WikiLeaks explodes US government to use monitoring software

On Monday, the UK’s DailyMail published a news on its website (MailOnline) under the headline “WikiLeaks disclosed that the U.S. government is secretly using civil security monitoring facilities to monitor everyone.” The report included a The picture from the movie "Bourne Identity". "PC Magazine" described "TrapWire" as "the overall surveillance of the U.S. secret implementation."

The vendor of the software, TrapWire Inc., in Virginia, declined to comment on Monday, but reports of the incident appeared to be overstated. The Homeland Security Department tested the TrapWire software on 15 surveillance cameras in Washington and Seattle. However, officials said that software trials had been suspended as early as last year, because they did not favor the prospects of the software after it was put into use.

The chief spokesman of the New York Police Department, Paul J. Browne, said that the leaked e-mail claimed that the 500 surveillance cameras installed in the New York City subway were related to TrapWire. This statement is wrong. "We didn't use TrapWire software," he said.

Stratfor Global Intelligence, a private security company based in Austin, Texas, discussed TrapWire in dozens of e-mails. Last week, WikiLeaks published the email on the website. Some hackers related to the loosely-structured international hacker group Anonymous stole a large number of e-mails late last year and early this year. These e-mails are also included. Afterwards, the "anonymous" handed over the emails to WikiLeaks.

In recent days, WikiLeaks has been closed by unidentified hackers. This led to speculation that hacking may be a retaliation for its published e-mails.

Initially, Abraxas Corporation, a company established by several former employees of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), developed the TrapWire software in 2004. Later the company split TrapWire out. However, the relationship between the software and the CIA, as well as the company's vague and impressive description of procedural features, seem to fuel online indignation. People think it is the fully-autonomous version of “Big Brother” (Big Brother, British The Utopian novel "1984" monitors the dictators of all the people.

TrapWire’s marketing information stated that it developed a software using surveillance data from cameras and security personnel, using a very grading system to describe people near potential terrorist targets, and using an eight-point scoring system to describe nearby vehicle. The software can also record "potential monitoring activities such as photographing, measurement and marking" and integrate "these manually entered data and information collected by the monitoring equipment" into TrapWire's database.

If surveillance finds that the same person or the same vehicle is involved in suspicious actions at multiple locations, the software will automatically correlate this data. However, the privacy statement on the TrapWire website states that the software does not collect "private information."

According to Jay Stanley, an American Civil Liberties Union engaged in research on privacy threats, many companies have tried to use technology to "search for terrorist plots in the vast amount of information related to daily activities."

“However, it is extremely difficult to identify the few terrorists among innocent people engaged in daily activities such as photographing. It may not be possible at all,” Stanley said. He also added that the current concerns have proved that before adopting new technologies, the government should openly respond to public concerns about government monitoring. “We live in a democratic society,” he said. “And it is exactly what security organizations need to protect.”