New Documents Confirm Police Vehicles’ Real-Time Access To DHS Spy Cameras

http://www.storyleak.com/new-mesh-network-documents-confirm-police-vehicles-real-time-access-dhs-spy-cameras/

by stfu • 13 years ago

135 36 13 years ago

jhonovich• 13 years ago

Saying these are DHS spy cameras is misleading. DHS and other government agencies (like the DoJ's COPS Program) provides grants to lots of police departments so they can buy technology, like video surveillance.

That police cruisers can access municipal cameras (whether funded by local businesses, local tax revenue or federal subsidies) is a common and well known implementation.

Beyond that, what is the real concern here? Unless you are simply objecting to any publicly owned and managed cameras, which is something much more fundamental.

betterunix2• 13 years ago

"Beyond that, what is the real concern here?"

I am concerned about any expansion of police power, including local forces. One of the protections we have against unjust laws is that they are unenforceable, but that protection is eroded when the police get expanded budgets. Whenever the police become better equipped to enforce the law, the citizens suffer because of it. We have a lot of unjust laws on the books; giving the police more ways to enforce those laws is harmful to our society.

ktd• 13 years ago

One of the protections we have against unjust laws is that they are unenforceable.

"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." --Abraham Lincoln

mpyne• 13 years ago

The police already selectively fail to enforce many laws they could otherwise arrest and charge people for. So if that's all you're worried about your worst fears came true decades ago, if not earlier.

bcl2• 13 years ago

They are referring to ... "including the controversial Homeland Security-run Fusion Center," -- http://fixyt.com/watch?v=jgZzRrTo5r8

eli• 13 years ago

Uh, isn't that kinda the whole point of municipal cameras?

kamakazizuru• 13 years ago

what I dont understand is - if the security forces in the US have access to SO much information - why do SO many crimes still go unsolved or even happen in the first place? (no im not thinking minority report as such )

slashdotaccount• 13 years ago

I don't think they want to reduce the crime. They want control. Those "security forces" are for protecting the security of their power.

Amadou• 13 years ago

Because the whole concept that massive monitoring leads to reduced crime is just one of those seductively simple authoritarian fallacies.

At best it is a tool that lets you "rewind" time to look at events that were coincident to a crime. But that doesn't necessarily get you new information, often its just a different way to get the same information that 'old-fashioned policework' would have turned up.

At worst it becomes a distraction for the police, a mental box that they are stuck in. Kind of like, "if it isn't in google, it isn't on the internet."

I'm not saying monitoring never improves the situation, I'm saying that its kind of like a glass of water - you can only pour so much water into it until the excess just spills out and starts making a mess.

(BTW I have a similar opinion about the utility of 'targeted' advertising.)

pcrh• 13 years ago

This effort by law enforcement to identify "bad actors" in society is similar in concept to the effort medical biologists to identify "bad" genes.

Oddly enough (or maybe not), both groups appear to have run into the same problem. In biology it was once thought that more "omics" (genomics, metabolomics, etc) would be better and lead to a better prediction of negative outcomes. Apparently, it is not, mostly, at least not yet.

It seems that for many important events (crime/cancer) a larger mass of untargeted data does not make determining causative effects much easier. Personal expertise in a particular disease area almost always trumps the most fervent of statisticians and "big data" biologists. I imagine it is similar for crimes (for example, the local police would know who is a trouble-maker, or a congressman would know which bankers are shady).

I don't think this will forever be the case, but for now, detection of pre-crime and pre-cancer are in the realms of fiction, at least in the majority of cases.

jonnybgood• 13 years ago

And how many crimes do get solved or don't happen in the first place?

betterunix2• 13 years ago

"how many crimes...don't happen in the first place?"

This is a pretty meaningless question...

bpodgursky• 13 years ago

Crime rates in the United States (both violent and property) have been dropping for decades-- variety of charts here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States.

I could hunt for more original sources but I promise they are not at all hard to find, it is a very well-established trend.

SwellJoe2• 13 years ago

The trend began before 9/11 and the modern US surveillance state as we know it today began, and has actually slowed since the Patriot Act.

ck2• 13 years ago

I could almost accept the government having cameras everywhere as long as all law makers and law enforcement were also recorded and not exempt from the video used against them in prosecution.

Except that's never going to be how it works. If they get bypasses for the TSA, I am sure they get to skip monitoring.

jes• 13 years ago

With respect, I will never accept cameras everywhere. The thugs may force them on me, but I will never call them a good thing. We don't need to live in a goddamn police state.

enry_straker• 13 years ago

Sadly, we all do.

CurtMonash• 13 years ago

That was the gist of David Brin's famous The Transparent Society.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/fftransparent_pr.htm...

SwellJoe2• 13 years ago

Which is why so many citizen groups have sprung up to film police. There are two such groups in Austin, there's a nationwide Copwatch organization, etc. Every experienced activist knows the first thing you do when police arrive on the scene is pull out your camera and start recording. It reduces the odds of someone getting hurt dramatically. It also reduces the odds of cops lying in court (though it does not prevent it entirely).

These days, when I see a black or brown person being detained by police, I tend to start recording from a safe distance. There's just too many instances of police violence in my city for me to consider it a safe situation (in the last year alone Austin police officers have shot and killed multiple unarmed black men...one was shot in the back of the head after a bank robbery he had nothing to do with...he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time).

I didn't always feel this way about police, but these days, I view them as dangerous and unpredictable; since I'm white and middle class, I have a lot less to fear from police, but I recognize the extreme power imbalance there, and I'm much more aware of the history of police violence than I was in the past.

danso• 13 years ago

Awhile ago, I was robbed at night while walking in what was presumably a well-surveilled area, in lower Manhattan. There was no CSI/"24" computer system here, the detective had to spend part of his day going over to the location and individually getting camera footage from the nearby businesses.

I know what you're thinking: "Well, that was just for a dumb robbery". But it was an unusual case and, anyway, if the police had a centralized repository to get camera footage, even after a significant delay, I think the detective would've gone there rather than hoof it over to the crime scene.

Another incident comes to mind: A woman was brutally beaten in a subway station and the incident was captured on film...within hours of the cops posting the footage on the Internet, commenters recognized the fraternity logo and the suspect was arrested almost immediately. The problem was that the cops waited almost a month to post the footage.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators...

"There are lots of different systems out there you have to make it compatible with our system, so there are some challenges in putting out these videos as quickly as possible," Kelly said.

So yeah, far from "real time" access

bcl2• 13 years ago

Some more background on this - http://seattletimes.com/html/latestnews/2022269628_spdwirele...

"But the ACLU has criticized the city for purchasing and employing technology, as well as an array of waterfront security cameras and unmanned aerial drones, without first holding public hearings and drafting policies on how to govern the devices."

crystaln• 13 years ago

I don't know much about the credibility of storyleak.com (although a quick look at their other headlines gives me an idea,) but this story derives from an inflammatory article by infowars.com, a site run by Alex Jones, the highly the deceptive right wing nutcase who rivals in nonsense Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck combined.

Whether there is a story here, I don't know. Don't trust this source though.

Spooky23• 13 years ago

With this particular issue, unfortunately, these rift wing looney sites have actually been reasonably accurate, and are the only outlets reporting on these issues.

That's the problem with excessive secrecy and a neutered mainstream media who has devolved into a press release factory. The press cannot afford to report, so they do not extensively publish stories unpopular with the government -- because doing so would lead to their access to politicians being cut off.

This stuff is reasonably true, although the headlines may be blown up a bit. My city paid for municipal wifi using grants from the state and federal governments. One of the significant grants was to provide access to street cameras to police cars via wifi networks.

If you look in police trade journals, you should be able to find references to some of the more big brother technologies. Look for grants if you are so inclined. License plate reading technology and highway traffic management systems would be a good place to look.

SolarNet2• 13 years ago

I would like to argue for the surveillance state, or at least government cameras recording all public actions.

Consider what it means to be in public. If you are in public you are giving up your implicit right to privacy relating to being viewed or overheard (and depending on jurisdiction, recorded without permission). I would argue that it is perfectly reasonable for the government to have as many cameras as they want in public spaces, with a few caveats:

* The data from the cameras should be publicly available. Probably not in real time (or with the option for the temporary disabling of real time by law enforcement until after whatever they disabled it for has ended (with obvious common sense restrictions, like maximum 48 hour delay)).

* This would require changes to laws, and society, about how illegal certain types of information is (information should not be inherently illegal) because anyone would be able to put anything on the public cameras, and to prevent cover-ups the data must always be there, even if horrendous and despicable (see: child rape, which is then child porn).

* The government has to respect the privacy of private property. Obviously businesses (with public areas) may prefer the government to invade their privacy for the protection they get. But people should be able to request movement (or removal of areas being recorded) of camera's view.

People will have to accept that being in public means potentially being recorded, and laws must adjust to fit that. There isn't a way around it if we like being able to take pictures, and recording ourselves. Other people will become recorded. Allowing the government to do it is a logical legal extension.

Consider what this enables, and what we already have which mimics it, by accepting this we acknowledge the reality, and don't deny what can already happen. And then consider what this enables that we already don't have. In the end public cameras are just another piece of automation:

* Following people's movements, and interactions, in public areas. We can already do this by tailing people. However currently it requires quite a lot of man power to do it (governments or corporations). With cameras anyone can do it, with some facial recognition software it becomes completely automated. You or I can see where any CEO goes, who they talk to, etc. Of course it can also be done to stalk people more easily (not that it's currently hard).

* Recording people's conversations in public areas. We can do this with a directional microphone, or a well placed bug.

* Every violent crime committed in public is easy to solve. This is reason we are installing them in the first place. We can't do this currently. But with this we can make it so it applies to police officers as well.

* Real-time world analysis. The start of Ubiquitous computing[1]. We don't have this at all for now. We can tell where there is heavy traffic. Follow a protest. See the weather at an exact location. I'm sure some startups could do great things.

So the next time you call your congressman, or discuss issues like this. Consider offering the compromise of making the recording public. It can also allow you to bring up the issues of illegal information (for example illegal primes are a good example of why it's ridiculous) or that there is no expectation of privacy in public.

Besides it would give us a good excuse to have punk hairstyles (http://cvdazzle.com/).

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing

newman314• 13 years ago

What a stupendously BAD idea and a huge waste of resources. You seriously need to rethink this.

What you are going to end up with is "normal" people being monitored/recorded etc. and the privileged being able to opt-out. Much like what has already been done with information such as home addresses etc.

I'd much rather the money used for something useful like science.

SolarNet2• 13 years ago

Oh don't get me wrong, I'd prefer we don't do this. I'm just saying if we do do it, we might as well make the data public.

TeMPOraL• 13 years ago

I'd much rather the money used for something useful like science.

Think how absolutely amazing and useful would such a thing be for science. With such data we could learn a lot about behaviour of people, groups, traffic, resource usage, etc. and use it to optimize the society even further.

That there are bad sides doesn't mean that there aren't any good ones.

reginaldjcooper3• 13 years ago

My opinion is that your points are all incorrect.

\* It will not be publicly available other than behind a paywall a la PACER.

\* No laws will change. The government and corporations are already protected from the consequences of acquiring illegal data so they (congress, lobbyists) will continue to not care if a non-corporate entity can access data safely or not.

\* The government has already decided that you are well within your rights to photograph whatever you want from public land, they will angle the cameras however they like. Although I am sure wealthy people will be able to get cameras facing away from their neighborhoods somehow.

Being in public does mean potentially being recorded. But that law was legalized before everyone had a camera and could easily aggregate it all. We should be fighting for laws against persistent, widespread recording or aggregation of photos and video done by private or government entities.

\* You cannot tail everyone, everywhere with such low expenses without ubiquitous recording. Why not criminalize that? Otherwise any CEO can see where you or I go, who we talk to, etc. It will not be available for ordinary people to view CEOs or congresspeople.

\* Recording people's conversations is illegal for private entities, but "voice stress analysis" is legal. Recording conversations in service to the NSA and DHS is probably illegal but they most likely have a secret court warrant that allows it but is unchallengeable.

\* If you think every violent crime will be solved by recording everything, and that it is worth the collateral damage, I have got some news for you. If you're serious about recording conversations they're going to be able to solve many new conspiracy to commit "crimes," like if someone jokes about eating a child's heart in public.

\* "Follow a protest" is exactly what they would like to do; by having computers everywhere they can skip having police get an identity and just add the protestors to a no-fly list directly, or look up their crimes from the email database and arrest the leaders at their leisure. No more embarrassing pepper spray incidents. Yes Google will be able to tell you the traffic or weather, startups will not be able to unless they are well-funded and well-connected.

Making the recording public just allows abusive spouses to easily find their victim again as well as enabling all the shit the government would like to do. I want neither the government nor private entities to be allowed video data from hundreds of points around any given city.

cantrevealname• 13 years ago

the mesh network devices’ ability to siphon off unsuspecting mobile user’s IP addresses as well as the last 1,000 locations visited

They are grabbing mobile users' MAC addresses and are therefore able to track user movement.

When the reporter wrote IP address, I initially thought he was talking about web-browsing habits.

New Documents Confirm Police Vehicles’ Real-Time Access To DHS Spy Cameras

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