NYPD Anti-Terrorism Cameras Used For Much More

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from the NY Times: "The Police Department's growing web of license-plate-reading cameras has been transforming investigative work. Though the imaging technology was conceived primarily as a counterterrorism tool, the cameras' presence — all those sets of watchful eyes that never seem to blink — has aided in all sorts of traditional criminal investigations. ... 'We knew going into it that they would have other obvious benefits,' Mr. Browne said about the use of the readers in the initiative. 'Obviously, conventional crime is far more common than terrorism, so it is not surprising that they would have benefits, more frequently, in conventional crime fighting than in terrorism.'"

Comments

really?!

[Hazel Bergeron]

Also every piece of information any corporation or state has or can collect on you will end up being used for more than you expected.

If you don't like it, stop developing the tech. Because if it exists, it will be used against you.

Re:really?!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"If a link is found, a small alarm sounds, Mr. Browne said."

I enjoy Mr. Browne's rhetorical use of a diminutive conditional adjective. A "small alarm" really isn't such an obstacle to the path of civil liberty? No?

The whole matter is hardly one over which to raise a concern. In fact, I'm surprised that the topic is newsworthy - really. Why such subtle psyops in the pages of the New York Times?

Re:really?!

[Cwix]

Since when does the government have a right to monitor the movements of an entire city's population when 99% have probably done nothing wrong.

Also does this just check a database at one time or does it log it saying license ABC 123 went by bridge a at 8:05 am and passed office B at 8:15 am, etc.

Re:really?!

[Jane Q. Public]

I think that not only is this the real central issue, but the one that has been most often overlooked.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." -- Benjamin Franklin

Re:really?!

[FatdogHaiku]

Since when does the government have a right to monitor the movements of an entire city's population when 99% have probably done nothing wrong.

The whole point of the current structure of the law is that EVERYONE is in some manor, a violator of some local, state, or federal statute. This makes it a lot easier to get all but a few people to shut up, move along, and keep their heads down... lest the focus of law enforcement swing towards them....

Re:really?!

[boristdog]

And since when do women have a right to not have their behinds or cleavage photographed while they bend over to pick something up in public?

I mean, anyone can see it...

Re:really?!

[SETIGuy]

Anyway, think of it as another great reason to take public transport.

With your new bar coded RFID tagged bus pass?

Re:really?!

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I've said this before, and people thought I was an asshole who didn't know what he was talking about. I'm going to keep repeating it until current events cause it to make some sense.

Who gives a shit about the cameras that the police have. You only need to worry about your own cameras. When you are prohibited from owning your own camera and taking pictures in public of public activities, including police activities, that is when you should worry.

There, make sense? All you people who think 1984 is all about Big Brother's cameras got it wrong.

Re:really?!

[mangu]

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." -- Benjamin Franklin

Erle Stanley Gardner mentioned an obvious corollary to this:

"For every innocent person convicted a guilty person walks away free"

Re:really?!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Mistakes, incompetence and mis-applied prosecutorial incentives are just a few of the reasons that this development should be viewed with prejudiced outrage.

The recent case of an innocent man, narrowly escaping capital execution on the basis of deliberate prosecution dishonesty and evidence manipulation should be enough to dissuade anyone who is burdened wit the notion that this "evidence" is just another publicly disclosed fact, that will be judiciously examined on objective merits.

In fact, the US Supreme Court overturned the judgement in favour of the Defendant in this case - effectively saying that collateral damage is an expected outcome in the Executive pursuit of law enforcement.

I am again reminded of the case of Harry Buttle, in the movie Brazil.

Re:really?!

[mangu]

And since when do women have a right to not have their behinds or cleavage photographed while they bend over to pick something up in public?

I mean, anyone can see it...

A Frenchman and a Spaniard walk down the street when a woman slips and falls revealing everything.

The Frenchman helps her up saying

-"C'est la vie, madam!"

The Spaniard says indignantly

-"Hombre, yo tambien se la vi, pero no se lo digo porque soy un caballero!"

  (OT: the Spanish punctuation and accents don't work on /.)

Driving patterns

[bonch]

Yet the strategy for the use of the license plate readers has raised questions about whether they represent a system for tracking driving patterns, said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. She said it was hard to tell whether interest in “effective and efficient law enforcement” was being balanced with the “values of privacy and freedom.”

It's hard to argue against the impact on crime that the cameras have, but it would be naive to assume they're not being used to gauge general driving patterns. Of course they are. No government organization would turn its back on such a valuable storehouse of data.

Re:Driving patterns

[Shakrai]

It's hard to argue against the impact on crime that the cameras have

Actually it's very easy to argue that. Many studies suggest that cameras don't do anything to deter crime. They may assist in the subsequent investigation and occasionally even provide the evidence that wins a criminal conviction but there is a bit of a difference between that and deterring/preventing crime.

Re:Driving patterns

[Wrath0fb0b]

Yet the strategy for the use of the license plate readers ... She said it was hard to tell whether interest in âoeeffective and efficient law enforcementâ was being balanced with the âoevalues of privacy and freedom.â

What possible interest of privacy could you have while on the public street? Hint: when you are out on the public streets everyone can see you.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro civil liberties in the context of private spaces. I just don't understand how anything I do on the street -- where I have the full expectation that other people can observe what I'm doing -- merits protections on the basis of privacy. That expectation informs me of the boundary between private and public. A citizen cannot reasonably claim to keep private his activities in public anymore than citizens have the right to publicize the private activities of others.

If anything, I see the blurring of this boundary as being quite destructive to privacy because it erodes the logical distinction between activities that take place inside a private space and ones outside. That is, attempts to extend the privacy of the home outside by making false equivalences are just as likely to erode the protections inside as they are to bolster protections outside.

Re:Driving patterns

[GooberToo]

Well then, clearly we should use all the info garnered by perverse medical experiments and torture also, seeing as that it's so 'valuable'..

Welcome to the 20th century...on wait...

You do realize, there is almost nothing of the 20th century (post WWII) which didn't directly or indirectly benefit from the Nazi's medical and scientific endeavors... As such, living in the 21st century means you benefited from the horrors of the Nazi's experiments conducted during the 20th century.

Was a statement of hypocrisy actually intended to invalidate your own point? Or perhaps your point went over my head? Was your point something other than what you seem to be implying?

Re:Driving patterns

[Anonymous Coward]

For the rest of us the idea that cameras make investigations easier (and therefore less expensive), and provide evidence that puts actual criminals in prison can generally be considered a win.

That's only true as long as all the laws are just.

Re:Driving patterns

[pixelpusher220]

Think about what, say, Richard Nixon, would have done with oodles and oodles of video evidence able to be manipulated post action...

I'm very pro civil liberties myself. Having the government record everything we do in public is a very good way for the government (or anyone able to hack into the system) to later on decide what you did *yesterday* is now illegal and you should be prosecuted for it.

This is why reasonable suspicion needs to be a part of *any* surveillance law.

Re:Driving patterns

[Jason Earl]

If you can't depend on your community to create just laws then you have much bigger problem than whether or not the police have a record of where you have driven your car.

Re:Driving patterns

[Hatta]

What community, anywhere, ever in history could one depend upon to create just laws?

Re:Driving patterns

[Hatta]

It's also worth pointing out that these cameras only prevent street crime. Low level poor people crime, that is. These cameras are entirely blind to the much larger crimes happening on Wall Street.

Re:Driving patterns

[Hatta]

I'm pretty sure that if I were to follow you around with a camera every minute of the day that you were in public spaces, you'd be able to get a restraining order against me. Does it not bother you that the government can do, without a warrant, what an individual cannot?

Records retention?

[identity0]

FTA:
>The license plate readers are different from other security cameras in the city: they are aimed low, designed to focus on a small area, unlike traditional surveillance cameras which look at broader sections like a toll plaza or the entrance of a building, Mr. Browne said. The information collected is immediately checked against databases storing information on stolen cars, stolen license plates, wanted persons and unregistered vehicles.

Well, the cameras themselves doesn't seem so bad, but does anyone know how long data is retained? I don't want to be leaving records of where I've been for years...

Re:Records retention?

[gstoddart]

Well, the cameras themselves doesn't seem so bad, but does anyone know how long data is retained? I don't want to be leaving records of where I've been for years...

Already happening, already too late, complete and utter surprise? Not so much.

A surveillance society takes an exceedingly short period of time to decide that the initial justifications for these things has so many other handy uses. Governments are completely interested in monitoring and recording everything so that eventually when they need something against you, they have it on file. Even the governments who pretend to be protecting "freedom" and the like.

There's a reason why all of this stuff has been rich fodder for sci-fi for decades ... because you can see it coming, and pretty much anticipate the results.

Terrorism was the stated reason, but they're not going to miss out on using a treasure trove of such information. Give it time, and there won't be a single free society on the planet ... least of all, the Western democracies who still pretend to be.

I may sound like my tin-foil hat is cutting off the blood supply, but it's hard not to see all of the dystopian stuff unfolding before us. Stuff that has happened in my life time was a work of fiction 50 years ago.

Re:Records retention?

[DM9290]

Your neighbors and yourself generally were presented to one another as equals, and thus they gave you a certain degree of respect and expected the same in return. You both had a shared interested in the type of lifestyle that is possible in the community. On the other hand the new government watchers are invisible. They see you from a great distance and you don't see them at all. They have nothing to fear from you so they have no reason to treat you with respect. They are not your neighbors, they are strangers.

I don't need to have my actions monitored just in case 20 years from now I can be prosecuted for things I do now which are legal.

What guarantee do I have that no future government will ever decide to punish people retroactively for acts they committed before the act was illegal?
i.e. blasphemy against private healthcare, saying bad things about the meat industry, about the church?

my neighbors aren't part of some vast system of control designed to outlast any individual human. they just want to live their lives in peace, and some day die. and thats all.

Government are self perpetuating systems. we should not simply assume government wont turn bad.

Re:That's how it works

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Especially when, statistically, terrorists are non-existent.

Choice of denomination

[ElMiguel]

Obviously, conventional crime is far more common than terrorism, so it is not surprising that they would have benefits, more frequently, in conventional crime fighting than in terrorism.

So obviously, calling them 'anti-terrorism cameras' is a lie.

Life Imitates Slashdot.

[Tackhead]

"'We knew going into it that they would have other obvious benefits,'"

Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're *lying*. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.

- Meringuinoid, on Slashdot, ca. 2005.

Re:Life Imitates Slashdot.

[dkleinsc]

A slight quibble here: They (in general, or the guy giving the answer) may or may not *intend* to use the law that way, but it's quite safe to say that the law *will* get used that way if passed.

If an agency director goes to Congress asking for new power XYZ, he may genuinely believe that the intent is to do something totally different from what the civil libertarians are worried about. Now, he may have been misled by his subordinates, or his successor might decide "hey, look at what I can do!" Alternately, of course, he may be the nefarious bastard who knows better but pretends otherwise. Since the basic rule of investigation is that every government official will say exactly what they need to say in order to save themselves, we'll never really know for sure.

Re:Life Imitates Slashdot.

[Hatta]

A slight quibble here: They (in general, or the guy giving the answer) may or may not *intend* to use the law that way, but it's quite safe to say that the law *will* get used that way if passed.

You're too generous. If they don't intend for the law to be abused, they will put in safeguards against it. If there's not a clause in the law saying "no section of this law shall be construed to allow X" coupled with appropriate penalties should X occur, then the author of the law fully intends for X to happen. Any claims otherwise are blatant lies.

Urbanization

[Quiet_Desperation]

And people wonder why my desires run counter to the reverse diaspora toward increased urbanization.

Just build the giant, sealed arcologies already, let the social engineering wonks have them, and let the rest of us live in more rural setting in peace.

Re:Urbanization

[Jason Earl]

I grew up in a small town. In small communities everyone tends to know your business in a way that people from the cities (or even the suburbs) would find very disconcerting. If you are worried about people watching your every move then a rural setting is not a Utopia.

Re:4th Amendment?

[Fwipp]

"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."

I'm confused - are the police using their cameras to search your person, house, papers or effects? Or are they seizing them?

NYT = fail

[TheGratefulNet]

please, STOP posting links to this horrible site!

I get a login screen. is that what you wanted me to read? ok, I read it. it said 'login'. I did not play its game. I saw no article.

didn't we all agree to start ignoring NYT? what happened subby? no other source?

poor showing. just poor showing, man.

and no, I will not 'login'. this is NOT what the web was supposed to be about.

PLEASE STOP SUPPORTING NYT.

thanks.

Re:NYT = fail

[maxdread]

So the internet was supposed to be about a slave labor force working for nothing? Because we see the numerous examples of great journalism (not that every article/newspaper/writer is an example of this) coming from the random blogs that pop up around the internet? Free does not always equal better and if there is anything we should support with our money, its probably a free and independent press.

Re:raise a concern

[TaoPhoenix]

Dang Internets and the lack of voice nuance...
I can't tell if you're doing satire or if you believe your last line.

Meanwhile, this is newsworthy because we've seen part 1 of this charade for a decade now ... "We need a Billion Dollars to fight one Afghani guy and his ten friends!"

This time they're actually admitting "Hey look, our billion dollar toys are fun! And so is power."

How many?

[Xelios]

So how many terrorists have these cameras caught?