The trials have been performed by a Dutch company called Sound Intelligence.  As you pass by, the CCTV camera analyses the tone of your voice rather than what you are actually saying.  Presumably if you sound stressed then you are likely to be a terrorist or mad, upon which the Big Brother police can swoop down and take you away for the good of society.

What’s next – listening in on your conversation on the street listening for significant words – like “bomb” or “airport” ????  Or maybe tapping into your phone calls or e-mails for stress or significant words.  Oh, I forgot, they are already planning to do that.

Maybe they decided to trial it in Scotland to see if it could cope with the strong Scottish accent!

Via BBC

The GCHQ project is called “Mastering the Internet” (MTI) which sums it all up perfectly!

The articles quote sources as saying that the UK Government through its various agencies is spending up to £1 billion on MTI projects – just to keep an eye on you and the bad guys!

The Register article says “It will grant intelligence staff in Cheltenahm complete visibility of UK Internet traffic, allowing them to remotely configure their deep packet inspection probes to intercept data – both communications data and the communication content – on demand.”

Since the revelations GCHQ has issued a press notice today (4th May 2009) denying that it will track all UK internet and phone usage.  It said “GCHQ is not developing technology to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain, or to target everyone in the UK.”

Well that’s OK then! Let’s not worry about this again.

Via The Register,  Sunday Times Online, BBC

Speaking to the BBC the article quotes Zimmerman as saying “The UK is risking sliding unwittingly into a police state because of the growing use of surveillance technology”.

Zimmerman is famous for inventing the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) e-mail encryption technology.

Interestingly he goes on to say that electronic surveillance of UK citizens by the authorities is becoming too easy.  He says that if surveillance were made harder then reduction of civil liberties would be more seriously debated.

Via BBC

The UK Government recently introduced new laws requiring all ISPs and telecommunication companies to record details about all internet traffic, e-mails and telephone calls that pass through their systems.

In the survey 60% of Britons rejected the European directive requiring all communications to be recorded to help crack down on criminals.

It appears that people don’t trust the UK Government to store and analyse the data correctly.

Maybe the Government wants to keep track of all that Viagra spam you’ve been receiving?

The organisers Zoom say “…We don’t believe it is (spying on the children). We think it is a way of ensuring that the system works a lot better…”  They also say “…The system is actually very secure. There’s no information on the (ID) cards that the pupils will be given themselves. It’s all held on a database and it’s obviously governed by data protection.”

Well that’s OK then given the UK Government’s record on securing our personal data in Government databases.  As safe as houses!