11 ms·

Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

220 points by jbegley 6y ago

xt00 6y ago
ACLU just needs to file a briefing asking "could this data be used to track the movement of judges, or city officials around the city?"
- malandrew 6y ago
  Sadly, the ACLU today would support surveillance if someone made the argument that it could be used to track “racists and Nazis”. It’s a shame what has happened to the institution. I stopped donating a few years ago because it’s been captured by ideologues whose ideologies incompatible with civil liberties.
- google234123 6y ago
  Why does that matter? You could block literally anything if all you need to show is that it can be used again a judge or city official.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Because the powers that be get sensitive about things that could allow people to physically attack members of the powers that be. Or, in simpler terms: Because the person hearing the lawsuit is a judge.
    - google234123 6y ago
      I think they are smarter than you think they are. I bet they would laugh this argument out of the room. Try getting all guns banned in the US by arguing that they endanger judges.
  - xt00 6y ago
    There have been countless examples of police organizations using surveillance in ways beyond their initial use -- so certain people like the mayor or judges might think "the police would be too dumb to try to use this against somebody like me", but if the system is essentially a dragnet where they store all the data, then they do actually track the judges and public officials in reality since the data would be stored -- just because they aren't accessing it today doesn't mean they can't in the future -- a FOIA request might be used to request all of the mayor's movements over the past year. Just the request itself may cause the mayor or other officials to want the program to be disbanded because they realize it can be used to mine information about where public officials are moving. What if the mayor threatened to cut funding to the police, so they decide to mine the dataset to see if they can find something in the database that would make the mayor look bad that they can leak to the press, etc. So it should force the issue of saying what data gets stored and the legality of collecting it in the first place on literally everybody vs. particular people of interest. Its only a matter of time before you have something happen like, "hmm, the mayor seems to be spending a lot of time at a random apartment in one part of town... oh look who is this random woman that lives there that is most definitely not his wife... hmmmmm what should we do with this information"..
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Or their children. Or their lovers. Or ...
typenil 6y ago
Unsurprising. I wish that mass surveillance didn't have complicit bipartisan support, but people in power only ever seem interested in expanding it.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  For this to change, more people who share an aversion to mass surveillance have to get involved in politics. There are lots of people like this, but they are either apolitical, apathetic, hopeless, don't want to get their hands dirty, think politics is beneath them, that their resistance would be ineffectual, or they are too busy with other things. That has to change.
  - tw25585624 6y ago
    > have to get involved in politics. Given the scope of human experience now encompassed by "politics", that's not sustainable. Or as someone else once put it: "130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop, hence they become apathetic and no longer resist. To fight each of the threats separately would be futile. Success can be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a whole; but that is revolution, not reform."
    - pmoriarty 6y ago
      The choice is not between fixing everything and doing nothing. The choice is between doing nothing and doing what you can within your limited, fallible, human means. Even the giants of history have failed to fix everything, but even small people have managed to make a difference. The problem is that too many people capable of making a difference don't even try.
tehwebguy 6y ago
Police can't really face any consequences for lying, so why wouldn't they? On an individual level it doesn't matter even if the lie is in a courtroom for the purpose of turning a murder into justified deadly force! Why wouldn't an organization of police lie even more when they know full well neither the org nor the individual officers will be punished? Even in this story the truly disturbing part is this: > A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit eventually ruled in BPD’s favor in the case. ACLU is appealing the decision, but where are the obstruction / perjury / contempt charges for all the individuals that lied?
- dmix 6y ago
  In the current system maybe. All things can change, laws especially. But there seems to be heavy bipartisan support federally/executively for mass surveillance in the US so good luck with getting your privacy protected nationally. Your best hope is some local policy changes at the state or municipal level in Baltimore or Maryland. Which may inspire change elsewhere.
  - tehwebguy 6y ago
    Yes -- if you or anyone else is a concerned citizen please look into your local district attorney and your state's attorney general. Make sure your DA knows that if they aren't willing to indict criminal cops they will be out of a job. We just did this in Los Angeles! No clue how far the new guy will take it, but he definitely understands that this was a referendum on the previous DA's near-absolute refusal to even consider indicting police misconduct.
  - tw25585624 6y ago
    Things can change, but only in ways that are beneficial to the system. Corporations and governments at every level now have more power over human affairs than they have at any other time in human history.
- voodootrucker 6y ago
  The headline says "lied about" but I think it should be updated to "lied to a judge about" - that's perjury! Nothing in the article about them being charged :(
adamsea 6y ago
Lets spend that spy plane money on mental health professionals and stuff that actually helps people and lets us not use the police for everything all the time. AKA "Defund the police."
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  False dichotomy
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Dead.
    - imwillofficial 6y ago
      How droll
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Non sequitur.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- valuearb 6y ago
  Instead of “defund the police” how bout “legalize victimless behaviors”? If cops weren’t tasked to police what you put in your body and what you do with other consenting adults, we’d need far fewer of them and we’d probably appreciate the remaining cops a lot more.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Why not both? BTW what exactly do cops police what consenting adults do with each other these days? Honest question.
craftinator 6y ago
It seems like the more I read about the police, the more I realize that in their current form, they are unnecessary. For general policing, as in keeping the population safe and dampening crime, they don't need spy planes, they need legs; they don't need pistols, they need communication skills; they don't need body armor, they need to earn the trust of the people that pay them. If 99% of police encounters don't involve violence, then 99% of police don't need to be equipped for violence. We need 1% of high speed, low drag, well funded SWAT teams, and the rest can just trudge around on foot.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Police should be able to pack heat and use it pursuant to local laws. They should be able to fly whatever planes they want but in compliance with the same laws (including ones about intercepting communications) as everyone else, They are a civilian police force so they should get the same rights as other civilians. The double standards are the root issue.
- valuearb 6y ago
  You aren’t totally wrong, but your view is a recipe for disaster because sooner or later most cops are thrust into that 1% scenario, and they need the ability to defend themselves and you. The better solution is to eliminate the drivers of friction between honest citizens and cops, especially those traffic create more violent encounters. No knock warrants, the war on drugs, civil forfeiture, vice squads and the criminalization of victimless crimes, the “trafficking myth” war on sex workers, etc.
stefan_ 6y ago
Baltimore police does need a mass surveillance program - for it's own officers. Remember when they looked at 2 years of body-cam footage for one of their highest earners and came out the other end with 32 counts of assault, false imprisonment and generalized misconduct? [1] They didn't get that idea themselves, though. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/12/an-officer-was-charged-with-assault-bystander-then-prosecutors-took-closer-look-his-past/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/12/an-office...
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Baltimore police does need a mass surveillance program - for it's own officers. Baltimore is #11 on a list of most violent cities in the world[1]. There are children and good people trying to live in those crime-ridden neighborhoods. The police is not the problem. I feel for the cops there because you can't take one of the most violent cities in the world and expect to police it like Sweden. As such, I wish they maintained their surveillance program because it works and it would result in more perps being taken out of that victimized community. Victim-rights trump criminal-rights. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    And what about the victims of false imprisonment due to a wholly corrupt police department? Sorry, working a tough beat does not excuse the malfeasance endemic to the Baltimore PD.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >And what about the victims of false imprisonment due to a wholly corrupt police department? What about them? False imprisonment is a problem, but not at the scale of the crime in that city. Baltimore had 350 homicides and 2000+ robberies/assaults/rapes, and thousands more thefts and property crimes [1]. Let me pose a question to you: At what point do we start focusing on victims of crime again? All I hear is about police reform, and about criminal rights. Who stands up for the good people living in the violent neighborhoods of St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore etc.? When will the focus be set on the victims in those neighborhoods? Do the people there have a right to not be victimized? Who enforces those rights? A 7 year old girl was killed by a stray bullet in Atlanta recently[2]? What is the ACLU doing for her, her family, and other such families? >working a tough beat does not excuse the malfeasance endemic to the Baltimore PD. Maybe the fact that Baltimore cops are forced to deal with the worst of humanity in one of the most violent cities in the world plays a role here? Maybe you need to lower the crime rate before you can expect policing to improve? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore [2] https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/latest-loss-from-atlantas-rise-in-deadly-violence-a-7-year-old-girl/QBIZT7KZFBABRCGZQOHNGK5OUM/ https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/latest-loss-from-atlantas-ris...
swiley 6y ago
Police are a critical component of any government. This crap is why they get no sympathy when people start talking about getting rid of them.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dmix 6y ago
> The ACLU and local activists are currently suing the BPD in an attempt to prevent the AIR program, which was a six-month pilot, from starting up again in Baltimore or anywhere else. I may no longer fully agree with what ACLU has turned into in recent years (despite their legendary past of unquestionable defense, which now apparently HAS conditions thanks to the social media whining era, which is sadly unsurprising in 2020), I fully respect what they are doing here. This sounds like the police were caught in the act and a perfect moment for pro-privacy lawyers to nail them in court.
- Rebles 6y ago
  What has ACLU done recently that you disagree with?
Cactus2018 6y ago
Does anyone have a link to a article about the use of the 'Persistent Surveillance Systems' to investigate crime in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico), the plane would fly back and forth over El Paso (Texas). The story was a female Mexican police officer had been ambushed, and with the use of the spy plane, the US was able to back-track the routes of the ambushers, and the routes all led back to (cartel headquarters) house on the outskirts of town. Was this all a dream? Edit: Found the article: Persistent Surveillance Systems https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-s...
- zug_zug 6y ago
  https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-s...
- jeffbee 6y ago
  That's the same company that is in this article.
NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
I'm as libertarian as they come, but I've also lived in Baltimore and know how incapable the city is of controlling its crime. Baltimore's homicide clearance rate in 2019 was 32%. Not only does that leave its residents living in fear, that also represents an outrageous injustice against victims whose deaths are written off as business as usual. Baltimore residents have a right to set their own destiny, but if they reject innovations in crime control that at least have a chance of being effective, I'm sure they'll spend the next 30 years like the last 30: getting absolutely nowhere. I spent decades desperately hoping and expecting Baltimore to turn the corner. It's an absolutely beautiful city with a rich history and many world-class cultural and educational institutions. But it hasn't changed (except even more murders over the last 50 years) and won't ever change if it doesn't control its crime. Frankly, the city already has many hundreds of street-level "blue light" cameras all over the place. To me, those are far more problematic and intrusive with respect to privacy than aerial surveillance. I'd much rather be an anonymous pixel on a giant map than a person whose recognizable features are video recorded and stored on a government street level security camera. To me, blue light cameras are both more problematic and fundamentally less effective. And yet, that's what the city has already accepted as a worthwhile privacy trade off.
- millzlane 6y ago
  I live near some blue light cameras in Baltimore. Murders happen right beneath them. They don't deter anything.

220 points by jbegley 6y ago

xt00 6y ago

ACLU just needs to file a briefing asking "could this data be used to track the movement of judges, or city officials around the city?"

malandrew 6y ago
Sadly, the ACLU today would support surveillance if someone made the argument that it could be used to track “racists and Nazis”. It’s a shame what has happened to the institution. I stopped donating a few years ago because it’s been captured by ideologues whose ideologies incompatible with civil liberties.
google234123 6y ago
Why does that matter? You could block literally anything if all you need to show is that it can be used again a judge or city official.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Because the powers that be get sensitive about things that could allow people to physically attack members of the powers that be. Or, in simpler terms: Because the person hearing the lawsuit is a judge.
  - google234123 6y ago
    I think they are smarter than you think they are. I bet they would laugh this argument out of the room. Try getting all guns banned in the US by arguing that they endanger judges.
- xt00 6y ago
  There have been countless examples of police organizations using surveillance in ways beyond their initial use -- so certain people like the mayor or judges might think "the police would be too dumb to try to use this against somebody like me", but if the system is essentially a dragnet where they store all the data, then they do actually track the judges and public officials in reality since the data would be stored -- just because they aren't accessing it today doesn't mean they can't in the future -- a FOIA request might be used to request all of the mayor's movements over the past year. Just the request itself may cause the mayor or other officials to want the program to be disbanded because they realize it can be used to mine information about where public officials are moving. What if the mayor threatened to cut funding to the police, so they decide to mine the dataset to see if they can find something in the database that would make the mayor look bad that they can leak to the press, etc. So it should force the issue of saying what data gets stored and the legality of collecting it in the first place on literally everybody vs. particular people of interest. Its only a matter of time before you have something happen like, "hmm, the mayor seems to be spending a lot of time at a random apartment in one part of town... oh look who is this random woman that lives there that is most definitely not his wife... hmmmmm what should we do with this information"..
dredmorbius 6y ago
Or their children. Or their lovers. Or ...

typenil 6y ago

Unsurprising. I wish that mass surveillance didn't have complicit bipartisan support, but people in power only ever seem interested in expanding it.

pmoriarty 6y ago
For this to change, more people who share an aversion to mass surveillance have to get involved in politics. There are lots of people like this, but they are either apolitical, apathetic, hopeless, don't want to get their hands dirty, think politics is beneath them, that their resistance would be ineffectual, or they are too busy with other things. That has to change.
- tw25585624 6y ago
  > have to get involved in politics. Given the scope of human experience now encompassed by "politics", that's not sustainable. Or as someone else once put it: "130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop, hence they become apathetic and no longer resist. To fight each of the threats separately would be futile. Success can be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a whole; but that is revolution, not reform."
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    The choice is not between fixing everything and doing nothing. The choice is between doing nothing and doing what you can within your limited, fallible, human means. Even the giants of history have failed to fix everything, but even small people have managed to make a difference. The problem is that too many people capable of making a difference don't even try.

tehwebguy 6y ago

Police can't really face any consequences for lying, so why wouldn't they? On an individual level it doesn't matter even if the lie is in a courtroom for the purpose of turning a murder into justified deadly force! Why wouldn't an organization of police lie even more when they know full well neither the org nor the individual officers will be punished? Even in this story the truly disturbing part is this: > A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit eventually ruled in BPD’s favor in the case. ACLU is appealing the decision, but where are the obstruction / perjury / contempt charges for all the individuals that lied?

dmix 6y ago
In the current system maybe. All things can change, laws especially. But there seems to be heavy bipartisan support federally/executively for mass surveillance in the US so good luck with getting your privacy protected nationally. Your best hope is some local policy changes at the state or municipal level in Baltimore or Maryland. Which may inspire change elsewhere.
- tehwebguy 6y ago
  Yes -- if you or anyone else is a concerned citizen please look into your local district attorney and your state's attorney general. Make sure your DA knows that if they aren't willing to indict criminal cops they will be out of a job. We just did this in Los Angeles! No clue how far the new guy will take it, but he definitely understands that this was a referendum on the previous DA's near-absolute refusal to even consider indicting police misconduct.
- tw25585624 6y ago
  Things can change, but only in ways that are beneficial to the system. Corporations and governments at every level now have more power over human affairs than they have at any other time in human history.
voodootrucker 6y ago
The headline says "lied about" but I think it should be updated to "lied to a judge about" - that's perjury! Nothing in the article about them being charged :(

adamsea 6y ago

Lets spend that spy plane money on mental health professionals and stuff that actually helps people and lets us not use the police for everything all the time. AKA "Defund the police."

imwillofficial 6y ago
False dichotomy
- craftinator 6y ago
  Dead.
  - imwillofficial 6y ago
    How droll
- craftinator 6y ago
  Non sequitur.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
valuearb 6y ago
Instead of “defund the police” how bout “legalize victimless behaviors”? If cops weren’t tasked to police what you put in your body and what you do with other consenting adults, we’d need far fewer of them and we’d probably appreciate the remaining cops a lot more.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Why not both? BTW what exactly do cops police what consenting adults do with each other these days? Honest question.

craftinator 6y ago

It seems like the more I read about the police, the more I realize that in their current form, they are unnecessary. For general policing, as in keeping the population safe and dampening crime, they don't need spy planes, they need legs; they don't need pistols, they need communication skills; they don't need body armor, they need to earn the trust of the people that pay them. If 99% of police encounters don't involve violence, then 99% of police don't need to be equipped for violence. We need 1% of high speed, low drag, well funded SWAT teams, and the rest can just trudge around on foot.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Police should be able to pack heat and use it pursuant to local laws. They should be able to fly whatever planes they want but in compliance with the same laws (including ones about intercepting communications) as everyone else, They are a civilian police force so they should get the same rights as other civilians. The double standards are the root issue.
valuearb 6y ago
You aren’t totally wrong, but your view is a recipe for disaster because sooner or later most cops are thrust into that 1% scenario, and they need the ability to defend themselves and you. The better solution is to eliminate the drivers of friction between honest citizens and cops, especially those traffic create more violent encounters. No knock warrants, the war on drugs, civil forfeiture, vice squads and the criminalization of victimless crimes, the “trafficking myth” war on sex workers, etc.

stefan_ 6y ago

Baltimore police does need a mass surveillance program - for it's own officers. Remember when they looked at 2 years of body-cam footage for one of their highest earners and came out the other end with 32 counts of assault, false imprisonment and generalized misconduct? [1] They didn't get that idea themselves, though. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/12/an-officer-was-charged-with-assault-bystander-then-prosecutors-took-closer-look-his-past/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/12/an-office...

macspoofing 6y ago
>Baltimore police does need a mass surveillance program - for it's own officers. Baltimore is #11 on a list of most violent cities in the world[1]. There are children and good people trying to live in those crime-ridden neighborhoods. The police is not the problem. I feel for the cops there because you can't take one of the most violent cities in the world and expect to police it like Sweden. As such, I wish they maintained their surveillance program because it works and it would result in more perps being taken out of that victimized community. Victim-rights trump criminal-rights. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
- alistairSH 6y ago
  And what about the victims of false imprisonment due to a wholly corrupt police department? Sorry, working a tough beat does not excuse the malfeasance endemic to the Baltimore PD.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >And what about the victims of false imprisonment due to a wholly corrupt police department? What about them? False imprisonment is a problem, but not at the scale of the crime in that city. Baltimore had 350 homicides and 2000+ robberies/assaults/rapes, and thousands more thefts and property crimes [1]. Let me pose a question to you: At what point do we start focusing on victims of crime again? All I hear is about police reform, and about criminal rights. Who stands up for the good people living in the violent neighborhoods of St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore etc.? When will the focus be set on the victims in those neighborhoods? Do the people there have a right to not be victimized? Who enforces those rights? A 7 year old girl was killed by a stray bullet in Atlanta recently[2]? What is the ACLU doing for her, her family, and other such families? >working a tough beat does not excuse the malfeasance endemic to the Baltimore PD. Maybe the fact that Baltimore cops are forced to deal with the worst of humanity in one of the most violent cities in the world plays a role here? Maybe you need to lower the crime rate before you can expect policing to improve? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore [2] https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/latest-loss-from-atlantas-rise-in-deadly-violence-a-7-year-old-girl/QBIZT7KZFBABRCGZQOHNGK5OUM/ https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/latest-loss-from-atlantas-ris...

swiley 6y ago

Police are a critical component of any government. This crap is why they get no sympathy when people start talking about getting rid of them.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dmix 6y ago

> The ACLU and local activists are currently suing the BPD in an attempt to prevent the AIR program, which was a six-month pilot, from starting up again in Baltimore or anywhere else. I may no longer fully agree with what ACLU has turned into in recent years (despite their legendary past of unquestionable defense, which now apparently HAS conditions thanks to the social media whining era, which is sadly unsurprising in 2020), I fully respect what they are doing here. This sounds like the police were caught in the act and a perfect moment for pro-privacy lawyers to nail them in court.

Rebles 6y ago
What has ACLU done recently that you disagree with?

Cactus2018 6y ago

Does anyone have a link to a article about the use of the 'Persistent Surveillance Systems' to investigate crime in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico), the plane would fly back and forth over El Paso (Texas). The story was a female Mexican police officer had been ambushed, and with the use of the spy plane, the US was able to back-track the routes of the ambushers, and the routes all led back to (cartel headquarters) house on the outskirts of town. Was this all a dream? Edit: Found the article: Persistent Surveillance Systems https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-s...

zug_zug 6y ago
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-s...
jeffbee 6y ago
That's the same company that is in this article.

NE2z2T9qi 6y ago

I'm as libertarian as they come, but I've also lived in Baltimore and know how incapable the city is of controlling its crime. Baltimore's homicide clearance rate in 2019 was 32%. Not only does that leave its residents living in fear, that also represents an outrageous injustice against victims whose deaths are written off as business as usual. Baltimore residents have a right to set their own destiny, but if they reject innovations in crime control that at least have a chance of being effective, I'm sure they'll spend the next 30 years like the last 30: getting absolutely nowhere. I spent decades desperately hoping and expecting Baltimore to turn the corner. It's an absolutely beautiful city with a rich history and many world-class cultural and educational institutions. But it hasn't changed (except even more murders over the last 50 years) and won't ever change if it doesn't control its crime. Frankly, the city already has many hundreds of street-level "blue light" cameras all over the place. To me, those are far more problematic and intrusive with respect to privacy than aerial surveillance. I'd much rather be an anonymous pixel on a giant map than a person whose recognizable features are video recorded and stored on a government street level security camera. To me, blue light cameras are both more problematic and fundamentally less effective. And yet, that's what the city has already accepted as a worthwhile privacy trade off.

millzlane 6y ago
I live near some blue light cameras in Baltimore. Murders happen right beneath them. They don't deter anything.