Tag Archives: privacy

private surveillance

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Private companies are making money vacuuming up photos of things in the public realm, like license plates and peoples’ faces, and selling them to law enforcement. I think we have to accept that the technology of potential tyranny is here to stay, and in fact it is necessary in a world of mass shootings and potentially much worse things, like bioterrorism. We need to figure out a way to regulate and channel it to positive purposes in democratic societies, but we will never be able to make it go away or even slow it down.

Druid app

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This app is supposed to measure cognitive impairment from alcohol, drugs, and fatigue.

Grounded in cognitive neuroscience, Druid is a breakthrough technology. It brings you a sophisticated tool that measures impairment from any cause, including cannabis and other drugs, alcohol, fatigue, illness, injury, chronic condition, or severe stress. Druid operates like a video game while it measures hundred of neurophysiological indicators.

Google Play

Seems useful for a variety of purposes. And employers could use it for a variety of legitimate purposes, such as maybe testing pilots and surgeons? People who aren’t able to do their jobs safely because they are tired or stressed shouldn’t get fired obviously, they should get to rest. You can certainly imagine employers and law enforcement using this app abusively. As for driving safely, let’s just turn that over to the computers already.

police cameras

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This article in the (paywalled) Philadelphia Inquirer says people in neighborhoods with large numbers of shootings are asking for more police cameras. I surprises me a little because it goes against the idea that people in these neighborhoods do not trust the police. This would support the idea that people want to be policed, i.e. protected from violence, as long as they feel they are being policed fairly. A certain level of fear seems to be the tipping point where people are more willing to give up some privacy in return for safety.

People want violent crimes to be solved and violent people to be brought to justice. They don’t want to be harassed. So it’s a fine line – police could use these cameras along with facial recognition to track people on probation or parole, for example, or even just people who have been arrested in the past. I don’t know if police are allowed to access driver’s license or passport photo databases, but if they are they could probably track anybody. I’m not paranoid about these things because the technology of tyranny has clearly existed for some time, and we have to work through our political system to make sure our rights are protected. We are hearing that there is “no constitutional right to privacy”. As wonderful as our 18th century founding fathers were, they could not have imagined these technologies. Maybe it is time for a 21st century bill of rights.

a persistent unblinking stare

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Blimps are making a comeback. According to The Intercept, they are being used routinely by the NSA for security and surveillance work.

In recent years, airships — or aerostats, as they are formally called — have been a source of major military investment. Between 2006 and 2015, the U.S. Army paid Raytheon some $1.8 billion to develop a massive missile-defense blimp called the JLENS, which is equipped with powerful radar that can scan in any direction 310 miles. (That’s almost the entire length of New York state.) In October 2015, the JLENS attracted national attention after one became untethered amid testing and drifted north from Maryland to Pennsylvania before it was brought back under control. In 2010, the Army commissioned another three airships — called Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles — as part of a $517 million contract with Northrop Grumman. The company stated that the airships would “shape the future” of the military’s intelligence-gathering capabilities and provide a “persistent unblinking stare” from the sky.

video camera coverage

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The police are making increasing use of video cameras – and not just public ones, but cameras on private property pointed in a public direction. When they want private footage, they just ask and most people are happy to turn it over. Some stats on Philadelphia from Philly.com:

This year, police have released more than 500 videos in crimes ranging from Halloween-decoration theft to shootings, throughout all six detective divisions – Northeast, Northwest, East, Central, South and Southwest.

As a result of those videos, police have made more than 100 arrests and have solved more than 200 crimes, Stanford said.

Police have access to about 4,000 video cameras across the city – in addition to city-owned cameras, SEPTA and Amtrak cameras and those at Philadelphia International and Northeast airports, Stanford said.

That adds up to more than 30 cameras per square mile in the city, from which police can readily obtain video – so it’s pretty tough to commit a crime anywhere and flee without being caught on video at some point…

Video is recovered in about 50 to 60 percent of homicide cases, he said. Based on a five-year average of 297 homicides a year in the city, detectives are obtaining video in roughly 150 to 180 homicide cases per year.

As a city dweller, it’s kind of hard to have a problem with this. City streets, and even underground walkways, aren’t nearly as dangerous as suburbanites think they are from sitting home watching CSI. But still, the more people feel that violent crime is being deterred, the more they will want to be out, and the safer we will all be. You wouldn’t want the police using video footage to get overzealous about minor infractions like jaywalking or open containers, or against political expression, but at least in Philadelphia there are no signs of that happening.