30,000 Cameras Can't Be Wrong: Chicago Banks On Surveillance To Solve Violence Problem

from the here's-looking-at-you,-Chicago-[unblinking-eye-pans-to-follow-passing-citize dept

Tue, Jun 5th 2018 3:35pm — Tim Cushing

Chicago's gun violence rate -- now in the midst of a long period of decline, never mind what the Attorney General and President say in public statements/tweet -- has been a concern for a few years now. The DOJ, before being chased away from policing the police by Jeff Sessions, noted the PD had destroyed its relationship with city residents with unconstitutional policing and an antagonistic attitude. A couple of high-profile shootings of Chicago residents by police officers did nothing to help.

Chicago is the poster child for violent crime, despite its rate of crime being lower than under-the-radar cities like Ft. Worth, Memphis, and Houston. This had led to all sorts of solutions being suggested, including the return of unconstitutional policing (Attorney General), sending in the troops (President Trump), and a sharp uptick in surveillance (the Chicago PD).

The New York Times covers the city's surveillance expansion under the headline "Can 30,000 Cameras Help Solve Chicago's Crime Problem?" The answer is unclear, despite the many glowing reviews of the city's camera network delivered by law enforcement officers and officials. The subhed -- "But what does it mean for residents' privacy?" -- is barely discussed.

The network Chicago is deploying involves thousands of hi-def cameras, automatic license plate readers, mugshot databases, and predictive policing software. That the system went online roughly about the time homicide numbers began to decline has prompted praise -- perhaps unearned -- for the system's ability to rid the city of its violent crime problem.

The department tested the use of technology in two of its most violent areas in early 2017. When crime began to fall, the department ultimately set aside space in 13 of its 22 police stations for the surveillance centers, which tap into the city’s approximately 30,000 government-operated closed-circuit cameras.

Inside, civilian crime analysts from the University of Chicago Crime Lab — self-described “nerds” who are often learning data science on the fly — and uniformed officers work side by side at computer terminals, scrutinizing crime data as they search for trends.

Much of the technology is similar to equipment used by dozens of police departments around the nation: sensors to detect the location of gunshots, software designed to predict the time and location of crimes and license plate readers that photograph thousands of plates per minute.

Cops like the system. It provides a wealth of information, starting with location of reported gunshots and working from there to bring up arrest records of people in the area and vehicle locations of suspects. Fun stuff for cops. Not so much for the thousands of innocent people who live in heavily-surveilled areas. Predictive policing software's track record isn't much better than facial recognition AI. Both have a tendency to generate false positives, but predictive policing allows cops to conjure reasonable suspicion out of ambient temperature, moon stages, and someone's proximity to known criminals. You may think I'm being facetious, but here's the receipt.

The civilian analysts spend much of their time feeding a range of information into software called HunchLab, which considers a number of variables — from gang tensions and gunshot reports to the number of parolees living in an area — to forecast crime by giving probability scores, much like a meteorological report.

HunchLab also examines less obvious data points, like the location of liquor stores and schools, an area’s proximity to local expressways, and even weather conditions and phases of the moon (there is more crime during full moons; no one knows why).

In reality, it seems to do little more than shore up preconceived notions. This is what may have gotten the city into the mess in the first place. And the DOJ's inability to move forward with investigations of police forces means the PD may never have to answer fully for its unconstitutional behavior. What residents are getting instead of better police officers and policies is a massive surveillance network -- one deployed with almost zero public comment or oversight. Some transparency has been put in place, but only after the system has been fully deployed, and it largely consists of invitations to community leaders to tour local "strategic centers" to look at the people looking at screens showing images of their friends and neighbors.

As local activist Kofi Ademola puts it, residents weren't asked about the new system. They were simply told this was the way forward.

“There was not a conversation like, ‘Do you want this in your community?’ ” he said. “Instead, the Chicago police say, ‘This is in your community and it is going to cut crime,’ and unfortunately, people don’t question that. It’s now been normalized for these communities to be under constant surveillance, which contributes to the criminalization of people. It is problematic.”

The situation is unlikely to change. It won't be scaled back, even if current crime rate declines plateau. To its proponents, it's the only explanation for the decline in violence. Efforts have been made to overhaul stop-and-frisk policies, which may have helped community relations, but there's no weight backing it up or codifying the changes. The DOJ isn't going to step in and demand permanent changes and city officials have taken heat from law enforcement reps for the minimal corrective efforts they have managed to put in place.

Sure, the system may do some good, but at what societal cost? Will certain residents just assume their lives will be documented and stored in law enforcement databases so long as they live or work in certain neighborhoods? Will guilt by association increase the number of interactions with law enforcement just because they have the misfortune to live in gang territory or a few houses away from recently-released felons? Those are questions that no one can answer with anything but "yes" at this point. The police feel this is an acceptable tradeoff: lower crime for 24-hour surveillance. Those being surveilled have been given no say in the matter.

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Filed Under: chicago, police, surveillance, violence

32 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2018 @ 3:48pm

Wrong minion! What are you doing covering Chicago?
Geigner must be, uh... deprecated.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2018 @ 3:49pm

The trouble is that cameras will be using 3g, 4g, or 5g internet to communicate with the monitoring centers. There are jammers that can jam data, but not voice, so any mobile internet device within range of the jammer quits working, but voice calls still go through.

I had a neighbor in my apartment complex a few years ago who used one of those at dinner time, to keep his kids from either texting or using the internet during dinner, but voice calls would still go through. Becuase his jammer did not jam voice calls, that did not violate FCC rules, since jamming data does not break FCC rules.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2018 @ 3:59pm

Jammers are ILLEGAL
https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement
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norahc (profile), 5 Jun 2018 @ 4:07pm

George Orwell writes a classic novel about a surveillance society...

Governments everywhere respond with "Hold my beer."
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 5 Jun 2018 @ 4:07pm

Reactive vs Proactive

The network Chicago is deploying involves thousands of hi-def cameras, automatic license plate readers, mugshot databases, and predictive policing software.

Hi-def cameras, automatic license plate readers, mugshot databases are all reactive. They might help catch someone after the fact. That predictive policing software, most likely a joke, and it will be a long, long, long time before it actually has sufficient data to prove its efficacy. In the meantime resources are being expended on things that will not prevent crime.

I would think Chicago, or any other municipality, would be better off spending their money on those things that are likely causes of crime. Poverty and homelessness come to mind. Getting the police under control might also help. There is also the likelihood that some portion of the corruption in Chicago is due to gangs or mob type operations that getting the police under control would mitigate.

Cameras and this other crap won't prevent. Do other things.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 5 Jun 2018 @ 6:21pm

From the city that ran a black site torturing people based on hunches.

There is no possible way the video will be edited to fit the narrative, I mean there was only the ONE cop who staged bodycam video to support the arrest after the fact.

People don't trust the police, so that makes their job harder.
This distrust has deep roots in the history of the force.
They behave in ways worse than some of the gangs, and calling them for help can result in death... so what benefit is there in giving info on killers to killers?
The gangs keep control through fear and intimidation... how does the Chicgo PD keep control?? (Hint: It's not Protect and Serve)

We keep throwing money at problems, praying the tech will magically solve it, ignoring that sometimes the most simple fixes would be cleaning up the police force, closing black sites, stop behaving like the gangs you are supposed to protect us from. Rebuild the trust, be the better option than letting the gangs patrol the neighborhood.

But lets waste more money on some magic beans that promise to solve the problems & ignore that fairy tales are just stories.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 5 Jun 2018 @ 6:31pm

Jammers
But fining illegal or prison illegal?

If you're about to throw down on gangsters you may not care about the illegality or the fines.

More interesting will be if they get hacked to accept the wrong signal via MITM. Then it becomes a matter of recording and sending a night's worth of calm while the evil goes down.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2018 @ 7:28pm

> there is more crime during full moons; no one knows why

Better lighting. Under a full moon, even an area with zero artificial lighting can be visible enough to support human activity, whether criminal or not. Under a new moon, artificial lighting will be required - and if the area doesn't provide its own, flashing torches around will likely draw the cops quickly.
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Pixelation, 5 Jun 2018 @ 7:39pm

Let's hope
Let's hope these cameras catch the criminals in the act. Hopefully the images will be clear enough to read the badge numbers.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2018 @ 7:45pm

Tech vs tech
I bet we'll see some experiments with infrared hats and car plates at night.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2018 @ 10:17pm

Re: Jammers are ILLEGAL
That depends on the jammer. The neighbors I had used to have jammers that jammed data, but not voice, so people could make and receive voice calls, it is just text and data that were blocked, voice calls could still made and received with no problem.

And I was told by apartment management of the time that their jammers were legal, becuase they did not interfere with voice calls, just data, and that his blocking of data so that his children would not either text or use the internet on their phone, was legal, from what I was told, because he did not jam voice communications, just data
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2018 @ 10:20pm

Re: Jammers are ILLEGAL
Other ways to defeat a camera, to keep your license plate number from being read, is one of the anti-camera license plate covers that can be seen straight on with the human eye, but that will be invisible to cameras at an angle.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 12:22am

The Chicago police are like children gleefully playing with taxpayer-funded toys.

This is an insult.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 1:33am

Re: Reactive vs Proactive
And then there are these anti camera license covers.

And with the radical environmentalists wanting to twist the endangered species act where you could go go prison for merely accidentally running over, say an endangered frog or snake, driving at night, having those are a good idea, so that no license plate readers in the area can record your plate number.

One thing I do now, as well, get my car washed more often, and pay cash, so there is no money trail to me, especially if I have recently done a lot of driving at night.

Washing my car to get rid of evidence of accidentally running over an endangered frog or snake at night, does, by itself, break any laws.

Washing my car to erase any evidence that might be used against me does not break any laws. I get the highest level wash which guarantees that nothing can ever be found to use as a test case against me. And doing that does not break any laws.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 2:14am

As per the septum that counsels the hound
Violence is a disease, you don't cure it by speading it.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 3:15am

Re:
Anything that can be explained by incopetance is more likely explained by malace when perpetrated by any organization more than 20 people
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 3:19am

Re:
Jammers are not a solution in any case, having a society not based entirely on state violence is the solution
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Peter John, 6 Jun 2018 @ 4:52am

Integrated surveilance
The cameras collect a lot of data. Too much data. What is need is an AI system that will search for illegal activities. Or at least track certain people.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 5:36am

The authorities are approaching the problem the wrong way. The bulk of Chicago's violent crime is coming from an extremely narrow demographic. More focus needs to be applied to that specific demographic.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 5:52am

Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 6th, 2018 @ 5:36am
"The authorities are approaching the problem the wrong way. The bulk of Chicago's violent crime is coming from an extremely narrow demographic. More focus needs to be applied to that specific demographic."

So in other words the cameras should be pointed at the cops?
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 6:33am

Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 6th, 2018 @ 5:36am
Yes, that would be a good start. Cleaning up the historically-corrupt Chicago police is a goal worth pursuing. Chicago could start by banning cops from taking jobs as "off duty officers" -- especially those who work in less-than-reputable establishments.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 6:39am

Re: Re: Jammers are ILLEGAL
Nope -- jamming is illegal no matter what service is being jammed. (It's a physical layer RF problem, not a telco problem -- see 47 USC 333 for the inside scoop)
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 8:50am

Re: Re: Jammers are ILLEGAL
>The neighbors I had used to have jammers that jammed data, but not voice

No, they did not. The packets are exactly the same, the same frequencies, the same encoding, the same access method. short of decoding the packets you cannot tell what is in them, voice or data, they are exactly the same.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 9:14am

What's unclear?

The New York Times covers the city's surveillance expansion under the headline "Can 30,000 Cameras Help Solve Chicago's Crime Problem?" The answer is unclear, despite the many glowing reviews of the city's camera network delivered by law enforcement officers and officials.

Looking over to London, I'm getting a pretty clear "no". What's different here?
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 9:44am

Well, when crime goes up it's due to a lousy economy and other bugaboos. When it goes down, it's due to great policing.

Nothing new here!
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Beefcake (profile), 6 Jun 2018 @ 12:31pm

In other news...
Sales in Chicago of Donald Trump masks increased 1000% practically overnight.
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Slow Joe Crow, 6 Jun 2018 @ 12:52pm

London indicates otherwise
London has more cameras than any other city, and a rising homicide rate. Cameras won't help Chicago, although the stats on Hey Jackass show a decline from the peaks of 2016 & 2017, so the gang members may killing each other off.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 12:57pm

Re: Re: Re: Jammers are ILLEGAL
The company managing the apartments at that time also told me their jamming was not illegal because the jamming signal did not go beyond the property. They told me to go to another part of the property if I needed to use my phone's internet. The management who was here at that time told me these people were doing anything illegal because the jamming signal did not go beyond the property

Nobody driving by on the street was affected.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 5:11pm

Only education will solve violence, maybe in the next few centuries... if mankind survives.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2018 @ 5:54pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Jammers are ILLEGAL
Perhaps the building manager did not want to deal with the problem and that is why he claimed it was not illegal.
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Anonymous Cowherd, 7 Jun 2018 @ 6:01am

Apparently it's OK to discriminate people based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, etc again, as long as you remember to add "...with a computer" at the end.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2018 @ 3:32pm

Re:
Yes, but don't you dare download a copyrighted file.
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