
Wherein SFPD is still going surveillance-nutty - sp332
http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2013/03/20.html
======
DanielBMarkham
"...they tried to get this written into the law back in 2010 and got their
asses handed to them, so instead they've just been making it a condition of
every new permit ever since. Because they think that they get to just make up
laws, all on their own..."

So by making administrative changes to business permits, police get effective
warrant-free surveillance?

It continues to amaze me how various government agencies are doing these end-
runs around the legislature and voters by fiat.

~~~
protomyth
I do wish we had an organization protecting the 4th & 5th amendments that was
as aggressive and successful as the NRA is at protecting the 2nd.

~~~
njharman
ACLU, EFF to name a couple.

And the 2nd has been eroded tremendously, maybe not as much as 4th, but plenty
still.

~~~
protomyth
The ACLU and EFF are no where near as effective as the NRA. The NRA has a
recent win in front of the Supreme Court that secured the 2nd on a state
level, the EFF doesn't seem to do well in front of the Supreme Court. The ACLU
protects part of the 1st and not much more.

~~~
eloisius
That's probably because freedom of speech and freedom from unlawful search are
perceived as rights that can wax and wane, but can always be restored.

The loss of the right to bare arms is perceived as an end-game. Once disarmed,
there's no going back.

~~~
ihsw
The same can be said about any policy -- verification is very easy with the
2nd Amendment because it's clear and obvious to consumers on a personal level
however censorship and surveillance are difficult to measure and quantify.

~~~
eloisius
I agree. That's why I carefully used the word "perceived."

------
bitcartel
Does anybody have a link to the San Francisco study referred to below by Cory
Doctorow?

 _"It's about the total failure of CCTV to deter people from committing crimes
in the first place. After all, that's how we were sold on CCTV – not mere
forensics after the fact, but deterrence. And although study after study has
concluded that CCTVs don't deter most crime (a famous San Francisco study
showed that, at best, street crime shifted a few metres down the pavement when
the CCTV went up), we've been told for years that we must all submit to being
photographed all the time because it would keep the people around us from
beating us, robbing us, burning our buildings and burglarising our homes."_

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/17/why-cctv-
do...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/17/why-cctv-does-not-
deter-crime)

 _“Rather than being a tool, [CCTV] has in a lot of cases become a substitute
for policing. So people very rarely see a bobby on the beat [a police officer
patrolling the streets], but they do see CCTV cameras,” said Pickles. “The
danger is that there is almost an acceptance that crime is going to happen. So
rather than trying to prevent crime you just focus on making sure you have
video footage of it when it happens.”_

[http://www.dw.de/doubts-as-to-cctv-efficacy-in-big-
brother-b...](http://www.dw.de/doubts-as-to-cctv-efficacy-in-big-brother-
britain/a-16461692)

~~~
archivator
I believe this is the study: <http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/08/08-007.pdf>

Summary of results:

• Neither cameras in Jordan Downs nor Hollywood Boulevard had any significant
effect in reducing violent or property crime rates within the target areas;

• The monthly rate of violent crimes fell in both the Jordan Downs and
Hollywood target areas; however, the Nickerson Gardens control site and the
Hollywood Box matched pair experienced similar reductions and the results were
not statistically significant;

• The monthly rate of property crimes decreased in Hollywood, and increased in
Jordan Downs, but the results were not statistically significant in either
case;

• The evidence on the displacement of crime is mixed; in both locations, some
crimes increased at a faster rate in the adjacent areas, indicating that CCTV
may displace crime, while other types of crimes decreased relatively more in
the buffer areas, though results were not statistically significant;

• CCTV had no statistically significant effect on arrest rates for misdemeanor
quality-of-life infractions in Jordan Downs or on Hollywood Boulevard

~~~
bitcartel
Thanks. That's not actually it but there was a reference to the SF study and
from that it was possible to find the actual report.

Researchers: [http://citris-
uc.org/news/2009/04/14/citris_helps_city_san_f...](http://citris-
uc.org/news/2009/04/14/citris_helps_city_san_francisco_evaluate_community_safety_camera_program)

PDF:
[http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/CITRIS_SF_CSC_Study_Fi...](http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/CITRIS_SF_CSC_Study_Final_Dec_2008.pdf)

SF Chronicle TLDR: [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Crime-cameras-not-
capt...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Crime-cameras-not-capturing-
many-crimes-3290349.php)

 _"San Francisco's 68 controversial anti-crime cameras haven't deterred
criminals from committing assaults, sex offenses or robberies - and they've
only moved homicides down the block, according to a new report from UC
Berkeley.

Researchers found that nonviolent thefts dropped by 22 percent within 100 feet
of the cameras, but the devices had no effect on burglaries or car theft. And
they've had no effect on violent crime.

The cameras have been installed in phases on some of the city's roughest
streets since 2005 with large concentrations of them in the Western Addition
and Mission District and others in the lower Haight, the Tenderloin and near
Coit Tower.

The cameras have contributed to only one arrest nearly two years ago in a city
that saw 98 homicides last year, a 12-year high. The video is choppy, and
police aren't allowed to watch video in real-time or maneuver the cameras to
get a better view of potential crimes."_

------
curt
This is going to get downvoted but...

...welcome to the liberal utopia. Where the 'experts' tell you how to run your
business and your live your life. Public servants now think they have the
right to violate our rights and freedoms because they know better. Whether its
surveillance or the size of a soda can. It's as though we are living in an
Orwellian novel. Why can't we just let people live their own lives as long as
they don't hurt anyone else.

~~~
tjic
1) 100% agreed

2) What I find amusing about jwz's blog is that every time he has to interact
with government he gets screwed - massively massively screwed - yet he still
thinks that anyone proposing less government is self-obviously a nut case.

~~~
cpeterso
jwz probably does not bother to blog about all the times he interacts with the
government and doesn't get screwed.

~~~
smsm42
So you think if someone is beaten by police and complains, he should also not
all the times he _wasn't_ beaten by the police in order to have balance? This
is not the case for balance - not being screwed is normal state and you don't
need to do anything to not be screwed. It is the cases which one gets screwed
which need change and thus need to be brought to everybody's attention. You
can't say "the system works" because not everybody gets screwed every time,
but you can say it does not when one gets screwed frequently.

------
protomyth
I've been reading his blog for a while, and I have no idea why (other than
love) you would be an entertainment venue in SF. The amount of money and
harassment is beyond belief. The authorities there act like warlords rather
than public servants.

~~~
smackfu
Here's what he said 15 years ago:

In 1998, it seemed like every band that I wanted to see was playing at one
particular venue, a terrible place to see live shows. I rarely went to shows
there, because I disliked the space so much. And I whined about it, a lot. I
bemoaned the fact that there were so few venues that could do justice to a
live show, and even fewer that were booking the kind of music I like.

Finally, one of my friends said, ``why don't you stop complaining about it and
do something about it.'' It hadn't occurred to me that, in fact, I could just
go and do that. I knew it wouldn't be easy: I was well aware of the fact that
the reason that there were fewer clubs was the current political climate in
San Francisco had a decidedly anti-club slant. But someone had to fight the
fight, and it might as well be me!

<http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/1998-1999.html>

------
pasbesoin
In private employment, when an employee "just can't take no for an answer",
this can eventually lead to dismissal.

The voting public needs to make such part of _public_ employment, including
particularly the election of politicians.

It's the only mechanism I see within our current governance structures for
putting curbs on "undead initiatives".

In the larger ecosphere, this would apply to, for example, these endless
rounds of international "trade agreements" that seek to legislate, via this
back door, ever more draconian IP rights to private parties. (ACTA, SOPA,
PIPA, TPP, the North American European one...)

So... inefficient and ineffective as this may be, note who's pushing this
policy, and who supports them, politically. Tell them it will influence your
vote.

Let the relevant union, if any, know that defending such proponents is or
would tarnish their reputation.

And support your local news... Local, where your influence is relatively large
and immediate.

------
bascule
Meanwhile the NSA is spying on the entire world's Internet communications,
including those of all US citizens, without warrant:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_Wind_(code_name)>

~~~
manicbovine
Funny enough, I was reading about this last night. There are so many
extraordinary claims in the Wired article [1], that I found it all hard to
believe. It'd require sci-fi technology to actively mine and decrypt every
electronic transaction around the world. Imagine decrypting just all of the
weakly-encrypted data --- sure, one communication stream is trivial. Billions
at once? That's insane -- I'm not sure if there is enough energy on this
planet.

I also don't understand the cost-benefit ratio associated with actively spying
on every transaction in the US. The vast majority of adversaries are outside
the US, clustered in a handful of countries. I know that the US ran massive
domestic anti-communism operations during the Cold War, but that would have
been far cheaper than setting up a data center capable of capturing, storing,
and processing every electronic transaction. (And even those Cold War
operations didn't focus on _every_ American.)

It reminds me of clients who think I can predict basically anything if I have
enough data and computational power. Most of them seem to think that I can
automate the process, that they don't need to be involved, that it doesn't
take weeks of gut feeling analysis, and that it'll basically give them God-
like omniscience.

I spend a lot of time educating customers about the limits of "big data". If
the federal government is running such a program, they need to hire a
consultant for education's sake.

Edit: Also, reading the post about NSL's [2], I get the impression that the
NSA is still at the same level of tech as the general public. Why wouldn't
they just use Stellar Wind?

[1] <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/>

[2] [https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-
discuss/20...](https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-
discuss/2013-March/035200.html)

~~~
gsibble
I've always assumed that they have backdoors into all of the publicly common
crytography protocols so they are effectively violating Moore's law (by not
having to brute-force).

Remember, it was the NSA that designed most of them to begin with and still
hires the best of the best to continue the work. It's also probably a lot
easier to just tap into everything and record it for later decryption if
necessary than try to target various networks or systems individually.

~~~
manicbovine
Well it depends on what you mean by backdoor. Just to pick one... let's take
AES. There are a lot of open-source implementations, depending on your
platform. Almost all of them are open-source [0]. Furthermore, AES is based on
the Rijndael cipher [1], which is simply a mathematical process that an
undergrad could understand and implement. Ignoring the fact that the major
implementations have been poured over and audited by many researchers (and
that you could do the same), it'd be just too risky to put a backdoor into an
open implementation.

It might be possible that the NSA has discovered some side-channel attack [2].
If that's what you mean by backdoor, then I suppose you could be right.
(Perhaps every CPU has been manufactured so as to facilitate timing attacks.)
I still think that the probabilities combine to some astronomically low number
because those attacks still take time, and I don't think they have the
computational ability to simultaneously run attacks against any very large
subset of the US population.

I don't trust secret, unaccountable organizations... but it just seems too
extraordinary to imagine that any organization could actively monitor billions
(millions, even) of communication streams at a time.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES_implementations>

[1] [http://csrc.nist.gov/archive/aes/rijndael/Rijndael-
ammended....](http://csrc.nist.gov/archive/aes/rijndael/Rijndael-
ammended.pdf#page=1)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-channel_attacks>

------
Aloisius
Having video surveillance in your bar as an owner isn't a bad idea. It is
useful to monitor your bar remotely to ensure that customers are being taken
care of and no one is stealing even when you're not there.

Giving those tapes without a warrant to the police though seems utterly
ridiculous.

~~~
gvb
"Having video surveillance in your [office] as an owner isn't a bad idea. It
is useful to monitor your [programmers] remotely to ensure that [they are busy
writing software] and no one is [reading Hacker News] even when you're not
there."

No. Just no.

~~~
Aloisius
I'm sorry, but there is zero equivalence between a bar and offices.

Bars lose about 24-26% of their gross revenue to theft [1]. Further, bars are
about customer service and every bar has a GM or owner who is there most of
the time monitoring their employees. Adding cameras only allows them to do it
remotely, it doesn't change the fact that they are watching.

The fact is that bartenders are mostly paid in tips and handle _a lot_ of cash
(some bars can pull in $60K/week gross). Not only is there a lot of
opportunity, but frankly, most bartenders aren't paid very well. Combine this
with lax monitoring and you are asking for theft.

Show me an office that has that kind of theft and I'll happily recommend
monitoring there too.

[1] According to Bevinco (they do auditing of bars/nightclubs by doing things
like weighing bottles at the end of the night and comparing it against the
POS) - [http://www.nightclub.com/bar-management/employee-
theft/thwar...](http://www.nightclub.com/bar-management/employee-
theft/thwarting-bartender-theft)

~~~
Domenic_S
> _Bars lose about 24-26% of their gross revenue to theft_

Internal theft. Shrink.

Do what minimarts do and mount a camera pointed down at the till, but don't
bother with entrances and exits. It's not a casino.

~~~
Aloisius
The theft is not as clear cut as someone pulling money out of the till. Often
it involves say, double collecting money from two patrons and only entering in
one order or charging a patron for a premium spirit, filling out an order for
a cheaper one and then pocketing the difference. Then there is the ever
constant overpouring or simply giving away free drinks. With nightclubs there
can be all sorts of theft and graft at the door when collecting covers.

Even in bars that don't have cameras, don't believe for a second you aren't
being watched just to ensure you're getting your drink quickly or you're not
being too aggressive or any number of things that happen when liquor and
people mix.

I'm not saying it is right, but it is reality.

------
Alex3917
This takes huge cojones on jwz's part. He already lost his liquor license once
for hosting gay-friendly events.

~~~
helmut_hed
This seems highly surprising in a neighborhood that hosts - a few blocks away
- the Folsom Street Fair and the even raunchier Up Your Alley. Can we have a
link?

~~~
bodyfour
Remember that liquor licenses are controlled by the ABC, which is a statewide
bureaucracy based out of Sacramento. Sometimes the enforcement policies of the
SF authorities and the ABC diverge.

If the ABC wants to punish you, they send their own undercover agents into
your bar until they see something they can write a citation for. In the case
of DNA's license suspension a few years back they found some allegedly-too-
raunchy patron behavior at a gay event. So it's probably not accurate to say
that the ABC was punishing them for doing gay events, but they may use those
events as opportunities for selective enforcement. The SFPD probably wouldn't
risk the local firestorm by doing that. The ABC doesn't have to care.

This isn't relavent to the issue at hand because we're not talking about
{California, ABC, Liquor License} this is {San Francisco, SFPD, Entertainment
Permit}. Different set of people, different priorities.

------
drallison
This is, of course, outrageous. Contact the Mayor of San Francisco, Edwin Lee,
and get him to do something about it. _mayoredwinlee@sfgov.org_

------
ryguytilidie
Sucks so bad because no logic matters in situations like these. The police can
just say "its for your safety", and that is that, everyone has to agree. :(

------
aubergene
The ICO in the UK has issued guidance specifically on this topic, saying that
licensing shouldn't be tied to use of CCTV without due cause.

[http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/topi...](http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/topic_guides/cctv.aspx)

------
pla3rhat3r
Is it a requirement that every club even HAVE CCTV? I figure it's a great
crime and safety tool but is it a requirement?

~~~
cnvogel
As jwz has explained, the requirement to have CCTV and make CCTV recordings
was put as a default-clause in the permits club owners have to get. jwz fought
against it and had the clause remove from _his_ _single_ permit, but no other
club or bar owner apparently did the same. (I reckon "Barry" quoted in the
linked blog-post is his lawyer).

~~~
packetslave
"Barry" is Barry Synoground, general manager of DNA Lounge.

------
largesse
It's an odd choice that they have to make, to press this or just install a
video surveillance system and _malfunction_ it, saying "oops" if the police
ever come by for footage.

I'm cynical enough to think that if they press it, they will be denied permits
on other grounds or be retaliated against in some other way.

~~~
sp332
That's incredibly passive-aggressive! And it would do nothing to inform other
venues in the area that they are being abused and don't have to put up with
it.

