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The Beast of Brussels 234

Posted by michael from the sprouts-are-bad-enough dept.
'No nickname' Ian writes "If you live in Europe you should definitely read this story about a government supercomputer. It's written by Andy McCue from silicon.com and entitled: IT Myths: Does the 'Beast of Brussels' know everything about us? Basically, in Europe there are rumours of an EU-owned super-computer which stores and process information on every European citizen. The piece debunks the rumour and finds out its roots are actually in a work of fiction - but there is some interesting comment from privacy activists who suggest it may not be too wide of the mark. Simon Davis of Privacy International goes so far as to suggest such computer may have existed - if perhaps not on the same 'three storey-high' magnitude."
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The Beast of Brussels

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  • How could this story be believed? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by James A. A. Joyce ( 681634 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:18AM (#6543400) Journal
    In what respect would static data regarding the citizens of Europe be processed continuously? Why would a supercomputer be needed? Is there that much data? How much data would be kept on citizens if the rumour were true? How come it hasn't been exposed? And so on and so forth. The rumour is so vague I'm surprised that anybody would have genuinely believed it on its own 'merit'. It's quite obviously wrong from even a cursory thought about some of its implications; the EU would never get away with such rampant privacy violations.

    • Re:How could this story be believed? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:32AM (#6543433)
      Today, with the technology we have, it might actually be possible. In cities around the world, cameras snap pictures of speeders' license plates, and they are automatically mailed speeding tickets. More information could be monitored by numerous distributed computer systems. It's all certainly POSSIBLE.

      But that doesn't mean it's actually happening.

      Besides, it would take as many people as are being monitored to monitor the data in order to intelligently get anything useful out of the morass of raw data. So, while it certainly could be processed to some extent and stored, it couldn't be used for a whole lot.

      • Re:How could this story be believed? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by GammaTau ( 636807 ) <jni@iki.fi> on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:43AM (#6543454) Homepage Journal

        Today, with the technology we have, it might actually be possible. [...] More information could be monitored by numerous distributed computer systems. It's all certainly POSSIBLE.

        What STASI did in East Germany was a lot worse than that. And it was not only possible, it was real.

        When people read books like 1984, they often forget that it was criticism aimed at the an existing system and its possible outcomes.

        • Re:How could this story be believed? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Frymaster ( 171343 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @04:35AM (#6543530) Homepage Journal
          And it was not only possible, it was real.

          forget staasi. the dod and darpa in the u.s. o' a is working on a total tracking system to track, record and analyze everything about the monitored individual - phone conversations, physical movement, surfing, purchase, even vital signs. it's the "lifelog" project (reference link is here [msnbc.com]).

          of course darpa/dod is saying it's only to be used on people who consent to being monitored.... but then again, j edgar hoover once said the fbi would never use phone taps. administrations and policies change y'know. so, skepticism is warranted.

          the only plus side to this is that the software is written by microsoft... so you may have the option to live privately during reboots.

        • And the Stasi didn't even need computers. Nor did they need computers in 1984 - or any other technology like the telescreens. All they need are your family, relatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues.

        • Nah, its just Distributed Now - TIA, Echelon (Score:4, Informative)

          by johnrpenner ( 40054 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @10:25AM (#6544096) Homepage
          > Said machine was supposed to track all world trade through
          > monitoring the buying and selling of every citizen on the planet...
          > These could be seen by infrared scanners at 'special verification
          > counters' (cash tills, to you and us).

          so, now we can finally all rest assured,
          since it was all just a fiction... OR CAN WE...!? :-\

          >> ECHELON [fas.org] :
          http://www.echelonwatch.org/
          http://www.fas.or g/irp/program/process/echelon.htm

          ECHELON attempts to capture staggering volumes of satellite,
          microwave, cellular and fiber-optic traffic... This massive
          surveillance system apparently operates with little oversight.

          >> TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS: [epic.org]
          http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/

          The goal is to track individuals through collecting as much
          information about them as possible...

          The project calls for the development of ultra-large all-source
          information repositories, which would contain information from
          multiple sources to create a 'virtual, centralized, grand
          database.' This database would be populated by transaction
          data contained in current databases such as financial records,
          medical records, communication records, and travel records as
          well as new sources of information. ...biometric technology
          to enable the identification and tracking of individuals.
          DARPA has already funded its 'Human ID at a Distance' program,
          which aims to positively identify people from a distance
          through technologies such as face recognition or gait recognition.
          A nationwide identificationsystem would be of great assistance
          to such a project by providing aneasy means to track individuals
          across multiple information sources.

          TIA Report to Congress May 2003.
          http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/m ay03_re port.pdf

          Congress Report Executive Summary and FAQ May 2003:
          http://www.darpa.mil/body/tia/TIA%20ES.pdf

          TIA System Description (PDF, 4.5 MB):
          http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/ti asyste mdescription.pdf

          Poindexter's August 2002 Speech:
          http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/poindex ter.html

          ???

        • This article [resort.com], while written before most of us were born, is still relevant.

          "Leetspeak" be damned!

      • Re:How could this story be believed? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You're right on that last part.

        Given your license plate, someone can look at the vehicle registration data to figure out who you are. Should this be a surprise to anyone? Isn't that somewhat the point of having license plates and registration?

        So, if somebody knows your license plate and your address, what is the worst they can do? See where you've been? Mail you speeding tickets? Big deal. Someone else pointed the kind of things East Germany did, and yeah, I have heard some similar stories too. (I

    • Re:How could this story be believed? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      James A. A. Joyce
      The rumour is so vague I'm surprised that anybody would have genuinely believed it on its own 'merit'. It's quite obviously wrong from even a cursory thought about some of its implications;

      Of course people would believe this rumor.
      Everybody knows that computers are bad, mmkay?

      the EU would never get away with such rampant privacy violations.

      ... and that's a point where I find it difficult to agree with you. Every .gov will try to keep track of the people, just in case. Echelon, anyo

    • Is there that much data? Only if they store data as MS Word docs instead of text files or some compressed format.
    • You can't escape... Muhahahah :D
    • Why would a supercomputer be needed?
      You don't need a supercomputer to perform a simple LEFT JOIN query that even mySQL could handle since v1.0.

      If the PK of each Govt Department's Table is indexed (standard DB practice) then the lookup will involve a simple QUERY_INDEX on all Government Tables, a very simple operation, not even a table scan is needed.

  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:26AM (#6543415)
    They should get Echelon and the Beast of Brussels networked together.

    You know, kinda like this [imdb.com].

  • Damn. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Synic ( 14430 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:28AM (#6543419) Homepage Journal
    I thought it said the *breast* of Brussels... how disappointing...
  • Dear god...

    I can only imagine how many hybrid Soviet Russia/Beowulf cluster jokes this story will generate. :)

  • I love that kind of stuff... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:30AM (#6543429) Journal
    I downloaded a movie about a "beast" of Brussels---oh, wait... it was Amsterdam. Never mind...

  • Falling on it's own improbability (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WegianWarrior ( 649800 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:34AM (#6543437) Journal

    Invisible barcodes tattoed on our foreheads? Beeing read by lasers as we shop groceries? And on every single citizen of the world / europe?

    It don't take much to debunk a myth like that, it falls flat on it's face from the sheer impossiblity of a) managing to register and tattoing everyone without someone noticing, b) actually correlating all the data, and c) getting usefull information out. In short, the computer - espesially if it was based on the avilable technology in the early 70's - wouldn't been able to coope with the sheer amount of raw data.

    I'm sure it's a bureaucrats wet dream to know everything about everyone, but it is beyond the realm of the possible. In order to believe this myth in the first place, you probaly has to be among those who wear tinfoilhats to stop the goverment from spying on you with rays... and if you are, nothing can change your mind on this, or convince you that man has walked on the moon.

    News for nerds? Not really. Stuff that matters? Not to me at any rate. Something that made me smile a sunday morning? Sure did, and I needed that.

    • it falls flat on it's face from the sheer impossiblity of a) managing to register and tattoing everyone without someone noticing

      Did the article mention tatooing?

      I'm sure it's a bureaucrats wet dream to know everything about everyone

      I doub't it. Imagine the forms he'd have to fill out!

      Anywho, though, I'm not sure I see any real evidence to show this is impossible, either. Certainly it is theoretically quite possible; such a scale of data management is no big feat compared to some, and there are in

    • managing to register and tattoing everyone without someone noticing

      [[mcc randomly wakes up in the middle of the night to find a man in a surgical mask standing over him and using a tattoo needlegun on his forehead]]

      mcc: uhhh.. what are you doing?

      man: nothing. i'm not here. go back to sleep.
    • Just make sure you pull your tinfoil hat down to your eyes. :)

    • Ha. I'm sure bureaucrats have no desire to know everything about everyone. Who really has a desire to learn everything about everyone is marketing executives. Why aren't people as paranoid about credit reporting agencies and direct-marketing database providers as they are about the government?

  • Working with the EC (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Osrin ( 599427 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:34AM (#6543438) Homepage
    I've done a lot of work with the EC over the last 10 years or so... the existence of the "beast of Brussels" would be a surprise for many reasons, not least of which several people would have had to have reached consensus to build the thing.

    Totally impossible.
    • I agree that Member States would have quite an issue with giving such powers to the EU. They also would lack resources to manage such a thing. Sometimes it is quite funny to see how the EU is made up to be somekind of leviathan superstate, when in reality it is still quite weak and powerless (except maybe in antitrust issues) compared to the states.

    • Re:Working with the EC (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is also very clear that the EC does not know much about their citizens. One of the most apparent things is that they have very little knowledge of what the average citizen would like a unified europe to give them.

      Hint: that is not providing a platform for the large companies of the world to get all the rights and benefits, thereby killing off all small business or forcing them into merging together.
      It is also not the reshaping of society into a faster and faster operating commercial merry-go-round.
    • I think you hit the nail on the head here. EU governments would be incapable of deciding how to fund, implement and manage a system like this. On a more cynical note if it did exist a member state would most likely come up with a means to get funding or grants for each of their citizens in the system so we could expect to see the population of Europe explode to about 20 billion over a 4-5 month period.

    • Re:Working with the EC (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JanneM ( 7445 )
      The surprise would not be that the members reached consensus - remember that for every acrimonius spat, there are many decisions that do go smoothly and without fuss. The surprise would be being able to keep quiet about the whole thing.

      _If_ such a thing ever existed, It'd be more likely that it would be an organisation set up by one or two of the member states, without connection to the EU itself.
    • Yes, but you would say that, wouldn't you...

      Now i am more nervous that ever.

  • Not really sure about these reporting standards... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ndr_Amigo ( 533266 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:38AM (#6543444)
    If you read the related article about the series (IT Myths Update [silicon.com]), check out the last paragraph.

    Now, I find it more than a little disapointing that they say they 'have a feeling it might be true'. What person writing IT articles doesn't even know basic computer history?

    Surely at least SOMEONE at a tech-based news site has heard of Grace Hopper?!? Although most people might remember her for Cobol, almost any book or show on computer history mentions her famous conversation with Howard Aiken after finding a moth stuck in a relay of the Mark II.

    Sheesh, either that or they are really strapped for ideas. Mentioning what should be known as one of the most fateful incidents, by one of the most famous people working on one of the most famous computers, as a 'possible truth' is a really bad way to hype a series, IMHO.

  • Well i live in Europe (Belgium)... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Interfacer ( 560564 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @03:40AM (#6543447)
    and most people - including me - think nothing of it. in Belgium it is mandatory for us to carry an official ID card (no library card or drivers license. a real ID card).

    we need to show that to open a bank account, a library card, a rent-a-video store,... well basically everywhere.

    for health care we have a unique number in a national database, and since a few months everyone who has a mortgage is in another database.

    We don't care. i mean why should't the governement know where you live, or which bank accounts i have.
    the only reason i can come up with is if you are a fraudster.

    for example tracking people with a mortgage on a national level is done so that not-so-bright people do not get a second mortgage if they already are at their financial limit with the first one.

    the most important reason i don't mind is that we have a law that applies to any place where personal information is stored about you.
    basically the law says that you have to get total access to all information about you, and that if it is incorrect the keeper of that information needs to change it.
    i know from several examples that this law is used and that is works ok.

    at least we can review and cghange information about ourselves.

    kind regards,
    Interfacer.

    • Re:Well i live in Europe (Belgium)... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 27, 2003 @04:21AM (#6543509)
      Well, I live in Belgium too, and I do care. Belgium is full with people in local and national politics who think they are technocrats who use IT for good purposes, and then turn around and do the worst things without realizing the implications to their constituents, or to the IT market/industry/whatever.

      Banksys/proton (a private company, being the only one that has the full picture of money flowing nation-wide), the new ID-card with your own personal certificate on-a-chip (nevermind that it's done by a private company - sun - and that the keys are pre-generated, so any of the intermediaries can escrow it), the e-voting problems, the e-tax return with the associated delays, the list goes on and on. Fuckups ranging from trivial to monumental, but all fuckups nonetheless.

      I've just got the impression that everyone in this country likes to think they're 'down' with technology, but they're all basically clueless. Half of the things they do are solutions to problems that never existed, the other half, really bad implementations.

      Sad thing is: I think Belgium is at least trying to do the right thing, I've heard stories that leave me far more cynical about other countries.

      To get more to the point (sorry for all the ranting): I agree with you that an ID card is not necessarily a bad thing. But I'd like to avoid having data about me being gathered and correlated unnecessarily. If you have a ton of data on real people, and analyse that data for certain patterns, you're bound to have a statically significant number of false positives, which will have consequences for the same real people.

      And I really hate the remark you've given: "the only reason i can come up with is if you are a fraudster". I don't want to be put in the position where I have to justify my (legal) behaviour, just because otherwise it might seem that I'm hiding something (you're using encryption? you must be a drug dealer, tax evader, child molester, ...)

      Yea, maybe I'm a bit paranoid, but it's far easier to have your rights slowly eroded, than it is to regain them.

    • Privacy is key to freedom (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nuntius ( 92696 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @04:31AM (#6543524)
      You ask why the government shouldn't have access to this info. I ask why they should.

      When designing a secure system, you try to minimize priviledges - if someone doesn't need access, then it is denied to them.

      Likewise we need to be ever vigilant in protecting our freedom. If someone (e.g. the government) doesn't need knowledge or power, then we shouldn't let them have it.

      In your example, you mention that the government now can decide when someone has exceed their financial limits. Why is that a good thing? Let the lenders sort it out and take the hit if a borrower defaults.

      The more information others have about you, the more subtly they can manipulate you. Detailed information is usually used to take advantage of someone. That's why stalking is illegal in many countries. You'd find it creepy if your neighbor knew this information; why doesn't it bother you that hundreds of government beaurocrats know this for an entire country?

      • The more information others have about you, the more subtly they can manipulate you. Detailed information is usually used to take advantage of someone.

        I'd like to echo this thought because it is all too easy to "look someone up" and form an opinion of them without even meeting the person. I am speaking specifically of credit reports / drug test results, which, more and more, are being used (because it's easy to do from a monied corporate perspective and going after the trustwothy drones that suit the su

        • Yes, replying to my own message, sorry.

          What happens in the "real engineering" world is that plants are built, facilities constructed, etc., based on "our" designs.

          The reality tends to be somewhat different though, as during construction certain necessary changes are made.

          The designer of the original system typically is not notified of these changes, as this is not important in the overall scheme of things. Most times, tweaks are done at the local level and are only ever documented at the facility i

    • Spain too (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Documento Nacional de Identidad (DNI) [www.mir.es] [National Identity Document] from the web of the Ministerio del Interior [www.mir.es].
    • I must say more power to you, if you trast government enough to have such a thing. I'm guessing that such trust is warrented being that I've never heard a bad thing about Belgium (though I am an American, so I might be missing something) In America this is a bad thing, because our government is (sad to say) broken. You can't trust a system that has gotten too big for its britches, too little interest in the common man, too much in the economy/politics. Belgium may face the same distrust, but I doubt it.

      • Re:Well i live in Europe (Belgium)... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 27, 2003 @05:44AM (#6543645)
        You've rather missed the point, I'm afraid.

        Essentially, you're saying that it's okay for him to trust his government because it's not broken. But what if today he trusts his government, tomorrow he gives away a bunch of rights because he trusts his government, and the next day his government is suddenly broken? What happens the day after that? The answer is he gets fucked in the ass, that's what.

        The point here is that you don't give away your power and your rights to a government just because you trust it or because you're happy or because the economy is good or the economy is bad or because there are terrorists out there and you want your government to protect you. You NEVER give these things away because it may take the blood of your sons and daughters to get them back. So what if you government doesn't fuck you today? Since when has today been a promise of tomorrow?

        I personaly don't mind if you sell your rights and freedoms for a pack of chewing gum. The problem is you want to give up my rights too.

        I will sell my rights and freedoms more dearly (expensively) than you are willing to sell yours. You can sell yours for safety, or health care, or whatever you choose.

        The cost of my rights and freedoms is blood. The only question is whose blood.
        • It really is too bad you posted this A.C., since you DO bring up a valid point.

          What you said is a serious dillema, I think that you have to go with the national vibe, if you have a good liberal government, with a precendent of being virtuous to the people, think I'm guessing that you just have to trust them. Some governments have a solid history of being good guys, and there is no option but to trust them. Constant paranoia, no matter how justified, is too stressful in a state that does not warrant it.

          Americans have a reasons (some justified, some not) to be paranoid. And American culture is based on a healthy sense of paranoia, it is just part of the country. Woven into the fabric, if you will. And please mind, we're not talking of terrorism, or economy, we're talking of pure practicality, to tell the truth a national ID makes sense, it has less possibility of fraud than giving out your social (though the risk is still there). I personally wouldn't really be that upset if America issued a national card, different thanyour social/drivers liscence, being that these cards are essencially ill-planned national IDs already.

          Please mind that I am very proud to be an American, even with all its nasty faults (and their multiplying like rabbits), and I am scared of my government. But this does NOT make Americans typical of the rest of the world. And most of the time I happen to agree with the EU, and not my home country.

          But, back OT, the actual myth of a giant computer tracking everything is scary, to everyone I hope. Since that is a MASSIVE violation of personal freedom/privacy. But I was only posting about Belgiums national ID, not big brother. While I'm sure America would LOVE big brother computers, I doubt most of the governments of the world would actually stand up for it.

    • Re:Well i live in Europe (Belgium)... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rxke ( 644923 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @08:00AM (#6543861) Homepage
      Also a fellow Belgian. one thing that's a bit scary about al that digital logging of your whereabouts is that you can end up looking suspicious w/o being guilty. i had this little experience, not so long ago: my credidcard was wearing out, so i had problems using it, so i go to the bank to ask for a change in. they go checking when and where i had troubles on their terminal, and on one point the guy asks me: 'it says here that yesterday you took XXXmoney out of the ATM at XXXsquare at 2 AM. is that right?' I go, 'yup, right' and all of a sudden people in the bank start looking a bit strange at me. why? That square is renowned for it's drugdealing scene, and i saw them thinking i was a user (being skinny and pale...withdrawing money at 2AM) What they do not know is that i work late shifts, and pass that ATM on my way home from work. so thanks to Big Bro my bankmanager now thinks i'm a junk... (i didn't care to explain what i did there)
  • I found a book on my parents' bookshelf a couple years ago. THe boko was printed in the mid-70'd by end-times "conspiracy nuts"... they went a little bit OTT with this book. I recall something about a massive computer that catalogs everyone in Brussels being mentioned. The cover of the book had a red "666" emblazoned on it, and it talked about oil, big business, and the US gov't taking away constitutional rights.
    • Big buisiness, big oil and the US DoJ taking away constitutional rights for profit and personal gain?

      Nah, way off base. I mean, a good conspiracy theory has to have at least an element of the believable.

  • Beastly Conspiracy Theory (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JWSmythe ( 446288 ) * <jwsmythe@nospam.jwsmythe.com> on Sunday July 27, 2003 @04:54AM (#6543562) Homepage Journal
    This sounds like great material for every conspiracy theorist to work with..

    It's perfectly possible, and concievable, but the question is, does it really exist?

    I saw a few comments on here. So what if someone sees your license plate? Lets go through an easy path for the feds to follow. I'm basing this off of the US. I'm sure similiar stuff applies in Europe.

    Your car is spotted in a particular area..

    1) Run the plate. Now they have your name, address, SS#, age, height, weight, hair and eye color, and your history of driving.

    2) Check the credit bureau's and Chex Systems. Now they know all your bank accounts, credit cards, etc, etc.. Even if your bank doesn't exactly report that you have an account, you'll show up when they checked your credit (or with Chex).

    3) Have you ever bought groceries or gas with your ATM/Debit card or credit cards? Do you use the grocery store's "discount" cards? Even if you bought your groceries with cash, if you used your discount card it's easy enough to track your purchases.

    So, was the driver of the car you? Sure. You bought gas a few miles away on your credit card.

    *IF* (that's a big if) they have a tracking system put together to keep all this information in the same place, it'd be easy to track any single person. Even if the police were interested in tracking an individual, it wouldn't be very hard.

    Think about what you did today. Using the simple outline I gave today, they know just about everything you did.

    I'm out of town. So, they know when I bought my plane tickets online from what IP, which is tracable back to my home. My home Internet provider would give up my info in a heart beat, including what checking account I pay my bill with. They know when I got on the plane, who I was with, and were I got off. Checking either with the rental car places at the airport or my credit cards, they know what car I'm driving. They know I went to a department store and bought kid toys and party supplies(for a kids birthday), a grocery store and bought a good bit of beer (for myself).

    Based on that, they could easily know where I am. I didn't get a hotel, and I haven't purchased gas yet, I'm probably still in the area, so who do I know in the area (phone records, previous contacts). They could go as far as to ask my cell phone provider what tower is my closest contact. That'll narrow me down to 4 miles.

    Based on that, they probably know what house or apartment I'm in, and it wouldn't take much creativity to figure out what's here (phones, Internet).

    So (oh my goodness), the big brother system knows what house I'm in, that I'm drinking beer and reading/writing on Slashdot. If they're really good, they can see two SSH connections back to one of my servers too.

    4:30am, he's drinking beer, working on servers, and on /.

    But you have to ask yourself, why would they track me? They wouldn't. I'm rather boring. No warrants, not a suspect in anything (right now).

    If the big brother system was this good, it may actually be a good thing. Got someone with a warrant? Wait til they show up anywhere, and voila, send the cops to pick them up. *AND* if say something happens in my home city (where I'm not at right now), it would be obvious that it wasn't me.

    Ybor City, in Tampa Florida, put together a more difficult system. It was facial recognition, where it would check against NCIC and try to guess pedestrians with warrants. From what I've read in the press, it failed miserably. Why hope that someone will walk past a camera and hope to get a cop there before he gets away? You could wait for him to go grocery shopping, and have a patrol car show up while he's still loading the car.

    Would a big brother system be good? Probably not. The detectives now are overworked, underpaid, and don't have the time to make a few phone calls (outlines in the first few steps) to track dow
    • 1) Run the plate. Now they have your name, address, SS#, age, height, weight, hair and eye color, and your history of driving.

      They have your plate yes, what is to say they have _you? Someone else could be driving. They have your plate, what is to say that the plate wasn't taken off another car and put on another?

      Even if this technology did exist (which it does with speed cameras) there are still flaws.
      ---
      • You didn't read on.. One piece of evidence is rarely enough. So, they spotted my car.. But then I use my credit card, or do something that validates my identity. Say I buy beer (like, I did say), I'd get carded. Most grocery stores will catch on that the name on the drivers license is different than the credit card, and not sell on that card.

        I wasn't saying that a camera saw my car drive by. What I was implying is that say my car was seen leaving the scene of a crime or potential crime.

        A sim
        • It still follows the line of circumstantial, it will be enough to bring someone in for questioning and can certainly help build a case against that person. More importantly, it does provide leads for a case, but at the end of the day unless your case stands up in court then doesn't matter how many bits of evidence you have from scanning plates, credit card purchases etc, those all can be done by almost anyone - guy steals a car and uses a stolen credit card, guy who it belongs to was asleep and didn't find
          • I wouldn't say to ever arrest someone purely on the results a computer spits out, even if I was the one writing the software (I'm always perfect, hehe).

            I'm not really comfortable with the idea that people track what I do. As it is right now, individual companies track everything they can. It's just a matter of time before they tie everthing together.

            My cell phone provider knows my general location (down to a few miles), and everyone I talk to. My bank knows every purchase I make, and every time
            • I wouldn't say to ever arrest someone purely on the results a computer spits out, even if I was the one writing the software (I'm always perfect, hehe).

              You missed the point, there is a difference between being hauled down to the station for questioning and being arrested. The police will only arrest you if there is sufficient evidence to make a case against you. Being questioned about something means just that, being asked questions.

              In Australia we have this think called a "Fly Buys" card. Everytime you


              • In Australia we have this think called a "Fly Buys" card. Everytime you buy something you rack up points

                Most grocery stores here in the states do that.. If you don't carry their card, they charge you more money for the same product. I find it really irritating that they always read my name off the reciept when they hand it to me. I didn't introduce myself, but they say "Thanks for shopping today Mr. Smythe." I'm just happy that they have a fake name, wrong address and bogus phone number on file. :)
        • The problem with a TIA like system is not that they are tracking you specifically. But that there is a chilling effect based on surveillance of everyone. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, and many others had were put under secret surveillance by J Edgar Hoover. If the FBI can see everything you do, you could end up on lists without even knowing it. Speak at a couple protests, check some Marx out of the library, and suddenly you're being pulled over more often, and can't fly without an invasive search.
          • Don't worry, I completely understand what you're saying.. I had to get a bigger closet to keep my skeletons in..

            Lets take accusitions for instance. Over the years, I've met some real lying assholes.. One said I threw rocks at his dogs in his yard, even though I never knew where he lived, and am nice to dogs. Another went to the FBI and InterPol with accusitions of DoS attacks, hacking, industrial esponiage, and international drug running.

            From both people, those were idle lies. But if you took
    • They know I went to a department store and bought kid toys and party supplies (for a kids birthday), a grocery store and bought a good bit of beer (for myself).
      (...)
      But you have to ask yourself, why would they track me? They wouldn't. I'm rather boring. No warrants, not a suspect in anything (right now).

      And to draw the conspiracy theory further, where you go from monitoring to guesstimation: Imagine you liked alcopops and not beer. And then some übercomputer corrolates your alcopop purchase with yo
      • Next thing you know, it'll mark you as a potential pedo loading up for a "party" where you get the kids wasted and do unspeakable things.

        Actually, I made the same relationship when I was writing it, but didn't want to go there. :) Maybe I solicit the kids with the toys, and then offer them a beer (or whatever), and the pictures go straight up to my site hosted in [pick a 3rd world country].

        They'd be able to make similiar relationships if I bought blank video tapes, cool aide, and xanax. It would raise
      • Dude, do they really make Alcopops? Sounds great. Screwdriver on a stick. They should make them shaped like genetalia. Excellent party favors.

  • Actually it does exist . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @04:57AM (#6543566) Journal
    . . . but it was built by some hyperintelligent pandimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pandimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own). Downside, is it's busy calculating 'The Answer', whatever that is . .

  • Statistics Denmark (Score:5, Informative)

    by Guanix ( 16477 ) * on Sunday July 27, 2003 @05:01AM (#6543574) Homepage

    In Denmark we've had a civil registration system for hundreds of years, and in the 1960's it became centralized. A wide range of information about births, deaths, marriages, divorces, jobs, education, and other information that the government collects is referenced by the CPR number, which is a national ID number for all Danish residents.

    These databases are controlled by a fairly strong Data Protection Act which prohibits cross-referencing different databases using the CPR number, except in special circumstances, and any such special permit is always made public.

    There is, however, one exception: the Statistical Bureau [www.dst.dk]. They have access to most public databases and are allowed to cross-reference them in order to compile statistics. We don't have a census in Denmark because all the information is already available.

    This is a very powerful tool for researchers. They can ask a question like "How many males who graduated from this particular primary school subsequently went on to be convicted of a serious crime?", and have it answered by the Statistical Bureau within a couple of weeks. They simply have to type in an SQL query. It's also much easier to find relationships between schools, workplaces and illnesses like cancer. They can also ask questions such as "How many people whose parents were divorced will go on to have a divorce?" with a simple SQL query, instead of the extensive surveys that are required in other countries.

    The RISKS, on the other hand, are obvious.

  • Myth and reality (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xenna ( 37238 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @05:14AM (#6543590)
    Well, with today's technology the government/EU certainly could collect a lot of information about it's citizens.

    I had a funny experience with a Dutch central government agency that is supposed to do all wiretapping for the police. They contacted me because they wanted to tap one of our customer's e-mail domains on tax fraud suspicions.

    It took them two weeks to figure out who was handling the mail for the suspicious company's domain (us). Then they wanted us to forward all mail to a mailbox at a free mail provider. This mailbox almost immediately filled up and started sending 'mailbox full' messages to the original senders.

    Big brother has a lot to learn...

    X.

    (BTW: I changed the sender addresses as a precaution ;-)
  • It looks to me like this is another attempt by THEM to distract the public from Bielefeld [camp.ccc.de], the German city that does not exist.
  • Some countries, like New Zealand, have very strict rules about what information government departments can share. As far as I know, the EU does not have such rules. Nonetheless, I know many people who work in the EU, including in the IT departments, and the idea of a "supercomputer" of some kind is so laughable...

    Firstly, the different sections of the EU are so jealous about gaining and holding power that they barely collaborate, and would never allow such a centralization of information (and thus power)
    • 11/9

      If people must insist on refering to that event by it's date, then they should at least include the year.
    • Absolutely incorrect. The EU has very strong data protection laws.

      Unfortunately, the commission has chosen to ignore it in favour of pandering to US security paranoia, see here [statewatch.org]. It will be interesting to see if they ultimately get away with it.

      • Very strong on paper, perhaps, but in practice they are not widely followed, and I have never heard of a case of an institution or business being in trouble for breaking the laws on data privacy. Add to this the fact that any implementation of these laws is done at the national level... and you do not get much of a feeling in Europe that private data is safe.

        "Strong laws that are widely ignored" is somewhat of an oxymoron. I chose the example of New Zealand specifically because this is a place where the
        • Sure, practices vary widely across the EU, but nevertheless, the rules exist. The national laws are supposed to be quite uniform, and as far as I know, this is true. The enforcement however, may be very patchy. But irrespective of how dilligent the national governments are, individuals do have recourse, in principle at least, to pursue companies or government agencies that are violating the laws.

          This is what makes the US customs dispute I linked to before so interesting. European law prohibits transfe

  • One weird thing about this article is the mention here and elsewhere of "The Beast" being part of the movie, The Rapture [reelmoviefx.com]. It's been a long time since I saw that movie but I don't remember anything about a supercomputer, just a sort of boring plot with some nice shots of Mimi Rogers [celebritym...rchive.com]. Odd reference.
  • In your face Echelon, who's my bitch ?, you are, thats who.
  • Why start ridicule people who are "conspiracists" and think people in power would do anything to stay in power (or get more)? Have you guys forgotten ww2? Ever heard of romania? Russia? Big centralized power structures tend to develop in the same way over and over again. Now we (europeans) have Schengen. Do some google'ing, and you'll find stuff like this [campaignfortruth.com] or this. [statewatch.org] You could proberbly find even better stuff, I dont spend to much time on this issues myself(though maybe I should). I do think I know that thes
  • Isaac Asimov once wrote short stories about an uber-computer called "Multivac" that controlled all world trade, education, science, etc.
    • Mmm, but it was a good computer because it was controlled by Asimov's laws of robotics. Unable to harm humans, and so on. In the end you have computers running the world for the good of humanity far better than humans could. With the amusing proviso given in 'The Machine that Won the War' (which may have had a different name) of a General who didn't trust the computer and so flipped a coin to make decisions instead.
  • Just at the begining of the article we read:

    "The Beast is here and it knows all about you. Satan must be here - and working in IT."

    I really could't resist to think about some guy who's name's ASCII codes add to the number of of the Beast:
    BILLGATESIII
    66 + 73 + 76 + 76 + 71 + 65 + 84 + 69 + 83 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 666

    If you want more examples go here [egomania.nu].
    And if you take it too seriously visit this site [datasearch.com.au].

  • Not a European Rumor (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The myth about the "Beast of Brussels" is not of European origin AFAIK. It builds heavily on religious drivel about Satan. Such religious myths are not very common in Europe. I am a European, and I have never heard it over here. I would not be surprised if it turned out that this story originated in the USA, where conspiracy tales with a religious undertone are far more common. The article says this:

    'The Beast' is actually the invention of Christian fiction writer Joe Musser, who included it in his book Be

  • In the US it is now common to use bank account cards to purchase everything. If you assume that the government could capture the feeds from all the banks and credit card information, then, storage requirements for such an animal would break out conservatively as:

    300 million citizens x 5 purchases per day x 4 bytes fk into SSN table x 4 bytes for long id of item purchased x 365 days x 60 years = 262.8 Tbytes which is A LOT, but doable.

    To track everything for just a rolling 5 years, rather than 60, then your storage requirements drop down to 21TB, and then further if you actually assumed only 2 purchases per day (on average), you could knock it down to 8TB, and finally, if you assumed that 150 million citizens were actually buying stuff as the other were children, then, you could knock it down to 4TB. Given today's hard drive prices, this would almost be within the range of affordability for a small business or even a determined hobbyist.

    So, the real issue is not, will the government be tracking everything, because, since it so cheap to do it it probably already does, but, the real issue will be, when will we use Kazaa to collect all the purchases everyone made simply for our own entertainment!


  • It is a fact that the U.S. government has agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA. It is a fact that these operate everywhere in the world they want to operate. It is a fact that these agencies are almost completely secret, and are even authorized to lie in the media to hide their activities. It is a fact that these agencies have money that is kept secret from the American people. No U.S. citizen can know how much taxpayer money is spent, or the specific ways the money is spent.

    For decades there have bee

    • Information that supports my earlier comment:

      Judging from their comments, most people who post to Slashdot have very little understanding of the activities of the U.S. government. There have been many, many abuses concerning the collection of information. To prevent some of these abuses, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) [gwu.edu] in 1978, and has since modified the law seven times. "The purpose of FISA was to create a wall between criminal investigations and intelligence

  • This must be an American myth about the EU... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mac Degger ( 576336 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @11:18AM (#6544374) Journal
    I have never heard this particular urban myth before. That might be my own ignorance, but I like to think I'm kinda plugged in...which leads me to believe this rumour isn't circulating as widely in Europe as the article would lead us to believe.
  • There is no need to tag people. Each one of us has a biometric signature of visible, audible, "smell"able patterns from the large (body shape) to the small (DNA) whch can collaborate to uniquely identify us.

    The "lapsus" in using these patterns is two fold: One, the technology is still expensive, potentially flawless but poorly distributed and expensive. Two, it has an entrenched, flawed but in "situ" infrastructure to displace.

    Once these two problem are overcome, in time they will be, we're going to be so

  • I am not surprised, considering the EU track record of total disregard for citizens' privacy rights.

    The Central European Bank, you'll remember, is planning to insert radioID tag chips in every euro banknote [eetimes.com]. The cover story is that it would make counterfeiting harder. The swiped-under-the-rug consequence is that cash would become as traceable as wiring transfers or credit card transactions, a paramount consideration in EU where the high taxation level (60% of the GNP avg) are driving a lot of people to t

  • All of the databases that actually do contain our information (credit bureaus, utility companies, etc.) virtually guarantee to screw something up eventually.

    Any master database will, within a few years of collecting data, contain at least one error in every field.

    Leaving you unrecognizable, unlocatable, and uncontrollable.
  • The Beast' is actually the invention of Christian fiction writer Joe Musser,

    This kind of fiction is "Christian" only in name. In reality, it's xenophobia and nationalism masquerading as Christianity. Some of the more modern varieties of this kind of drivel, like the "Left Behind" series, make the head of the UN the anti-Christ.
  • What's particularly ironic about this story is that Europe doesn't even have credit reporting agencies in the way the US has: if you want credit, European banks want to see collateral and income guarantees, not credit ratings. And European businesses aren't permitted to retain or exchange transaction records beyond what is needed for completing business transactions.

    But in the US, your complete purchasing histories are being kept track of: between credit reporting agencies, supermarket affinity card recor

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