
Monitoring America - pierrefar
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-america/print/
======
pmorici
""We have got things now we didn't have before," said Memphis Police
Department Director Larry Godwin, who has produced record numbers of arrests
using all this new analysis and technology. "Some of them we can talk about.
Some of them we can't.""

Since when does a local city police department have things they "can't talk
about"? Is that even possible given that eventually the arrests they make will
have to go to court and presumably whatever technology or process they are
using will have to be made public as part of that case?

~~~
shareme
it use to be that there was law on the books that military cannot pass on
military training and technology to local law enforcement..see Waco..

When did this change?

~~~
artmageddon
Not too recently, it seems, as this link shows:

[http://www.examiner.com/page-one-in-houston/police-line-
up-t...](http://www.examiner.com/page-one-in-houston/police-line-up-to-use-
drones-on-patrol-after-houston-secret-test)

I wasn't on Hacker News at the time(I'm on here now just as much as I've been
on Reddit) but I could only imagine the storm it created. There was also a
more recent incident of a Mexican UAV crashing across the border into El Paso,
TX:

[http://www.policemag.com/Channel/Vehicles/News/2010/12/18/Me...](http://www.policemag.com/Channel/Vehicles/News/2010/12/18/Mexican-
Drone-Crashes-In-El-Paso-Backyard.aspx)

I don't know if I'm more freaked out at the possibility of seeing dozens of
these flying around at any given time in the future, or the fact that I won't
be able to see even a single one at any given time, knowing it could be
observing innocent civilians for no good reason.

------
maukdaddy
_Or, as most often happens, it could make no specific determination, which
would mean that Suspicious Activity Report N03821 would sit in limbo for as
long as five years, during which time many other pieces of information about
the man photographing a boat on a Sunday morning could be added to his file:
employment, financial and residential histories; multiple phone numbers; audio
files; video from the dashboard-mounted camera in the police cruiser at the
harbor where he took pictures; and anything else in government or commercial
databases "that adds value," as the FBI agent in charge of the database
described it._

The most terrifying part of that is "commercial databases"

------
forgotAgain
I am struck by the dichotomy of recent rules and regulations in our society.
How is it that controls and surveillance of individuals are justified by
individuals being inherently bad and at the the same time they are wrong for
corporations because corporations are inherently good?

------
mcantelon
Terrorism is merely the pretext for building a massive counter-insurgency
apparatus. If the federal government is this concerned about insurgency it
seems likely that they plan to consolidate their power.

------
JSig
"There have been no convictions yet." Amazing.

------
jimfl
The boy who cries wolf at 10Hz.

