Excuse me a second while I put on my tinfoil hat and my super absorbent conspiracy pants. In a controversial move, the European Union has given £ 10 million in funding to Project Indect, a wide ranging five year plan to bring passive and active monitoring to almost every aspect of public life in the EU. Hardware and software platforms to monitor public spaces for ‘abnormal behavior’, special search engines for images and documents using ubiquitous hidden digital watermarks, and internet based intelligence gathering that will monitor public networking communities – if you’ve had a nightmare about government invasion of privacy, chances are that Project Indect is trying to make it come true. Yet, as scary as the project may appear, and despite my shiny tinfoil headgear, I don’t find the prospects of this Orwellian endeavor that surprising.

We’ve seen cameras getting smaller, CCTV spreading through the UK, and even projects aiming to incorporate brain scans into security checks. New software platforms like Vitamin D Video are geared at making such technologies more powerful by helping users sort and filter vast information efficiently. The Iraq War has lead to an increase dependence on automated surveillance and response to help combat the increased frequency of surprise attacks, explosive sabotage, and modern guerilla tactics. Project Indect should be seen as part of a larger trend to leverage technology to combat the security threat of the 21st century: dedicated combatants using dispersed violence for an united goal (aka Terrorism).

Read More