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Social Media a Threat To Undercover Cops
angry tapir writes "Facebook has proven to be one of the biggest dangers in keeping undercover police officers safe, due to applications such as facial recognition and photo tagging, according to an adjunct professor at ANU and Charles Sturt University. Mick Keelty, a former Australian Federal Police commissioner, told the audience at Security 2011 in Sydney that because of the convergence of a number of technologies undercover policing may be 'impossible' in the future."
Don't have a public profile and don't go out with friends and have them publicly tag your photos. Just an idea.
Not all cops do that. And in some cases undercover cops can very well be providing an alibi for you too, so it cuts both ways.
In any case - undercover cops aren't cost effective for catching small time criminals.
Best is to not commit any crimes.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
You have a very jaded view of your police force.
...if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
Wait.
"In any case - undercover cops aren't cost effective for catching small time criminals."
Ever watch Cops, or Police Women of Broward County? They use undercover cops all the time to catch small time drug dealers and buyers, and guys looking for prostitutes. Although social media probably won't hurt them, given that they often expose the undercover cops faces on TV but they're still able to fool people for more than 1 season.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
"because of the convergence of a number of technologies" governments won't need undercover police in the future.
The solution seems simple, just don't use the latest "aol.com" of the internet. Facebook, for those who don't get the reference, is essentially nothing more than what aol.com was during its heyday. A secluded, walled garden, where nothing gets in or out unless you have drank the kook-aid and become a member.
As in, never during your lifetime. You see a camera - duck, turn around, and run in the opposite direction.
You should make two whole steps before you run into another camera, if you're in an urban area.
Cause, you know... I can go and tag both Jesus, Elvis AND Mohammed on the photo of an empty wall - regardless if they have a Facebook account or not.
As for face recognition bit - the idea would be that you take a photo of a person, open an account with it and just let Facebook's face-recognizing algorithms do their thing.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Best is to not commit any crimes.
This particular strategy doesn't help you if the cops plant evidence to close out a case.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yes they deserve to die and i hope they burn in hell.
Don't have secret police in the first place. "Undercover" cops have no place in a free society. Only police states have or need secret police. If social media makes the secret police impossible, GOOD!
As to the cop's safety, being a cop is nowhere near the top ten list of dangerous jobs. A taxi driver or construction worker is in far more danger than a cop.
Free Martian Whores!
The less you have in return. Especially for the government, it seems.
Pretty soon, the people you track will know where all of you are, and then it's their game, not yours.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Most cops are corrupt. Here in Lake County, California we finally got a Sheriff who actually wants to change things. Here is an article on him being cleared of certain wrongdoings. Because our police force is so very corrupt (with ties to meth production and such) he did not inform them of a bust the sheriff's department was conducting. The cops found out anyway and showed up to point guns at them just to fuck up the whole operation, because the bust was against one of their cronies.
Why do I say most cops are corrupt? Because if you're a cop and you cover for a bad cop, you are precisely as bad as he is. You are precisely as responsible for his actions, because it is your job to attempt to prevent and to help bring people to justice for these actions. You are instead a traitor to the American people, and I hope you die of ball cancer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
and their image sources will include surveillance cams
so social active criminals will face a tough time.
You aren't fixing the dumb when dumb is a requirement for the police force.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Facebook has helped the police get dirt on people in many cases. Don't be surprised when it works the other way too.
Everything we lose in security will be gained tenfold in liberty if undercover policing shits the bed.
does anyone else see quality of cop going into a toilet also since 9/11 and they complain OH WE got ya we know your a narc .....
haha everything works both ways. THERE is a saying....Don't be good, be good at what you do.....
Gee wonder what that means....
You create a fake Facebook profile and mistag-yourself everywhere. You have a police department staff scan photos and mistag you. With a little more effort, Facebook could become the best thing that ever happened for people setting up false identities. But Facebook has to let you mis-tag yourself. I started a Facebook Group "Data Camouflage Anonymous" for the purpose of mis-tagging and mis-identifying photos (to water down the facial recognition database) and within a day found my "tagging" ability turned off by Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/groups/151915044879668/ Facebook should be no more reliable at facial data than they are at birthday records (which are a joke).
Gently reply
Well, look @ the bright side. When a crime is committed, the same technology that puts cops @ risk will put criminals @ risks, assuming that the cops won't do anything to them. The answer, then, would be for lone vigilantes to track down these criminals using those surveillance pictures, do an ID check on them - the capability of which would no longer be limited to law enforcement agencies - and then stalk the criminals in question and do whatever the vigilante thinks is appropriate.
Mark my words - the same namby-pamby defender of criminals and police-haters out there will be yelping like yorkers for the cops to be out, once such vigilantes take the law into their own hands and start hunting down such criminals. In fact, make such a line of work something that specialized contractors do for a fee - something like collection agencies. And if you do have criminal advocates, such as the ACLU, try and file cases against them, since they are vigilantes and not police, have them hunt down any lawyers who would pursue them for their vigilante actions, so that anybody in civil society would be scared to confront them. Oh, and they won't be accountable to the executives of any city, state or federal, as police always are, so nobody can even go after the government for them being loose.
Enough such activity, say for a year or two, and you'll see all defense lawyers and advocates in the country begging for normal police surveillance, and promising all sorts of checks & balances to ensure that normal law-enforcement activity is not hindered.
I note that these days you can just get a library to do stuff like find elements of a face... it's only a matter of time before recognizing cops from biometrics is feasible. ID them with a webcam at the door. Get someone to grab some photos of the photos of graduating classes for data to stock it with, should be easy since future cops are edumacated at our finest public institutions. Er, I mean, our crappy community colleges.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
7 years into a known criminal gang? what the fuck kind of policing is this, assist & switch? they would have to know that it's a criminal gang to have ethical reasoning for infiltrating - and in that case they certainly wouldn't have good reasons to let it keep going on for seven friggin' years. that's not infiltration, that's living a lifestyle - that's being fabric of the criminal gang, that's giving motivation to the criminal gang if you hang around with them for seven frigging years while they don't get busted, so they're having a part in spurring the crime they're supposed to prevent while messing with peoples lives.
because, suppose that they don't even bust them. they made an artificial, constructed impact on the people they interacted with and that's messed up, peoples political etc motives depend on the people they know so government invented shill persons shouldn't be on the list unless you want to copy STASI.
""If you have someone in the service who is trying to remain anonymous for whatever reason, it is still possible through other relationships to find them," Keelty said. " no shit, it always was. and anonymous isn't the right word here, FAKE person is the right word. but this issue is just highlighting issues that existed in their covert police operations long before this - and that they seemed to prefer guys who never appeared in a yearbook. actually they could fix this by hiring immigrants to police their kids, as they want people who had been invisible and never appeared anywhere.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This is a good thing.
Not all cops do that.
True, but far too many do. As we found in the 1920s, prohibition of intoxicants breeds corruption.
In any case - undercover cops aren't cost effective for catching small time criminals.
Half of all arrests in the US are for misdemeanor marijuana possession. THAT's what the secret police are for -- to catch pot smokers. You can't catch armed robbers with secret police.
Free Martian Whores!
Reading the newspaper or living in a bad neighborhood will do that to you. Ironically, in the place where you're in most danger of criminals, even the law-abiding residents fear the police more than they fear criminals.
Free Martian Whores!
the 'mainstream' media can tout, or hide (constantly) anything it wants (eow events, alien invasion rumors etc) to generate fear, compliance etc..., whilst the 'security forces' fire anti-aircraft rounds at those with opposing (reality based) views. the population must not have any recourse to dispel the fatal distraction buybull generated by an obsoletely failed plan to disempower/destroy us? can this even remotely be called 'weather'?
disarm. tell the truth. post the results of your endeavors everywhere. stay out from under the falling gargoyles. read the teepeeleaks etchings. see you there?
Don't post your pictures and employment info online if you're a cop and ever want to do this work. Cops know that this work is what gets them the big promotions. If they want to advance their careers, being discrete on Facebook will just be de rigeur for them.
Do you see the CIA's clandestine service going "OH NOES WE CANT USE TEH FACEBOOK?" Of course not. If and when they get sent overseas, they don't want to end up in a ditch because they moronically outed themselves on Facebook.
The SockPuppets are taking over for them. The new and ultimate officer of the future will be AI, programmed to seek and destroy dynamic thinking, and uploaded with 666 terabytes of variations of all known bovine memes. It will simply tell you that you don't recognize it, and you'll obey.
So one screwed up city proves that most cops everywhere are corrupt? That is pretty much the definition of anecdotal evidence.
I personally know at least a half-dozen cops (through various organizations I am involved in) and I can't see a single one of them doing anything like that.
It's amazing that "cops are evil" is about the only FUD that is not only accepted by slashdot, but actively PROMOTED. You people either need to stop getting your information about cops from Fox News or stop peddling meth through your mail slot!
But think of the police.
GO BLUE!
Just remove "Undercover cop" from your profile and you're done.
Nice and easy peasy.
It's amazing that "cops are evil" is about the only FUD that is not only accepted by slashdot, but actively PROMOTED.
There is a forest of anecdotes. I was pointing out endemic corruption.
I personally know at least a half-dozen cops (through various organizations I am involved in) and I can't see a single one of them doing anything like that.
Like what?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't know exactly what percentage of undercover operations go to supporting the immoral, unjust, and self-serving disaster of prohibition, but I'm willing to bet it's over 50%. In that case, I hope their entire undercover business goes down. (And it certainly is a business -- from the perspective of the elite who built the temple of prohibition, the objective was always the multi billion-dollar budget, not solving "crime").
What if the law becomes a tool to criminalize those that dare to stand up against an unjust regime?
People who follow the law, no matter what this law may be like, is what makes dictatorships possible in the first place. There were not many people who liked that Nazi ideology. Or the Commie one, for that matter. There were rather few who were die-hard supporters. There were just many who don't give a shit how they're governed and who just follow the rules, without questioning whether those rules are just and 'right'.
Not questioning laws is dangerous. Question them! Test them against your moral code and see if they hold up against it. And please note that I do not say "to hell with the laws, laws are evil". I do not ask you to break the law, no matter what (it's about as bad as following the law, no matter what), I do expect people to be willing and able to see if the laws stand the test of their personal morals. Because that's what laws generally (should) codify: The common consensus what is "right" and what is "wrong".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The percentage of criminals who get caught who are "ragingly stupid" is likely higher than in the general criminal population. You just haven't heard about the smart ones. You know; the ones who would do diligent background checks, because they are careful and keep some idiots around to take the fall when things don't work out.
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
I note that these days you can just get a library to do stuff like find elements of a face... it's only a matter of time before recognizing cops from biometrics is feasible.
Or, it's only a matter of time until wearing "Lucha Libre"-style masks on all social occasions, because everybody is just fed up of being publicly outed for anything silly they've done, lose jobs because of party-behaviours while on week-end etc.
That or "programmable tatoo" and/or plastic surgery becoming suddenly infinitely more affordable.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Could we start with the others. Dumb, corrupt and evil cops sounds a lot better than smart, corrupt and evil cops.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sorry coppers, you started this. We now live in a world where constitutional protections of privacy are nothing more than symbolic and viewed by school kids on field trips on an old parchment document of the past.
I don't feel sorry for the undercover cops one bit. In Chicago, where I live we have a saying, What goes around, comes around!
See ya on Facebook!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
seems that the Secret Whoremonger Society needs to better brief their members.
"...one of the biggest dangers in keeping undercover police officers safe, due to applications such as facial recognition and photo tagging."
Oh, the irony here. Funny how the shoe doesn't fit so well when it's on the other foot, now does it, officer?
Perhaps now you can feel what it's like first hand to have your liberties stripped from you with little regard for you or your privacy.
I personally know at least a half-dozen cops (through various organizations I am involved in) and I can't see a single one of them doing anything like that.
You can't see them showing up at a bust to disrupt it or you can't see them covering for their friends and colleagues or turning a blind eye?
Facebook has proven to be one of the biggest dangers in keeping undercover police officers safe, due to applications such as facial recognition and photo tagging
You want an undercover cop? Change his face. We /do/ have that technology, you know.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Here's another entertaining story. My ex-girlfriend had a minibike in her yard in Kelseyville and this cop stopped by to ask after the price. Thought it was too much. Got stolen that night. The next day, without any police report being filed et cetera, got a call from that cop saying he didn't steal the bike. Really? At minimum, he knows who did.
When I was a kid I mock-punched a big hardwood sign in Library Park in Lakeport. The sign is 2-3" thick and covered with acrylic. When I got through the park I encountered this cop McGraw who was always broadly known to be poking some underage girl. He's been up and down the ranks over the years for one thing and another. He accused me of breaking the sign, then handcuffed me and put me in the front of his little crappy patrol car... with my face basically against the dash because my hands were behind me and I'm big. Unless perhaps you're the reincarnation of Bruce Lee, there's no way to break the sign (which was split from weather... probably because the plastic they put over the sign to protect it from graffiti trapped moisture beneath it — everything is done incompetently in Lake county) without breaking the acrylic over it, which was intact. And I couldn't have broken it even without the plastic at that age; I was a big puss with no muscle worth mentioning. My dad ended up fixing the sign because he has a history in this town — but I didn't, and still don't, almost 20 years later.
All these idiots who think that cops aren't/can't be corrupt are just that, idiots. Further, they are actually complicit in this culture of police corruption, as they make it more difficult to have a frank and open discussion of the subject.
This little bumfuck town is utterly corrupt anyway. My dad's Italian ex-boss used to own a 3,500 acre parcel on the way out of town towards Hopland. The county or perhaps city acquired it in some kind of special deal and now it's owned by the government but you can't go there. Actually, this used to be a major Mafia town, studded with airstrips and home of a great deal of their activity. And I'm at something of a loss to explain otherwise how the same company keeps getting paid to resurface roads around the county even though every time they touch a road it gets bumper. The same pronounced bumps have been on Main Street in Lakeport since time immemorial and every time they resurface they get taller.
Corruption is the status quo everywhere, the local high mucky mucks are just too poor at covering their tracks to hide their malfeasance. I assume that every place has the same kind of dark underbelly as here, but that in most places there has been enough journalistic or other pressure to drive it underground, whereas here they are just flagrant.
It doesn't help that this region is rich in minerals. The local cinnabar mine responsible for most of the local pollution (they say don't eat fish over a certain number of inches or over so many pounds a year, but the law of averages says that there will be lucky winners... and if you look at the populace on the most polluted side of the lake, it shows) was closed only because state and national regulations made it too expensive to continue operation. And it stopped pouring mercury into the local water system only because it closed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Image recognition is good if the cops are doing it and bad if anyone else does it.
Would this be right?
You have a very jaded view of your police force.
Maybe there is some cause for mistrust?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kassP7zI0qc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Vp32WeGHE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_SBnZXCaGI
Just sayin'
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
It's the sound of the world's smallest violin.
I dare you to not break a single law for 72 hours.
If they're innocent they should have nothing to hide.
Better just say, don't have friends. Also don't have family either.
I don't think most cops are allowed to have a facebook account, let alone a undercover cop. I'm pretty sure police agencies have a few policies about that.
I know a buddy of mine went to RCMP college and he had to get rid of his account.
Isn't that what NSA, TSA, FBI, CIA and DHS are doing?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Will undercover policing be necessary when the government tracks your every move and monitors all communications?
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
7 years into a known criminal gang? what the fuck kind of policing is this, assist & switch? they would have to know that it's a criminal gang to have ethical reasoning for infiltrating - and in that case they certainly wouldn't have good reasons to let it keep going on for seven friggin' years.
Have you never seen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Brasco about the FBI agent who spent six years infiltrating a mob family? It takes time for criminal gangs to trust you enough for you to get evidence on the bosses.
Undercover agents have harassed vegans and animal rights activists in several countries for years. These people are usually exposed via email lists. There are some good ones who go undetected, but it is amazing how clueless some of them are about blending in.
In regards to the article I'm surprised how clueless/irresponsible a professional undercover agent would be in having a Facebook page in the first place. It seems like a nobrainer that would be one of the things you would give up for the job.
Have gnu, will travel.
Somebody better give these guys the scramble suits they need.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fac6aHFa_k
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/faq#.2.1.12
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
crimes will get harder to do.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"At one point, he went to a police station and found a Los Angeles Police Department yearbook for sale. It included photographs and names of the very undercover squads seeking him. He said he wanted to buy a copy as a gift for his police officer uncle. With no questions asked, for $75 he walked away with a photo guide to his pursuers."
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/hacking-the-system-because-he-could/question-2086111/
...a whole orchestra of the world's smallest violins.
Liberty in your lifetime
...the sword cuts both ways.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
It already has. Just look around Slashdot for all the stories of cops using wiretapping laws against people videotaping them.
And in reply to the rest of your comment: This article from CopBlock is highly relevant.
Liberty in your lifetime
They want it on everything you do and say?
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
eff 'em.
You have a very jaded view of your police force.
Welcome to slashdot. I'm pretty sure half the reader base took part in the London riots, and another quarter were looting in Vancouver.
They'll have to go back to informants.
The CIA has few undercover "spies", in the classic sense. Rarely does an intelligence agency have someone on the inside of an enemy. Usually, they have their people ("case workers") on the outside, who recruit people ("assets") on the inside.
During the Cold War, the KGB and CIA station chiefs in many cities knew who their counterpart was.
Yet the New York City Mafia families were broken partly because the FBI and the NYPD were able to get their people into positions of trust within the Mafia.
Just imagine:
In this picture: Joey 'The Hammer', 'Cheeky' Fellucci, Officer Ryan Alfred Wysmith Jr., and Tony Ducks.
I would imagine that in the US the main use for undercover agents is to battle narcotics and/or gangs that get most of their illicit profits from drugs. If anything, social media "outing" undercover police will be another nail in the coffin of the failed Drug War policies of the US.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Unless having a Facebook profile is part of the "string", I'd say anybody who is in a profession that requires anonymity and has a Facebook profile is really bad at their job.
There will be no need, for undercover police, in the future...everything they police will need to know, will be readily available through the social networks, and the pre-crime detection alogs will sort out the evil doers, before they can do much real harm, in most cases.
The Police are just realizing that the sword has two edges, to use a figure of speech.
You have a citation for this, Steve? i'm not giving you shit, a quick Google is not turning this up for me and I'd like to read what you're quoting.
Wrong doers will have a much harder time getting away with crimes as technology makes it faster and easier to catch them so it seems logical that cops also would have trouble keeping anything secret. The balance exists when all parties are free to compile information equally. I am reminded of the postal employee hiding in a homeowners hedge and urinating. Obviously the poor guy needed a toilet and on a foot beat none existed. But if we can catch burglars and arsonists doing their crimes we will also tend to catch postal workers relieving themselves in our shrubbery and wives and husbands doing things they would rather keep secret as well.
"Now, you will notice," the Lions Club host said, "that you can barely see this individual, who is seated directly to my right, because he is wearing what is called a scramble suit, which is the exact same suit he wears--and in fact must wear--during certain parts, in fact most, of his daily activities of law enforcement. Later he will explain why."
The audience, which mirrored the qualities of the host in every possible way, regarded the individual in his scramble suit.
"This man," the host declared, "whom we will call Fred, because this is the code name under which he reports the information he gathers, once within the scramble suit, cannot be identified by voice, or by even technological voiceprint, or by appearance. He looks, does he not, like a vague blur and nothing more? Am I right?" He let loose a great smile. His audience, appreciating that this was indeed funny, did a little smiling on their own.
I live long enough for the day 1 or 100 is killed by this.
No mercy for gestapo that has imprisoned more than anyone ever.
Even if you don't tag your photos your mug is still on the net thanks to mom, grandma, your first cousin, best friend, or significant other. Google+ is not even as secure as it claims to be. You can set up a secure user on Google+ and chances are within one or two years or less someone will figure out how to break it. Probably several working on that break now because they want to be the first. Another half dozen want the good stuff you posted, and a few pictures of you in that less than desirable pose that someone took of you. I hope you smiled in that photo instead of hanging over the toilet.
As long as you have ONE stupid friend, coworker, relative, acquaintance, neighbor or anyone else who is willing to tag you the same on your "before" and "after" photos/videos.
Basically... only way to be sure is to cut their ties with everyone they know, kill-off their old identity and appearance, and have all undercover police officers wearing scramble suits.
Or padded ninja suits, dark sunglasses and voice modulators.
Until someone develops an actual scramble suit.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There are exceptions to every rule of course. But in general
...it's not always the greatest idea to build those exceptions into the rule on purpose.
Wow, who would of thought that technology that has been helping the police can be used against them?
I'm sorry, who is surprised here? Because I'm sure as fuck not.
Be seeing you...
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/20-marijuana-arrests-set-new-record/
Free Martian Whores!