OFF THE WIRE
An internationally-spread Orwellian surveillance system uncovered by
RT has been linked to a software company that collects the GPS
coordinates of cell phone users in over 100 major cities.
The discovery of the TrapWire risk mitigation program last year and
its ability to match human faces caught on camera against massive
databases of intelligence led to an outcry from privacy advocates
around the world. Now once again the burgeoning preponderance of
Big Brother is being put into perspective.
In late 2011, members of the loose-knight hacktivist group
Anonymous pilfered data from the servers of private intelligence
firm Stratfor that were in turn handed over to the
whistleblower website WikiLeaks for dissemination. When internal emails
alluding to a service called TrapWire surfaced in the leak, an
investigation uncovered a program that, according to the company’s
founder, “can collect information about people and vehicles that
is more accurate than facial recognition.”
TrapWire developers Abraxas later became the subject of several
investigative reports by RT and others, and further analysis
revealed that that company was acquired in 2010 by technology
giants Cubic Corporation of Southern California. Cubic
would eventually deny any affiliation ever existed between their San
Diego headquarters and the spy-program discussed by Stratfor execs,
but links were nevertheless still evident. A Department of Homeland
Security website, in fact, all but affirmed that TrapWire was being
sold to government agencies as a product of
Abraxas as recently as February 2011.
Cubic — and to a lesser degree Abraxas — have since been linked
at least to some degree with a number of other suspicious spy
products. One item, Tartan, “exposes and quantifies key influencers and
hidden connections in social networks using mathematical algorithms
for objective, un-biased output,” its website claims.
“Our analysts, mathematicians and
computer scientists are continually exploring new quantification,
mining and visualization techniques in order to better analyze
social networks.” Tartan was marketed by Ntrepid, a Northern
Virginia company that’s board of directors shared four names
directly involved in the finances of Abraxas. Now a blogger has
uncovered yet another connection, and this one puts Cubic directly
in touch with the exact whereabouts of potentially millions of
Americans.
Under the radar of Cubic’s critics, earlier this year the
California company acquired NextBus, a “real-time transit
information” program that helps mass transportation customers
in over 100 North American cities get precise travel and traffic
information about bus and rail systems. Cubic made the acquisition
at a cost of just over $20 million, and with it gained yet another
resource for collecting personally identifiable information: namely
the exact global position coordinates for NextBus’ massive user
base.
NextBus bills itself as providing “real-time passenger
information solutions” by collecting GPS data volunteered by
willing customers and then uses that information to help them get
from point A to point B by accurately matching up transportation
routes with up-to-the-second travel information. It exists to make
the dreadful bus commute a little more reliable, but in doing so
demands that customers sacrifice a sizeable chunk of privacy.
“While your riders stay warm and safe, they can easily find
out exactly when to expect the next bus,” reads an advert from
NextBus website that’s used to sell their service to major
metropolitan areas across North America. The Los Angeles,
California metro became NextBus’ eightieth client in 2011, and
joined a roster of established clients that includes Toronto, San
Francisco, Washington DC and Boston.
“When you get a message from the Panopticon, the Panopticon
also gets a message from you, or rather, your GPS enabled
device,” writes the administrator of Female Faust, a blog where the connection
between NextBus and Cubic was first written about this week.
For Cubic, though, the latest acquisition isn’t anything out of
the ordinary. Cubic has been tied to services in cities around the
globe that involve not just accumulating biometric data using
TrapWire, but tracking the transportation habits of metro riders in
New York, Chicago and other cities abroad. Cubic’s transportation
division is reported to be the world’s leader when it comes to
implementing automated fare collection cards and the infrastructure
used in mass-transit systems across the globe, meaning TrapWire
cameras in cities such as Washington, DC are just a stone’s throw
from the very machines that commuters use their credit cards at to
pay for bus fare—transactions done with Cubic’s own vending
machines.
“Over the past decade, Cubic has implemented more than 80
percent of the major smart card systems in the US now active
today,” Cubic admits by their own right. With the acquisition
of NextBus, though, one major behemoth of the private surveillance
sector is allowed to scoop up yet more sensitive information about
customers who are likely none the wiser.
"Transit agencies and their communities worldwide are racing
to utilize information more effectively – optimizing their
resources and providing intelligent travel information to their
riders," says Steve Shewmaker, president of Cubic
Transportation Systems, in a statement from January. "Since
1996, NextBus has been a pioneer and a market and technology leader
at the forefront of this trend. As part of the Cubic family,
NextBus will have the additional resources and capabilities to
expand more rapidly while adding further depth to our own Nextcity
vision, which emphasizes better utilization of information,
wireless communications and mobile devices as key technologies for
the future of public transit."
On the Cubic website, NextCity is described as a program that “enable[s]
customers to manage how they travel – whether by train, bus, taxi,
private vehicle or bike – by providing both operators and travelers
real-time, dynamic information that will make their journey faster
and more reliable.”
“The NextCity platform will provide passengers and travelers
with a single, whole of transport payments account meaning that no
more will passengers need to maintain an account associated with a
transport smartcard, one or more toll accounts, a congestion
account and various methods of paying for parking. It will be
integrated, seamless and convenient for the traveller.”
Thanks to Cubic’s latest acquisition, the company is being
trusted with yet another trove of sensitive data. And while it’s
facetious to assume that Cubic’s many divisions around the world
are working in cahoots to collect and build personal profiles that
scan faces, sniff out social network habits and scoop up insanely
accurate GPS stats on travel patterns, the buy-out of NextBus
doesn’t make a company seem any less like a prime example of how
privacy is slowly but surely being eroded in the exchange for a
little bit of serenity and whole lot of surveillance.
