Atlas of Surveillance: Documenting police tech in our communities

by freedomben • 3 years ago

183 76 3 years ago

tptacek• 3 years ago

If they've decided to classify body cams as "surveillance" --- and, fair enough, I guess --- then really all they're going to need long term is an atlas of every law enforcement agency in the country.

Zigurd2• 3 years ago

Body cams are qualitatively different in the way they are used. For example if they are used in domestic violence cases, they can be harmful. If cops are not disciplined for turning them off when encountering citizens they are meant to protect, they provide an inaccurate story, usually slanted in cops' favor.

I suppose studies like this need to get finer granularity on bodycams.

komali23• 3 years ago

Can you clarify how being able to demonstrate the exact circumstances of an event in perpetuity is "harmful?" This seems completely counter intuitive, in fact it's a point of view regarding bodycams I've never encountered.

Most dialogue around bodycams focuses on desires for extreme punishments for police that turn off their bodycams during interactions with civilians.

ozfive3• 3 years ago

This can and will be used by criminals to target communities that have less tech or tech that is exploitable/circumventable. Yes I am aware that security through obscurity is not the answer.

public_defender• 3 years ago

This can and will be used by criminals to target communities that have less tech or tech that is exploitable/circumventable.

No it won't!

ska2• 3 years ago

I think this makes some pretty strong assumptions about the purpose and effectiveness of at least some of the relevant technology.

ozfive3• 3 years ago

What assumptions do you believe I am making about the purpose and effectiveness of at least some of the relevant technology?

_jal• 3 years ago

News stories can and do reveal where rich people live for targeting, reveal security weaknesses at businesses, and encourage copy-cat crimes.

Public security vulnerability releases can and do lead to slow-patchers being targeted by criminals.

Hell, having been involved in physical security leads to me amusing myself while waiting at businesses by analyzing their camera lines of sight and speculating about other measures. (It is usually pretty easy to tell who installed their own systems.)

hotnfresh2• 3 years ago

This makes some assumptions about both how effective any of this is in practice, and how criminals operate, and I’m pretty sure none of those assumptions are true.

ozfive3• 3 years ago

It doesn't make assumptions at all. You assume I haven't been around criminals in my lifetime. You also assume criminals aren't intelligent, and that my opinion is an assumption. I'm sorry to burst your bubble but criminals are opportunists and they are intelligent and if they are given an opportunity to assess security they certainly will. My opinion isn't an assumption it's from experience.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF3• 3 years ago

There's a whole lot of:

The $LOCAL_CITY Police Department signed an agreement with Amazon's home surveillance equipment company, Ring, in $RECENT_YEAR to gain special access to the company's Neighbors app.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

Clubber4• 3 years ago

If someone is breaking into houses in my neighborhood and a ring camera is able to identify and help apprehend the person, I would want that to happen.

itishappy4• 3 years ago

That's fine if it's your property and camera.

But if somebody breaks into your neighbors place... You're really ok with police asking Amazon (without your knowledge, consent, or a warrant) for footage?

(Edit: Removed "the last few weeks of footage" from the last statement, which was correctly pointed out to be exaggeration.)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/ring-reveals-they-give...

Clubber4• 3 years ago

You ok with police subpoenaing Amazon

With a subpoena, absolutely, those need to be signed off by a judge. Warrantless, depends on the circumstance. If someone broke in between 2am and 4am, I'm fine with them requesting ring footage, explicitly for that timeframe, explicitly for the purpose of apprehending the perpetrator.

I don't agree with police using it to surveil areas without a specific person and crime in mind. I'm not sure that's happening or not.

for the last few weeks of footage

I don't see in the article where it says they typically request weeks of footage. Are you exaggerating to strengthen your point?

lubesGordi• 3 years ago

The one that bothers me the most is the Ring integration with police. That's happening in Chicago. The neighbor across the street installs a Ring doorbell because they like gadgety shit or whatever, and suddenly my children's playing is under surveillance.

oldpersonintx3• 3 years ago

that ship sailed with Google Streetview, and now sat imagery

look up "privacy" in the Constitution...that's right, you don't have an explicitly spelled out right to privacy in the US (you should though, and we should fix that)

in the US, if you want privacy, go inside and close the blinds...sad but this is pretty much what it has come to

AlbertCory3• 3 years ago

You have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in your back yard. Not in the street.

whatshisface2• 3 years ago

Your right to privacy is your security against unreasonable search and seizure. Fourth amendment. No wonder it's so easy for the government to infringe our rights - we are not taught we have them!

bigstrat20032• 3 years ago

look up "privacy" in the Constitution...that's right, you don't have an explicitly spelled out right to privacy in the US

You don't have explicit rights to most things in the US. The Constitution is an explicit grant of powers to the government (reserving anything else to the people), not an explicit grant of rights to the people (letting the government do anything not prohibited).

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF3• 3 years ago

I went to a friend's apartment last week and noticed their neighbor across the way has a Ring doorbell. I can understand that, if interested, the police would be able to tail me from my home to my friend's home but it's another matter that it often happens automatically, regardless of individual interest.

partytax• 3 years ago

Also be aware of a company called FUSUS that's enabling law enforcement agencies to access surveillance feeds from [consenting] businesses:

https://www.fusus.com/blog/real-time-crime-center-in-the-clo...

Not as sketchy or ubiquitous, but worth keeping a close eye on.

oalae5niMiel7qu2• 3 years ago

That's plenty sketchy. They can track you wherever you go.

klaussilveira• 3 years ago

Snoop on to them, as they snoop on to us.

AlexandrB• 3 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

clemailacct1• 3 years ago

I'll always appreciate a Hackers (greatest movie of all time) quote. :)

jduebcusk• 3 years ago

Slightly OT, but I've been wondering for a while now if and when license plate scanner camera data will be compared and analyzed for traffic violations, like "you went from Park Ave to Boardwalk in a time frame which would have required you to exceed the posted speed limit, here's your ticket".

pixl972• 3 years ago

If it doesn't catch a picture of the driver it most likely will not valid in court in most states.

Be fun to troll the shit out of politicians/elected officials with this. Have someone monitor them leaving one place, then with another car and a fake plate have them get scanned at another location moments later.

nebula88042• 3 years ago

They'll just add an exception to the scanners for their plates. What would stop them? Outrage? Probably not.

metadaemon3• 3 years ago

In my experience the cops using these systems only care about larger crimes. It's way too noisy to monitor every expired tag, for instance. Not many of these companies (if any) do speed monitoring with LPRs.

petsfed• 3 years ago

But what they will do (and have done) is pull over a vehicle that is registered to a person known to have e.g. an expired/suspended license and use whatever excuse they can find to arrest the driver, even if the driver's license is not expired.

The near-real-time cross-referencing is basically a probable-cause factory, and then its on the person getting pulled over to stand up to all the implied threats of violence that the police can bring to bear.

Prior to tools like this, running a dragnet on e.g. invalid licenses was quite a bit more labor intensive, and so there was a built-in grace allowed to people whose only crime was omission of paperwork.

komali23• 3 years ago

We're still fighting in Taiwan over whether or not average speed cameras are legal in Taiwan.

There's a couple strong, imo, arguments against the legality.

For one, average speed cameras are constant, identified surveillance of everyone that drives passed them (as opposed to CCTV, average speed cameras positively identify every vehicle that passes by). Blanket surveillance is bad and possibly illegal, but also it happens to civilians the State has no reasonable suspicion have committed a crime, which is also bad and possibly illegal. Finally, a ticket gets written for someone breaking the law by driving faster than the speed limit... but in fact, nobody, including surveillance, actually witnesses them breaking the law. They just assume they broke the law because timestamps.

I know it sounds silly but it really is a pretty big legal leap to "assume" someone broke a law without actually witnessing the crime itself. You might suggest the timestamps are strong evidence of the crime being committed, and sure, you're right, but then we're back to the blanket surveillance issue. Furthermore, there are actual ways to pass two average speed cameras within a time frame that would "require" speeding, such as by taking a route unaccounted for in the camera's design.

Though in the end the cameras are pretty useless because they put them in the best fast riding zones in the mountains so we just zip back and forth between two cameras practicing the same route a couple times at 3 or 4 times the speed limit and by the time we go past the second camera our average speed is like 20km/h lol. Whereas regular actual speed cameras at the entrance and exit of small towns actually force you to slow down for pedestrian-heavy or dangerous areas.

I've had an argument with some police politician about this, about how putting the cameras in the good riding areas is pushing people away from the safest riding spots in Taiwan with wide shoulders, double lanes, and barriers between oncoming (SO COMMON for cars to violate the double yellow here!!) and into the single lane unlit nightmare roads alongside the big good road, which are impossible to get speed camera infrastructure to (without great cost anyway). Which is driving up deaths so really defeating the purpose.

verve_rat• 3 years ago

Or... roads are a community utility, not your personal playground.

csa• 3 years ago

Iirc, this currently happens in China.

noAnswer2• 3 years ago

It happens in EU, UK, Norway, Switzerland too. As long as the operator pretends to "securely" delete dates of non offenders it's legal.

jgys• 3 years ago

On a trip from Kristiansand to Oslo in 2011, I noted to the driver of the vehicle in which I was traveling how unusual it seemed to me that no one on the highway was being impatient or aggressive. How remarkable, I proposed, that even the impatience of motorists could be tamed by Norwegian social norms? He chuckled and explained section speed control to me: https://www.vegvesen.no/en/fag/fokusomrader/trafikksikkerhet...

Norway has the lowest per-capita traffic deaths of any European country. Check out the US's traffic death statistics if you need another reason to be disappointed in the outcomes of our domestic policy.

noAnswer2• 3 years ago

It's called Section Control.

recursive4• 3 years ago

Contains false negatives, for example only listing a single police department using Clearview (https://atlasofsurveillance.org/search?vendor=Clearview). Likely a limitation of the current data sources.

marcod• 3 years ago

If an area has no markers, it may mean it hasn't been researched yet. To help collect more data, visit our Collaborate page.

metadaemon3• 3 years ago

ALPRs are totally fair play IMO -- if that's their only function. I'd rather have a robot triage criminal activity than a biased human. Facial recognition, however, is 100% the wrong move.

Zak• 3 years ago

I think it depends very much on how they're used. If they're set up to flag stolen vehicles and vehicles owned by fugitives and don't store irrelevant license plate numbers long-term, I have no complaints.

I think in practice they often record every plate and store the data long-term, which can be used to track people who are not active targets of an investigation.

metadaemon3• 3 years ago

My company has a strict 30-day policy, irrelevant plates are never recorded either. But yeah I agree, some of the bigger players are pretty loosey goosey with their privacy policies.

vongomben• 3 years ago

This is interesting. Is there anything similar for Europe?

cobychapple• 3 years ago

Why US-only?

roamerz• 3 years ago

It’s strange I don’t see Flock or Redflex. They are both widely used in my area.

dang• 3 years ago

EFF's Atlas of Surveillance: Documenting Police Tech with Open Source Research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26270166 - Feb 2021 (2 comments)

Atlas of Surveillance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23824845 - July 2020 (134 comments)

DonnyV• 3 years ago

You can't walk more than a couple miles before getting facially scanned in Michigan. Oof!

oldbbsnickname• 3 years ago

Interesting.

Austin, TX has a police drone that flies between 8 pm and 3:30 am, and peeps into my apartment (floor-to-ceiling glass) almost every / every other night. I'd like to do something about it because it's violating and wrong.

CatWChainsaw• 3 years ago

... Blackout Curtains??

oalae5niMiel7qu2• 3 years ago

They don't include street cameras in their data.

Atlas of Surveillance: Documenting police tech in our communities

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