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Oakland Is Building a Big Data Center For Police Surveillance
rjmarvin writes "$7 million in federal grant money originally tasked with terrorism prevention is now being used to fund construction of a new data center in Oakland to electronically gather and analyze data around the clock from a variety of sensors and databases, displaying selected info on a bank of giant monitors. The center will mine massive data streams, helping the police department tap into 911 calls, port and traffic cameras, license plate readers, gunshot sensors, social media posts and commuters' electronic toll payments."
Since when does $7m get you a large data center, more like a single rack...
"Tap into 911 calls" I think it'd be a bit embarrassing but someone ought to point out to the Oakland police that calls to 911 are in fact often calls to the police, so the only thing they'd need to tap into them is, well pick up the bloody ringing phone to be honest.
As an Oakland native, i think its only fair to clarify what the police department means by these technologies in their pursuit of law enforcement:
911 calls: those troubling interruptions from sleeping, fast food or harassing the homeless that require you do actually respond to something in an hour or so.
port and traffic cameras often seen on the morning news, and cited frequently throughout the day, it sure would be neat if we used them as frequently as motorists and media personalities did, but that would require us to repair the 400 or so that still dont work.
license plate readers the closest thing we've got to a thoughtcrime detector. if you havent made quota, this little go-getter is like a golden goose for finding people with parking tickets, expired registrations, and the ever guilty smudgy plate that cant be read.
gunshot sensors Residents, mostly. Try not to obsess over the ones in low-income neighborhoods, they're constantly going off and its becoming a nuisance.
social media posts and commuters' electronic toll payments. Ford has a new police car this year, Bushmaster has a new rifle this year, my cruiser laptop is getting too slow to play minecraft, blaze yellow stop sticks are the new black this year, oh, and uh, protect 'n' serve or something.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I'm curious, how do "they" access/ interface these huge reams of data? Does anyone have any insight?
Surely all this google-size data is useless without a very very good interface to it
It takes 40+ days in Oakland, just to get a police report number after a non-violent crime has been committed. The insurance people thought that I am kidding, until I mentioned the crime happened in Oakland. Oh well. This is one of the problems with property taxes paying for police. If the value of properties is not high, you don't get police, the crime goes up, the property values go further down and so on. Fun cycle.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Not true. 1984 had full employment. Because the Party didn't bother with computers, real people had to do the work, and that meant jobs for all.
...they will start building data centers for data center surveillance.
It's always been about technology to do stuff and the surplus of wealth necessary to pay for that. In the 1850s, the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy was trying to curb "undesirable writings", so they employed censors to take care of things. But since the quill was the most advanced IT tool by then, and because they could employ something like fifty people, not much was accomplished. Reading letters en masse was just a pipe dream, so they didn't even try. Ditto for the secret police - it sucked by today's standards. By the 1950s, the secret police organizations of the assorted socialist countries were enjoying steam envelope openers (what with seals on letters having fallen out of use) and could read millions of letters every year. Also, the economy, despite still being lousy, improved to the point that the police machinery could have been funded much more generously. And now? With the computational power at hand, immense disk arrays, and with most stuff being electronic, they can store and analyze volumes of letters that the socialist agents of our past could only dream of. It's never been about "will we do that?" for the governments - it's always been about "can we afford that?".
Ezekiel 23:20
I think you are conflating "socialist" with "totalitarian"
Oakland Is Building a Big Data Center For Police Surveillance
Awesome. More cities should keep their police under surveillance.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
That's not too far from where I live, but it wasn't exactly "torched by locals", but torched by an anarchist group.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
A nice example of what might happen when they do is given here: http://www.storyleak.com/woman-calls-911-diabetic-husband-police-shoot-kill-man-upon-arrival/
There's been a lot of talk about "socialism with a human face" in my country back then, but somehow it never materialized. ;/
Ezekiel 23:20
Let's see...Federal anti-terrorism money used to surveil American citizens.
What else is new?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
In 1984 the government actually cared about the citizens more than our government does.
Now let that sink in for a minute.
Is it clear to you all yet that the government considers YOU, the Citizens, to be the terrorists?
The Phillip K Dick I Told Ya So Data Repository
Farming and street-sweeping are both good honest jobs, and far more productive than the alleged "work" performed by the average American office drone. But everybody wants a useless desk job and meanwhile the streets are filthy.
The SF Bay area is one of the most expensive areas in the world. What is $7 million going to buy? Perhaps a Winnebago which they can park on the street and loaded with 10 yo Linux boxes?
As if the internet surveillance is not enough, most cities now have networks of microphones so that Big Brother can listen in.
What will it take to get the Federal government out of the business of wasting money buying local cops toys?
That's not too far from where I live, but it wasn't exactly "torched by locals", but torched by an anarchist group.
Was it a local anarchist group?
Yeah! It's about time we start watching the police back! We need more surveillance on what the governmental organizations are doing.
Oh wait! That's not what they mean, is it?!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
"displaying selected info on a bank of giant monitors"
Yeah I'm familiar with the OPD, this is a giant joke, the only monitors these over payed buffoons will be looking at are their phones.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It was most likely a local chapter of the IAF, but originally the IAF is from Italy. Stating "torched by locals" makes it sound like everyday folk were that upset by it that they stormed it with pitchforks etc.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
$7MM would only buy them about 800 square feet of datacenter, but it could be about 3,500 square feet of dispatch or emergency response. Essential Facilities in seismic zones tend to be base-isolated structures, which drives up costs.
I think for $7MM Los Angeles can just build a radio tower and shelter...
Socialism is not totalitarianism. Totalitarianism can exist in a corruption of socialism, or any other form of governance besides a truly REPRESENTATIVE democracy.
http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/oakland-crowdfunding-private-cops/
WTF!
This type of thing is why Tea Party.
Free Huey!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
1984 will be a true story
Yes, If it was titled "2014" it would have been real. He just missed it by 3 decades.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Have gnu, will travel.
Don't think "jobs for all" means "pay for all". I used to work with a guy who grew up in Bulgaria under communism there. Starting at about age 13, he was required to work a few hours every day in a local factory.
The sort of exploitation of workers, especially child labor, that was normal for capitalism in the late 19th century was normal for communism in the late 20th century. People are just dicks, and changes in economic systems can't fix that.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Crime shows like "CSI" and "NCIS" and even that show about the operations of a casino "Las Vegas", which have direct access to everything without the need for a court order or others' say-so, will be a reality!
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
"I used to work with a guy who grew up in Bulgaria under communism there. Starting at about age 13, he was required to work a few hours every day in a local factory. The sort of exploitation of workers, especially child labor, that was normal for capitalism in the late 19th century was normal for communism in the late 20th century."
I call bullshit. I asked several people born in the USSR and a coworker born in Poland in 1955: they said "Maybe during WW2, but unthinkable after that"; the Polish guy said "I wanted to work as a paperboy when I was 14 and the newspaper needed my parents' permission".
In the USSR it was farmers - they took your land (and all stored food) and offered you the opportunity to work on government farms - but child labor was normal on farms throughout history, so maybe that's a bad example.
But Poland and the USSR were both quite prosperous compared to Bulgaria, Romania, and the like. Conditions were worse in the satellites, in general.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm not impressed with 1984 society at all. That's the point. When our government cares about citizens less than THEY did then it's a problem.