6 ms·

LA Sheriffs launch a surveillance app that uses your photos and videos

50 points by NIL8 12y ago

at-fates-hands 12y ago
Completely unneeded and seems like more police state tactics. Take the Boston Marathon bombing - an event they cite as something where this would be useful. Even without it, their was a ton of news video and surveillance video, thousands of images from the attack taken right after or before the bomb going off. Within days, they had video footage of the suspects and a few more days they had killed one and arrested the other suspect. I'm not convinced having this software would've helped shorten that time frame. Too me, it's more about mass surveillance and going after protesters. Seems to me there could be a whole bunch of innocent people getting swept up with this tool as well.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I think it is the sort of thing you have to try before you can convince the people involved that it isn't worth doing.
  - jbooth 12y ago
    Yeah, it'll be way easier to get rid of once the program is established and there are people who's jobs depend on it.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      This isn't a response to what I said. I didn't say I thought it was a good idea. I said that I don't think the people involved will stop until there is solid evidence that it won't work. Even then, who knows.
      - thisiswrong 12y ago
        Your posts sound like Government sockpuppetry [1] [2]. > (...) until there is solid evidence that it won't work. Why should we need evidence that such an Orwellian program will work? Of course it will work. It will work - for those in power - against the people. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_%28Internet%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_%28Internet%29 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
        maxerickson 12y ago
        You must have strange ears. "the people involved" -> pro government city council members and police administrators. Those are the people with the purse strings, and money is what ultimately makes something like this happen. They will be looking at this as an opportunity to 'positively involve citizens' in security efforts, without paying any mind to the likelihood that they will get ~100% noise and ~0% actionable information. edit: swapped in 'likelihood' for 'fact'
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Well, you can't force people to upload to it. So if they don't want to, they won't.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
    - pmorici 12y ago
      I could see a good public protest of this would be for everyone to download the app take some video of something disgusting like a dog taking a dump and then sending that to the cops. Or use it to record police misbehavior and send in footage of that that would probably get it canned real fast.
Kenji 12y ago
Yay, I always wanted to install police software on my devices!
- bilbo0s 12y ago
  Not necessarily this app... but the technology to track you comes preinstalled in your device. The government already has access to hordes of information about your whereabouts and activities... just take care to live your life so that you're never worth the trouble to dig through it.
pmorici 12y ago
So it's like the app for snitches, tattletales, and nosy neighbors? Why would any free person install this thing on their phone you would have to be nuts.
- mindslight 12y ago
  Because many "free" people have been irreparably damaged by public schooling and other forms of mass media, and feel so helplessly disempowered that they'll take any chance to exercise some petty power. Even if that just means getting their neighbor hassled for useless code violations :/
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    That's some impressive conspiracy hokum right there. I'm sure you have links to sane, data-driven evidence of the "damage" of public schooling that you'd like to share?
    - mindslight 12y ago
      Erm, where am I describing a conspiracy? The "nosy neighbor" phenomenon isn't exactly rare - start doing work on a friend's house and there's a decent chance you'll get an inspector stopping by, accusing you of being paid, and generally treating you like a criminal. For the mechanism, it's not really a stretch to figure that people bombarded with stories of omniscient "good guys" (real, fictitious, and imaginary) are likely to reflexively call the purported "good guys" whenever they see something they don't like.
    - olefoo 12y ago
      Anyone who's had contact with american public school knows that they are quite prone to all sorts of social pathologies. The suggestion that they are willfully malign is not entirely implausible, especially in places where the main job of public high schools seems to be serving as a minimum-security holding facility for people who are too energetic and inexperienced to be inflicted on the rest of society. A true synomosophist will distinguish between conspiracies of effect and conspiracies of cause. American public education certainly seems like a conspiracy of effect; wasting massive amounts of human potential to marginal benefit of the few who profit most from the established order.
fredgrott 12y ago
the problem is context...not just detecting if the image or media was doctored but what context was it taken? If I am a defendants lawyer, hell yes I might be attempting to identify the person taking the image or taking the video to get testimony to the context of said image or vidoe
- NIL8 12y ago
  Good point.
tantalor 12y ago
Predicted by science-fiction as usual in Brin's Earth, where surveillance by elderly retirees wearing recognizable networked camera-glasses is common.
lorddoig 12y ago
So we all want an open internet and personal freedoms - but not for the people who choose to be on the side of the state? I'm no state fanboy, but you can't have it both ways.
- vdaniuk 12y ago
  I am curious what exactly are you trying to say. Care to elaborate?
  - lorddoig 12y ago
    So the LA police have made an app that relies on voluntary contributions from free citizens to further their goals. There's no coercion here, people either choose to help the cops or not. But this article and the comments are critical in a manner congruent with the criticism levied at mass surveillance et al. True freedom is not about keeping down the oppressors forever - that's just a power inversion. Freedom is about having choices, and there's no restriction of that here.
    - vdaniuk 12y ago
      Thank you for clarification. I don't agree but this is a philosophical discussion that depends on semantics too much. And I don't want to engage in that.
      - lorddoig 12y ago
        Don't get me wrong I see at least as much bad coming from this as good, I just find directing anger at the technology to be illogical and think it'd be more lucrative to direct such emotions to the root issue here which is that the police as a concept is inherently problematic. Solving those problems solves this one for free, and prevents its reoccurrence to boot.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >I'm no state fanboy, but you can't have it both ways. You very much can. Wanting something does not mean you have to accept it wholesale, in any quantity, by any entity and in extreme doses. The notion behind your argument makes everything a false dichotomy, between "not wanting something at all" and "fully wanting it 1000%". We are very much capable of wanting something in moderation and with certain provisions. And we are very much capable of wanting open internet and personal freedoms, and, at the same time, not want people give full access to information to the state. I'm not even sure where this notion that personal freedoms and not wanting anybody to assist a police state are incompatible comes from.
GoodIntentions 12y ago
"All they think about is the Spies, and the war, of course. D'you know what that little girl of mine did last Saturday, when her troop was on a hike out Berkhamsted way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off from the hike, and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols.' 'What did they do that for?' said Winston, somewhat taken aback. Parsons went on triumphantly: 'My kid was sure he was some kind of enemy agent -- might have been dropped by parachute, for instance. But here's the point, old boy. What do you think put her on to him in the first place? She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes -- said she'd never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?'" This app should make it _much_ easier to spot people with strange shoes.
- lukejduncan 12y ago
  I get the Little Spies Orwell parallel, and it does give me pause. What I don't have an answer to yet is: how is this fundamentally different than the police having a tip hotline? I also really dislike OPs headline. It implies that they're doing something much more than they are.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >I get the Little Spies Orwell parallel, and it does give me pause. What I don't have an answer to yet is: how is this fundamentally different than the police having a tip hotline? Both are bad. But actively encouraging people to record and snitch other people is worse.
hf 12y ago
Leaving all those unsavoury associations of perfecting surveillance en masse aside: Are they quite sure their transmission channels are strictly uni-directionnal?
angersock 12y ago
So, this is insidious in one particular way: It doesn't actually help do any sort of immediate surveillance (right now, anyways, thank god). But, it does mean that any gathering of people with phones out is potentially spying. This specifically is excellent discouragement against perhaps the biggest threat the establishment faces today: peaceful gathering and protests. This is (intentionally or not) targeted almost perfectly at Millenials and more tech-savvy folks, because those are the ones who'll recognize the threat most clearly.
wtvanhest 12y ago
Regardless of whether this works or not, it is becoming clear that the future will involve a lot of cameras practically everywhere. Historically crimes were punished severely because it was hard to catch people and prove they did something so the expected value of committing a crime had to be lowered through strict punishments. For example: If $1,000 in cash was in an envelope sitting on a table in an outdoor cafe with no visible video cameras, it would very likely be stolen if someone walked by who A) needed the money, B) didn't have a strong moral compass. He would calculate like this: IS (Chance of not being caught X value gained by crime) more or less valuable than (Chance of being caught X Punishment). The equation is balanced when it is just slightly less valuable to commit the crime. With the advent of cameras it appears that the % chance of being caught has gone way up, so I feel like we need to reduce the punishments to balance the equation. Having longer punishments is not positive for society, it is expensive, doesn't help the person doing the time and doesn't help the victims. Reducing punishments as we can catch a higher number of crimes makes sense. I hope that the discussion about crime and punishment shifts to reduce sentences to help balance that equation. I'm sure there are better ways of putting what I said, but hopefully people get the idea.
- smokeyj 12y ago
  I think discussing punishment is less productive than discussing prevention or rehabilitation. But when your only tool is a hammer..
  - wtvanhest 12y ago
    Oh, I completely agree, but I think punishment will always be part of the criminal justice system in my lifetime. My point is that the thing we need to change first is lowering sentences since they are just absurdly long given that it is so easy to catch people committing crimes relative to just 20 years ago.
- saraid216 12y ago
  Yes, but we're creating jobs for prison guards. That's what matters, right? Creating jobs?
NIL8 12y ago
Did anybody else notice this? "There’s no cost to the law enforcement agency to use LEEDIR if the emergency affects more than 5,000 people or covers five square miles and at least two public safety agencies respond." "this week the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department is using LEEDIR to gather photos and videos from eyewitnesses of a chaotic street party in Isla Vista that led to over 100 arrests. Sheriff's investigators hope the images they receive will allow them to ID more suspects." I wonder how much this is going to cost taxpayers and who the shareholders are in this company.
Karunamon 12y ago
Headline is misleading by omission. This isn't a data-snarfing app along the lines of what we hate the NSA for, this is a tool put out there so people who want to send things in to the police have a quick way to do so. Less like Carnivore/PRISM and more local police tip line, but on the internet. There is no coercion happening here. There is no "surveillance" happening here, at least not in the loaded way that term in used nowadays. I see absolutely no problem with this. Normal people willingly participating in law enforcement is a Good Thing.
h4pless 12y ago
Just going to throw this out there... Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

50 points by NIL8 12y ago

Completely unneeded and seems like more police state tactics. Take the Boston Marathon bombing - an event they cite as something where this would be useful. Even without it, their was a ton of news video and surveillance video, thousands of images from the attack taken right after or before the bomb going off. Within days, they had video footage of the suspects and a few more days they had killed one and arrested the other suspect. I'm not convinced having this software would've helped shorten that time frame. Too me, it's more about mass surveillance and going after protesters. Seems to me there could be a whole bunch of innocent people getting swept up with this tool as well.

maxerickson 12y ago
I think it is the sort of thing you have to try before you can convince the people involved that it isn't worth doing.
- jbooth 12y ago
  Yeah, it'll be way easier to get rid of once the program is established and there are people who's jobs depend on it.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    This isn't a response to what I said. I didn't say I thought it was a good idea. I said that I don't think the people involved will stop until there is solid evidence that it won't work. Even then, who knows.
    - thisiswrong 12y ago
      Your posts sound like Government sockpuppetry [1] [2]. > (...) until there is solid evidence that it won't work. Why should we need evidence that such an Orwellian program will work? Of course it will work. It will work - for those in power - against the people. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_%28Internet%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_%28Internet%29 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        You must have strange ears. "the people involved" -> pro government city council members and police administrators. Those are the people with the purse strings, and money is what ultimately makes something like this happen. They will be looking at this as an opportunity to 'positively involve citizens' in security efforts, without paying any mind to the likelihood that they will get ~100% noise and ~0% actionable information. edit: swapped in 'likelihood' for 'fact'
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Well, you can't force people to upload to it. So if they don't want to, they won't.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - pmorici 12y ago
    I could see a good public protest of this would be for everyone to download the app take some video of something disgusting like a dog taking a dump and then sending that to the cops. Or use it to record police misbehavior and send in footage of that that would probably get it canned real fast.

Kenji 12y ago

Yay, I always wanted to install police software on my devices!

bilbo0s 12y ago
Not necessarily this app... but the technology to track you comes preinstalled in your device. The government already has access to hordes of information about your whereabouts and activities... just take care to live your life so that you're never worth the trouble to dig through it.

pmorici 12y ago

So it's like the app for snitches, tattletales, and nosy neighbors? Why would any free person install this thing on their phone you would have to be nuts.

mindslight 12y ago
Because many "free" people have been irreparably damaged by public schooling and other forms of mass media, and feel so helplessly disempowered that they'll take any chance to exercise some petty power. Even if that just means getting their neighbor hassled for useless code violations :/
- Karunamon 12y ago
  That's some impressive conspiracy hokum right there. I'm sure you have links to sane, data-driven evidence of the "damage" of public schooling that you'd like to share?
  - mindslight 12y ago
    Erm, where am I describing a conspiracy? The "nosy neighbor" phenomenon isn't exactly rare - start doing work on a friend's house and there's a decent chance you'll get an inspector stopping by, accusing you of being paid, and generally treating you like a criminal. For the mechanism, it's not really a stretch to figure that people bombarded with stories of omniscient "good guys" (real, fictitious, and imaginary) are likely to reflexively call the purported "good guys" whenever they see something they don't like.
  - olefoo 12y ago
    Anyone who's had contact with american public school knows that they are quite prone to all sorts of social pathologies. The suggestion that they are willfully malign is not entirely implausible, especially in places where the main job of public high schools seems to be serving as a minimum-security holding facility for people who are too energetic and inexperienced to be inflicted on the rest of society. A true synomosophist will distinguish between conspiracies of effect and conspiracies of cause. American public education certainly seems like a conspiracy of effect; wasting massive amounts of human potential to marginal benefit of the few who profit most from the established order.

fredgrott 12y ago

the problem is context...not just detecting if the image or media was doctored but what context was it taken? If I am a defendants lawyer, hell yes I might be attempting to identify the person taking the image or taking the video to get testimony to the context of said image or vidoe

NIL8 12y ago
Good point.

tantalor 12y ago

Predicted by science-fiction as usual in Brin's Earth, where surveillance by elderly retirees wearing recognizable networked camera-glasses is common.

lorddoig 12y ago

So we all want an open internet and personal freedoms - but not for the people who choose to be on the side of the state? I'm no state fanboy, but you can't have it both ways.

vdaniuk 12y ago
I am curious what exactly are you trying to say. Care to elaborate?
- lorddoig 12y ago
  So the LA police have made an app that relies on voluntary contributions from free citizens to further their goals. There's no coercion here, people either choose to help the cops or not. But this article and the comments are critical in a manner congruent with the criticism levied at mass surveillance et al. True freedom is not about keeping down the oppressors forever - that's just a power inversion. Freedom is about having choices, and there's no restriction of that here.
  - vdaniuk 12y ago
    Thank you for clarification. I don't agree but this is a philosophical discussion that depends on semantics too much. And I don't want to engage in that.
    - lorddoig 12y ago
      Don't get me wrong I see at least as much bad coming from this as good, I just find directing anger at the technology to be illogical and think it'd be more lucrative to direct such emotions to the root issue here which is that the police as a concept is inherently problematic. Solving those problems solves this one for free, and prevents its reoccurrence to boot.
coldtea 12y ago
>I'm no state fanboy, but you can't have it both ways. You very much can. Wanting something does not mean you have to accept it wholesale, in any quantity, by any entity and in extreme doses. The notion behind your argument makes everything a false dichotomy, between "not wanting something at all" and "fully wanting it 1000%". We are very much capable of wanting something in moderation and with certain provisions. And we are very much capable of wanting open internet and personal freedoms, and, at the same time, not want people give full access to information to the state. I'm not even sure where this notion that personal freedoms and not wanting anybody to assist a police state are incompatible comes from.

GoodIntentions 12y ago

"All they think about is the Spies, and the war, of course. D'you know what that little girl of mine did last Saturday, when her troop was on a hike out Berkhamsted way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off from the hike, and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols.' 'What did they do that for?' said Winston, somewhat taken aback. Parsons went on triumphantly: 'My kid was sure he was some kind of enemy agent -- might have been dropped by parachute, for instance. But here's the point, old boy. What do you think put her on to him in the first place? She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes -- said she'd never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?'" This app should make it _much_ easier to spot people with strange shoes.

lukejduncan 12y ago
I get the Little Spies Orwell parallel, and it does give me pause. What I don't have an answer to yet is: how is this fundamentally different than the police having a tip hotline? I also really dislike OPs headline. It implies that they're doing something much more than they are.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >I get the Little Spies Orwell parallel, and it does give me pause. What I don't have an answer to yet is: how is this fundamentally different than the police having a tip hotline? Both are bad. But actively encouraging people to record and snitch other people is worse.

hf 12y ago

Leaving all those unsavoury associations of perfecting surveillance en masse aside: Are they quite sure their transmission channels are strictly uni-directionnal?

angersock 12y ago

So, this is insidious in one particular way: It doesn't actually help do any sort of immediate surveillance (right now, anyways, thank god). But, it does mean that any gathering of people with phones out is potentially spying. This specifically is excellent discouragement against perhaps the biggest threat the establishment faces today: peaceful gathering and protests. This is (intentionally or not) targeted almost perfectly at Millenials and more tech-savvy folks, because those are the ones who'll recognize the threat most clearly.

wtvanhest 12y ago

Regardless of whether this works or not, it is becoming clear that the future will involve a lot of cameras practically everywhere. Historically crimes were punished severely because it was hard to catch people and prove they did something so the expected value of committing a crime had to be lowered through strict punishments. For example: If $1,000 in cash was in an envelope sitting on a table in an outdoor cafe with no visible video cameras, it would very likely be stolen if someone walked by who A) needed the money, B) didn't have a strong moral compass. He would calculate like this: IS (Chance of not being caught X value gained by crime) more or less valuable than (Chance of being caught X Punishment). The equation is balanced when it is just slightly less valuable to commit the crime. With the advent of cameras it appears that the % chance of being caught has gone way up, so I feel like we need to reduce the punishments to balance the equation. Having longer punishments is not positive for society, it is expensive, doesn't help the person doing the time and doesn't help the victims. Reducing punishments as we can catch a higher number of crimes makes sense. I hope that the discussion about crime and punishment shifts to reduce sentences to help balance that equation. I'm sure there are better ways of putting what I said, but hopefully people get the idea.

smokeyj 12y ago
I think discussing punishment is less productive than discussing prevention or rehabilitation. But when your only tool is a hammer..
- wtvanhest 12y ago
  Oh, I completely agree, but I think punishment will always be part of the criminal justice system in my lifetime. My point is that the thing we need to change first is lowering sentences since they are just absurdly long given that it is so easy to catch people committing crimes relative to just 20 years ago.
saraid216 12y ago
Yes, but we're creating jobs for prison guards. That's what matters, right? Creating jobs?

NIL8 12y ago

Did anybody else notice this? "There’s no cost to the law enforcement agency to use LEEDIR if the emergency affects more than 5,000 people or covers five square miles and at least two public safety agencies respond." "this week the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department is using LEEDIR to gather photos and videos from eyewitnesses of a chaotic street party in Isla Vista that led to over 100 arrests. Sheriff's investigators hope the images they receive will allow them to ID more suspects." I wonder how much this is going to cost taxpayers and who the shareholders are in this company.

Karunamon 12y ago

Headline is misleading by omission. This isn't a data-snarfing app along the lines of what we hate the NSA for, this is a tool put out there so people who want to send things in to the police have a quick way to do so. Less like Carnivore/PRISM and more local police tip line, but on the internet. There is no coercion happening here. There is no "surveillance" happening here, at least not in the loaded way that term in used nowadays. I see absolutely no problem with this. Normal people willingly participating in law enforcement is a Good Thing.

h4pless 12y ago

Just going to throw this out there... Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.