5 ms·

The LAPD Spies on Millions of Innocent Folks

77 points by whbk 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
alcari 13y ago
No, let's not "forget" about the NSA. Other groups may be doing bad things too, but that doesn't diminish the badness of the bad things done by the NSA (or anyone else).
- walshemj 13y ago
  True but Bruce Scheiers panglosian suggestion of just handing over the internal monitoring to the FBI aka the cops is just going to make things worse. Remberer what the FBI has done in the past (under hoover) compared to what the NSA has not done.
Joeboy 13y ago
"Forget the NSA" is taking it a bit far, but I think we should not forget that there are other threats to our privacy. In particular we should not obsess about whether software is "NSA-proof", or imagine that the problem would go away if the NSA's activities were somehow curtailed.
wellboy 13y ago
A bit of a linkbait, since the NSA surveillance covers probably 3 billion people at all times and the LAPD covers L.A. with maybe 5 million people. So the capabilities of the NSA are around 1,000 times bigger than the capabilities of the LAPD.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Capabilities of LAPD are probably a subset of NSA's - the latter can probably pull up on demand every information the former gathered.
perlpimp 13y ago
this is creepy, while stopping at a gas station I have noticed a camera scanning customers and their cars in a very robotic way - possibility being scanning faces and car plates. Where does it end, when and how? Is it a felony to destroy devices that spy on me for which I didn't authorize the gathering of intelligence on me? I am sorry but all this is really gets under my skin. my 2c.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Where does it end, when and how? It doesn't end. Or it "ends" in a police state, with a-level people living in protected communities and b-level people suffering all kinds of abuse. And if you feel like it's OK now, sitting in some suburban home, wait until the middle class is not longer sustainable and the majority falls on the "black guy on the street" level. You know, Detroit like. It might be done incrementally (same way as the middle class is shrinking for decades) or it might be boosted after 1-2 jolts. Could be a war, a major financial hit, an ecologic disaster etc. Historically, the only way to end such things, is with people participating in politics. Like the unions of the past brough the 8-hour work-week, child-labour laws, and the like.
  - amagumori 13y ago
    i think one of our biggest problems in american politics today is that the critical mass of popular support needed to affect policy change is untenably high compared to how easily people are split into partisan factions (or convinced to act against their own interests).
- icantthinkofone 13y ago
  I own some restaurants. We have cameras, too. No, they don't scan customers and cars in any way. You're implying those cameras are owned by the police. You're making stuff up.
  - bediger4000 13y ago
    I've seen steerable cameras in shopping mall parking lots follow shapely, fashionably dressed young women. Also, some cities have deals where the police (or "Public Safety") department monitors cameras that private sector entities buy and install. I believe that person, in short.
atmosx 13y ago
> LAPD's mild-sounding "predictive policing" technique, introduced by former Chief William Bratton to anticipate where future crime would hit, is actually a sophisticated system developed not by cops but by the U.S. military, based on "insurgent" activity in Iraq and civilian casualty patterns in Afghanistan. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Aoyagi 13y ago
This reminds me (and I apologize for the OT), I know Singapore also relies heavily on camera surveillance, but is it known whether they then process the data in a similar (i.e. harvest as much as they can) way to LAPD? Are there any known incidents of abuse of that system? Again, sorry about the OT, but the city state intrigues me greatly.
coldtea 13y ago
Read this scholarly work for an ever more disturbing description of changes and trends in LA: http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/dp/0679738061 http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/...
LeeHunter 13y ago
Some of this is disturbing and some is not. I don't know why the article makes a big deal out of predictive policing and it's roots in counter-insurgency. Putting police officers where crime is likely to happen is just good management. More power to them. I could care less whether the software was developed for Fallujah. Why would you want to put police resources where they're not needed?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- omarforgotpwd 13y ago
  Haha, this is funny. I'm one of the co-founders of PredPol, the startup that makes the predictive policing software LA uses. I think it's a stretch to call anything I wrote in my dorm military grade, but I suppose I'll take that as a compliment. For the record, the DoD called us once asking if some of the models we use to predict crime could be used to predict IED locations, but nothing major ever came of it as far as I know. Also, I live in Santa Clara not Fallujah. P.S. PredPol predicts crime using only the time, place, and type of past crimes using some simple statistical models. All that is public information for municipalities in the US.
  - EGreg 13y ago
    Can you back this up with some links please? And anyway, even if the LAPD may not be using anything more sophisticated than PredPol with growing their CCTV array, they will in the future. Think of it like this: right now the data is stored. In 5-10 years it will be cross correlated and profiles will be built on everybody. Thanks to the efficiency, the definition of crime will be expanded. Look at Singapore's law against gum wrappers. Look at local laws against homeless blankets. More to the point - the sites you surf can be cross correlated with the places you visit to indicate a reasonable belief that you may harm your kids and they will be taken away after you've been aubpoenaed in court. 20-30 years from now: court cases initiated by computer and suggested to the DA, based on cross correlated databases. Theories built and presented against you by the eloquent lawyer, with the jury thinking, "yeah this cant be all a coincidence." And a vastly expanded private prison complex. All in all maybe not a bad thing, but people arent used to living like robots.
EGreg 13y ago
Let's skip 10-20 years ahead, ok? The march of technology cannot be stopped. I've always said that terrorism is a problem of technology. Now we see the surveillance state is as well. The truth is that vast troves of data on people are any organization's crack, whether that organization is an a corporation, a government agency, or a local law enforcement agency. Good luck taking the crack away. If you think the war on drugs has been ineffective, wait until you try making organizations quit as others are smoking up. Look around, Hacker News. Embrace the inexorable march of technology. It is our time to disrupt these products with new ones and turn it for good, but wishing it would all stop is more suited to luddites.
mindcrime 13y ago
"Hackers of the world, unite". Seriously, it's time the resistance starts to coalesce a bit, and hackers get to work mitigating the damage that this stuff does. Hack the facial recognition cameras and scramble the data so they don't recognize a damn thing... hack the license plate database and and change every recognized plate number out for a random number. Better yet, let's develop technological means to counter this crap. Treat it as damage and route around it, to use an analogy. Let's create wearable devices that blur your face out of video feeds, or a license plate frame that can keep your tag from being read, etc. The political system has failed us and it's now a technological arms race. And while the NSA may hoover up a lot of the best mathematicians, I'd still wager that there are more smart hackers who don't work for the govt. than ones who do.
dhughes 13y ago
How much of this and the NSA are due to the "gee whiz" effect as I call it? These organizations have cool new technology so they want to use it for no other reason than that. It's like the HTML blink tag it was annoying and pretty much useless but just because it existed people used it.

77 points by whbk 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

No, let's not "forget" about the NSA. Other groups may be doing bad things too, but that doesn't diminish the badness of the bad things done by the NSA (or anyone else).

walshemj 13y ago
True but Bruce Scheiers panglosian suggestion of just handing over the internal monitoring to the FBI aka the cops is just going to make things worse. Remberer what the FBI has done in the past (under hoover) compared to what the NSA has not done.

Joeboy 13y ago

"Forget the NSA" is taking it a bit far, but I think we should not forget that there are other threats to our privacy. In particular we should not obsess about whether software is "NSA-proof", or imagine that the problem would go away if the NSA's activities were somehow curtailed.

wellboy 13y ago

A bit of a linkbait, since the NSA surveillance covers probably 3 billion people at all times and the LAPD covers L.A. with maybe 5 million people. So the capabilities of the NSA are around 1,000 times bigger than the capabilities of the LAPD.

TeMPOraL 13y ago
Capabilities of LAPD are probably a subset of NSA's - the latter can probably pull up on demand every information the former gathered.

perlpimp 13y ago

this is creepy, while stopping at a gas station I have noticed a camera scanning customers and their cars in a very robotic way - possibility being scanning faces and car plates. Where does it end, when and how? Is it a felony to destroy devices that spy on me for which I didn't authorize the gathering of intelligence on me? I am sorry but all this is really gets under my skin. my 2c.

coldtea 13y ago
>Where does it end, when and how? It doesn't end. Or it "ends" in a police state, with a-level people living in protected communities and b-level people suffering all kinds of abuse. And if you feel like it's OK now, sitting in some suburban home, wait until the middle class is not longer sustainable and the majority falls on the "black guy on the street" level. You know, Detroit like. It might be done incrementally (same way as the middle class is shrinking for decades) or it might be boosted after 1-2 jolts. Could be a war, a major financial hit, an ecologic disaster etc. Historically, the only way to end such things, is with people participating in politics. Like the unions of the past brough the 8-hour work-week, child-labour laws, and the like.
- amagumori 13y ago
  i think one of our biggest problems in american politics today is that the critical mass of popular support needed to affect policy change is untenably high compared to how easily people are split into partisan factions (or convinced to act against their own interests).
icantthinkofone 13y ago
I own some restaurants. We have cameras, too. No, they don't scan customers and cars in any way. You're implying those cameras are owned by the police. You're making stuff up.
- bediger4000 13y ago
  I've seen steerable cameras in shopping mall parking lots follow shapely, fashionably dressed young women. Also, some cities have deals where the police (or "Public Safety") department monitors cameras that private sector entities buy and install. I believe that person, in short.

atmosx 13y ago

> LAPD's mild-sounding "predictive policing" technique, introduced by former Chief William Bratton to anticipate where future crime would hit, is actually a sophisticated system developed not by cops but by the U.S. military, based on "insurgent" activity in Iraq and civilian casualty patterns in Afghanistan. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

Aoyagi 13y ago

This reminds me (and I apologize for the OT), I know Singapore also relies heavily on camera surveillance, but is it known whether they then process the data in a similar (i.e. harvest as much as they can) way to LAPD? Are there any known incidents of abuse of that system? Again, sorry about the OT, but the city state intrigues me greatly.

coldtea 13y ago

Read this scholarly work for an ever more disturbing description of changes and trends in LA: http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/dp/0679738061 http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/...

LeeHunter 13y ago

Some of this is disturbing and some is not. I don't know why the article makes a big deal out of predictive policing and it's roots in counter-insurgency. Putting police officers where crime is likely to happen is just good management. More power to them. I could care less whether the software was developed for Fallujah. Why would you want to put police resources where they're not needed?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
omarforgotpwd 13y ago
Haha, this is funny. I'm one of the co-founders of PredPol, the startup that makes the predictive policing software LA uses. I think it's a stretch to call anything I wrote in my dorm military grade, but I suppose I'll take that as a compliment. For the record, the DoD called us once asking if some of the models we use to predict crime could be used to predict IED locations, but nothing major ever came of it as far as I know. Also, I live in Santa Clara not Fallujah. P.S. PredPol predicts crime using only the time, place, and type of past crimes using some simple statistical models. All that is public information for municipalities in the US.
- EGreg 13y ago
  Can you back this up with some links please? And anyway, even if the LAPD may not be using anything more sophisticated than PredPol with growing their CCTV array, they will in the future. Think of it like this: right now the data is stored. In 5-10 years it will be cross correlated and profiles will be built on everybody. Thanks to the efficiency, the definition of crime will be expanded. Look at Singapore's law against gum wrappers. Look at local laws against homeless blankets. More to the point - the sites you surf can be cross correlated with the places you visit to indicate a reasonable belief that you may harm your kids and they will be taken away after you've been aubpoenaed in court. 20-30 years from now: court cases initiated by computer and suggested to the DA, based on cross correlated databases. Theories built and presented against you by the eloquent lawyer, with the jury thinking, "yeah this cant be all a coincidence." And a vastly expanded private prison complex. All in all maybe not a bad thing, but people arent used to living like robots.

EGreg 13y ago

Let's skip 10-20 years ahead, ok? The march of technology cannot be stopped. I've always said that terrorism is a problem of technology. Now we see the surveillance state is as well. The truth is that vast troves of data on people are any organization's crack, whether that organization is an a corporation, a government agency, or a local law enforcement agency. Good luck taking the crack away. If you think the war on drugs has been ineffective, wait until you try making organizations quit as others are smoking up. Look around, Hacker News. Embrace the inexorable march of technology. It is our time to disrupt these products with new ones and turn it for good, but wishing it would all stop is more suited to luddites.

mindcrime 13y ago

"Hackers of the world, unite". Seriously, it's time the resistance starts to coalesce a bit, and hackers get to work mitigating the damage that this stuff does. Hack the facial recognition cameras and scramble the data so they don't recognize a damn thing... hack the license plate database and and change every recognized plate number out for a random number. Better yet, let's develop technological means to counter this crap. Treat it as damage and route around it, to use an analogy. Let's create wearable devices that blur your face out of video feeds, or a license plate frame that can keep your tag from being read, etc. The political system has failed us and it's now a technological arms race. And while the NSA may hoover up a lot of the best mathematicians, I'd still wager that there are more smart hackers who don't work for the govt. than ones who do.

dhughes 13y ago

How much of this and the NSA are due to the "gee whiz" effect as I call it? These organizations have cool new technology so they want to use it for no other reason than that. It's like the HTML blink tag it was annoying and pretty much useless but just because it existed people used it.