
Campaign in Oakland pushing for greater control of police surveillance - tagawa
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37411250
======
peterlk
"Instead of trying to repair these relationships we are just throwing more
surveillance equipment at the problem. We are smart people here in Oakland. We
have Silicon Valley right up the road and we just think all these new tools
are going to solve our problems but it just doesn't work."

This is a really excellent quote. Technology does not solve human problems.
Humans solve human problems - sometimes with the help of technology. Improving
safety involves convincing citizens to trust police. Accepting distrust and
working around it is not a viable solution.

~~~
jackweirdy
This is at the heart of the principle of Genchi Genbutsu[0], from the Toyota
Production System. "If the problem exists on the shop floor then it needs to
be understood and solved at the shop floor"

And of course, the more general intuition that people should aim to fix
problems not just symptoms.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genchi_Genbutsu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genchi_Genbutsu)

~~~
ethbro
I interact a lot with legacy businesses and processes in my job. I think the
Genba-based approach is absolutely more effective than others... with a
caveat.

After actual process has been observed, understood, and solutions designed on
the floor, those still need to be taken back up to be verified with
management. In today's tall organizations, what's happening on the floor often
doesn't reflect what _should_ be happening. If there's a discrepancy, the
reasons need to be understood and worked through. Otherwise you run the risk
of overspecialization given the narrow focus of the worker on the floor (in
the same way that you might with training data).

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ggreer
I live in Oakland and I would love it if the police had more surveillance
tools at their disposal. Of course oversight is important, but the current
political climate is far too wary of surveillance in public areas. Many parts
of Oakland have issues with violent crime, vandalism, and theft. Often,
criminals get away because the police don't have the resources to track them.

For example: Just two nights ago, a crazy homeless man tried to assault me
with cinder blocks. Had I not been able to outrun him, I'd certainly be in the
hospital. I called the cops, but by the time they arrived, the man had taken
off on bicycle. The police couldn't find him. He'll likely victimize quite a
few more people before he's caught.

Last week, an intoxicated driver hit a parked car in front of my home and
drove off. Cops couldn't track the car. The driver is still out there and
still a danger to others.

On a bike ride a couple months ago, a driver got behind me in the bike lane
and yelled that he would run me over. Again, no arrest.

The likelihood of being caught is incredibly low, and antisocial people know
this. Better surveillance of public areas would increase the chance of arrest
and discourage such psychopathic behavior. I'm having a really hard time
imagining a scenario in which this cure is worse than the disease. It is other
civilians who endanger my life on a monthly basis, not police.

~~~
nitrogen
I'm not convinced that survrillance tools will cure what appears to be a lack
of effort from police. They probably have things they consider more important
to investigate than your encounters in Oakland or the thousands of dollars of
equipment I had stolen from myself and my startup a couple years ago. I'm
confident that all of these things could be solved with data already available
to the police, with a bit of investigative effort. I don't think more
surveillance in their direct control would help.

~~~
CalChris
I live in Oakland as well. The police here are not very good. They been under
Federal oversight. There's a current sex scandal (involving a bunch of East
Bay departments). We've run through several chiefs in short order. They were
completely out of control during Occupy.

Surveillance hardware is just more toys. It's the culture that needs to be
fixed. I'd like to see a bachelors degree (currently a GED) and Oakland
residency required.

~~~
Kalium
As I understand it, police often don't want to live and work in the same city.
There's the risk of running into the guy they busted for slinging drugs while
grocery shopping with spouse and kids, and avoiding that by living the next
town over is an attractive proposition.

Requiring a degree is likely going to skew the racial mix of OPD more.

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Animats
It's strange that the Port of Oakland was the driver behind this. Port
surveillance for a container port is completely different from policing a
city. Nobody lives at the port. Only authorized people, and not that many of
them, are supposed to be there. Surveillance is mostly about containers, not
people.

There's something missing in this story.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
The Port of Oakland was the driver for this because it is critical
infrastructure and was awarded funds by the federal government to secure
itself. I'm not sure that's controversial. I'm also reminded of the sniper
that fired on the PG&E power distribution apparatus south of San Jose and the
investment that followed.

Monitoring the movements of people in an area as large as the Port of Oakland
is actually correct surveillance. Think about it. If you were going to destroy
the port or use it to further other goals, the first thing you'd do is turn or
plant an authorized person. Literally step 1. You also need to watch merchant
crews and activity near the port; surveillance is actually really hard, from
experience, and I don't like seeing people think they know what's best like
this and opining accordingly. There are valid uses for very strong
surveillance even beyond containers here.

That it grew to the city is indeed interesting and concerning and worthy of
discussion, but casino surveillance would absolutely blow your mind if you
think you have a handle on infrastructure security. The type of stuff people
are (probably correctly) resisting in broader Oakland are actually exactly
what you want for securing a port, datacenter, military base, and so on.

Bringing the point back to the Hacker News crowd: if it's easy for you to
enter your datacenter, shop for a new datacenter. I appreciate vehicle
barricades having to be lowered once I present biometrics to enter a
datacenter, and you should too. Facial recognition to go on the floor is not
unheard of. You should want that. Same reason you should want strong
surveillance on a port.

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protomyth
_The city said it needed an early warning system to give "first responders" a
head start when dealing with emergencies like chemical spills and earthquakes,
as well as major crime and terrorist incidents._

Ok, then only allow Fire and EMT folks to monitor the cameras and ban all
other uses or reporting of the footage. In fact, it probably shouldn't be kept
unless there is an active safety (e.g. Fire, NTSB, etc) investigation using
it.

Then I might, possibly believe this statement.

~~~
initram
I doesn't seem to me that having what I consider a reasonable retention period
would be too bad, where "reasonable" is on the order of 7-30 days. If a person
hasn't reported a crime within that time, then the tapes (or drives or
whatever) are wiped. Any shorter than 7 days, and you risk the person being in
a state of shock/in a period of "I should report this - no, wait, I don't want
any trouble - no wait, it could happen to other people," etc.

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mjevans
I like the idea of a TEMPORARY city wide footage, say everything not part of
an active investigation expunged after a month. It should in no way by indexed
by the individuals or objects within it, but instead just the location and
time.

If you are solving a crime, a human finding the suspects from the area, and
tracking them out through the footage should be worth the results. If you
aren't willing to spend that effort than it surely isn't a truly important
thing you wanted to get from that data.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
What keeps foreign intelligence, whether under the direction of U.S.
intelligence or not, from infiltrating the system and exfiltrating the
goodies?

~~~
mjevans
The same thing that keeps the users of the system on the level in the first
place.

A good design with rigorous publicly validated (published) oversight.

------
cryptoz
Very interesting article but the title is clickbait at best and Big Brother
propaganda at worst. The NSA is still as strong as ever in Oakland.
Corporations are still selling spy cameras and microphones disguised as cell
phones or entertainment centres. The population is still distracted by the
lottery and by sports and by politics. Big Brother plays tricks where it makes
you think you're not being surveilled by 'losing' public battles. But it does
not lose. Articles written to make the citizens feel good about the current
state of increasing surveillance are likely written by friends of Big Brother.

Neither Oakland nor any other US city has, or ever will, "beat" Big Brother.
Not unless there is global systemic change and current surveillance powers are
ended.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
There's literally nothing other than angry Twitter accounts for a three letter
agency to monitor in Oakland. I'm sure the NSA cares about the plight of CVS
managers whose stores get vandalized in the inevitable riots.

Now, I can see the NSA much more concerned about spying about 35 miles
southwest of Oakland.

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morgante
Over all, I am actually in favor of surveillance in public spaces. If you're
in public, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy—I, as a private
citizen, could also easily track and follow your public movements throughout
the day.

From the equipment catalogue, this seems very alarming though:

> These use radar to peer through the walls of buildings - currently precise
> enough to show how many people are in a particular room.

How is that not blatantly unconstitutional? The Supreme Court has consistently
affirmed a right to privacy in your own home and that the police cannot use
technology to circumvent that right without a warrant.

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CalChris
A good article. As a resident of Oakland, I can say that it is well
reported+sourced, especially for something from the other side of the globe.

A couple of things about Oakland. The OPD has been under Federal oversight for
more than a decade stemming from the Riders cases in 2000. The Port of Oakland
is 5th in the US with about 2.2M TEUs of shipping. The local economy has
really taken off post-recession. I liked Quan and I really like Schaaf but
Dellums was less than a nothing; he actually stopped going in to work.

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throw2016
Surveillance can solve a lot of problems. If you have a drone following
everyone and rapid response teams you can literally stop crime. You can then
start working on analysing all the data and working on pre-crime, ml and smart
prediction.

Millions of freedom loving software developers can be gainfully employed
working on this.

Let's get real, the average person does not commit crime, nor do they have any
real need for privacy or freedom of speech. Are they activists, or protestors?
So what use privacy or free speech fo the general person going about life? Why
not trade it for the posssibility of improving safety and quality of life for
everyone?

It's of course not compatible with a modern democratic state but that's just
idealogy. Safety first.

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santaclaus
> A deprived port city

As a current resident of Oakland I'm not sure I'd describe the city as
'deprived,' but please, do continue BBC...

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posterboy
Oh the irony, the surveillance is too much, let's put more surveillance in
place.

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dang
We changed the linkbait title to one of the photo captions (sometimes a good
place to look for more neutral descriptions of the content), to which we added
'Oakland' and 'police'.

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zmanian
If you want to learn more or participate, checkout
[http://oaklandprivacy.org/](http://oaklandprivacy.org/)

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forrestthewoods
Beat big brother. But certainly didn't beat crime.

