13 Oct
2013
13 Oct
'13
7:13 p.m.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/technology/privacy-fears-as-surveillance-…
October 13, 2013
Privacy Fears as Surveillance Grows in Cities
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
OAKLAND, Calif. — Federal grants of $7 million awarded to this city
were meant largely to help thwart terror attacks 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.
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.
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.
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.
Proponents of the Oakland initiative, formally known as the Domain
Awareness Center, 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.
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.”
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.
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.
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 tools for Las Vegas
and Memphis.
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.
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 paid 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.
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 audit 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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?”