Friday 24 August 2012

Global TrapWire/INDECT protest October 20

The TrapWire surveillance system and Europe's INDECT are the subject of a global Anonymous protest planned for Saturday, October 20 2012 Information about the protest is being shared on twitter by OpINDECT International and there is an #OpINDECT/#TrapWire Facebook Event Page.

It is not the first INDECT protest - but recent news about TrapWire from the Wikileaks leak of private intelligence firm Stratfor's documents has added a tanker of gas to the fire.

News and locations of the protest are being shared on various forums and social media sites primarily with a google map showing locations of protesters joining the efforts to raise awareness and intent to stop use of the surveillance technologies.

TrapWire is in implementation in the United States while INDECT is officially still a European research project. While details are unconfirmed, the intent of both TrapWire and INDECT is to combine various intelligent surveillance technologies with tracking and location data, individual profile histories from various sources (datamining and social media), and image data analysis (such as facial recognition; TrapWire's video component) to monitor people under the guise of threat detection. Upon the release of Wikileaks' Stratfor documents (emails), news about TrapWire and sibling surveillance technologies have been met with increasing public surprise, fear and outrage.

A significant number of TrapWire and INDECT's opponents believe the surveillance systems to be direct threats to privacy, certain civil freedoms and that their implementation could constitute human rights violations. TrapWire is used by private entities, the US Government "and its allies overseas."

Last week it was revealed that TrapWire is now linked to Anonymizer, a tool used by activists and at-risk populations - formerly trusted for its security and anonymity protections.

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