These days, if you feel like somebody's watching you, you might be right.

One year after the Sept. 11 attacks, security experts and privacy advocates say there has been a surge in the number of video cameras installed around the country. The electronic eyes keep an unwavering gaze on everything from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Washington Monument.

And biometric facial recognition technology is being tested with video surveillance systems in a handful of places such as the Fresno airport and the resort area of Virginia Beach, Va.

"Our business is booming," said Ron Cadle, an executive with Pelco, the Fresno-area firm that is the biggest supplier of video security equipment.

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Privacy rights advocates say that the increase in video surveillance has not turned the United States into a "Big Brother state" yet, but they fear Sept. 11 has opened the door to creating a "surveillance society."

"It definitely could become widespread," said Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Everybody's using the threat of terrorism to justify a lot of things that don't have a lot to do with terrorism."

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Even before Sept. 11, the security industry conservatively estimated that there were more than 2 million surveillance cameras in the United States, and video equipment purchases made up the biggest slice of a $40 billion-a-year industry.

Although there are no current estimates, a group of anti-surveillance activists who have mapped the location of cameras in Manhattan since 1998 say they've seen a 40 percent increase in new cameras in New York's financial district since last September.

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Earlier this year, Washington officials activated a state-of-the art command center that can monitor 12 cameras throughout the Capitol Mall area and has the capability to tap a network of other video surveillance cameras throughout the city.

The ACLU and EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argue that the system can be used to infringe on citizens' rights and are pushing for regulations and public oversight of its use.

"It's open-ended surveillance," said EPIC President Marc Rotenberg. "It's the digital electronic equivalent of allowing police to go through your home without a warrant."

Stanley, public education coordinator of the ACLU's newly-created Technology and Liberty program, said numerous studies have documented the misuse of surveillance video.

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Technology now being developed will make video surveillance equipment even more powerful. High-definition television, or HDTV, equipment makes it possible for surveillance cameras to capture an image of a person 3,000 feet away with as much detail as one taken by an older analog camera at 30 feet, said John Burwell, an executive with SGI.

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But the most controversial video surveillance technology has been biometric facial recognition, which can identify individuals using the unique distances between specific points on a person's face. Critics maintain the technology is inaccurate and intrusive.

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And this past weekend, police in Virginia Beach, Va., began formally using a Visionics system that's plugged into a 10-camera surveillance network that has been used since 1993. Police use the cameras to control traffic and crime in a 42-block area filled with hotels, restaurants and bars.

CNET NEWS.COM - Intel: Hyperthreading to speed desktops.

LaGrande places a secure wrapper around selected hard-drive data, as well as around the keyboard, the display and the interconeects inside the computer, said an Intel representative. Currently, data that gets sent to commerce sites is encrypted while traveling between a PC and a server. But once it's back on a hard drive, it reverts to its original form, making it valuable if it can be stolen.

Conceptually, LaGrande is similar to IBM's RapidRestore, a feature on IBM notebooks that lets users store applications and data behind a secure partition on the hard drive. The technology, though, will have other functions. It is possible to use it in conjunction with digital rights management programs, such as Microsoft's Palladium, to prevent piracy, which in turn could help promote legal entertainment downloads.

Otellini said users will be able to turn LaGrande off. "It will be opt in," he said.

Ummm ... If its Opt-in, shouldn't that be 'users can turn it on'? If we have to turn it off, thats opt-out.

TechNews.com part of the Washington Post - Internet Security Not Pressing to All. Some Firms Admit Measures Inadequate

Companies increasingly identify computer security as one of their top priorities, but a significant minority admit that they are inadequately protected, according to a survey to be released today.

"The positive news is that industry is talking the talk of the need for improved information security," said David McCurdy, executive director of the Internet Security Alliance. "The negative news is that very few are walking the walk."

Nearly 90 percent of 227 companies that responded to a survey said information security was essential to the survival of their business. However, 30 percent said their plans for dealing with technology threats were inadequate.

Bloomberg.com : Airline-Passenger Screening Plan to Test U.S. Privacy Rights.

Washington, Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government said it plans to begin testing this year a computer system at airports that will check passengers' criminal backgrounds, credit histories and driver's license data.

The program is one of several proposals being considered to improve airport security since hijackers flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Airport executives say the plan will set a standard that goes to further lengths in compiling and reviewing the type of personal data critics consider private.

``Political correctness was cast aside on Sept. 11,'' said Michael Wascom, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, a trade group whose members include AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines.

The Transportation Security Administration, which took over airport security after Sept. 11, will begin testing CAPPS II in the fall, said spokeswoman Heather Rosenker, who wouldn't give any details. Government documents show that CAPPS II is an upgrade of the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System created by the Federal Aviation Administration and airlines in the late 1990s.

Lockheed Martin Corp., Fair Isaac & Co.'s HNC Software unit, Infoglide Software Corp. and Ascent Technology Inc. have been given separate grants to help develop CAPPS II, government documents show. The system is being designed to comb multiple databases and alert security to passengers who may be dangerous.

Katie Corrigan, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the system ``would pose a serious threat to individual privacy.''

``Traditionally, before there is an investigation, there is some level of suspicion,'' Corrigan said. ``Here everyone would be under suspicion from the outset.''

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Mihir Kshirsagar, a policy analyst for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said CAPPS II will be flawed because many of the databases it would use have erroneous information. He's also concerned that the data would be used for purposes other than passenger screening, such as for catching criminals.

``This is an ineffective and overly intrusive security measure,'' Kshirsagar said. His organization is suing the government for more details about the program, he said.

Until CAPPS II is ready, airlines are pushing for the use of a so-called ``trusted traveler'' program, in which fliers who agree to background checks ahead of time would move faster through airport security. The TSA is studying this idea, spokesman David Steigman said.

Technology Law Week -Terrorism triggers global privacy crackdown, report says This link is an indirect one via Moreover.com - Registration is required and I haven't registered so I can't provide any interesting pull quotes from the article.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Special report: Big brother privacy. A collection of articles at this publication

New York Times - free registration required U.S. Will Fingerprint Some Foreign Visitors.

Immigration agents at the nation's border crossings, airports and seaports this week will begin to fingerprint foreigners who they suspect may pose security risks and will require those visitors to regularly report where they are staying and what they are doing in the United States.

The new procedures, intended to improve the monitoring of certain foreigners in the country, will apply to anyone arriving with a student, business or tourist visa who is believed to fit the criteria of a potential terrorist.

Justice Department officials said they would not disclose the criteria that the agents will use in determining who will be required to submit to fingerprinting, as well as photographing, for fear of jeopardizing intelligence-gathering.

Still, the widespread assumption among civil liberties groups and American Muslims is that visitors from Arab and Islamic nations will receive the closest scrutiny. Arab nations have drawn the same conclusion and the 22-member Arab League has denounced the new effort as discriminatory.

CNET NEWS.COM By Declan McCullagh - Be wary of Washington's spam solution.

About three dozen high-level lobbyists met quietly last Friday afternoon at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to concoct a way to drastically reduce the deluge of unsolicited e-mail.

The invitation-only lunch meeting, which lasted about two hours, started a process that could result in an industry agreement on new laws or self-regulation.

Lobbyists for AOL Time Warner, Verizon, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, and the Direct Marketing Association were among the attendees. According to the invitation, the group met to discuss "approaches to addressing problems arising from abusive electronic mail practices."

Business News from Wired News - Corporate Paws Grab for Desktop.

There is nothing wrong with your PC. Don't attempt to adjust the monitor. We are controlling transmission.

Fans of The Outer Limits will recognize that modified refrain, but media company executives appear to have taken the campy TV theme to heart and turned it into the backbone of their effort to control the flow of digital information.

They've applied pressure on Congress to pass bills like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (PDF), which has allowed them to clamp down on new technologies.

And they've gone to work on computer manufacturers and software developers, persuading them to release PCs with restrictive hardware, software and settings pre-installed.

Today, manufacturers seem more likely to produce computers that operate more like VCRs or DVD players than the PCs people are accustomed to. These machines have copy-protection embedded in the hardware, much like home recorders that keep people from making copies of videos they have purchased.

The security sounds like a good idea, but it increases corporate control over networked systems. The code for those digital rights management systems is closed to outside developers.

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Slashdot | Upcoming Cyberwars.

Jamyang writes "In the run-up to the first anniversary of September 11, Taiwan's President has accused China of threatening Taipei with "terrorist" tactics in a speech that will fuel Beijing's current fury: "Communist China has accelerated development of 'unrestricted warfare' similar to terrorist methods," he said. Reuters man in Taipei reckon he's referring to "Unrestricted Warfare" [PDF] by leading PLA strategists - Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui - who famously argued that China should focus on "asymmetric engagement" in the 21st century. In fact, many related secret documents have leaked out of China lately. Taiwan's Defense Ministry is taking the threat of infowar very seriously, as can be seen in their 2002 Defense Whitepaper. If the U.S. gets tied up in a ground war in the Middle East, China's going to be real tempted ...."

New York Times - free registration required Year After 9/11, Cyberspace Door Is Still Ajar.

Sounding the alarm is not the same as paying for a deadbolt on the door. Which may explain why, despite the heightened fears of cyberterrorism and online security that followed last September's attacks in New York and Washington, few American businesses or organizations have responded with new measures to safeguard their computing systems from intruders.

Harris Miller had hoped it would be otherwise. He recalls that warning Americans about cyberterrorism and online security before Sept. 11 had been an exercise in futility.

"I felt like Sisyphus," said Mr. Miller, president of the the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group, adding that his pleas for greater awareness and quicker action were consistently ignored. "Just rolling the stone up the mountain, and it kept rolling right back down again." For government, corporations and individuals alike, Mr. Miller said, computer security was always "the 11th item on a 10-item list."

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The fretting and frameworking, however, has not escalated into spending. Money spent on security has been flat the last year, with no turnaround imminent, said Steve Hunt, a vice president of the Giga Information Group, a high-technology analysis company.

New York Times - free registration required Locked Up and Patted Down: A Year of Making U.S. Safer.

Cockpit doors are stronger, but not all cargo is screened for bombs. The directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency now jointly brief the president on terrorist threats, but there are still critical gaps in intelligence gathering and analysis. The Super Bowl has become a superfortress, but the local cineplex remains a soft target. The government issues a rolling rainbow of threat alerts, but Congress and the White House are still battling over the creation of an agency to coordinate security.

One year after the worst terrorist attacks on United States soil, Americans are safer but still far from safe.

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Safety, of course, cannot be guaranteed, especially in a democracy that holds individual freedom among its most cherished values. The real issue is whether the institutions of American life have taken reasonable precautions to protect the public; for the most part, neither the government nor private organizations have taken more than the first halting steps.