11 ms·

I've lived in Fort Worth, TX for about a year. I was already aware of the existence of these devices. I had no clue that my local PD was spending such an insane

by sh-run 10y ago

I've lived in Fort Worth, TX for about a year. I was already aware of the existence of these devices. I had no clue that my local PD was spending such an insane amount of money on surveillance. It's also worth mentioning that our population is only 792K. I've lived in Texas most of life and in general I think the people here are great. However, Texans do have a tendency to blindly support anything the Military and Police want to do, while at the same time complaining about big government. I guess I'd better start bringing this up in my circles. I don't think many people are fully aware of what's going on.

jjawssd 10y ago
Are we powerless to stop it? Should we bother?
- Retric 10y ago
  There are options between stop it and do nothing. I would assume cellphone companies can easily give access to any conversation from their internal network so that's probably a more cost effective solution at all levels. The question becomes, why do police feel the need for other tools?
  - barake 10y ago
    Cellphone companies is one more layer in their trust circle. It's easier to just bypass them and collect the data yourself. Warrants only really became a requirement in 2015. And police were misleading judges on Stingray usage to hide the tech. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/appeals-court-no-stingrays-without-a-warrant-explanation-to-judge/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/appeals-court-no...
  - upofadown 10y ago
    Casual ad hoc surveillance can be very useful for law enforcement. It can save a tremendous amount of time and money keeping track of where people are and where they are planning to be. The fact that the information gained is not admissible in court is not important. From the article: >“You guys picking up any information? Where they're going, possibly?" Law enforcement has become somewhat dependent on this sort of access and would not be able to do their job as effectively without it. Hence the desperation shown by the use of things like Stingrays where the network is actively attacked in what is arguably a straight up illegal way.
    - naasking 10y ago
      > Law enforcement has become somewhat dependent on this sort of access and would not be able to do their job as effectively without it. I've seen this claim repeated, but never with any evidence.
      - upofadown 10y ago
        It doesn't matter if the claim is objectively true just as long as law enforcement people continue to believe it. ... and it is obvious from comments coming out of that community that they do. What has to happen now is that law enforcement has to come clean and there has to be a public discussion about this stuff. Otherwise the private and public hand wringing will continue indefinitely and things will continue to get worse. The general public is ultimately responsible here as they are effectively the boss of the law enforcement people. We need to take the time to understand why our employees are acting the way they are.
    - wwweston 10y ago
      "Effectively." "Why are you looking for the lost keys by the lamppost when they were lost on the other side of the street?" "Well, it's dark over there, and the lamppost is where the light is."
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    Power. Invoking public fear. Using that as an end-around the 1st Amendment.
    - thehardsphere 10y ago
      You mean the 4th Amendment?
      - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
        I meant 1st. If you have concern they may be listening, you may be less likely to say something.
- tr1ck5t3r 10y ago
  Just use a landline phone with a cable although you call will still be listened into like mine currently are, but anything using radio frequency can be hacked easily, which also means vpn's in the online sense. There is an illusion of security which naive pen testers like to sell.
dsl 10y ago
> It's also worth mentioning that our population is only 792K. Most of the homeland security money funding surveillance is likely tied to DFW being along a major drug distribution corridor coming up from Mexico, and has nothing to do with the local population.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Thank god for the Wall!!!
  - oxide 10y ago
    IMO you underestimate cartels. It's been back and forth since the start of the drug war. Sure, people walk it over occasionally. They have submersibles, tunnels dug waiting to be completed North Korean style, functional tunnels, etc. I'd bet they have drones, or are R&Ding drone smuggling. Cars and trucks coming through the border, decoy cars and trucks meant to be discovered so that something bigger gets through. Trap doors in sedans, faked shipments in trucks, shipping containers in ports with falsified information hidden among the masses of imports. These guys are not going to pack up shop and sell bars of soap because of a wall. Where there is a will, there is a way. If you were joking, I'm sorry for assuming otherwise. Poe's Law, I suppose. My point is that the demand is incredibly high. Drugs that are worth very little along that corridor are worth much, much more on the streets of the US. People will continue to risk life and limb, as well as take life and limb, as long as the War on Drugs continues. The potential profit is too great.
    - stevehawk 10y ago
      I'd bet a dollar he was being sarcastic.
- digler999 10y ago
  and what happens when you're a department that takes in $x million in federal funds but you aren't raking in as many criminals as projected (or you rake them in, and there aren't any left) ? Have to make use of that budget somehow, or else you'll lose all your cool high-tech toys. I know, let's point the surveillance at people not suspected of a crime. We can certainly find criminals if we search hard enough, and thanks to Parallel Construction, they never even know how we found them.
sreenadh 10y ago
>However, Texans do have a tendency to blindly support anything the Military and Police want to do, while at the same time complaining about big government. I did observe that. Why is that so? Historically was the police or sheriffs independent from the government?
- nojvek 10y ago
  I never understand why America spends an obscene amount of money to make technology to kill other people. Education is suffering, public transportation and healthcare is ridiculously behind western nations but military still gets an insane budget. I would like Google and Apple to really up their game on security.
  - visarga 10y ago
    It's a consequence of the puritanical roots of US. It's a fetish for punishment.
    - sdoering 10y ago
      This does seem to me to be a little bit of a to easy explanation. Is it really so that this can be tied back to the founding roots of the country, when the setup of the population nowadays can be tied back to so many different influences from different parts of the world? I never understood the "fetish" of Hollywood for the lone ranger and bullet slinging revenge guy. Or the idea that guns are a valid protection. Non the less - there are other parts of the world that maybe have the same (or even higher) amounts of guns in private possession without the military and police fetish. I am even not sure, that this is a valid correlation. Private gun ownership and police/military spending/fetish.
      - ciaranm 10y ago
        From an outsider's perspective, nowhere comes close to the US for gun (and by extension, miltary/police) fetish. Wikipedia seems to back up my first thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c...
tastythrowaway2 10y ago
It's not just Texas. I've lived in big and small cities in several east coast states and the blind support is always something I just can't grok. the only difference over here is nobody has an issue with big government.
- fdanconia21 10y ago
  Here in Chicago we are quickly losing faith and respect for our police force.

by sh-run 10y ago

jjawssd 10y ago

Are we powerless to stop it? Should we bother?

Retric 10y ago
There are options between stop it and do nothing. I would assume cellphone companies can easily give access to any conversation from their internal network so that's probably a more cost effective solution at all levels. The question becomes, why do police feel the need for other tools?
- barake 10y ago
  Cellphone companies is one more layer in their trust circle. It's easier to just bypass them and collect the data yourself. Warrants only really became a requirement in 2015. And police were misleading judges on Stingray usage to hide the tech. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/appeals-court-no-stingrays-without-a-warrant-explanation-to-judge/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/appeals-court-no...
- upofadown 10y ago
  Casual ad hoc surveillance can be very useful for law enforcement. It can save a tremendous amount of time and money keeping track of where people are and where they are planning to be. The fact that the information gained is not admissible in court is not important. From the article: >“You guys picking up any information? Where they're going, possibly?" Law enforcement has become somewhat dependent on this sort of access and would not be able to do their job as effectively without it. Hence the desperation shown by the use of things like Stingrays where the network is actively attacked in what is arguably a straight up illegal way.
  - naasking 10y ago
    > Law enforcement has become somewhat dependent on this sort of access and would not be able to do their job as effectively without it. I've seen this claim repeated, but never with any evidence.
    - upofadown 10y ago
      It doesn't matter if the claim is objectively true just as long as law enforcement people continue to believe it. ... and it is obvious from comments coming out of that community that they do. What has to happen now is that law enforcement has to come clean and there has to be a public discussion about this stuff. Otherwise the private and public hand wringing will continue indefinitely and things will continue to get worse. The general public is ultimately responsible here as they are effectively the boss of the law enforcement people. We need to take the time to understand why our employees are acting the way they are.
  - wwweston 10y ago
    "Effectively." "Why are you looking for the lost keys by the lamppost when they were lost on the other side of the street?" "Well, it's dark over there, and the lamppost is where the light is."
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Power. Invoking public fear. Using that as an end-around the 1st Amendment.
  - thehardsphere 10y ago
    You mean the 4th Amendment?
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      I meant 1st. If you have concern they may be listening, you may be less likely to say something.
tr1ck5t3r 10y ago
Just use a landline phone with a cable although you call will still be listened into like mine currently are, but anything using radio frequency can be hacked easily, which also means vpn's in the online sense. There is an illusion of security which naive pen testers like to sell.

dsl 10y ago

> It's also worth mentioning that our population is only 792K. Most of the homeland security money funding surveillance is likely tied to DFW being along a major drug distribution corridor coming up from Mexico, and has nothing to do with the local population.

sjg007 10y ago
Thank god for the Wall!!!
- oxide 10y ago
  IMO you underestimate cartels. It's been back and forth since the start of the drug war. Sure, people walk it over occasionally. They have submersibles, tunnels dug waiting to be completed North Korean style, functional tunnels, etc. I'd bet they have drones, or are R&Ding drone smuggling. Cars and trucks coming through the border, decoy cars and trucks meant to be discovered so that something bigger gets through. Trap doors in sedans, faked shipments in trucks, shipping containers in ports with falsified information hidden among the masses of imports. These guys are not going to pack up shop and sell bars of soap because of a wall. Where there is a will, there is a way. If you were joking, I'm sorry for assuming otherwise. Poe's Law, I suppose. My point is that the demand is incredibly high. Drugs that are worth very little along that corridor are worth much, much more on the streets of the US. People will continue to risk life and limb, as well as take life and limb, as long as the War on Drugs continues. The potential profit is too great.
  - stevehawk 10y ago
    I'd bet a dollar he was being sarcastic.
digler999 10y ago
and what happens when you're a department that takes in $x million in federal funds but you aren't raking in as many criminals as projected (or you rake them in, and there aren't any left) ? Have to make use of that budget somehow, or else you'll lose all your cool high-tech toys. I know, let's point the surveillance at people not suspected of a crime. We can certainly find criminals if we search hard enough, and thanks to Parallel Construction, they never even know how we found them.

sreenadh 10y ago

>However, Texans do have a tendency to blindly support anything the Military and Police want to do, while at the same time complaining about big government. I did observe that. Why is that so? Historically was the police or sheriffs independent from the government?

nojvek 10y ago
I never understand why America spends an obscene amount of money to make technology to kill other people. Education is suffering, public transportation and healthcare is ridiculously behind western nations but military still gets an insane budget. I would like Google and Apple to really up their game on security.
- visarga 10y ago
  It's a consequence of the puritanical roots of US. It's a fetish for punishment.
  - sdoering 10y ago
    This does seem to me to be a little bit of a to easy explanation. Is it really so that this can be tied back to the founding roots of the country, when the setup of the population nowadays can be tied back to so many different influences from different parts of the world? I never understood the "fetish" of Hollywood for the lone ranger and bullet slinging revenge guy. Or the idea that guns are a valid protection. Non the less - there are other parts of the world that maybe have the same (or even higher) amounts of guns in private possession without the military and police fetish. I am even not sure, that this is a valid correlation. Private gun ownership and police/military spending/fetish.
    - ciaranm 10y ago
      From an outsider's perspective, nowhere comes close to the US for gun (and by extension, miltary/police) fetish. Wikipedia seems to back up my first thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c...

tastythrowaway2 10y ago

It's not just Texas. I've lived in big and small cities in several east coast states and the blind support is always something I just can't grok. the only difference over here is nobody has an issue with big government.

fdanconia21 10y ago
Here in Chicago we are quickly losing faith and respect for our police force.