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

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.

Filed Under: chicago, police, surveillance, violence

The Attorney General Thinks Police Having To Follow The Constitution Leads To Violent Crime Increases

from the it's-not-just-him-unfortunately dept

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an old-school law and order man. He wants asset forfeiture returned to its former glory -- no longer questioned by all and sundry for its ability to enrich law enforcement agencies without making much of a dent in criminal activity. He wants drug sellers jailed for as long as possible, suggesting the last time he read a policy paper was sometime during the mid-1980s. And he thinks people questioning law enforcement efforts should be ashamed of themselves, what with the dangers faced occasionally by officers whose workplace can't even crack the Top 10 Deadliest Jobs in America list.

Sessions goes where he's wanted when he speaks, ensuring he'll receive applause and accolades, rather than a bunch of "wtfs?" when he delivers bullshit like this:

I believe one of my highest duties is to call attention to your successes, and to encourage our fellow citizens to support you in your difficult and dangerous work.

But what has made times difficult recently for law enforcement is that—by the end of the previous administration—many of you came to believe that some of the political leadership of this country had abandoned you. Some radicals and politicians began to unfairly malign and blame police as a whole for the crimes and unacceptable deeds of a few. Amazing— their message seemed to be that the police were the problem, not the criminals. They wanted the ACLU to determine police policies, and that was enforced by a federal court order. They said police were violent while homicides in America increased by a total of 20% in 2015 and 2016, the largest jump since 1968. Law Professor Paul Cassell and economics Professor Richard Fowles established that in Chicago, homicide jumped 58% after the ACLU settlement ended proven and constitutional policing.

This was delivered to the National Association of Police Organizations -- a union of police unions -- so there was no one present to question the veracity of this statement, nor push back against its loaded, implicit assertions. No one would expect any more (or any less!) of an organization of organizations which are largely responsible for the general state of disrepair that passes for policing these days.

Law enforcement has never been abandoned. Even when the criticism rains down from the federal government, it's always hedged with phrases implying the problem is a few officers, rather than the culture itself. If all it takes is an incremental increase in accountability to make officers feel "abandoned," they're far too sensitive to be holding positions of public power.

Second, Sessions shows he doesn't care about police misconduct or public accountability by maligning those who demand accountability as "radicals." This suggests Sessions is more interested in a docile nation than upholding his duties as Attorney General, which (used to) include investigating and prosecuting officers who abuse their power.

Finally, his portrayal of the rise in violence in Chicago as the direct result of a consent decree is both dishonest and ugly. The consent decree dealt with the Chicago PD's stop-and-frisk tactics. The PD agreed to revamp its policies after a 2015 report by the ACLU found the program disproportionately targeted black residents. In other words, Sessions is claiming requiring cops to behave Constitutionally results in increased criminal activity.

That would be bad enough on its own, but there's not one single thing Sessions can point at to back up this claim -- not even the report itself. Correlation isn't causation and there's ample evidence a consent decree that requires Constitutional policing does not lead to increased crime. We have apples-to-apples comparisons that disprove this ridiculous theory.

The NYPD was forced to drastically alter its stop-and-frisk program for the same reasons (targeting minorities). Crime went down, despite then-mayor Michael Bloomberg's promise of a criminal apocalypse. That's only one example. Salvador Rizzo of the Washington Post has several more.

Philadelphia has been working under a settlement agreement on stop-and-frisk practices like Chicago’s since 2011, and its homicide rate fell for several years afterward before rising again in 2016 and 2017 (albeit at much lower rates than in Chicago).

Seattle has been under a consent decree that includes stop-and-frisk provisions since 2012, and its yearly homicide rate has been mostly steady, hovering between 19 and 27, in the following years.

In Newark, N.J., a consent decree imposing requirements for stop-and-frisk practices, among other provisions, was adopted in 2016. The city reported 72 homicides in 2017, a 25 percent drop, although nonfatal shootings increased.

“The consent decree was signed and the monitor appointed in the spring and summer of 2016, and Newark continues to have the lowest crime in 50 years since then,” said Paul J. Fishman, the former U.S. attorney for New Jersey, who implemented the consent decree.

Sessions is correct in terms of quoting the report's findings. But the findings cannot possibly be correct. Even if the stats are right, the rationale is wrong. Fewer police stops may lead to increased crime, but connecting the two is far from a foregone conclusion. And yet, there it is, in a still-unreleased report that provides ammo for supporters of unconstitutional policing.

Even the authors of the report find it difficult to make this conclusion stick. To do so means throwing out other contradictory evidence, which is exactly what appears to have happened.

Cassell and Fowles called New York City an “anomaly” and wrote that it had a much lower rate of homicides committed with firearms than Chicago, “a small number of guns and gun crimes (relative to Chicago and many other cities),” and a police force that is about 25 percent larger than Chicago’s on a per-capita basis.

The other "anomalies" (Philadelphia, Seattle, Newark, etc.) were ignored. The DOJ itself -- which Sessions heads -- did not arrive at this conclusion either. Its report on increased violence suggests a few factors, none of which are the consent decree governing police stops.

“Over the year-plus since release of that video, and while we have been conducting this investigation, Chicago experienced a surge in shootings and homicides,” the DOJ report says. “The reasons for this spike are broadly debated and inarguably complex. But on two points there is little debate. First, for decades, certain neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West Sides have been disproportionately ravaged by gun violence. Those same neighborhoods have borne the brunt of the recent surge of violence. And second, for Chicago to find solutions — short- and long-term — for making those neighborhoods safe, it is imperative that the City rebuild trust between CPD and the people it serves, particularly in these communities.”

While Chicago may be grabbing headlines with its high number of homicides, several other US cities have experienced higher spikes in the violent crime rate -- Ft. Worth, Houston, Memphis, and Baltimore have seen far more significant increases than Chicago's. But no one is claiming these spikes are due to ACLU meddling, consent decrees, or the actions of "radicals" opposed to abusive policing. Nope, it's just AG Sessions cherry-picking a single report with anomalous "findings" -- one that refers to data that doesn't agree with its theory as "anomalous." Speaking in front of cops makes it that much easier to peddle bullshit. But that doesn't change the fact it's still bullshit, no matter how much uncritical applause is offered in return.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, chicago, jeff sessions, police, police brutality, police misconduct, stop-and-frisk
Companies: napo, national association of police organizations

Chicago Wins 'Most Corrupt City' Award Due In No Small Part To Its Awful Redlight Camera System

from the we-won-we-won dept

We've talked a great deal about my home city of Chicago, largely for the myriad of awful, corrupt practices it has put in place around topics that we cover here. For instance, we have an alderman trying to shore up the city budget by taxing the shit out of Uber and Lyft, our Mayor thought it was a great idea to have his own private email accounts to conduct business, and a red light camera system so hilariously geared towards bilking money from citizens that the courts have tossed out huge swaths of the tickets it generated, which led the city to decide to make it barely less corrupt by a measure of tenths-of-seconds worth of leeway for drivers crossing the intersection.

Now, you might be thinking that all of this effort to be corrupt and insidious seems like a waste. Wouldn't it be far easier, you might be thinking, to simply run the city in a sensible way? Wouldn't that actually require less effort and be better for the people of Chicago? Perhaps, but then Chicago wouldn't have received the prestigious award of "most corrupt city", as it did this past week.

A report released Tuesday ranks Chicago as the most corrupt city in the country and Illinois as the third-most corrupt state.

"What we find is a very dreary picture. In nearly every sector, whether you talk about aldermen, you talk about Chicago schools, you talk about contracts, in every area corruption is still rife in the city of Chicago," said Dick Simpson, lead author of the "Continuing Corruption in Illinois" study and a University of Illinois Chicago political science professor.

We did it! Suck it, every city in New Jersey! My hometown is the corruptest place in the land. And, as the UIC report notes, Chicago won this much sought after award in no small part to the very red light camera system we mentioned above.

Chicago's red light camera scandal sent an assistant transportation department commission to prison for bribery and extortion.

"What that means is that it's harder to get businesses to come here because of its corrupt state, we're losing population and corruption is one of the reasons we're losing population. We have undermined faith in government," Simpson said.

Asked to comment on the UIC report, Mayor Rahm Emanuel responded by noting how awesome a job he's done at not being corrupt, despite that not being the framing of the question at all. But that's the kind of response you can expect from Rahm, who has overseen the most corrupt city's government for more than seven years now. It has been under his watch that the camera system has flourished into the corruption monster it now is, not to mention it being under his watch that the Chicago Police Department has become the butt of a national joke.

So pop the champagne, fellow Chicago residents. It took a lot of hard work and effort, but we made it!

Filed Under: chicago, corruption, illinois, rahm emanuel, red light cameras

Ravinia Festival Bullies Startup Brewery, Leading The Brewery To Shut Down Plans For Opening

from the bully-for-you dept

I've had the opportunity to write about many trademark disputes in these pages, but it's been rare for any of them to hit very close to home. That changed this week when we learned that Ravinia Festival in the northern Chicago suburbs, at which I have seen many a concert, has decided to bully a startup brewery over its use of the word "Ravinia" in its name.

A demand for royalties from the Ravinia Festival halted preparations to open a brewpub in Highland Park's Ravinia district in the coming months. The outdoor music festival sent a letter to the Ravinia Brewing Company two weeks ago demanding licensing payments and royalties for the brewery's use of the neighborhood's name, according to the Ravinia Neighbors Association, a local community organization.

These demands simply make no sense. Ravinia Festival is a concert venue. It has trademark rights on the word Ravinia, a historical name for the area in which both businesses reside, for restaurants, catering services, and banquet services. It is not and never has been a brewer of beer, nor does it have a valid trademark for that market. There is no potential for customer confusion, either, as nobody is going to walk into a brewery expecting to see a classical music concert. In other words, this is pure bullying.

And, all the more annoying, Ravinia Festival can't even be bothered to be consistent in its bullying.

Between 1985 and 2015, the proposed location of the Ravinia Brewing Company's restaurant at 592 Roger Williams Avenue housed Ravinia BBQ. There is no indication Ravinia Festival ever sought licensing payments from that restaurant during its three decades of operation. In order for the music festival to get its trademark for "restaurant services," it filed a sworn statement alleging there was no other restaurant using the name, despite the existence of the longtime barbecue joint.

To be clear, Ravinia is bullying a brewery over the name of a geographic area using the term in a market in which Ravinia Festival does not operate. Meanwhile, Ravinia Festival likely did infringe on the trademark rights of the barbeque joint located at the exact same address as this new brewery back when it was in operation and lied on its trademark application to get the mark approved. Ravinia Festival also did not object when Ravinia Brewing Company applied for its own trademark back in 2015.

Sadly, none of that may matter, because Ravinia Festival has lots of money and the brewery does not.

The brewpub's owners, Highland Park residents Kris Walker, David Place and Brian Taylor, say they will be forced to cancel plans for the business if the music festival doesn't relent.

Their proposed pub planned to offer a full menu, but had no intention of hosting musical performances.

It looks like I may have to cross Ravinia Festival off of my list of concert venues in the future, unless there is enough public backlash to correct its behavior.

Filed Under: chicago, ravinia, trademark
Companies: ravinia brewing company, ravinia festival

Suburban Express, Which Sued Over Online Reviews Claiming It Had Racist Drivers, Cheerfully Sends Out Racist Advertisement

from the fly-your-flag dept

Remember Suburban Express? It's been a few years since we've had the pleasure of writing about the company that buses students between the University of Illinois and Chicago, or its lawsuit happy owner, Dennis Toeppen. Toeppen and his company have engaged in some fairly anti-consumer behaviors, most of which have to do with hefty three-figure fines unilaterally assessed to passengers for the most minor of infractions, like showing up for the wrong bus or on the wrong day. But some of the online critics also brought up issues with drivers for the company who treated foreign exchange students like trash in front of other passengers.

Now, one of Toeppen's excuses for filing lawsuits against those specific critics is that this foreign exchange student was apologized to, though the company has never said from who or at what time that apology was issued. One would think such an apology was an indication of regret over those racist comments, had such an apology ever actually been issued. Judging by a recent advertisement Suburban Express sent out for its Christmas bus schedule, it seems like the drivers take their cues from the company at large.

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Companies generally don't advertise that students will ride buses with: "passengers like you. You won't feel like you're in China when you're on our buses." Why? Well, because catering to any asshole that can't stand being on a bus with someone who looks a bit different from them isn't the MO for most people with a soul. One does wonder whether any lawsuits over the reviews accusing the company of racism would have survived all this being entered into evidence.

But, as per usual, Suburban Express was quick with an apology. And it's just dripping with remorse.

When called out for a racist advertisement, companies don't generally apologize for that by insisting that a major public university is terribly run because it admits a large number of foreign students, nor does it call that "selling out." For the record, the actual percentage of Chinese-born students at U of I is much lower, not to mention that the claim that higher-paying foreign exchange students somehow are a burden on Illinois residents seems like a self-defeating argument.

Regardless, the Illinois Attorney General has decided to get involved, opening an investigation into the company to determine if Suburban Express violated the Illinois Human Rights Act. And, whaddya know, shortly after Lisa Madigan got involved, the company apologized again.

No need to read the entire apology. It's actually apologetic, both for the initial advertisement and the first apology. Apologizing for an apology isn't generally a good look, but the reputation Suburban Express has built for itself practically begs you to read this supposedly sincere apology in a tone of sarcasm, because nothing in the history of the company suggests that we should take this as anything other than the shivering, whimpering attempt to avoid the scrutiny of a state attorney general known as a bulldog.

Best of luck to Suburban Express in getting itself out of this one, and even more luck to any foreign student finding herself in need of a ride to Champaign-Urbana.

Filed Under: bus, chicago, dennis toeppen, racism
Companies: suburban express

Chicago Considers Another Dumb 'Texting And Walking' Law To Raise Revenue

from the distracted-legislating dept

Since the advent of the smartphone, it seems that every few years or so, one government enttity or another suddenly has the brilliant idea that its constituency ought to have fines levied on them for "distracted walking." This catchall term has a much more specific meaning with in the laws in question: walking and using a phone at the same time. While this nonsense began mostly in foreign countries, there a few states in America that have some flavor of this kind of law on the books.

And now my beloved hometown of Chicago is looking to join the nanny government ranks in the most Chicago way possible: by charging enormous fines for "distracted walking" in a fairly naked attempt to generate revenue for the government.

Aldermen Ed Burke (Ward 14) and Anthony Beale (Ward 9) introduced an ordinance Wednesday aimed at changing pedestrians' bad behavior by fining them if they text or use a mobile device while walking through intersections in Chicago.

The measure proposed by Burke and Beale would fine pedestrians between $90 and $500 for each incident of using a mobile device while crossing a street or highway. The full City Council would have to pass the measure.

There are a myriad of reasons why these laws are silly. Given that we're talking about pedestrians here, it seems clear that these laws are being pitched as an attempt to protect the safety of the very citizens it would fine. That kind of parental hue of government is generally pretty silly, but not nearly as silly as expecting that a $500 fine will get someone to not blindly walk across a highway while texting, but the very likely result of being splattered across the windshield of an SUV wouldn't. In other words, were this crisis as dangerous as the good Aldermen suggest, the roads would be paved with blood, making for a perfectly suitable warning to distracted walkers. Notably, these deaths simply aren't happening.

Which is entirely besides the point, because if a fine that can be up to $500 for something as subjective as distracted walking is anything other than a cash-grab by a municipal government whose efforts to balance its budget are comedic at Mel Brooks levels, then I can't imagine what that other thing would be.

Filed Under: chicago, fines, texting, texting and walking

Chicago Alderman's Plan On City Budget Crisis: Let's Just Charge Uber And Lyft More To Fix It

from the that's-not-a-plan dept

Big city budgets are hellaciously complicated affairs. That much is obvious, but the actual level of management of a budget likely goes far beyond what the average member of the public realizes. Even with that stipulated, the city of Chicago's budget is an absolute mess. Budget shortfalls abound for any number of reasons, ranging from bloated payrolls, to pet projects that have missed the mark on cost projections, to a shortage of income related to police and parking activity from our infamous redlight cameras and our equally infamous privatization of parking meters. Anyone looking to solve this budget crisis is likely to begin pulling their hair out immediately, wondering where to even begin.

Except for Alderman Anthony Beale, longtime stooge for the taxi industry, who has suggested an easy fix: just go crazy in taxing the hell out of innovative ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft.

Beale, who chairs the City Council Transportation Committee, said he hopes Emanuel will revisit the idea of higher fees and tougher regulations on the burgeoning ride share industry as part of budget talks for 2018. He said the move would help even the playing field for cab drivers finding it increasingly difficult to compete. Beale wanted a per-ride charge of $1 on ride share companies as part of Emanuel’s 2016 budget. Instead, Emanuel raised the charge from 30 cents to 52 cents per ride.

“We should have went for the dollar and we negotiated down to the 50-cent (fee),” Beale said Wednesday. “Now here we are again, going for the dollar. And so, I think we could have been much further along if we had just stuck to our guns and gone for the dollar a couple years ago.”

Chicago has been a battleground of sorts in this fight between taxis and ride-sharing services. The per-ride fee instituted in 2016 came on the heels of a city-wide protest by taxis in 2015, where cabs refused to pick up fares in the downtown area and instead just honked their horns a bunch while those of us that work down here tried to actually do our jobs. The protest was designed not so much to rally public support to their side, as the public's voting with their wallets is what got us here in the first place. Rather, it was designed simply to be a pain in the city's ass enough for city officials to write in higher per-ride fees into its licensing legal framework.

And to that extent, it worked. The fee went up by a third or so. For Beale to lament the lack of a 300% increase in fees and, more fallaciously, to frame the desire for that increase as a budget solution when it is nothing of the sort, is fairly laughable. The real reason for Beale's angst is that he is the errand boy of Chicago's taxi companies, plain and simple. This is pure entrenched player protectionism and regulatory capture in reverse, with taxi companies looking to regulate more innovative and useful companies to death, or at least into some sort of insane fairness coma.

That isn't how government is supposed to be done, but it sure is the Chicago way.

Filed Under: anthony beale, budget, chicago, ride sharing
Companies: lyft, uber

Contractor Exposes Personal Information Of 1.8 Million Chicago Voters On AWS

from the oops dept

At some point, it seems clear that if Chris Vickery comes a-callin', you've screwed up when it comes to keeping the private information of customers/voters secure. Vickery works for Upguard, a cyber-security consulting firm that regularly seeks out insecure sites and works with their owners to secure them. Vickery's fingerprints have been on discoveries such as Verizon's exposure of the personal information of 6 million of its customers and a firm contracted by the GOP exposing the personal data of roughly every American voter everywhere.

And now Vickery and Upguard have found that a contractor managing the city of Chicago's voter rolls appears to have exposed more personal information on an AWS server.

The acknowledgment came days after a data security researcher alerted officials to the existence of the unsecured files. The researcher found the files while conducting a search of items uploaded to Amazon Web Services, a cloud system that allows users to rent storage space and share files with certain people or the general public. The files had been uploaded by Election Systems & Software, a contractor that helps maintain Chicago's electronic poll books.

Election Systems said in a statement that the files "did not include any ballot information or vote totals and were not in any way connected to Chicago's voting or tabulation systems." The company said it had "promptly secured" the files on Saturday evening and had launched "a full investigation, with the assistance of a third-party firm, to perform thorough forensic analyses of the AWS server."

So, a couple of things to note here. First, while it's true no voting information was exposed, a good deal of personal information certainly was. Names, addresses, last four digits of social security numbers; you know, all of the things one would need to wreak havoc on a person using their identifying information. Second, it appears that "promptly securing" the files mostly had to do with actually having a password needed to access them. There was no hacking required for Vickery to get to these files, because there was no password protecting them. Great.

Now, where I will give ES&S credit is that they are working with Upguard, rather than trying to vilify it, as we've seen done to so many other security researchers. That's a good thing. Still, Chicago officials are pretty pissed off.

"We were deeply troubled to learn of this incident, and very relieved to have it contained quickly," Chicago Election Board Chairwoman Marisel A. Hernandez said in a statement. "We have been in steady contact with ES&S to order and review the steps that must be taken, including the investigation of ES&S' AWS server. We will continue reviewing our contract, policies and practices with ES&S. We are taking steps to make certain this can never happen again."

Allen added that the board is considering how to notify and potentially offer remedies to those whose information was exposed.

"The expense for that is going to be borne by ES&S," Allen said. "This was a violation of the contract terms that explicitly lay out the requirement to safeguard the voters' data."

It's a wonder to this writer that the constant calls for things like e-voting machines continue when those in charge of securing voter data can't even do that right.

Filed Under: aws, chicago, chris vickery, cybersecurity
Companies: upguard

City Officials Step Up After DOJ Told To Stop Worrying About Civil Rights Violations By Law Enforcement Agencies

from the bold-'us-vs.-them'-strategy-to-prop-up-flagging-LEO-morale dept

It appears the DOJ will no longer be in the business of policing the police. A memo issued by every cop's new best friend, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, states the DOJ will be doing more to empower police and will conduct fewer civil rights investigations of law enforcement agencies. On one hand, it makes sense to have the locals handle their own problems. On the other hand, the locals have repeatedly shown a willingness to ignore abusive policing until the feds are forced to step in.

It may be difficult to roll back DOJ agreements and oversight of investigated agencies immediately. It may, in fact, be impossible. Those consent decrees that have made their way through the court system on the way to being put into force would take some serious litigating to roll back. It's not clear the DOJ's interested in attempting an expensive clawback of police oversight and policy changes.

It's those that haven't been formalized through this process that are in danger of being scaled back, if not removed completely. The DOJ has filed a motion asking for time to review its proposed consent decree with the Baltimore PD in light of AG Sessions' memo. The DOJ also just finished wrapping up an investigation of the Chicago PD, but statements made by Sessions and President Trump indicate the White House and DOJ are more interested in solving Chicago's crime problem, rather than its police problem.

Sessions himself has no interest in police misconduct or systemic civil liberties violations and abuse the DOJ has uncovered over the past eight years. He claimed the lengthy investigation the DOJ's civil rights division performed produced nothing more than "anecdotal" evidence. He made this claim while admitting he hasn't read any of the investigative reports.

By not reading the reports, Sessions won't have to deal with contradictory thoughts while shifting the DOJ towards its new position as a law enforcement booster club. Adam Serwer of The Atlantic points out the vast amount of denial Sessions is swimming in.

As attorney general, Sessions said he read a summary, but not the full Ferguson report, which found that “95% of Manner of Walking charges; 94% of all Fail to Comply charges; 92% of all Resisting Arrest charges; 92% of all Peace Disturbance charges; and 89% of all Failure to Obey charges” were filed against black residents. But on the basis of the summary alone, Sessions concluded that the report was “pretty anecdotal” and “not scientifically based.”

The refusal to believe police abuse could be systemic rather than individual is, in the aftermath of all the data collected by the very agency Sessions now leads, a form of denial. Nor can Sessions’s decision be justified by the familiar excuse that police reforms lead to higher crime rates—the notion that “it is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies,” is a normative standard that would eschew federal oversight of local police regardless of the crime rate or the gravity of any abuse that might occur.

This is a problem that's going to be bigger than just the guy sitting at the head of the DOJ organizational chart. Sessions' memo made it clear he actually believes misconduct and discriminatory policing are the handywork of a "few bad apples." That cannot possibly be true unless it's just a "few bad apples" issuing 90% of the summonses and performing 90% of the arrests. Every investigation by the DOJ turns up systemic abuses. Not one has reached the conclusion that the problems would all go away with a handful of firings.

Sessions' memo is morale booster for bad cops. It states the DOJ will focus on everything but systemic police misconduct and every excuse will be made to clear cops of wrongdoing. The DOJ's civil rights division at least gave people hope that America's policing could be improved, possibly even rising to the level of "constitutional" most of the time. That hope is now gone. As Adam Serwer puts it, Sessions' DOJ is abandoning the public by turning a blind eye to misconduct by public servants.

Sessions’s memo reads as an announcement that it is no longer the business of the federal government if American citizens’ rights are violated by those sworn to protect them and empowered with lethal force to do so. When local governments violate the basic constitutional rights of citizens, Americans are supposed to be able to look to the federal government to protect those rights. Sessions has made clear that when it comes to police abuses, they’re now on their own.

For what it's worth, some cities whose consent decrees might disappear thanks to the DOJ's new marching orders are promising to carry on without the federal government's carrots and sticks. Baltimore officials are saying they're not interested in rollbacks or compromises in the proposed consent decree the DOJ wants more time to examine in light of Sessions' "law and order" memo. [Warning: ad blocker-blocking dead ahead.]

Any interruption in moving forward may have the effect of eroding the trust that we are working hard to establish," Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh said in a statement.

The same goes for Chicago, where a consent decree may never be put in place by the DOJ.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and police chief Eddie Johnson have also vowed to press ahead with reforms within the city's police department, noting that a plan has already been drafted in recent weeks.

This is encouraging, even if the statements may end up being more sincere than the follow-through. The discouraging fact is these cities would have likely done nothing about the problems in their law enforcement agencies without the DOJ stepping in. If the DOJ's no longer going to be pursuing investigations of local PDs, it's all in the hands of local officials, and most are willing to ignore issues until they become front-page news around the nation.

Filed Under: baltimore, chicago, civil rights, doj, jeff sessions, police

Chicago Agrees To Make Red Light Camera System Barely Less Corrupt By Increasing Grace Period By 0.2 Seconds

from the yay? dept

It's been well-established at this point that red light cameras, those devices that issue tickets and blinding lights to drivers not stopping on red, have always been less about safety and more about the revenue produced by the tickets. That really should be enough a story of corruption for anyone to cast a wary eye at cities implementing these cameras, but you really have to admire the brazen committment to corruption the city of Chicago displayed when initially contracting with the company Redflex for its camera system. The CEO for Redflex was brought up on federal charges for bribing city officials, including offering some condos and cars, because why mess around? Yet, even once we move past the corrupt manner the cameras were put in place, Chicago saw tons of its tickets tossed by a judge who noted that the city wasn't even following its own rules for due process on those tickets. Furthermore, the cameras were set to have a "grace period," the buffer time for which a driver could run a red light and still not be ticketed, of .1 seconds, even as other major cities' grace periods were three times that, and it was laughably clear how this system was designed entirely to bring in city revenue.

Well, rejoice Chicagoans, because the city has been dragged into extending that grace period to the .3 seconds shared by other major cities, making the whole thing barely less nauseating.

Under the new policy, which was announced Monday, the grace period for Chicago’s red lights will move from 0.1 seconds to 0.3 seconds. This will bring the Windy City in line with other Americans metropolises, including New York City and Philadelphia. In a statement, the city agency said that this increase would “maintain the safety benefits of the program while ensuring the program’s fairness.”

Except it really doesn't. This is the same system, no longer operated by Redflex due to the company's corrupt practices, but still born of that same corruption and forever tainted by it. Unaddressed thus far are the city's failings in due process, nevermind any valid analysis showing a safety benefit to any of this. Instead, the city has basically agreed to collect slightly less revenue in its traffic camera revenue program. This, by the way, is the city with the largest red light camera program in the nation. So... yay?

Filed Under: chicago, corruption, red light cameras
Companies: redflex