LA Sheriffs launch a surveillance app that uses your photos and videos

http://boingboing.net/2014/04/11/leedir.html

by NIL8 • 12 years ago

50 49 12 years ago

Completely unneeded and seems like more police state tactics.

Take the Boston Marathon bombing - an event they cite as something where this would be useful. Even without it, their was a ton of news video and surveillance video, thousands of images from the attack taken right after or before the bomb going off. Within days, they had video footage of the suspects and a few more days they had killed one and arrested the other suspect.

I'm not convinced having this software would've helped shorten that time frame. Too me, it's more about mass surveillance and going after protesters. Seems to me there could be a whole bunch of innocent people getting swept up with this tool as well.

maxerickson3• 12 years ago

I think it is the sort of thing you have to try before you can convince the people involved that it isn't worth doing.

jbooth• 12 years ago

Yeah, it'll be way easier to get rid of once the program is established and there are people who's jobs depend on it.

Kenji• 12 years ago

Yay, I always wanted to install police software on my devices!

bilbo0s• 12 years ago

Not necessarily this app... but the technology to track you comes preinstalled in your device. The government already has access to hordes of information about your whereabouts and activities...

just take care to live your life so that you're never worth the trouble to dig through it.

pmorici3• 12 years ago

So it's like the app for snitches, tattletales, and nosy neighbors? Why would any free person install this thing on their phone you would have to be nuts.

mindslight2• 12 years ago

Because many "free" people have been irreparably damaged by public schooling and other forms of mass media, and feel so helplessly disempowered that they'll take any chance to exercise some petty power. Even if that just means getting their neighbor hassled for useless code violations :/

Karunamon7• 12 years ago

That's some impressive conspiracy hokum right there. I'm sure you have links to sane, data-driven evidence of the "damage" of public schooling that you'd like to share?

Karunamon7• 12 years ago

This thing where you shame people who invoke any kind of authority figure really needs to die off. It's sophomoric at best.

pmorici3• 12 years ago

This isn't exactly any authority figure. It's a piece of software that as described is the essence of Big Brother and is being promoted by an individual who had to resign from a position of power due to corruption per the article. It's being used by an organization that has a history of abuses of power.

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

This thing where you call other people's opinions stupid and say they need to die off, then pass that off as a counter-argument; that's what needs to die off. If you have an argument to make, just make it. If you don't, don't just stand on the side calling everyone stupid.

fredgrott• 12 years ago

the problem is context...not just detecting if the image or media was doctored but what context was it taken?

If I am a defendants lawyer, hell yes I might be attempting to identify the person taking the image or taking the video to get testimony to the context of said image or vidoe

NIL82• 12 years ago

Good point.

tantalor• 12 years ago

Predicted by science-fiction as usual in Brin's Earth, where surveillance by elderly retirees wearing recognizable networked camera-glasses is common.

lorddoig4• 12 years ago

So we all want an open internet and personal freedoms - but not for the people who choose to be on the side of the state?

I'm no state fanboy, but you can't have it both ways.

vdaniuk2• 12 years ago

I am curious what exactly are you trying to say. Care to elaborate?

lorddoig4• 12 years ago

So the LA police have made an app that relies on voluntary contributions from free citizens to further their goals. There's no coercion here, people either choose to help the cops or not. But this article and the comments are critical in a manner congruent with the criticism levied at mass surveillance et al.

True freedom is not about keeping down the oppressors forever - that's just a power inversion. Freedom is about having choices, and there's no restriction of that here.

coldtea6• 12 years ago

I'm no state fanboy, but you can't have it both ways.

You very much can. Wanting something does not mean you have to accept it wholesale, in any quantity, by any entity and in extreme doses.

The notion behind your argument makes everything a false dichotomy, between "not wanting something at all" and "fully wanting it 1000%".

We are very much capable of wanting something in moderation and with certain provisions.

And we are very much capable of wanting open internet and personal freedoms, and, at the same time, not want people give full access to information to the state.

I'm not even sure where this notion that personal freedoms and not wanting anybody to assist a police state are incompatible comes from.

lorddoig4• 12 years ago

If you go for something other than wholesale freedom - 'freedom with restrictions' - then you find yourself in the position where there is going to have to be somebody who creates and polices those restrictions. Even if there was a full-scale revolution and everything we consider to form 'the state' fell, the people who thereafter created and policed any restrictions would be the de facto state, and I'd bet there'd be people on forums like this criticising them too, just maybe not you.

And we're back to square one.

Edit: And freedom is a binary choice unless you restrict the problem domain from 'life' to some subset of life, in which case all such subsets must be 'free' in order so say one is free. If one is not free there logically must be oppressors. You see? All we've done is reshuffle things.

GoodIntentions• 12 years ago

"All they think about is the Spies, and the war, of course. D'you know what that little girl of mine did last Saturday, when her troop was on a hike out Berkhamsted way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off from the hike, and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols.'

'What did they do that for?' said Winston, somewhat taken aback. Parsons went on triumphantly:

'My kid was sure he was some kind of enemy agent -- might have been dropped by parachute, for instance. But here's the point, old boy. What do you think put her on to him in the first place? She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes -- said she'd never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?'"

This app should make it _much_ easier to spot people with strange shoes.

lukejduncan• 12 years ago

I get the Little Spies Orwell parallel, and it does give me pause. What I don't have an answer to yet is: how is this fundamentally different than the police having a tip hotline?

I also really dislike OPs headline. It implies that they're doing something much more than they are.

coldtea6• 12 years ago

I get the Little Spies Orwell parallel, and it does give me pause. What I don't have an answer to yet is: how is this fundamentally different than the police having a tip hotline?

Both are bad. But actively encouraging people to record and snitch other people is worse.

hf• 12 years ago

Leaving all those unsavoury associations of perfecting surveillance en masse aside: Are they quite sure their transmission channels are strictly uni-directionnal?

angersock• 12 years ago

So, this is insidious in one particular way:

It doesn't actually help do any sort of immediate surveillance (right now, anyways, thank god). But, it does mean that any gathering of people with phones out is potentially spying.

This specifically is excellent discouragement against perhaps the biggest threat the establishment faces today: peaceful gathering and protests.

This is (intentionally or not) targeted almost perfectly at Millenials and more tech-savvy folks, because those are the ones who'll recognize the threat most clearly.

wtvanhest2• 12 years ago

Regardless of whether this works or not, it is becoming clear that the future will involve a lot of cameras practically everywhere.

Historically crimes were punished severely because it was hard to catch people and prove they did something so the expected value of committing a crime had to be lowered through strict punishments.

For example: If $1,000 in cash was in an envelope sitting on a table in an outdoor cafe with no visible video cameras, it would very likely be stolen if someone walked by who A) needed the money, B) didn't have a strong moral compass.

He would calculate like this: IS (Chance of not being caught X value gained by crime) more or less valuable than (Chance of being caught X Punishment).

The equation is balanced when it is just slightly less valuable to commit the crime. With the advent of cameras it appears that the % chance of being caught has gone way up, so I feel like we need to reduce the punishments to balance the equation.

Having longer punishments is not positive for society, it is expensive, doesn't help the person doing the time and doesn't help the victims. Reducing punishments as we can catch a higher number of crimes makes sense.

I hope that the discussion about crime and punishment shifts to reduce sentences to help balance that equation. I'm sure there are better ways of putting what I said, but hopefully people get the idea.

smokeyj• 12 years ago

I think discussing punishment is less productive than discussing prevention or rehabilitation. But when your only tool is a hammer..

wtvanhest2• 12 years ago

Oh, I completely agree, but I think punishment will always be part of the criminal justice system in my lifetime.

My point is that the thing we need to change first is lowering sentences since they are just absurdly long given that it is so easy to catch people committing crimes relative to just 20 years ago.

saraid216• 12 years ago

Yes, but we're creating jobs for prison guards. That's what matters, right? Creating jobs?

NIL82• 12 years ago

Did anybody else notice this?

"There’s no cost to the law enforcement agency to use LEEDIR if the emergency affects more than 5,000 people or covers five square miles and at least two public safety agencies respond."

"this week the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department is using LEEDIR to gather photos and videos from eyewitnesses of a chaotic street party in Isla Vista that led to over 100 arrests. Sheriff's investigators hope the images they receive will allow them to ID more suspects."

I wonder how much this is going to cost taxpayers and who the shareholders are in this company.

Karunamon7• 12 years ago

Headline is misleading by omission.

This isn't a data-snarfing app along the lines of what we hate the NSA for, this is a tool put out there so people who want to send things in to the police have a quick way to do so. Less like Carnivore/PRISM and more local police tip line, but on the internet.

There is no coercion happening here. There is no "surveillance" happening here, at least not in the loaded way that term in used nowadays.

I see absolutely no problem with this. Normal people willingly participating in law enforcement is a Good Thing.

h4pless• 12 years ago

Just going to throw this out there...

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

LA Sheriffs launch a surveillance app that uses your photos and videos

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