Once again, the real world moves faster than the world of South. Yesterday, California’s Governor Jerry Brown signed a law that allows the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to start experimenting with electronic license plates. South Carolina and New Jersey have similar bills in progress. California DMV will be able…
One of our favorite autocracies (Russia) brings us a new tech product that bypasses pesky FISA courts and warrants: AIBIS, a device that mimics a GSM cell tower and can intercept up to eight simultaneous connections within a 500m range. It can soak up voice, SMS, mobile internet and call-setup…
Once again, the present catches up with South’s near-future: on 30 January, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued Integration of Drones into Domestic Airspace: Selected Legal Issues, a report outlining (among other things) the problems of trespassing and voyeurism that private operation of drones will bring literally to our doorsteps…
One of the conceits of South, my near-future thriller, is that in 2032, we will all be carrying what essentially is a national ID card embedded with voluminous information about ourselves, and security agencies will have an ID reader that can access all this data as well as check it…
A while back, I posted about fashion in 2032 in connection with my work-in-progress, South. One aspect I didn’t think much about is passive surveillance countermeasures. Discovery News wrote on 18 January about Adam Harvey, a New York artist and activist who has debuted a line of outerwear using a…
In Part 1, I outlined the legal foundations of the surveillance state in 2032. In parts 2a and 2b, I listed some of the capabilities law enforcement and intelligence agencies will have to watch where people go and what they do, say or write. So now that you’re all paranoid…
Last time, I reviewed some (but certainly not all) of the surveillance tools available today to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This time, I’ll talk about a few of the new wrinkles that have appeared in the 2032 of South. These aren’t sci-fi whizbangs; they already exist, just aren’t deployed…
In Part 1, I reviewed the legal state-of-play enabling the surveillance state in South’s 2032 (disturbingly similar to today’s conditions). In this installment and the next, I’ll talk about some of the tools law-enforcement and intelligence agencies have available to monitor people’s activity and communications. Part 3 will talk about…
Most of the point-of-view characters in South are either under surveillance or doing the surveillance. How does surveillance in 2032 differ from what we have now in 2012? The sad and scary answer: not much. Most of the legal and technological plumbing is already in place and already being used….