
New Documents Confirm Police Vehicles’ Real-Time Access To DHS Spy Cameras - stfu
http://www.storyleak.com/new-mesh-network-documents-confirm-police-vehicles-real-time-access-dhs-spy-cameras/
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ck2
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
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
Sadly, we all do.

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danso
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...](http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=9053236)

> _" 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

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crystaln
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
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.

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jhonovich
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.

~~~
betterunix
"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
>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

~~~
amagumori
> "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly†."
> \--Abraham Lincoln

†may require working democratic process, ability for regular people to affect
policy change, lack of special interest groups with opposing positions, and a
congressional representative who will actually do something about the issue
for you. restrictions apply, including but not limited to: population of those
disaffected is too small; population of those disaffected is discriminated
against by the population at large; population of those disaffected is too
poor and focused on survival to work at policy change; congressman disagrees;
congressman doesn't care; policy is remotely controversial; policy can be
associated with incendiary buzzwords such as socialism, government spending,
and "big government"; and more.

see: "the war on drugs"

~~~
XorNot
Well it sure as hell is never going to change so long as your only solution is
to declare you won't vote because both parties are the same.

You want to change the system? Learn how it works first and stop throwing the
problem into the too hard basket.

~~~
itchitawa
Yes. Americans keep complaining about their government, yet every election
they keep on voting for the same party they voted for last time, the same one
that already did what the didn't like - or they don't bother. Where I live,
people complain that they can't influence politics, they can't even complain
about the government online without getting arrested. They don't have voting
rights to do anything about it. Americans do! No amount of lobbying can force
you to vote for someone you don't want.

~~~
reginaldjcooper
Your logical fallacy here is that you have no evidence whatsoever that the
people complaining are not voting for a third party every time. Perhaps they
are, and in fact, it is as ineffectual as they claim.

~~~
XorNot
Its not about voting for a third party - which is ineffectual. It's about
remembering that you have _way_ more elections then _just_ who the president
is.

~~~
amagumori
even ignoring the issues i raised in my original post, another huge problem is
the success of propaganda and the polarization of the political landscape.
even if the system worked perfectly, a large portion of the population would
continue to vote against their self-interest due to propaganda and social
conditioning. and the polarization makes it so you can't get people to
entertain different views, as they feel that they're getting attacked and
"losing the fight" if they change their stance.

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bcl
Some more background on this -
[http://seattletimes.com/html/latestnews/2022269628_spdwirele...](http://seattletimes.com/html/latestnews/2022269628_spdwirelessxml.html)

"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."

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kamakazizuru
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 )

~~~
Amadou
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
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.

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

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cantrevealname
> _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.

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SolarNet
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/](http://cvdazzle.com/)).

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

~~~
newman314
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.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _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.

