
Watched: Police are stockpiling databases with personal information - kogus
https://data.postandcourier.com/saga/watched/page/1
======
rb808
Interesting how gun records are forbidden to be computerized. NRA knows how to
avoid big brother.

[http://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-
man...](http://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns)

>> That's been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable
database of America's gun owners. So people here have to use paper, sort
through enormous stacks of forms and record books that gun stores are required
to keep and to eventually turn over to the feds when requested. It's kind of
like a library in the old days—but without the card catalog. They can use
pictures of paper, like microfilm (they recently got the go-ahead to convert
the microfilm to PDFs), as long as the pictures of paper are not searchable.
You have to flip through and read. No searching by gun owner. No searching by
name.

~~~
knz
Do we still trust that these types of rules are being followed (particularly
in the context of mass surveillance)? If I recall correctly, the public has
been told on many occasions that the NSA/FBI/local police were not doing
something only to be told years later that this was not the case.

Laws such as this just highlight how asinine gun policy can be. Allowing a
paper trail but not allowing digital records doesn't really benefit gun owners
(Completing a 4473 would be a lot easier if they could verify that you are
already a responsible gun owner) or make policing gun laws any safer (straw
purchases would be easier to track if the records were digitized).

~~~
abysmallyideal
They simply out-source it to a corporation that would be willing to do what it
takes to collect the information, or as much as possible. It's not uncommon
for the three letter agencies to delegate the illegal ramifications to a
"corporate" entity, freelancers, mercenaries, etc... The FBI hires gangsters
and criminals to "gather information" or "assist in investigations" when they
need something done that is highly questionable. It's a really grey area, and
a very large market.

Snowden for example succeeded in pinning "illegal surveillance" on the NSA,
when the work was contracted out to the American corporate security-cartels,
although he is a very rare exception, especially considering he is alive and
not jailed.

~~~
chrisbennet
Don't they get around some of this "you can't spy on your own countrymen"
thing by just swapping data with the British surveillance service i.e. "I'll
spy on yours and you spy on mine and we'll swap afterwards"?

~~~
Natanael_L
Five eyes program

------
mindcrime
I think it's time for the return of a "reverse intelligence agency", something
like the old Government Information Awareness[1] idea. We need an intelligence
agency for the people that monitors government agents of all sorts, and
integrates all the open data databases, to make it easier for us to monitor
the government. First, because transparency is the ultimate disinfectant, and
two, because once they see how it feels to have the shoe on the other foot, it
might change the way certain people feel about ubiquitous surveillance.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Information_Awarene...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Information_Awareness)

~~~
maerF0x0
Whats to stop that intelligence agency for the people from becoming just as
corrupt as the current 3 letter ones?

~~~
mindcrime
That's a fair question. I think thr0waway1239 basically said what can be said
about it. It's down to checks and balances. Right now, we have nearly
unlimited State surveillance with little work to counter-balance that. So I
would think anything that serves the end of transparency and "undersight"
would be a positive simply by balancing out the current state of affairs.

I feel like we'd have to go a VERY long way before things flip-flop and the
problem goes the other way. But I could be wrong, and just to be clear, this
isn't something where I've sat down and planned out a detailed proposal or
anything. It's more an idea that's been stirring on my mental "back burner"
for a while, but has never been fully fleshed out.

------
dmfdmf
As the article mentioned, these field contact cards have been around for a
long time. A few were even filed on me in my youth ;-). The problem is when it
was a simple card system there was an inherent time limit on the usefulness of
the info. The police officer had to recall filling out a card that might tie
someone to a crime. And I doubt that cards were kept in perpetuity since the
value of the info (for criminal investigations) fell rather quickly over
months or a year. In a major case, such as a murder, investigators might do a
blind search of all the cards filed in some area around the time of the murder
to find leads, suspects or potential witnesses so the card system was a
valuable tool for legitimate police action. Now that everything is
computerized there is no longer any time limit on the data and the potential
for abuse is now becoming clear. So the time limit on the collected data that
was implicit has to be made explicit as a matter of policy instead of tacitly
due the limits of the system for the collection and use of the info. The real
problem is that explicitly drawing that line is forcing us to clearly define
the nature of government and what "freedom" actually means.

------
chewbacha
Either I'm numb to all the "data" that's out there or I don't really
understand the threat. But I'm feeling a bit "meh" about all of these reports.

Don't get me wrong, the use of personal data for vendettas and retaliation is
clearly wrong and should be prosecuted.

So yea, I don't like misuse of data, but simply having data that they
collected no longer seems bad to me. And if it was warrantless then it's
inadmissible anyhow, right?

If you don't want them "taking" your info, just don't speak to them. That's
your right. And if you make the data publicly available on the internet, they
scrap it, and you get upset, isn't that the same as distributing free
pamphlets and getting annoyed at the police for taking a couple and
photocopying them?

~~~
tocf
> I don't really understand the threat.

Do you view the government as benign? What if that were to change?

Do you view all governments as benign? Foreign governments can further justify
their actions by pointing at so called "free", and "democratic" nations and
say if they can do it, so can we.

Do you trust these organizations (government or otherwise) to secure your
data?

Governments change. Conditions change. Imagine another large criminal act in
the US where thousands perish. The citizenry starts demanding more and more
invasions of privacy, in futile attempts to stop further attacks. As each
generation grows up with less and less privacy, they become even more
accustomed to it. Is it possible to have a free society that's completely
surveilled?

> And if it was warrantless then it's inadmissible anyhow, right?

In 2015, not a single one of the FISA applications for a warrant were
rejected.

> If you don't want them "taking" your info, just don't speak to them.

GHCQ in the UK collects massive amounts of data on _all_ internet users. You
don't have any choice, if you're operating on anything but the dark web. The
issues we're facing here have never been faced before. It's never been
possible for the police/governments to just record and store everything,
making it possible for them, or some future government, to use it against you.

I should also point out - when I say you, I don't mean you. Or me. We're just
two idiots on the internet. I'm talking about people with power. Or
journalists, who want to expose wrong doing. Judges, who are going to decide
whether or not to put that person in jail (or let them off). Maybe even other
police. Oh, this officer wants to report me for corruption? Find out what shit
we have on him, make it stick. Nothing? Well, easy enough to add data, and
problem solved.

If you're not convinced - think about it this way. This is the exact opposite
of what should be happening. We should know what our governments are doing,
what they're spending OUR money on. We should know when a corporation is
planning to pollute the air so that they can sell more cars. We should know if
a moral pillar of our community is a den of pedophiles. WE should have the
information on THEM, not the other way around.

~~~
hx87
> Is it possible to have a free society that's completely surveilled?

It is, if a society's ethical and legal code and how its members actually
behave are closely aligned (which prevents blackmail), surveillance is done by
all to all, and the government has limited ability to arrest and prosecute.

~~~
tocf
>> Is it possible to have a free society that's completely surveilled?

>It is, if a society's ethical and legal code and how its members actually
behave are closely aligned (which prevents blackmail), surveillance is done by
all to all, and the government has limited ability to arrest and prosecute.

Anonymity and privacy would still have to be respected for it to work. While I
believe that this is possible (just finishing up first draft of my first
novel, a scifi that looks at this) it's not going to be achieved by
legislating our way to it (or that it'll even originate from our governments).

The main thing I think to point out is that individuals shouldn't be the ones
we're keeping eyes on. Governments, corporations, charities, religions, and
unions - basically any group of people - is where we should be demanding
complete transparency, and surveillance by all.

------
qrendel
I was a bit shocked, though I probably shouldn't have been, to notice recently
that police in the local airport all carry assault rifles now. Assault rifles.
I'm not that knowledgeable about guns, so I'm not sure what kind exactly -
maybe M-16s?

A few years ago there was something about military personnel being stationed
with unloaded rifles in airports as part of the War on Terror(TM). I now
imagine that was to desensitize us to this future - everyday cops carrying
loaded assault rifles in public all the time.

The U.S. really has become a police state.

~~~
hga
The reason the military personnel carried unloaded weapons is that commanding
officers live in fear of an negligent discharge ending their career, this was
true for most base sentries before _and_ after 9/11, you can pretty much only
count on those guarding nuclear weapons to have rounds in their weapons.
"Nothing personal".

As for police carrying rifles/carbines in our airports today, well, they're
much better weapons than pistols, more accurate and more likely to hit the
target and not an innocent, much harder hitting if they have the right ammo in
them, all police should have a "patrol carbine" instead of a shotgun in their
trunk or secured in the passenger space of their vehicles.

The only question here, is the threat level at the airport high enough that
routinely carrying rifles is warranted? That I can't say, but as noted by
others, it's routine in more "civilized" Europe.

~~~
Zigurd
In Europe, it depends on the cop: Traffic cops are often unarmed schlubs.
Federal police are armed and well-trained. China also seems to have multiple
tiers of cops and relatively few are carrying guns in public.

------
pweissbrod
QUESTION for Americans: If you approach a police officer and ask for
directions (or any context where youre not a suspect) and the police officer
asks for your ID can you legally refuse to comply?

*Edit: This has happened to me before. After politely asking 'why do you need my ID?' things escalated. I complied out of fear of being detained.

~~~
johndubchak
Yes, of course. You are under no obligation to share that information in such
an encounter.

~~~
runako
Based on the details of the encounter, I would disagree. The police repeatedly
(apparently) asked for his ID and escalated the encounter. Based on those
facts, I would not assume that I was not being detained and was free to go.

The Supreme Court has held that even if the police have a flawed understanding
of the laws and rules they are enforcing, their flawed interpretation governs
the interaction on the street. So what the office believed matters, and that
in turn guides his/her behavior. If you're in the right, you can usually be
vindicated after a brief trip through the criminal justice system (arrest,
jail, court). But it's guaranteed to ruin your day.

Safest bet would have been to ask "Am I free to go?" to find out.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The police repeatedly (apparently) asked for his ID and escalated the
> encounter. Based on those facts, I would not assume that I was not being
> detained and was free to go.

Even if one is detained, one is not legally obligated to produce ID (even if
one has it in one's possession, which also is not required.)

~~~
maxerickson
What about
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes)
?

I would think there is some overlap between reasons to invoke those statutes
and reasons to detain.

Is it simply the case that none of those laws require production of a
document?

~~~
dragonwriter
Stop and identify statutes apply to detentions (they are not merely
overlapping), but AFAIK the only one requiring identity documents considered
by the federal courts was struck down as unconstitutional.

------
srgseg
If it's impossible to reverse the tide, what if this could become a database
of innocence instead of a database of guilt?

Instead of cops pulling over some poor innocent guy every few weeks because he
has a suspicious looking beaten up car, instead the police computer would
green flag the person. The records might show that:

1\. CCTV shows the person has not been driving in the vicinity of any crime
they might currently be looking for suspects in connection with

2\. The person has been stopped before, but was not involved in any criminal
activity. This prevents unintentional repeated harassment.

3\. The person has no known associations with any people involved in criminal
activity.

Just like Uber, we'd be glad people were recording feedback about us because
it helps people get a ride even in a high crime area where taxis would be
otherwise afraid or unwilling to service.

~~~
7373737373
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System)

Such a system will be used and abused for political purposes eventually.

~~~
srgseg
Maybe the solution would be to have Swiss style direct democracy so that
people could directly approve or disapprove of any particular system of data
collection.

~~~
trendia
Unfortunately, direct democracy would reduce the power of current legislators,
so it is unlikely that our political system will change.

~~~
hga
As the Instapundit puts it about many "obvious" solutions to problems, they
"provide insufficient opportunities for graft".

------
davidhariri
"Over the next six years, police recorded over 1000 interactions with this
man."

With holidays, that's conservatively an average of one interaction every 2
days. How is that possible? Am I the only one who finds that shocking?

~~~
eternalban
Community policing. Beat cop. 1 a day is even possible. You should be alarmed
if such cases stop being outliers and start approaching the mean i.e. papers
please.

~~~
DanBC
We don't know how far down the long tail that one person is.

How many people are having unwelcome weekly interaction with police?

~~~
eternalban
That was my point, exactly. [edit: to be clear, that a beat cop may have to
deal with a handful of local louts, for exmple. But not the entire
neighborhood.]

Doesn't our Justice Department have people monitoring this sort of metric?

------
joesmo
So, basically, don't ever talk to the police, don't even say 'hi'. There's no
such thing as a casual conversation with the police. They should be avoided at
all costs. Isn't this common sense? That's the first thing I'd teach my
children.

~~~
criddell
Good lord, I'd hate to live in your world.

------
imroot
I have a friend who is a sergeant in the LAPD. She was asking me a question
and followed it up with something about trying to not seem stalkerish, and I
made a joke about "isn't that what NCIC (National Crime Information Computer)
is for?"

She comes back a few minutes later and tells me that she finds much more
information on the internet than she could ever find through NCIC.

~~~
pc86
> _National Crime Information Computer_

Center, not Computer

------
reconciliation
At some point there will be a really massive fuck up, that will resist the
usual cover ups and smear campaigns that have been used to silence the fuck
ups that manage to boil to the surface these days.

Only when that one really bad thing finally happens, and doesn't just go away;
when it refuses to be swept under the carpet, only then will anything change.

Either that, or it will break us, and usher in a new unstoppable tyrrany.

Think about it like that.

------
HillaryBriss
It's hard to put this into context.

On one hand, we feel anxious if our government has more information about us
than we believe they need. We feel that, in a truly free society, the
government should keep its nose out of our day to day lives.

On the other hand, we demand that our government somehow prevent crimes and
catch criminals, ensure that people treat each other fairly in day to day
life, business dealings, even personal relationships. And for-profit
corporations have huge databases about our commercial (and other?) activities
-- and we have few if any legal tools to force them to stop collecting data or
to purge those databases.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
That dilemma is as old as our republic. At its founding we decided it's better
to let guilty people go free than to put innocent people behind bars. In the
beginning we valued Liberty above all else, as the ultimate virtue of our
country.

It appears now we value security more, or else these types of things wouldn't
be tolerated. History tells us this is a mistake but maybe we haven't yet
learned the lesson.

~~~
fixermark
I agree with the overall assessment of goals, but I don't think I agree that
the surveillance tools are at odds with them.

> At its founding we decided it's better to let guilty people go free than to
> put innocent people behind bars

Ubiquitous surveillance record makes it easier to discern the facts of an
event. It makes it less likely that the innocent will be put behind bars
(relative to the alternative solutions of faulty witness memory and after-the-
fact narrative construction).

~~~
mindcrime
_Ubiquitous surveillance record makes it easier to discern the facts of an
event. It makes it less likely that the innocent will be put behind bars
(relative to the alternative solutions of faulty witness memory and after-the-
fact narrative construction)._

That might be true IF the "ubiquitous surveillance record" was gathered,
maintained, and monitored by a truly neutral party. But it's not. It's
maintained by the State, who are your adversary if you are charged with a
crime (and possibly at other times, but that's a different topic). Anyway, if
the State owns the surveillance and they decide to target you, do you expect
that - as a defendant - you will be given full and unfettered access to an
unaltered record of events? History suggests that this is not the case.

~~~
fixermark
Ah, I see the disconnect; I assumed I was the one doing the recording. ;)

~~~
mindcrime
Oh, OK. Well yeah, then definitely. :-)

------
chadlavi
> A person can end up in one of these databases by doing nothing more than
> sitting on a public park bench or chatting with an officer on the street.

So does this mean that public park benches are under constant video
surveillance?

------
strathmeyer
Our University required the police to collect and write down the names of
everyone they ever spoke to... so they could prove they weren't being racially
biased?

------
simbalion
Welcome to 1984.

