Slashdot Mirror
The DEA and ICE Are Hiding Surveillance Cameras In Streetlights (qz.com)
According to federal contracting documents, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have hidden an undisclosed number of covert surveillance cameras inside streetlights around the country. Quartz reports: According to government procurement data, the DEA has paid a Houston, Texas company called Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC roughly $22,000 since June 2018 for "video recording and reproducing equipment." ICE paid out about $28,000 to Cowboy Streetlight Concealments over the same period of time. It's unclear where the DEA and ICE streetlight cameras have been installed, or where the next deployments will take place. ICE offices in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio have provided funding for recent acquisitions from Cowboy Streetlight Concealments; the DEA's most recent purchases were funded by the agency's Office of Investigative Technology, which is located in Lorton, Virginia. "We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures," Christie Crawford, who owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, told Quartz. "Basically, there's businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that's what we do. They specify what's best for them, and we make it. And that's about all I can probably say."
When it comes to installing equipment on telephone poles and street lights, it's all tightly regulated. If they are doing this without any notification then they are likely violating multiple city/county regulations and state laws.
Food for thought.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Hey, fuck you buddy, why the hell are you blaming Crete for this shit?
Have you ever been to Crete? No.
Do they have public surveillance in Crete? No.
Do they even have good cell phone access in Crete? No.
If you can manage to comprehend the story, this is being done by Fucking Texans!
You might want to buy yourself a dictionary there bub. A cretin is a stupid person. The derivation of the word has nothing to do with Crete, it's actually a corruption of the word "Christian" oddly enough.
The local governors recently put up multiple $44,000 streetlight fixtures near interstate intersections, apparently without the Cowboy Neil? Streetlight Concealments... I wonder just exactly how many fixtures, retailing at $22k and $28K, could've been purchased for this insidious TLA deployment?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Do they have public surveillance in Crete? No.
Oh really? https://www.researchgate.net/p...
Do they even have good cell phone access in Crete? No.
Crete is actually rather small and has cell phone coverage everywhere.
If you can manage to comprehend the story, this is being done by Fucking Texans!
Texans? What a bunch of cretins.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Move to London then. They've got cameras all over. Doesn't seem to have done much about the crime though. Turns out that criminals can just cover their faces.
I can't for the life of me imagine why people will gladly run to totalitarian solutions with arms wide open just because they think it will solve some other problem. It won't, but now you've just given the government more power and more control, and good luck clawing that back.
We can finally put an end to those terrible weed smokers and migrant workers.
Well, probably not.
But all it cost us was our rights and our privacy.
And somewhere north of a trillion dollars.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Woosh. Typical you missed the humor.
Based on the amounts paid, this barely covers 8 cameras in total, probably a lot less if you factor in the cost of the software to support them.
Their use is often quite limited as the cellular charges for the things can get out of hand. Mostly used for tactical specific investigation, and not blanket surveilance for that reason.
Full disclosure - I have worked with this kind of camera and support them in their use, but not the brand indicated above AFAIK.
then don't shoot out streetlights. /s
Seriously, the streetlight across from my house sways so much in even a minor wind that it is out for hours at a time.
I can't imagine the impact repeated electrical outages would have on electronics,
Of all terrorist groups DEA, NSA and ICE are among the country's most vile enemies.
This is just one more piece of evidence on the ever-expanding pile that shows every last one of them hates all of us for our freedoms and will stop at nothing to annihilate what's left of the ideals of democracy, freedom and justice for all.
They are armed, dangerous, and have openly declared war (both through "on drugs" and "on terrorism") on the entire citizenry of the United States. Every last one of them must stop existing. It's them now, or soon enough it'll be us.
Hey, fuck you buddy, why the hell are you blaming Crete for this shit?
Was this your high school?
https://www.niche.com/k12/cret...
A contract with DEA and ICE for 6 months, and all you managed to fleece them for is $22,000? Lightweights.
You need a better sales/marketing dept.
It really doesn't take much effort to make a "good enough" concealment. Basically, the higher off the ground, the easier. Make them look like they're part of the utility infrastructure, and you're home free. The hard part is weatherproofing and hot days in the sun with no wind. For being rain-proof you want no holes, yet to cool down you do, since heat sinks are hard to hide.
We primarily made concealments containing steerable high-zoom video cameras, the same ones used in high-end security systems, mounted to extremely accurate miniature PTZ bases. The cameras had internal image stabilization, but we also added external stabilization. Then we added automatic subject tracking, so no remote operator on a joystick was needed.
They were bought by TLAs (Three Letter Agencies), and generally needed a warrant to be mounted and activated.
When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started, we were asked to modify our technology to provide 360-degree surveillance for forward fire bases, who never had enough soldiers to use as sentries 24/7. Our systems turned out so good that we next had to integrate them with C4I systems, just as was done with the video from Predator drones. We initially built the systems into concealments, but soon found that beige paint was good enough, and we simply used sturdy tripods.
When Somali pirates became a problem, we modified our systems so they could be mounted to ships to again provide 360 degree surveillance.
We were riding high, a small company (well under 100 employees) who was by far the largest provider in a specialty market. Then the Budget Sequestration of 2011 hit, and all of our government customers not only became unable to buy our new products, they couldn't even fund support contracts or repairs. The guillotine fell, but fortunately we had already started a pivot toward vertical integration, to provide the communication systems needed to relay the surveillance video.
We entered that market in the right way at the right time, and soon had a long list of prospective customers. But our reduced income caused us to burn through our cash stockpile, and then the banks to stop lending to us: The company folded just as our new products were ready to go into production. That really hurt.
Looking back, my favorite product was the firebase surveillance system. We were told it had helped prevent countless sneak attacks.
It is bad enough to have a surveillance state. I understand the need for security cameras, general traffic cameras, and even SOME surveillance cameras. But I personally draw the line at *concealed* cameras [and microphones]. I don't think they have any place in a free society... public or private, government or business. Government wants one installed? Get probable cause, get a time-limited warrant, they must be temporary and have a clear, present, and provable objective.
this is why. ICE was a secondary and borderline paramilitary police force created in the wake of the 9/11 hysteria. We already had plenty of existing power structures in place to control immigration, we didn't need another. You should be very, very careful when folks are asking for entirely new police forces. Ask yourself, what can this new police force do that the old ones couldn't? You probably wouldn't like the answer.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yes, statistically it doesn't do much good at all. But the control freaks and power-hungry types don't feel like peeing their pants out of anxiety when they can grip the general public as tightly as possible.
Used to be if you said something like "The Government is Hiding Surveillance Cameras In Streetlights", you'd be labelled as a paranoid nut and probably locked up for you own good.
Difference is, in 2018 it's actually true.
The big Q is, "Are you pro Crete or con Crete?"
This space unintentionally left blank.
I hope this is humor.
The TL;DR version: "I can dish it out but I can't take it."
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Please explain how a hosts file protects against speculative execution vulnerabilities.
The one time they've tried to change things and voted for Brexit, their rulers were outraged and are attempting to nullify the result.
That is just so full of lies and/or stupid I don't know where to begin.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
More lies from an idiot.
Brexit, their rulers were outraged and are attempting to nullify the result.
May is outraged? Johnson is outraged? Raab? Hunt? Reese-Mogg? Hell, even Corbyn?
You're yet again simply lying about stuff because you want to blame teh ibruhls for things and in your view anything you can think of no matter how wild is true.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Someone please tell me they're not affiliated with the Catheter Cowboy. That would be a rough merger.
I didn't even bother to finish reading the summary, I have the flu and a hangover, which is turning out to be unpleasant, anyways just wanted to comment.
For the last year or so I have been working on Building Management Software (BMS).
Nice change for me since I have a long financial background, and tend to get head hunted by banks etc.
So since I am working with BMS I've started looking up a LOT more, because I need to talk to those camera's mounted in the ceiling, that fire detector over there etc. so I have just started paying more attention to shit mounted on the ceiling. There are camera's EVERYWHERE, it's actually fucking scary. I live in a 2nd world country (although I class it as 3rd, most others don't) so I can only imagine in first world countries it's even more prevalent. Do yourself a favor (or disfavor) and look up more, start paying attention to the shit above you, you will not be happy with what you find. We needed to check on a desktop PC that just happened to be deployed in my cities control center. Someone kicked the back of the PC and dislodged the network cable, usually we are not allowed in there, or more accurately I am not allowed in there, I'm a programmer not a desktop technician, but they were desperate and asked me to take a look. There were rows on rows of people sitting monitoring cameras from all around the city, from highway camera's to street camera's to camera's mounted outside public buildings and power lines. Each person had three video walls in front of them with different sized video tiles, I am not sure if that was the only camera's they could see, or just the ones they were currently monitoring, I wasn't in there long and when I started asking questions I didn't get any answers. There were easily a 100 people in there, probably more, all monitoring camera's all over the city. Most buildings have camera's in their elevators, think you are alone in the elevator and can scratch your balls? Think again, there is a camera in there somewhere. So now when I drive to work and get stuck in traffic I tend to look up, and spot the camera's. Look up more, you won't like what you find.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
To get electrical power and their own fast networking in.
People tend to notice a set of CCTV like camera equipment to capture driver and passengers faces next to a citizenship question road stop with the citizenship alerting K9 units.
Workers for telcos also notice law enforcement requests for their city, states networks.
A "hide' lets all enforcement with federal funding get past local telco workers and any need for their new equipment to be seen in the open.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You have truly scaled the cliffs of inanity, who done.
You keep blithering about the rulers yet literally ignoring all the rich ruling toffs who want to leave.
As for your laughably idiotic assessment of May's negotiating... you clearly think there's some magical way of winning against very experienced negotiators when you have the weakest hand and everyone knows it.
And it's especially stupid when we have promised several mutually exclusive things on the Ireland border. I'll bet you have no solution for that either expect drooling about "rulers".
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I know that this "camera in a street light" has been is use by law enforcement at least since the early to middle 90's. One of the main uses was to have a camera situated so that it was focused on a phone booth. This was to watch for a specific user of the phone and in higher crime areas to observe drug dealers and other miscreants phone usage. When / if those users were using the phone, then a court order for a phone tap could be asked for. That's how long ago these cameras were being used, pay phones and court orders.
Passionately Indifferent
You will stand for the national anthem, not kneel.
(Look to JK Rowling's recent tweets about Trump and remember than 1984 had lots of camera)
After a long hard session in the bathroom, I've decided I'm an ex-crete
Yeah, that's the sort of numbers I was getting. TFS isn't at all clear on whether or not the bills are purely for supplying the hardware, or for supply and installation. If it's just for the hardware, weatherproofed and batteried (so they'll still work when the light isn't powered up) ... you might cover a hundred or so of these. If it's to supply and install, then it's probably a couple of dozen only. Putting a man up on a cherry picker isn't exactly cheap. and sparkies ticketed to work on public utilities cost too. Even without getting any landsharks involved.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I don't understand. Either this was a very specific operation limited to a small area or these things have gotten much cheaper than I realized.
It's too early in the morning for me to read the whole article.
I mean I bought some decent but very reasonably priced security cams for my home in the last year, but they're nothing stealthy. (I keep telling myself that's a feature, not a bug).
But compared to prices I hear for red light cameras or body cameras for cops or whatever, how can this be so cheap unless it was very specific and small in scope?
We ought to string up the owners of this company by the nearest tree. And others who runs similar companies. This is clear betrayal against their fellow Americans for financial interest. Everyone e who lives in the USA knows we're in a cold war with our own government. Just a matter of time before it heats up
My dog to the rescue!
Have gnu, will travel.
traffic control cams
Some of these don't feed video back to a headquarters*. They just drive object detection software to sense vehicles present and trigger the signal cycle. They replace inductive traffic loops, which are high maintenance items.
*But you can never be sure.
Have gnu, will travel.
the savages killing innocents is thousands of times bigger the problem and why they need to be gunned down when a danger to others. Like that "gentle giant" in Ferguson, actually a dangerous violent huge primate
for one, they make me less free from cameras observing public places.
Whoosh! Kinda flew right over your head, huh, bub?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
If the installer of the surveillance equipment did their job properly, why would Bubba be doing more than just changing the bulb?
What bulb? This is an LED fixture.
While I haven't yet found a picture of it, the LED fixtures that are getting installed where I drive seem to have integral LEDs. It looks like "Relamping" them means replacing the fixture.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It looks like "Relamping" them means replacing the fixture.
And that actually makes sense. LEDs are still more than a factor of two short of 100% efficient and still improving. By the time these fixtures need relamping it would probably be better to replace them even if the "lamps" were a replaceable part.
So why make them more complicated and expensive by making what amounts to the entire guts a removable unit, in the hopes somebody will buy some more of that piece ten or twenty years later?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Red light cameras are sold as, among other things, reducing accidents, by reducing the number of people who run the light.
Turns out they increase them. They do it by reducing the number of people who run the red light, too.
At intersections with red light cameras, some drivers who notice the light went yellow (but missed the event and don't know just how long ago it happened) slam on the brakes rather than risk a ticket - and get rear-ended by someone who knew there was plenty of time left.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The places are publicly owned and accessible.
Things that happen there CAN still be private: when you look around, and see that no other person is there or nearby, then you have a reasonable expectation of almost complete privacy.
Also, if somebody records your voice without the consent of at least one party to the conversation, then you have what is called an illegal recording; A.K.A. illegal unauthorized wiretap.
I didn't say anything about race, talked about behavior. How typical of those that imagine themselves enlightened, raising the race smokescreen to hide the truth that we have violent dangerous lawless people making our inner cities a war zone.