As the USA Freedom Act enters hibernation during the lame duck session of Congress, word comes that Verizon -- one of the most vocal opponents of government surveillance -- has infected 100s of millions of customer accounts with “super cookies” that reveal nearly every bit as much personal information as the NSA bulk metadata collection program. It’s commonplace for … [Read more...]
Clearing the Air on Deep Packet Inspection
Recently C5IS was taken to task by a maker of deep packet inspection (DPI) that objected to our inferring their product was licensed by other companies for surveillance purposes. Under public investigation and in the face of evidence showing they had indeed previously sold DPI for surveillance, the company had reason to be concerned. So much so, in fact, that they’ve exited … [Read more...]
Raytheon: Driving Big Data Evolution for Local Police
A look at Raytheon’s Big Data solutions for law enforcement agencies shows that local police definitely benefit from leveraging analytics to pursue criminal investigations -- particularly when they share data with other police departments. The most common use of Big Data is to conduct searches for available data on a target: to identify patterns, detect anomalies and … [Read more...]
BAE Systems Applied Intelligence: a Brand and a Statement
C5IS kicks off this month’s focus on the British surveillance industry with a report on BAE Systems Applied Intelligence. The United Kingdom has some 20-plus significant vendors of electronic surveillance products and services, perhaps surprising for a country Britain’s size. Then again, this is the land that developed the world’s first modern foreign intelligence agency … [Read more...]
Israel’s NICE: Comprehensive Lawful Intercept and Intelligence
Analysts often speak of real time predictive analytics as the “next wave” in surveillance for preemptively taking action against acts of crime or terror. At Israel’s NICE Systems, the future of lawful intercept and intelligence has arrived. Launched in 1986 by a group of former Israeli soldiers, NICE (short for “Neptune Intelligence Computer Engineering”) began operations … [Read more...]