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Re. the police using Facebook and Google, and Stephen Spiker's
question "what happens when someone doesn't like me and has access
to all that information?": <br>
<br>
Right now 41% of employers use Facebook to screen job applicants and
monitor employees. That creates an _enormous_ chilling effect on
speech. <br>
<br>
And, credit agencies are also using Facebook to assign
creditworthiness-by-association. If your "friends" have bad credit,
your own credit rating goes down. That creates an _enormous_
chilling effect on freedom of association. <br>
<br>
With all the anarchists, left-libertarians, and civil liberties
hawks onboard here, where's the outrage about those abuses? <br>
<br>
Or have we become smug in our status as geeks, whose economics are
secure even if we wear the circle-A flag into the office and into
job interviews? Do we care about Joe Average Worker whose job may
be dangling by a thread, whose boss may be a diehard Fox Newz
enthusiast, and who might end up unemployed and out in the streets
for voicing an "unpopular" opinion online...? <br>
<br>
Is that a paradigm example of why Marxists consider the
"intelligentsia" to be an unreliable class as far as solidarity with
workers is concerned? Are we better than that?, or not?<br>
<br>
--<br>
<br>
The primary difference between NSA and Google is that you can vote
for NSA's boss every four years, but Google has better marketing. <br>
<br>
The root issue is _collection_. Data that aren't collected, can't
be abused. If you're on Facebook, if you use GMail or Google Voice,
or if you carry around a "smart" phone with a battery that can't be
removed, you're already subjected to a degree of surveillance that
NSA reserves for members of Al Qaeda. <br>
<br>
If you don't like the Oakland Police getting access to the data, the
place to start is with the mega-corps that collect the data.
Complaining about the police using data that huge corporations
collect, without complaining about the mega-corps collecting the
data, is a self-contradiction. <br>
<br>
Lastly, shot-spotters shouldn't be controversial, even among those
of us who support the personal rights interpretation of the 2nd
Amendment. A gunshot on a city street means one of two things: a
criminal has just shot a victim, or a criminal's would-be victim has
just shot their attacker in self-defense. Either of those things
merits getting the police and paramedics on the scene, pronto. <br>
<br>
-G.<br>
<br>
<br>
=====<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 13-10-13-Sun 7:13 PM, Eddan Katz
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:B0C3470D-D07D-460E-8A45-A305BB843DCC@clear.net"
type="cite">
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<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/technology/privacy-fears-as-surveillance-grows-in-cities.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/technology/privacy-fears-as-surveillance-grows-in-cities.html</a>
<div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">October 13, 2013</div>
<h1 style="font-size: 2.4em; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px;
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-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><nyt_headline version="1.0"
type=" ">Privacy Fears as Surveillance Grows in Cities</nyt_headline></h1>
<nyt_byline style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia,
serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant:
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<h6 class="byline" style="margin: 2px 0px; color: rgb(128,
128, 128); font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.2em; font-weight:
bold; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; ">By <span
itemprop="author creator" itemscope=""
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"
itemid="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/somini_sengupta/index.html"><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/somini_sengupta/index.html"
rel="author" title="More Articles by SOMINI SENGUPTA"
style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none;
"><span itemprop="name">SOMINI SENGUPTA</span></a></span></h6>
</nyt_byline><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:
Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal;
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255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; "></span><nyt_text
style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, serif;
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<div id="articleBody"><nyt_correction_top></nyt_correction_top>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">OAKLAND,
Calif. — Federal grants of $7 million awarded to this city
were meant largely <a moz-do-not-send="true" title="About
the program."
href="http://aapa.files.cms-plus.com/PDFs/FY2009PSGPGuidanceFINAL.pdf"
style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none;
">to help thwart terror attacks</a> at its bustling
port. But instead, the money is going to a police
initiative that will collect and analyze reams of
surveillance data from around town — from
gunshot-detection sensors in the barrios of East Oakland
to license plate readers mounted on police cars patrolling
the city’s upscale hills.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The new
system, scheduled to begin next summer, is the latest
example of how cities are compiling and processing large
amounts of information, known as big data, for routine law
enforcement. And the system underscores how technology has
enabled the tracking of people in many aspects of life.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The
police can monitor a fire hose of social media posts to
look for evidence of criminal activities; transportation
agencies can track commuters’ toll payments when drivers
use an electronic pass; and the National Security Agency,
as news reports this summer revealed, scooped up telephone
records of millions of cellphone customers in the United
States.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Like the
Oakland effort, other pushes to use new surveillance tools
in law enforcement are supported with federal dollars. The
New York Police Department, aided by federal financing,
has a big data system that links 3,000 surveillance
cameras with license plate readers, radiation sensors,
criminal databases and terror suspect lists. Police in
Massachusetts have used federal money to buy automated
license plate scanners. And police in Texas have bought a
drone with homeland security money, something that Alameda
County, which Oakland is part of, also tried but shelved
after public protest.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Proponents
of the Oakland initiative, formally known as the <a
moz-do-not-send="true" title="About the program."
href="http://oaklandwiki.org/Domain_Awareness_Center/_files/Port%20of%20Oakland%20DAC%20Report.pdf/_info/"
style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none;
">Domain Awareness Center</a>, say it will help the
police reduce the city’s notoriously high crime rates. But
critics say the program, which will create a central
repository of surveillance information, will also gather
data about the everyday movements and habits of
law-abiding residents, raising legal and ethical questions
about tracking people so closely.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Libby
Schaaf, an Oakland City Council member, said that because
of the city’s high crime rate, “it’s our responsibility to
take advantage of new tools that become available.” She
added, though, that the center would be able to “paint a
pretty detailed picture of someone’s personal life,
someone who may be innocent.”</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">For
example, if two men were caught on camera at the port
stealing goods and driving off in a black Honda sedan,
Oakland authorities could look up where in the city the
car had been in the last several weeks. That could include
stoplights it drove past each morning and whether it
regularly went to see Oakland A’s baseball games.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">For law
enforcement, data mining is a big step toward more
complete intelligence gathering. The police have
traditionally made arrests based on small bits of data —
witness testimony, logs of license plate readers, footage
from a surveillance camera perched above a bank machine.
The new capacity to collect and sift through all that
information gives the authorities a much broader view of
the people they are investigating.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">For the
companies that make big data tools, projects like
Oakland’s are a big business opportunity. Microsoft built
the technology for the New York City program. I.B.M. has
sold data-mining <a moz-do-not-send="true" title="About
the tools."
href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/ecm/offers/partners/ecmu-rca4law.html"
style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none;
">tools</a> for Las Vegas and Memphis.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Oakland
has a contract with the Science Applications International
Corporation, or SAIC, to build its system. That company
has earned the bulk of its $12 billion in annual revenue
from military contracts. As the federal military budget
has fallen, though, SAIC has diversified to other
government agency projects, though not without problems.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The
company’s contract to help modernize the New York City
payroll system, using new technology like biometric
readers, resulted in reports of kickbacks. Last year, the
company <a moz-do-not-send="true" title="About the
settlement."
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/nyregion/contractor-in-citytime-payroll-scandal-to-pay-record-500-million.html?pagewanted=all"
style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none;
">paid</a> the city $500 million to avoid a federal
prosecution. The amount was believed to be the largest
ever paid to settle accusations of government contract
fraud. SAIC declined to comment.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Even
before the initiative, Oakland spent millions of dollars
on traffic cameras, license plate readers and a network of
sound sensors to pick up gunshots. Still, the city has one
of the highest violent crime rates in the country. And an
internal <a moz-do-not-send="true" title="The audit."
href="http://www.oaklandauditor.com/images/oakland/auditreports/0pd%20tech.pdf"
style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none;
">audit</a> in August 2012 found that the police had
spent $1.87 million on technology tools that did not work
properly or remained unused because their vendors had gone
out of business.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The new
center will be far more ambitious. From a central
location, it will electronically gather data around the
clock from a variety of sensors and databases, analyze
that data and display some of the information on a bank of
giant monitors.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The city
plans to staff the center around the clock. If there is an
incident, workers can analyze the many sources of data to
give leads to the police, fire department or Coast Guard.
In the absence of an incident, how the data would be used
and how long it would be kept remain largely unclear.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The
center will collect feeds from cameras at the port,
traffic cameras, license plate readers and gunshot
sensors. The center will also be integrated next summer
with a database that allows police to tap into reports of
911 calls. Renee Domingo, the city’s emergency services
coordinator, said school surveillance cameras, as well as
video data from the regional commuter rail system and
state highways, may be added later.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Far less
advanced surveillance programs have elicited resistance at
the local and state level. Iowa City, for example,
recently imposed a moratorium on some surveillance
devices, including license plate readers. The Seattle City
Council forced its police department to return a federally
financed drone to the manufacturer.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">In
Virginia, the state police purged a database of millions
of license plates collected by cameras, including some at
political rallies, after the state’s attorney general said
the method of collecting and saving the data violated
state law. But for a cash-starved city like Oakland, the
expectation of more federal financing makes the project
particularly attractive. The City Council approved the
program in late July, but public outcry later compelled
the council to add restrictions. The council instructed
public officials to write a policy detailing what kind of
data could be collected and protected, and how it could be
used. The council expects the privacy policy to be ready
before the center can start operations.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The
American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California
described the program as “warrantless surveillance” and
said “the city would be able to collect and stockpile
comprehensive information about Oakland residents who have
engaged in no wrongdoing.”</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The
port’s chief security officer, Michael O’Brien, sought to
allay fears, saying the center was meant to hasten
law-enforcement response time to crimes and emergencies.
“It’s not to spy on people,” he said.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Steve
Spiker, research and technology director at the Urban
Strategies Council, an Oakland nonprofit organization that
has examined the effectiveness of police technology tools,
said he was uncomfortable with city officials knowing so
much about his movements. But, he said, there is already
so much public data that it makes sense to enable
government officials to collect and analyze it for the
public good.</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size:
1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Still, he
would like to know how all that data would be kept and
shared. “What happens,” he wondered, “when someone doesn’t
like me and has access to all that information?”</p>
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