English Reading: EU plans to tap cell phones

A report accidentally published on the Internet provides insight into a secretive European Union surveillance project designed to monitor its citizens. Project INDECT aims to mine data from television, internet traffic, cellphone conversations, p2p file sharing and a range of other sources for crime prevention and threat prediction. The €14.68 million project began in January, 2009, and is scheduled to continue for five years.

INDECT produced the report as part of their "Extraction of Information for Crime Prevention by Combining Web Derived Knowledge and Unstructured Data" project, but do not list all the potential applications of the search and surveillance technology. Police are discussed as a prime example of users, with Polish and British forces detailed as active project participants.

The scope of data collected is particularly broad; days of television news, radio, newspapers, and recorded telephone conversations are included. Several weeks of content from online sources were agglomerated.

Technology research performed as part of Project INDECT has clear use in countering industrial and international espionage, although the potential use in maintaining any security and predicting leaks is much broader. Quoted in the UK's Daily Telegraph, Liberty's director, Shami Chakrabarti, described a possible future implementation of INDECT as a "sinister step" with "positively chilling" repercussions Europe-wide.

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Story Source: Wikinews

English Vocabulary Notes

tap = secretly listen to
provides insight to = helps us understand
mines data = collects information
a prime example = a good example
sinister = dangerous
chilling = worrying

5 comments on “English Reading: EU plans to tap cell phones”

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Zin Zin Myo November 6th, 2009

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Thanks
Zin

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Clare November 7th, 2009

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