[Infowarrior] - Privacy Fears Grow as Cities Increase Surveillance

[Richard Forno]

Privacy Fears Grow as Cities Increase Surveillance - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/technology/privacy-fears-as-surveillance-grows-in-cities.html?_r=0

The new system, scheduled to begin next summer, is the latest example of 
how cities are compiling and processing large amounts of information, 
known as big data, for routine law enforcement. And the system 
underscores how technology has enabled the tracking of people in many 
aspects of life.

The police can monitor a fire hose of social media posts to look for 
evidence of criminal activities; transportation agencies can track 
commuters’ toll payments when drivers use an electronic pass; and the 
National Security Agency, as news reports this summer revealed, scooped 
up telephone records of millions of cellphone customers in the United 
States.

Like the Oakland effort, other pushes to use new surveillance tools in 
law enforcement are supported with federal dollars. The New York Police 
Department, aided by federal financing, has a big data system that links 
3,000 surveillance cameras with license plate readers, radiation 
sensors, criminal databases and terror suspect lists. Police in 
Massachusetts have used federal money to buy automated license plate 
scanners. And police in Texas have bought a drone with homeland security 
money, something that Alameda County, which Oakland is part of, also 
tried but shelved after public protest.

Proponents of the Oakland initiative, formally known as the Domain 
Awareness Center, say it will help the police reduce the city’s 
notoriously high crime rates. But critics say the program, which will 
create a central repository of surveillance information, will also 
gather data about the everyday movements and habits of law-abiding 
residents, raising legal and ethical questions about tracking people so 
closely.

Libby Schaaf, an Oakland City Council member, said that because of the 
city’s high crime rate, “it’s our responsibility to take advantage of 
new tools that become available.” She added, though, that the center 
would be able to “paint a pretty detailed picture of someone’s personal 
life, someone who may be innocent.”

For example, if two men were caught on camera at the port stealing goods 
and driving off in a black Honda sedan, Oakland authorities could look 
up where in the city the car had been in the last several weeks. That 
could include stoplights it drove past each morning and whether it 
regularly went to see Oakland A’s baseball games.

For law enforcement, data mining is a big step toward more complete 
intelligence gathering. The police have traditionally made arrests based 
on small bits of data — witness testimony, logs of license plate 
readers, footage from a surveillance camera perched above a bank 
machine. The new capacity to collect and sift through all that 
information gives the authorities a much broader view of the people they 
are investigating.

For the companies that make big data tools, projects like Oakland’s are 
a big business opportunity. Microsoft built the technology for the New 
York City program. I.B.M. has sold data-mining tools for Las Vegas and Memp

Oakland entered into a a contract with the Science Applications 
International Corporation, or SAIC, to build its system. (In late 
September, that company was renamed Leidos Holdings.)

The company’s contract to help modernize the New York City payroll 
system, using new technology like biometric readers, resulted in reports 
of kickbacks. Last year, the company paid the city $500 million to avoid 
a federal prosecution. The amount was believed to be the largest ever 
paid to settle accusations of government contract fraud. A 
representative of SAIC, now Leidos, declined to comment.

Even before the initiative, Oakland spent millions of dollars on traffic 
cameras, license plate readers and a network of sound sensors to pick up 
gunshots. Still, the city has one of the highest violent crime rates in 
the country. And an internal audit in August 2012 found that the police 
had spent $1.87 million on technology tools that did not work properly 
or remained unused because their vendors had gone out of business.

The new center will be far more ambitious. From a central location, it 
will electronically gather data around the clock from a variety of 
sensors and databases, analyze that data and display some of the 
information on a bank of giant monitors.

The city plans to staff the center around the clock. If there is an 
incident, workers can analyze the many sources of data to give leads to 
the police, fire department or Coast Guard. In the absence of an 
incident, how the data would be used and how long it would be kept 
remain largely unclear.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 16, 2013

An article on Monday about a police surveillance system in Oakland, 
Calif., gave an outdated name for the city’s contractor for the system. 
While the contract to build the system was with the Science Applications 
International Corporation, or SAIC, that company was renamed Leidos 
Holdings in late September.


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