New subject: Breaking: Oakland to lead country in diverting anti-terror funding to ubiquitous warrantless surveillance

13 Oct 2013

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?”