expenses per year. In 2012, the company paid $39,467 for personal security services for CEO Mayer, who joined the company in July of last year.

 

NCR paid $55,636 in security-related costs for its CEO, William Nuti. The payments are for "the Company-provided car and driver Mr. Nuti is required to use for security purposes in and around the New York City area, to the extent that such trips were for commuting purposes," NCR explained in its proxy statement.

 

In the same pricing league is Intel, which paid $58,600 for home security expenses for former CEO Paul Otellini, who retired this spring.

 

AT&T picked up the tab for CEO Randall Stephenson's home security, which amounted to $101,923 in 2012.

 

The tab at Amazon.com is much higher: $1.6 million on security for CEO Jeff Bezos. The Internet retailer justifies the security expenses in part because of Bezos' low compensation (besides the $1.6 million security perk, Bezos' only pay is his $81,840 salary).

 

"We provide security for Mr. Bezos, including security in addition to that provided at business facilities and during business-related travel," Amazon wrote in its proxy statement. "We believe that all Company-incurred security costs are reasonable and necessary and for the Company's benefit, and we believe that the amount of the reported security expenses is especially reasonable in light of Mr. Bezos' low salary and the fact that he has never received any stock-based compensation."

 

There are likely other tech CEOs who receive security perks in addition to these seven tech leaders, but not all of those perks are itemised in financial reporting documents. For example, Time Warner Cable paid for CEO Glenn Britt's "personal use of a Company-provided car and specially trained driver provided for security reasons," but didn't disclose the cost.

 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission doesn't require companies to report the exact cost of a perk if the benefits are valued at less than $10,000 -- but it does view CEO security as a perk. While a company might consider the CEO's security to be a corporate expense, the SEC sees it differently because there's a personal benefit associated with company-paid security and because it's not a benefit that's offered to all employees.

 

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