Microsoft, NYC Marketing Vast Surveillance System To Other Cities

Presto Vivace writes with this snippet from the New York Times: "'In the six months since the Domain Awareness System was unveiled, officials of Microsoft, which designed the system with the New York Police Department, said they have been surprised by the response and are actively negotiating with a number of prospective buyers, whom Microsoft declined to identify.' Don't want this in your city? You might want to let your local leadership know how you feel."

Comments

Herr Bloomberg...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"As a user-object within the Domain Awareness System you have the permissions to set 'read deny' on your access control list. Any of your attributes can and may be used against you."

Re: Herr Bloomberg...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Domain Awareness System the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the fascists who try to control everything, and the technologists who supports them.

But who watches the watchers?

[FreekyGeek]

As usual, no information about oversight, abuse detection, or anything similar. It's the same old "just trust us, we won't use our powerful new toy for anything bad, we promise." Puh-lease. The same people who claim that law abiding citizens with nothing to hide shouldn't care about privacy-invading constant surveillance are also the peopel who do their utmost to make darn sure no one can oobserve *their* activities or punish *them* for any infractions. "We don't trust you at all, but we expect you to just trust us." I'm so filled with confidence.

Re:But who watches the watchers?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Jim Pasco was quite straightforward about it.

Police officers, he told NPR, “need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be.” He added that law enforcement authorities believe “that anything that’s going to have a chilling effect on an officer moving — an apprehension that he’s being videotaped and may be made to look bad — could cost him or some citizen their life.”"

Re:But who watches the watchers?

[Anonymous Coward]

And not watching the police can cost lives, too.

Re:But who watches the watchers?

[Thud457]

Steve Ballmer is no Harold Finch.

Re:But who watches the watchers?

[Anonymous Coward]

He shouldn't worry. Here's how the London Metropolitan Police handled the execution, er, tragic death of a Brazilian man, Jean Charles de Menezes, misidentified as a terrorist in 2005.

Missing CCTV footage

Initial UK media reports suggested that no CCTV footage was available from the Stockwell station, as recording media had not been replaced after being removed for examination after the previous day's attempted bombings. Other reports stated that faulty cameras on the platform were the reason for the lack of video evidence. An anonymous source confirmed that CCTV footage was available for the ticket area, but that there was a problem with the platform coverage. The source suggested that there was no useful CCTV footage from the platform or the train carriage.[103]

Extracts from a later police report stated that examination of the platform cameras had produced no footage. It said: "It has been established that there has been a technical problem with the CCTV equipment on the relevant platform and no footage exists." It also reported there was no footage from CCTV in the carriage where Menezes was shot, saying "Although there was on-board CCTV in the train, due to previous incidents, the hard drive had been removed and not replaced."

The platform CCTV system is maintained by the Tube Lines consortium in charge of maintaining the Northern Line; unofficial sources from inside the company insisted that the cameras were in working order. It was also reported that London Underground sources insisted that at least three of the four cameras trained on the Stockwell Tube platform were in full working order, and rejected suggestions that the cameras had not been fitted with new tapes after police took away footage from the previous day, 21 July, when suspects in the failed bombings caught trains there.[104]

Police do something they don't want recorded for the public to see, the surveillance equipment will coincidently be malfunctioning at that time.

Re:But who watches the watchers?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

With a sufficiently advanced system, such malfunctions could probably even be automated for greater safety and efficiency!

Re:But who watches the watchers?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yeah - Finch's machine manages to always stay up.

The interface leaves something to be desired, though.

Re:But who watches the watchers?

[FreekyGeek]

Tough shit for the police. They have to deal with the same shit everyone else does, poor things. Guess what - we ALL would like to be able to act "without worrying about adverse consequences" - that sure would be nice! Golly, I know I'd like it if my employer promised not to monitor me. I'm apprehensive about being videotaped, too, but I can't do anything about it.

If you're a cop and can't do your job without worrying that you'll violate someone's rights on camera and get caught, well - QUIT NOW, thanks.

I'm not saying cops should have to get permission in triplicate before taking any action, but their actions should be recorded just like citizens are recorded, those recordings should be accessible to the puiblic, and police should be held accountable for their actions. What Jim Pasco seems to think is that it's OK for police to record citizens in case they are breaking the law, but not OK for police to be recorded in case *they* are breaking the law.

Re:But who watches the watchers?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Please don't mistake my quotation for agreement. As it happens, Joe Pasco is a slimy shitbag even by the relaxed standards of lobbyists, he has quite the history, and the idea that '[police officers] “need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be.”' is nothing more than a flowery way of saying "We must be given impunity, or the terrorists or somebody win."

New York doesn't quite have LA's pure sleaze; but they make up for it in a more efficient, technocratic, vision of surveillance dystopia(As icing on the cake, a number of totally-ethically-unimpeachable corporate actors, mostly financial sector, even have cozy deals that provide them with access to the surveillance centers, just to keep a watchful eye on their interests...) Heartwarming place, really.

mission creepy

[1u3hr]

it has figured in a number of investigative coups that went beyond the systemâ(TM)s original purpose of counterterrorism in Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attack

They aren't even pretending it's just anti-terrorism.

it was developed by cops for cops

I'm sure it doesn't track every movement of every person in New York and store it in a database indefinitely. That will be version 2.0.

Here in the nation's capitol

[Presto Vivace]

the local police chief explicitly said it was OK to record officers acting on official business.

What really irritates me is that

[Presto Vivace]

there is always money for surveillance and swat teams, but never money for education, health care, jobs programs, or anything that people would actually want.

Re:What really irritates me is that

[Hentes]

Because cameras cost orders of magnitude less.

Remember what we learned from the TSA

[GodfatherofSoul]

Don't trust a word of what we're told, only what we can see. Like their scanners, we were first told they couldn't record images, then that turned to "well, they can but only in testing mode", then that turned to "well, they can on production machines, but they can't be pulled off them", then that turned into stories of TSA agents emailing around pictures of passengers to their friends.