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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."
"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.
But it has a donut vending machine next to the rack (separate power line though 'cuz that's what $7 mil gets you).
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
The only subtle distinction is that the terror that we need to worry about are increasingly of the domestic variety.
the important question is if the increase is the cause of our actions or effect of them.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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.
In 1984 the government actually cared about the citizens more than our government does.
Now let that sink in for a minute.
As if the internet surveillance is not enough, most cities now have networks of microphones so that Big Brother can listen in.