
Albuquerque Police Engaged in Secret Intelligence Gathering Operation - AndrewBissell
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/07/albuquerque-police-engaged-in-secret-intelligence-gathering-operation-leaked-documents-show/
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jcrawfordor
The City of Albuquerque and APD have significantly invested in a variety of
"data-based policing" methods, which range from intelligence sharing
agreements like this one to the Real-Time Crime Center which is staffed by
analysts with, for example, live access to a large network of city and
privately owned surveillance cameras. Various administrations have touted
these investments as a solution to the city's high crime levels, notoriously
poor performance of APD (in terms of both crime reduction and compliance with
a Department of Justice consent decree), and chronic understaffing of many
area police organizations but especially APD.

There has, of course, been no real evidence of success. A promising change in
local crime trends seems to be more a result of significant reform of the DA's
office than anything APD has done. APD's main contribution to the effort has
been harassing anyone who happens to be near downtown at night, including
people who live and work there. That and shooting someone on occasion.

What is perhaps most surprising about these programs is how little attention
they have received from the public. While APD's abuse of force and corruption
problems are widely known and one of the area's foremost political issues,
there is almost no discussion of APD's mass surveillance programs even among
police abolition groups. It seems to reflect the general trend that mass
surveillance is a much great topic of discussion in the tech community than
outside of it.

All that said, my real comment is that this program seems unsurprising and of
little import compared to the real-time crime center, its privacy
implications, and ongoing internal problems including chronic high turnover
and sudden dismissals (which tends to suggest problems that were not
publicized), hiring a director with a history of internal affairs problems,
etc. And then even that seems like a small matter in the context that APD has
been under a department of justice consent decree resulting from a pattern of
excessive force for six years now and has only just in the last few months
finished making the policy changes required by DoJ, with the independent
monitor reporting that compliance with those new policies is extremely poor.

I guess it's just hard to get too fired up about APD being run by major
retailers when it's been clear for years that APD does not answer to the
people, the city government, or the federal government. Being in the pocket of
Target is downright wholesome compared to what we expect from APD.

Look on the bright side: APD has it together compared to BCSO. Sheriff
Gonzales resisted implementation of body cameras for years until the state
legislature took the matter into their own hands and mandated cameras for all
law enforcement agencies. After a series of gaffs including Sheriff Gonzales
announcing that he thought officers owning smart phones was sufficient to meet
the mandate, the media has enjoyed discussing what will happen when they blow
through the deadline and BCSO no longer meets statutory requirements to
exercise law enforcement authority.

~~~
daun
After reading your comment I looked up some stats and almost couldn't believe
how bad the crime situation is in Albuquerque. It seems like this entire
program is meant to help select retailers and former PD employees, and is
ineffective in reducing crime in any meaningful way.

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rshnotsecure
The City of Albuquerque's site was maintained by Netsential, who in turn used
"Data Foundry" in central Texas as their colo / cloud provider.

It appears that the specific colo being used was also a major NSA bulk intel
collection point. The site was codenamed WAXTITAN and it was part of the
BOUNDLESS INFORMANT program (we know this because of the Snowden leaks).

I wrote a small script to take screenshots of every DHS Fusion a Center site
that was part of #BlueLeaks [1]. Some of the sites are very strange looking.

Data Foundry and Netsential were also part of a series of bizarre allegations
made by a former employee back in 2014 and posted to Cryptome.org in some
detail. They were serious enough Data Foundry had to write a series of
articles and posts denying then. I tried to merge what we know now with what
was originally claimed back in 2014 here [2].

[1] -
[https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qyqd8m7goj6uruh/AADM-6C7L7sy4XTad...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qyqd8m7goj6uruh/AADM-6C7L7sy4XTadB2FS8_Xa?dl=0)

[2] - [https://cryptome.org/2020/09/dhs-fusion-
center.htm](https://cryptome.org/2020/09/dhs-fusion-center.htm)

~~~
pueblito
Wow. Thank you, that's very interesting.

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wonderwonder
It appears very much like this program is designed to take in private funds,
provide nice jobs to police officers once they retire, arrest whoever Target &
Walmart specify, allow executives to play spy and provide information to
political allies and well connected citizens. Its very much a big brother is
watching in all of the worst ways where big brother works for the wealthy.

We are watching police departments attempt to seize power and form isolated
fiefdoms in real time. Outside of the scope of this article but the NYPD, and
Portsmouth, Va police are just a few egregious examples.

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Wagmire
Public-private cooperation with police departments has been an exceptionally
sticky legal situation for a long time.

This sticky relationship will only amplify when the public sector gains more
and more capability from the private sector folded into SOP.

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de_watcher
And did it help to find Walter?

~~~
ahmadhamza19
you mean heisenberg ;) ?

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treis
This is a lot of words to say that retailers share evidence with police and
have access to evidence that other retailers have shared. Very few if any of
them explain why this is a bad thing.

~~~
imglorp
I'll try.

Our civilization--our contract with each other and the government--includes a
reasonable expectation of privacy and of freedom from unreasonable searches:
basic human rights. A court would be needed to violate privacy. It was
sufficient in the distant past to use that kind of language before tech.

With tech, you have a massive data wake as you go about an ordinary life,
largely open source for anyone to buy, share, and aggregate. Nobody needs to
tail you or subpoena your records. The aggregation from widely disparate
sources allows connections and inferences as well as allowing inverse
searches: fishing expeditions.

Remember how Target was figuring out who was pregnant before they even knew?
That was 2012 and it was only one store. Now you can add in many, many
aggregations like license plates and face rec and credit history, assistant
devices recording every utterance, browsing and lingering behaviors in stores
with cameras. All corporate assets. It's in the government's interest to buy
and sell along with the retailers.

Not only don't you need a court order to look into someone's mind, but it's a
valuable commodity now.

~~~
treis
To be blunt, this is just more words with few of them explaining why any of
this stuff is bad. Where is the actual real world harm?

Everyone leaving a data wake, as you describe it, is a good thing if you're
not committing crimes and/or are the victim of one. As an example, we had case
locally where an elderly couple were found dead from arson in their house. The
cops arrested the Son and he spent 9 months in jail until the geofence warrant
came back from Google. There was a hit in the house 20 minutes before the 911
call. Son is released and the real killer arrested. Without that data wake
that story (probably) ends up with the son in jail for life and the real
killer free.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ajc.com/news/man-no-
longer-...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ajc.com/news/man-no-longer-
charged-in-parents-gruesome-deaths-in-atlanta-new-suspect-
arrested/OWCX5CVVF5FBZGZAGYA3A5FCZM/%3foutputType=amp)

~~~
imglorp
Are you asking why humans need privacy? If you've done nothing wrong then
nothing to hide? So yes open society might stop a crime. But at what cost? Big
essay [0] below. But my top points are:

* The Panopticon experiment shows that constant surveillance has deleterious effects on all people, not just "bad" ones. It is a form of control. [1]

* Authoritarian regimes everywhere deploy information apparatus to control their people. Eg the Stasi [2], and now everywhere.

Do you really want to participate in a global, authoritarian, totalitarian
society? That's what we're building here.

"Those Who Would Give Up Liberty for Safety, Deserve Neither"

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

1\. [https://exploringyourmind.com/the-panopticon-effect-
someones...](https://exploringyourmind.com/the-panopticon-effect-someones-
watching-you/)

2\. [https://www.bstu.de/en/the-
stasi/introduction/](https://www.bstu.de/en/the-stasi/introduction/)

------
Mindless2112
One thing this article fails to mention is that Albuquerque is the property
crime capitol of the US[1]. APD needs all the help it can get.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate)
(sort by total property crime)

~~~
vkou
In my experience, the police deal with property crime by showing up a few
hours later, writing a police report, and suggesting that you move to a less
shitty neighbourhood.

I don't think they need much help with that sort of thing, it seems to be
pretty throughly figured out.

If we wanted to solve property crime, we would probably do two things - arrest
the fences who buy stolen goods, and give addicts free drugs.

~~~
watersb
While that was our experience in Oakland 30 years ago, it's what I expected;
we would need a police report for an insurance claim.

First home after college, we didn't own anything worth more than ten bucks,
minimum wage it was crazy. But someone broke in and gave it a go anyway.

It felt awful.

Felt better after the police arrived, but seriously what else are they going
to do?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> but seriously what else are they going to do?

The police should _arrest the fucking fences_ and openly advocate _giving
addicts drugs_.

Seriously, the fences aren't hard to find: they openly do things like
sellobviously near-new and second hand cordless drills with battery but no
charger, while at the same time advertising a rather odd collection of other
random items.

People are doing carriable item theft for only handful of reasons: fun, or
they need the cash.

Edit: typo and grammar errors galore!

~~~
darawk
You can't just arrest people for selling things on the street if you can't
prove that its stolen. There's a reason they don't arrest them.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
The police _can and do_ arrest anyone for any thing at any time, and charge
them willy-nilly. Sometimes they even shoot people. In the back. For no
reason.

But whatever, mate.

Arresting an obvious fence and charging them with possessing stolen properly
wouldn't be a _complete waste of resources_ like half of policing already is.

~~~
heavenlyblue
I agree highly with the point you're making and I would put it by rephrasing
the famous words: "Nobody gets fired for arresting a black person".

