ShotSpotter (Again) Spotted Altering Shots (And Spots) To Better Serve Police Narratives

from the so-scientific-it-can-be-remodeled-on-the-fly! dept

Dozens of cities around the nation are relying on early warning tech to help their law enforcement get out ahead of crime. (Well, get out slightly behind crime, to be accurate…) Microphones and sensors placed in strategic locations around cities pick up loud noises and pass this information on to police departments so they can scramble cops to the spotted shot.

That's what ShotSpotter does. How well it does it is still up for debate. SpotShotter detects loud noises that might be gunshots, runs everything through some coding, and makes a determination. Maybe the sound is just a backfire or someone setting off fireworks. Or maybe it's actually gunfire.

This is what those in the cop business call "actionable intel." The problem is that ShotSpotter isn't as accurate as cops think it is. On the plus side, ShotSpotter appears to be every bit as malleable as cops want it to be.

A few years ago, we covered the story of a man who sued Rochester police officers after they used ShotSpotter data (after the fact) to justify shooting him. A lot of things in the narrative didn't add up.

Rochester resident Silvon Simmons was headed home from a convenience store around 9 pm when a cop car cut him off. The officer hit Simmons with his spotlight and then opened fire when Simmons ran away from the car. At no time did the officer identify himself as an officer.

The Rochester PD attempted to justify this use of deadly force when faced with no deadly threat. Officers said they found a gun in a yard, but it was several houses away from where Simmons was stopped and in the opposite direction of where he had run when confronted by the police officer. The officers then said Simmons had fired on them, prompting them to fire back. Simmons' DNA and fingerprints were not on the recovered gun.

So, the PD turned to ShotSpotter. What was originally determined to be "helicopter noise" by a ShotSpotter mic near the scene was changed to "multiple gunshots" at an officer's request. Unfortunately for the officer, ShotSpotter's count of shots fired was too few, as it only included the shots fired by officers. Another request resulted in ShotSpotter finding another gunshot in its recordings -- the one supposedly fired by Simmons at officers from the gun he never had in his possession. That was good enough to get him charged with aggravated assault on a police officer. He spent a year in jail before being acquitted on all charges.

ShotSpotter and its law enforcement partners are doing it again. They're altering evidence to fit narratives, as Todd Feathers reports for Motherboard.

On May 31 last year, 25-year-old Safarain Herring was shot in the head and dropped off at St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago by a man named Michael Williams. He died two days later.

Chicago police eventually arrested the 64-year-old Williams and charged him with murder (Williams maintains that Herring was hit in a drive-by shooting). A key piece of evidence in the case is video surveillance footage showing Williams’ car stopped on the 6300 block of South Stony Island Avenue at 11:46 p.m.—the time and location where police say they know Herring was shot.

The key connective evidence in this case comes from ShotSpotter. But since ShotSpotter didn't originally deliver the evidence officers wanted, the evidence apparently had to change. The night in question, 19 ShotSpotter devices "detected a percussive" sound, determining the originating location of this noise to be 5700 Lake Shore Drive. That's about a mile from the address where Williams' vehicle was caught on camera.

Obviously, evidence putting a potential gunshot a mile away from where the murder was supposedly committed wouldn't do. Alterations were made.

[A]fter the 11:46 p.m. alert came in, a ShotSpotter analyst manually overrode the algorithms and “reclassified” the sound as a gunshot. Then, months later and after “post-processing,” another ShotSpotter analyst changed the alert’s coordinates to a location on South Stony Island Drive near where Williams’ car was seen on camera.

It's one thing to review an alert and flag it as a potential gunshot (rather than the original determination that this might have been a firework). It's quite another to move the location of the detected noise to exactly where it does cops and prosecutors the most good.

This discovery has resulted in Williams and his lawyer raising a challenge to the evidence.

“Through this human-involved method, the ShotSpotter output in this case was dramatically transformed from data that did not support criminal charges of any kind to data that now forms the centerpiece of the prosecution’s murder case against Mr. Williams,” the public defender wrote in the motion.

The motion asks for the court to examine and rule on the evidence and ShotSpotter's methodology to determine whether they're scientifically sound. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing any in-depth examination of ShotSpotter or law enforcement's contribution to the shifting ShotSpotter narrative.

Rather than defend ShotSpotter’s technology and its employees' actions in a Frye hearing, the prosecutors withdrew all ShotSpotter evidence against Williams.

It would be presumptive to call this an implicit admission of guilt. But I think we've earned that indulgence. If this were legit evidence -- something both ShotSpotter and investigators could justify with thorough explanations and examination of ShotSpotter's shot spotting tech -- you'd think it wouldn't have been dropped as soon as it was challenged. But it appears prosecutors would rather let an accused murder walk than discuss their tactics and their partner in (fighting) crime in open court.

Filed Under: law enforcement, police, shotspotter

As Everyone Rushes To Change Section 230, New GAO Report Points Out That FOSTA Hasn't Lived Up To Any Of Its Promises

from the garbage-in,-garbage-out dept

As you may have heard, tons of politicians are rushing to introduce new and different bills to undermine or repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act -- a bill that is rightly credited for enabling a more open internet for freedom of speech. As you may recall, in early 2018 we had the first actual reform to Section 230 in decades -- FOSTA. It was signed into law on April 11th, with tons of politicians insisting it was critical to protecting people online. We had so many quotes from politicians (and a whole campaign from Hollywood stars like Amy Schumer) claiming (falsely) that without FOSTA, children could be "bought and sold" online.

One thing the bill did include (in Section 8) was a requirement that 3 years after the bill passed, the GAO should put out a report on how effective it has been. It's a few months late (the GAO does excellent work, but tends to be overworked and under-resourced) but on Monday the GAO finally released its study on the effectiveness of FOSTA. And... it basically says that all of the critics claims were exactly right.

Before FOSTA became law, co-author of Section 230, Senator Ron Wyden warned:

I fear that the legislation before the Senate will be another failure. I fear it will do more to take down ads than take down traffickers. I fear it will send the bad guys beyond the grasp of law enforcement to the shadowy corners of the dark web, where everyday search engines don’t go, but where criminals find safe haven for their monstrous acts....

[....]

In my view, the legislation before the Senate will prove to be ineffective, it will have harmful unintended consequences, and it could be ruled unconstitutional.

[....]

But the bill before us today will not stop sex trafficking. It will not prevent young people from becoming victims.....

So, now that we're three years in, what has the GAO found? That, just as predicted, the law was not at all necessary, and has barely been used, and the very, very few times it's been used in court, it's been ineffective:

Criminal restitution has not been sought and civil damages have not been awarded under section 3 of FOSTA. In June 2020, DOJ brought one case under the criminal provision established by section 3 of FOSTA for aggravated violations involving the promotion of prostitution of five or more people or acting in reckless disregard of sex trafficking. As of March 2021, restitution had not been sought or awarded. According to DOJ officials, prosecutors have not brought more cases with charges under section 3 of FOSTA because the law is relatively new and prosecutors have had success using other criminal statutes. Finally, in November 2020 one individual sought civil damages under a number of constitutional and statutory provisions, including section 3 of FOSTA. However, in March 2021, the court dismissed the case without awarding damages after it had granted defendants' motions to dismiss.

So... why did we need it again? Why was it so urgent? Why were Senators, Members of Congress, Hollywood stars, and others practically shoving each other aside to say that we needed this yesterday? And now, it's barely been used?

The report also shows -- again as many of us predicted -- that post FOSTA, law enforcement has had more difficulty tracking down those engaged in sex trafficking. Not because there is less trafficking, but because they're harder for law enforcement to find or access the details:

The current landscape of the online commercial sex market heightens already-existing challenges law enforcement face in gathering tips and evidence. Specifically, gathering tips and evidence to investigate and prosecute those who control or use online platforms has become more difficult due to the relocation of platforms overseas; platforms’ use of complex payment systems; and the increased use of social media, dating, hookup, and messaging/communication platforms.

The relocation of platforms overseas makes it more difficult for law enforcement to gather tips and evidence. According to DOJ officials, successfully prosecuting those who control online platforms—whether their platforms are located domestically or abroad—requires gathering enough evidence to prove that they intended that their platforms be used to promote prostitution, and, in some cases, that they also acted in reckless disregard of the fact that their actions contributed to sex trafficking.

Of course, in the runup to passing FOSTA, everyone kept talking about Backpage -- that FOSTA was needed to takedown Backpage, the company that everyone insisted was terrible. Except... as everyone now knows, the DOJ took down Backpage without FOSTA. Perhaps, the real issue had nothing to do with the law itself, and plenty to do with the DOJ not doing much on this issue. Or, worse, the DOJ recognizing that maybe Backpage wasn't the evil bogeyman that politicians and the press were making it out to be.

After all, leaked government documents later showed that Backpage was actually working closely with law enforcement to track down traffickers. So, guess what the report has found now? Thanks to FOSTA and also to the takedown of Backpage, the FBI is now finding it really really difficult to actually track down traffickers:

According to a 2019 FBI document, the FBI’s ability to identify and locate sex trafficking victims and perpetrators was significantly decreased following the takedown of backpage.com. According to FBI officials, this is largely because law enforcement was familiar with backpage.com, and backpage.com was generally responsive to legal requests for information. In contrast, officials said, law enforcement may be less familiar with platforms located overseas. Further, obtaining evidence from entities overseas may be more cumbersome and time-intensive, as those who control such platforms may not voluntarily respond to legal process, and mutual legal assistance requests may take months, if not years, according to DOJ officials.

So... end result: the government is barely using FOSTA and it's now significantly more difficult to find sex traffickers.

And, of course, the report doesn't even touch on the fact that things FOSTA did do to harm sex workers, putting them more at risk. It also doesn't talk about how lots of legitimate sites, such as dating sites and Tumblr, started aggressively blocking content that was likely perfectly legal, out of fear that FOSTA would open them up to criminal liability.

So, here's the big question: as a ton of politicians are pushing for big massive changes to Section 230, will they listen to us this time when we warn them about the possible consequences of such changes? Or will they dismiss us and insist that we're lying like they did last time? And who will go ask the politicians and Hollywood stars who swore that FOSTA was so absolutely necessary, how they respond to the fact that it didn't work, isn't being used, has made it more difficult to stop actual trafficking and has put actual lives in danger? Because all of that seems kind of important.

Filed Under: fosta, gao, intermediary liability, law enforcement, section 230, sex trafficking

FBI's Recovery Of Colonial Pipeline Bitcoin Ransom Highlights How The 'Ban Crypto To Stop Ransomware' Cries Were Wrong Again

from the that's-not-how-it-works dept

Last month we highlighted what seemed like a fairly silly Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that banning cryptocurrency was the best way to stop ransomware, in response (mainly) to the well publicized ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, which resulted in the company shutting down the flow of oil while it sorted things out. As we pointed out, not only was the idea of banning cryptocurrency unworkable, it was unlikely to do much to stop ransomware. Unfortunately, it appears that a number of other cryptocurrency haters jumped on this moment to push the idea even further, claiming that "society has a Bitcoin problem."

Of course, part of the key narrative in all of these pieces is that cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in particular, somehow make it easier for criminals to "get away" with these kinds of ransom demands, highlighting that it is somewhat easier to move around large values of Bitcoin than cash. However, as we noted in our original piece, the idea that cryptocurrency allows criminals to "get away" seemed extremely overblown, as we've seen plenty of cases where criminals using cryptocurrency were caught. And, as if to put an exclamation point on all of this, soon after the huge moral panic, the FBI announced that it had recovered over half of the money Colonial Pipeline had paid.

And, as the FBI special agent's affidavit showed, this was done in part by tracking how the money flowed across the public ledger. The NY Times ran an article noting that the FBI's recovery of the money here "upends the idea that Bitcoin is untraceable." A bunch of long time Bitcoin/cryptocurrency followers scoffed at the NY Times article, because they've long known that Bitcoin's public ledger has always made it so that transactions are traceable. But it's actually important for people not deeply in the Bitcoin space to understand this as well. And the problem with so many of the "ransomware is really a cryptocurrency problem" articles, was that they implied otherwise -- that cryptocurrency was somehow totally and completely untraceable.

As the NY Times article explains, what's important here is that it demonstrates that for all the hand wringing about cryptocurrencies and ransomware, the reality is that law enforcement is evolving with the times, and using the same kind of law enforcement detective work it's supposed to use to solve crimes.

Yet for the growing community of cryptocurrency enthusiasts and investors, the fact that federal investigators had tracked the ransom as it moved through at least 23 different electronic accounts belonging to DarkSide, the hacking collective, before accessing one account showed that law enforcement was growing along with the industry.

That’s because the same properties that make cryptocurrencies attractive to cybercriminals — the ability to transfer money instantaneously without a bank’s permission — can be leveraged by law enforcement to track and seize criminals’ funds at the speed of the internet.

That's an important point and one that often gets lost in the FUD surrounding new technologies (such as encryption) that might make law enforcement's job slightly more complex in the short run. But, at the same time, law enforcement needs to learn to adapt, not by undermining these technologies, but understanding how they work, and understanding how to do the actual legwork to trace those abusing the technology for criminal purposes.

So rather than jumping to the conclusion that we need to ban this or that technology because it makes it slightly more challenging for law enforcement, this is actually an example showing how if law enforcement does their job properly, the technology is not the problem.

Filed Under: bitcoin, cryptocurrency, detective work, fbi, law enforcement, ransomeware, recovery
Companies: colonial pipeline

Ring Will Now Require Law Enforcement Requests For Camera Footage To Be Made Publicly

from the forcing-cops-to-form-a-better-relationship-with-those-they-serve dept

Ring, Amazon's doorbell camera acquisition, has long considered itself to be an integral part of law enforcement. It has aggressively pursued partnerships with local governments, offering up cheap (or free) cameras in exchange for recommendations and installations by law enforcement agencies.

Hundreds of law enforcement agencies have decided Ring provides a welcome new stream of surveillance footage, all captured by private cameras. Although Ring suggests users only capture their immediate doorsteps (or the interiors of their houses), plenty of cameras provide users (and law enforcement) with an insight into the movements of other people as they traverse nearby sidewalks and streets.

Ring has racked up an impressive amount of negative press over the last couple of years -- mainly because it appears to consider owners of cameras as little more than footage portals for government agencies. It has provided guidance to law enforcement agencies on how to bypass warrant requirements and given them cameras to hand out with the implicit suggestion the favor will be returned whenever officers come asking for recordings.

It appears Ring has realized its aggressive courting of law enforcement isn't doing much for its reputation. Its parent company, Amazon, recently extended its moratorium on providing facial recognition tech to government agencies. Its doorbell/camera subsidiary hasn't said much lately about its facial recognition plans (and there's nothing stopping cops from running Ring footage through their own tech), but it is stepping up to make its relationship with law enforcement more transparent. (via CNBC)

Beginning next week, public safety agencies will only be able to request information or video from their communities through a new, publicly viewable post category on Neighbors called Request for Assistance. Public safety agencies can use these posts to notify residents of an incident and ask their communities for help related to an investigation. All Request for Assistance posts will be publicly viewable in the Neighbors feed, and logged on the agency’s public profile. This way, anyone interested in knowing more about how their police agency is using Request for Assistance posts can simply visit the agency’s profile and see the post history.

This is the best way to approach this. And I assume there's a little bit of public pressure in play. Neighbors might lean on other neighbors when something violent or destructive goes down in their neighborhood but some Ring owners aren't playing ball with the local PD. That may increase "engagement," but probably only slightly.

On the other hand, it will deter law enforcement agencies from engaging in fishing expeditions for footage that they feel might provide some insight or just want to use for other purposes, like keeping an eye on people engaged in First Amendment activities.

Warrants served by law enforcement agencies won't be posted to this portal. This is just for informal requests for assistance. And that's fine. Warrants need probable cause and a judge's signature, which obviously doesn't guarantee probable cause exists to demand footage, but is far more oversight than the nothing at all that accompanies direct requests to Ring owners via Ring-enabled law enforcement portals. And law enforcement can always approach Ring directly with subpoenas and warrants, bypassing Ring owners completely, so there's a built-in way to avoid interacting with the public if that's what agencies prefer to do.

This is a positive step away from the precipice by Ring. The company has long considered its customers to be little more than contributors to ever-expanding law enforcement surveillance networks. Its move towards more transparency suggests it has been listening to its critics and the concerns of its customers, which is something it really hasn't done since its emergence as a major player in the home camera market.

Filed Under: cameras, law enforcement, police requests, ring, ring doorbell, video doorbells
Companies: amazon

Private Security Company Thinks It Should Be Able To Take People To Jail Just Like Real Cops

from the Uber-but-for-vigilantes dept

A snitch app called Citizen is angling for the position of Local Law Enforcement®. Going a step further than hotbeds of bigotry like Ring's Neighbors or Facebook-but-for-racism Nextdoor, Citizen is actually trying to create a private law enforcement agency that provides "security" and other services for app users.

A marauding cop-like patrol vehicle emblazoned with the Citizen logo (and some branding for another private security company) was spotted roaming Los Angeles last week. The desire to create a private cutout in public law enforcement space was confirmed by current and former Citizen employees, as well as documents shared with Motherboard and Joseph Cox.

It's not just theoretical. It appears some employees of this private company really want to convert Citizen into a law enforcement agency. (Supporters of this move may also contain members of the Los Angeles Police Department, which called Citizen's move towards patrolling the streets a "game changer.") Then there's this new twist, which indicates Citizen's partner in patrolling -- Los Angeles Professional Security Services -- really would prefer to be an actual law enforcement agency, rather than the private security company it actually is.

In a self-described “documentary” on the Los Angeles Professional Security YouTube, the company's CEO and founder James Caspari explains after detaining two tresspassers that the company wants the power to make arrests and take people to jail.

“We’re going to waste police resources because we can’t drive them to the police station,” he said. “The security guard manual says we have to wait and a peace officer has to take them. That’s just a waste. If we’ve already cleared it... why can’t we just take ‘em to jail?”

Flow my tears, the fake policeman said. Why? WHY?? Because you're a goddamn rent-a-cop. You're not the real thing. You don't get to start depriving people of freedom just because you're dressed in black cop-adjacent garb and employed by a private security firm. No one has granted you the right to arrest people because that's limited to publicly-funded government agencies that are (in theory) more accountable to taxpayers than a private company that only answers to paying customers.

"Private security has zero authority on a public space," he later laments.

Go be a cop then. If it's killing you that you can't violate rights as a private citizen, go get an actual cop job where you can violate rights on the taxpayers' dime. Sure, this seems a bit backwards but that's how it works. The government gets to do certain things with the implicit consent of the governed. Los Angeles citizens have not agreed to allowing private citizens to start throwing other private citizens into faux cop cars in order to take them to jail. What standard is LAPS applying to itself when it affects an arrest? There are rules in place, backed by the Constitution. And, while these rules may be violated with alarming frequency by government agencies, they're still rules. Private companies don't have to adhere to the Constitution. And that's why they shouldn't be getting into the business of violating the rights of others. (And, before certain commenters start trying to turn this statement into something about social media, no one's rights are violated when a company refuses to provide you a platform for expressing yourself.)

Going from bad to arguably worse, the CEO of a private security firm actually believes it's capable of responding to mental health calls with its staff of people who apparently couldn't cut it as real cops or first responders.

Caspari explains in the video that LAPS believes it can remove trespassers and respond to mental health calls. “We are in a position to respond in force to effectively anywhere in the city to remove any negative element that a client of ours is threatened with,” Caspari said in the video.

And even in its own video, which it had the chance to edit before publishing it, the private security company's employees are given the "what even the fuck" treatment by the partners Citizen and LAPS really want to have on board: the Los Angeles Police Department.

After searching an abandoned building, LAPS employees cuff the two people they find there and wait for the LAPD to arrive. Caspari explains this is all cool and legal: a "private person arrest" supported by California law. After lamenting the "waste of time" that is waiting for actual law enforcement to show up, he's greeted with LAPD officers wondering why the private security firm is patrolling abandoned buildings that appear to be outside of its contractual obligations with its customers.

At one point, the LAPD does turn up. A seemingly surprised LAPD officer asks Caspari, "Is that your normal protocol, you guys just go search the building?"

"On your own, or? Just curious, I've never dealt with you guys before," the LAPD officer continues.

It's a legitimate question. If the private security company wasn't asked by the owners (and "abandoned" suggests no real owner exits) to patrol the building, why the hell are they entering it? At that point, the security personnel are just as guilty of trespassing as the people they detained.

Since there are no good answers to that question, the CEO moves on to complain the LAPD doesn't have enough resources to harass the homeless, leaving people "pushing two shopping carts down the road" free to annoy Caspari.

If nothing else, Caspari has the right mindset for law enforcement. The people who should be rounded up first are hanging out in abandoned buildings or irritating the locals with their homelessness. Nothing in the video suggests the security firm is stumbling across serious or violent criminal activity that's not being handled by the LAPD. Instead, the CEO complains his company has its hands tied, unable to remove homeless people, trespassers, and the mentally ill from the street without having to bring the LAPD into it.

If the LAPD has to use its resources to handle more serious crime and leave this sort of "crime" unaddressed, good. But that's not an invitation for private companies to fill this perceived void. Providing security for paying clients is fine, but wanting to be a cop just so you can round up a bunch of non-threatening, non-violent people makes you worse than the actual cops. This is just a bunch of people cosplaying and wishing their cardboard props were real. And it's going to do serious damage to Los Angeles residents if companies like this continue to believe they should have the right to violate the rights of others.

Filed Under: arrests, law enforcement, private cops, snitching, vigilante
Companies: citizen, la professional security services

Crime-Reporting App Citizen Apparently Attempting To Get Into The Law Enforcement Business

from the bad-ideas-from-worse-people dept

It looks like app developers want to be cops. Late last week, a Los Angeles resident spotted a Citizen-app branded patrol car roaming the city. Citizen is yet another app that allows residents to send crime alerts and other news to each other, following in the steps of Ring's Neighbors app and Nextdoor, a hyperlocal social media service that only lets actual neighbors connect with each other.

The only thing missing here is the replicant hunters.

"Few things make you feel like you live in a bleak dystopian reality like a Citizen App patrol car that looks like a cop car," Brandon Wenerd tweeted, along with a photo of the vehicle, on Wednesday.

The all black vehicle with tinted windows has the Citizen logo emblazoned across its side, as well as Citizen's tagline "Making your world a safer place" and the phrase "Private Patrol."

Also emblazoned on the dystopiamobile was the logo for Los Angeles Professional Security, a private security firm with its own fleet of vehicles. That only added to the list of raised questions about the app and its plans for the future.

Like any other app or service that allows locals to report crime and other suspicious activity, Citizen has proven to be a handy conduit for bigots and racists to expose their biases and, unfortunately, find like-minded "citizens" in their area. This app may have been more empowering than most. It allows users to send crime alerts and Citizen encourages the livestreaming of crimes in progress. While it may not actually encourage users to don their Batsuits and start fighting crime on their own, the app did make its debut under the name "Vigilante." Its booting from Apple's app store resulted in its less-overtly-worrying rebrand.

But here's what's actually going on: Citizen wants to get into the cop business. That's according to internal documents shared with Joseph Cox and Motherboard shortly after residents began reporting the existence of this Citizen-branded mock cop car.

Crime and neighborhood watch app Citizen has ambitions to deploy private security workers to the scene of disturbances at the request of app users, according to leaked internal Citizen documents and Citizen sources.

[...]

"The broad master plan was to create a privatized secondary emergency response network," one former Citizen employee told Motherboard. Motherboard granted multiple sources anonymity to protect them from retaliation from the company.

"It's been something discussed for a while but I personally never expected it to make it this far," another Citizen source told Motherboard.

The car observed on the streets is Citizen's "security response" vehicle. Presumably, Citizen is planning to add more cars to this fleet so it can better serve users who feel they might need some additional security. Whether that includes responding to calls of crimes in progress remains to be seen, but the addition of Los Angeles Professional Security to the mix suggests that it does. This firm offers a "subscription law enforcement service" that includes a "potent combination of technology, K-9 support, and patrol personnel."

That's not the only private security firm in the mix.

Citizen has been actively testing the program, with what the company describes as quick response times and instant communication between Citizen and security partners, according to the emails.

One of those companies, according to the emails, is well-known private security contractor Securitas. The email about the tests says that Securitas average response times have improved to around 20 minutes.

It looks like Citizen believes there's a large market for private cops. Unfortunately, it looks like local law enforcement agrees. According to internal emails seen by Motherboard, Citizen approached the Los Angeles Police Department with its proposal to expand into the police business and this was (allegedly -- we are talking about a document that will probably be used to market Citizen to other cop shops) warmly received by LAPD officials, who said it would be a "game changer."

And, to be sure, it might be. Los Angeles has a property crime problem cops can't seem to fix. Adding roving bands of vigilantes would be a "game changer" too, but no one really thinks that's a solution. That's just an additional problem. Citizen's expansion may change the game, but it also encourages Citizen to embrace the ideals that saw it debut as "Vigilante."

We don't need tech companies thinking they're just an extension of the government, especially the parts of the government allowed to deploy deadly force and deprive people of their freedoms. Blurring the line between public and private tends to work out poorly for those supposedly being served by these partnerships. Members of the public will be expected to treat both as law enforcement, even though only actual cops have the power to enforce the law. Private companies can do things cops can't -- like engage in searches of property ostensibly under their control -- and cops can swoop in and directly benefit from searches they themselves cannot legally engage in. The end result will be more government power -- not derived from laws or Constitutional amendments but from app developers who see themselves as crime fighters.

Filed Under: crime reporting, law enforcement, los angeles, private law enforcement, snitch app, vigilantes
Companies: citizen

EFF Sues California Law Enforcement Training Entity Over Its BS Use Of Copyright Law To Deny Public Records Requests

from the conveniently-invoked-IP-rights dept

Following the passage of a law that finally made lots of documentation related to police misconduct publicly accessible in California, the requests for information began pouring in. Some law enforcement agencies complied. Others sued. The state Attorney General showed the public how much they mattered by siding with the secretive agencies.

The entity behind the standards for law enforcement training in the state -- Police Officers Standards and Training (POST) -- was supposed to post its training materials publicly in response to the new law. But it found a convenient out: copyright law. It claimed the company that produced its training materials on everything from ALPR readers to deployment of facial recognition tech refused to allow its copyrighted material to be posted publicly.

This was obviously a load of crap. Copyright law does not forbid the publication of public interest documents by the agencies that utilize them. Allowing the public to view and download the documents does not destroy the market for law enforcement training materials. This was obviously nothing more than a convenient way to avoid complying with the new public records law.

Making this even stupider was the fact the EFF had already obtained a copy of POST ALPR training materials through a public records request. That copyrighted material had already been "distributed" to outsiders, all without putting POST or the EFF on the wrong side of IP law.

This bullshit is probably going to end up costing the state's taxpayers. The EFF is suing POST over this convenient kowtowing to meaningless copyright claims.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) to obtain materials showing how police are trained in the use of force, after the organization cited third-party copyright interests to illegally withhold them from the public.

The lawsuit, filed under California’s Public Records Act (PRA), seeks a court order forcing POST to make public unredacted copies of outlines for a number of police training courses, including training on use of force. As the country struggles to process the many painful-to-watch examples of extensive and deadly use of force by police, Californians have a right to know what officers are being trained to do, and how they are being trained.

As the lawsuit [PDF] points out, the state has directly -- through legislation -- ordered the release of this material. And that mandate contains nothing saying "unless copyright protections are invoked."

SB 978 mandates that, as of January 2020, “the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training and each local law enforcement agency shall conspicuously post on their Internet Web sites all current standards, policies, practices, operating procedures, and education and training materials that would otherwise be available to the public if a request was made pursuant to the California Public Records Act.”

And who is the private entity invoking copyright law to avoid complying with the law? Well, it's none other than the state's largest pro-police lobbying group, the California Peace Officers' Association. When not misapplying the law to prevent the public from knowing more about their public servants, the CPOA is acting against the public's interest by opposing legislation affecting everything from marijuana legalization to sentence reductions for nonviolent crimes to facial recognition tech bans.

Even if the CPOA is right about copyright law (and it isn't), fair use covers both the distribution of the material by POST and any further publications by recipients like the EFF.

First, the purpose of POST’s use—to comply with the CPRA’s transparency requirements—would be a non-commercial, transformative use in service of the public interest. Second, the ECO is a primarily factual work, subject to thinnest copyright protection. Third, sharing the complete, unredacted ECO is necessary to achieve meaningful transparency and educate the public. Fourth, POST’s use of the ECO would not harm the market for CPOA’s training materials.

Once again, it's copyright acting as a convenient censor. Hopefully, the court will see it for what it is and direct POST to stop screwing around and hand over the training materials to the EFF and publish them to the POST website. If the EFF succeeds (and it should), it will be the public sector forced to pay for the CPOA's censorial actions. While CPOA may be a private entity, it's the state's law enforcement training entity that's being sued. Maybe the state's residents will realize POST could have blown off the lobbying association without worrying about being sued for copyright infringement and respond accordingly -- possibly by stripping the funding headed to the CPOA to produce training materials or rerouting it to another agency that's not going to pretend federal copyright law mandates non-compliance with state transparency laws.

Filed Under: california, copyright, foia, law enforcement, training, transparency
Companies: eff, police officers standards and training, post

Amateur Online Detectives Have Apparently Decided Facial Recognition Tech Is Good As Long As They're The Ones Using It

from the OnlyFans-accounts-but-for-watching-amateurs-stroke-their-frontal-lobes dept

The exponential growth of facial recognition tech over the past decade is cause for concern. The tech is unproven and caters to pre-existing biases. The biggest beneficiaries of the tech explosion are the usual suspects: white guys over the age of 35. Cops claim it's a godsend -- a tool that gives them what they need to close cases, even when it's usually just doing what they've always done: deciding any minority "fits the description."

A late entrant to the facial recognition games drew a lot of heat. Clearview gives its government customers (along with billionaires, retailers, and… um… gyms) access to billions of images, every one of them scraped from public posts at hundreds of websites and social media platforms. The legality of the scraping is still unsettled, but the company's desire to turn online posts into fodder for misidentifications that can lead to wrongful incarceration is truly disturbing.

But it's not just the public sector taking advantage of AI "advances." Facial recognition is a game even amateurs can play. Online tools allow the Wikipedia Browns of the world to misidentify people just as often as the pros do. Ryan Reilly and Jesselyn Cook of Huffington Post detail the online sleuthing done by internet denizens following the January 6 insurrection attempt. Here's how the possible ID of two Capitol raid participants went down:

Jason Beddingfield admits he made his way to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Videos discovered by citizen sleuths and by HuffPost show a man who looks identical to Jason Beddingfield hopping over barriers while holding a Trump flag and storming past bike racks moments after members of the mob ripped them down. At the same time, approaching the Capitol via a different path, a young man holding an American flag led a crowd and shouted at the police. Soon the young man was brawling with cops at the front of the police line. He later entered the Capitol building, and emerged from the Senate side after being pepper-sprayed.

The young man bore a striking resemblance to Jason Beddingfield’s son Matthew.

This similarity might never have come to light without the use of a highly controversial technology. A member of a network of citizen sleuths plugged images of the man ― whom online insurrection investigators dubbed #SoggyKidInsider, because he later emerged from the Capitol covered in liquid, and #NaziGrayHat, because he appeared to give a Sieg Heil salute ― into PimEyes, a facial recognition website. One of Matthew Beddingfield’s mug shots popped up.

Matthew Beddingfield was charged with murder in 2019. He was released on bail. While on bail, he apparently made his way to Washington DC with his father, Jason Beddingfield. His mug shot proved instrumental to this search of photos and footage of the Capitol raid. The elder Beddingfield stated in Facebook post he was headed to the nation's capital to take it back from "commie bastards." According to online sleuths, it was "Bring Your Child To The Insurrection Day."

Beddingfield's son was more careful about his online posts. He didn't admit to traveling to DC (something that likely would have violated his bond conditions). But he allegedly assaulted a police officer with a fire extinguisher. And he has, so far, managed to avoid being hit with federal charges for his apparent involvement in the Capitol raid.

But even if this all ends up being factual, there's still cause for alarm. The availability of tech tools claiming to be capable of facial recognition is a huge problem since so many of these tools are pretty terrible at recognizing faces. Amateur detectives using open source tools shouldn't be trusted any more than law enforcement agencies utilizing the same tech. The possibility of actual harm remains, even if no one's capable of performing a citizen's arrest over the internet. Redditors crowdsourcing info about the Boston Marathon bombing got a lot of things wrong, resulting in the infliction of misery on innocent people by pitchfork-bearing shit-posters as well as law enforcement officers willing to believe the internet had actually identified the perpetrators.

It's not that crowdsourcing information always results in wrong conclusions. Occasionally, the internet is right about stuff. Adding untested facial recognition AI to the mix is a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, the feds didn't act on this unvetted intel. But at some point they might. And the barrier to entry -- in this case, less than a dollar day -- means anyone can use facial recognition tech to do far more harmful things, like stalk people or set them up for possibly deadly encounters with local law enforcement. The most problematic aspect of this particular use of facial recognition AI is that PimEyes is just Clearview, but with even less accountability.

Clearview AI saw a 26% spike in search volume in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection. It has a database of more than 3 billion images and is primarily used by private companies and law enforcement agencies. Members of the #SeditionHunters community are unable to access Clearview. Instead, they’re using PimEyes, a lesser-known Polish company offering free and paid facial recognition services to the public, through a search engine that reportedly contains more than 900 million faces. Like Clearview, PimEyes has prompted serious concerns about misuse, abuse, privacy and civil liberties violations.

You cannot decry the use of unproven tech offered by sketchy AI companies by law enforcement and then pretend these tools are somehow now "good" just because it's regular people, rather than cops, using them. Sure, private citizens may not be able to effect arrests and lock people up, but they can engage in violence using questionable intel. A whole cottage industry of sex offender-related vigilantism shows how much real damage can be done by people who, with the best of intents, decide they can play cop with internet tools.

And when citizens do it, they're operating with fewer restraints and less accountability. The path to compensation for wrongful arrests and violated rights via our court system may be less than ideal when it comes to law enforcement agencies. But the path to justice is almost nonexistent when it comes to amateur online sleuthing. The tools suck. They don't suck less just because JoeAnon is using them, rather than federal or local law enforcement agencies. Pretending otherwise is to fall into the same criminal justice Dunning-Krueger trap. The tech is faulty and the ends cannot ever justify using broken means.

Filed Under: amateur sleuthing, facial recognition, law enforcement, privacy, vigilantes

Drone Company Wants To Sell Cops A Drone That Can Break Windows, Negotiate With Criminals

from the did-we-mention-it-breaks-windows dept

A drone manufacturer really really wants cops to start inviting drones to their raiding parties. This will bring "+ whatever" to all raiding party stats, apparently. BRINC Drones is here to help... and welcomes users to question the life choices made by company execs that led to the implementation of this splash page:

If these cops don't really look like cops to you, you're not alone. And by "you," I also mean BRINC Drones, which apparently wants to attract the warriors-in-a-war-zone mindset far too common in law enforcement. BRINC has a new drone -- one that presents itself as warlike as its target audience.

Drones are definitely an integral part of the surveillance market. BRINC wants to make them an integral part of the "drug raids and standoffs with reluctant arrestees" market. Sure, anyone can smash a window. But how cool would it be if a drone could do it?

The LEMUR is built by BRINC Drones to help police locate, isolate, and communicate with suspects. It has an encrypted cellphone link for two-way communication and can right itself if it crashes upside down. But it’s that remarkable glass smasher that sets it apart from the many other police drones we’ve seen.

BRINC says the 5-inch blade has tungsten teeth and can spin at up to 30,000 RPM. It’s enough to break tempered, automotive, and most residential glass. It’s an add-on feature to the drone, but it can be quickly attached with three thumb screws.

Whatever tactical gains might be made by a two-way communication device for negotiations will presumably be undone by the Black Mirror-esque destruction of windows by a remotely controlled flying nuisance. Assuming the suspect isn't able to, I don't know, throw a coat over the drone, negotiations will proceed between the human person and the bug-like drone sitting on the ground in front of them.

And let's not underplay the window-smashing. Cops do love them some broken windows. Break a window, justify your policing, as the old "broken windows" philosophy goes. "Command presence" is the term often deployed to excuse the physical destruction that precedes physical violence by police officers. Disorient and disarm. That's why cops smash all the doors and windows they can when raiding houses.

But if you give cops a specialized tool that is cheap to buy and cheap to replace, it will swiftly move from a last resort to Plan A. Case in point: flashbang grenades. These are not harmless weapons. They are war weapons designed to disorient lethal forces. Instead of being used in only the most desperate of situations, they're used as bog standard raid initiators. That's how they end up in the beds of toddlers, resulting in severe burns -- something the involved cops claimed was an innocent mistake. How could they have know the house might have contained children, they said stepping over a multitude of children's toys scattered across the lawn of the house they were raiding.

This drone will become as common as a flashbang grenade if they're cheap enough to obtain. The difference between a severely burned toddler and a flayed toddler is something the courts will get to sort out. And no matter how the court decision goes for cops, no one can put the skin back on injured toddlers. "By any means necessary," say drug warriors, forgetting the Constitution and a bunch of other state-level safeguards are in place to supposedly prevent the ends from justifying the means.

But there's even more here. And the "more" is inadvertently hilarious. BRINC claims its drone can open doors. But that's only true if by "open" you mean "make incrementally more open." Check out the drone "opening" a door in this BRINC promotional video.

LOL.

It gets funnier when you add physics to the mix. BRINC promises cops a warlike machine. Science says theses drones can be swiftly turned from aggressors to victims simply by allowing the drones to operate in the advertised manner.

Viewers of Battlebots know if a whirling blade comes into contact with a stationary object, at least SOME of the energy is absorbed by the blade. A 2.4-pound drone would be knocked reeling from a 30,000 rpm collision. The video doesn’t actually show that moment of impact, but the fact it hits the floor upside down suggests there’s no fancy electronics or damping to keep it stable.

Sure, we can laugh at this now. And we can hope our local law enforcement officials aren't so taken in by a presentation that keeps its boots slick with saliva. But tech will keep moving forward and BRINC's fantasies will edge closer to reality.

But what we have to ask ourselves (and hope our government agencies will consider) is how much this actually might subtract from the deadly human costs of police-citizen interactions. Sending a drone smashing through a window hardly sounds like de-escalation, even if the end result is a walkie-talkie hitching a ride on a modded tech toy. There's still a lot of intrinsic value in human interactions. Putting a flying buffer between law enforcement and those they're attempting to "save" sounds like a recipe for more violence, rather than less. The physical approach of dystopia through a recently shattered window is hardly calming, especially for those already on edge.

Filed Under: breaking windows, drones, law enforcement, lemur, police, warrior cop
Companies: brinc drones

Forfeiture In Theory: TAKING DOWN DRUG LORDS! Forfeiture In Practice: Taking A Guy's TV And PlayStation During A Drug Raid

from the can't-make-a-drug-war-without-breaking-a-few-home-electronics dept

Asset forfeiture means taking everything that isn't nailed down. Why bother being selective? In most cases, it's pure profit for the law enforcement agency that performs the seizure. And since forfeitures are so rarely successfully challenged, it's pretty much a foolproof way to make a little extra cash. The citizens who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (in their own houses with their own possessions) are acceptable collateral damage.

We're in the middle of a war against drugs. Collateral damage should be expected. That's the viewpoint of drug warriors, even when the "acceptable" collateral damage means nothing more than law enforcement officers taking stuff just because they can.

Here's a rare successful motion for a return of property -- one filed against the Bay County (FL) Sheriff's Office by a person who had his stuff taken even though it was his father being charged with criminal acts. The son -- whose father had all charges dropped after passing away -- took on the Office and secured a ruling that should finally give him back what was taken from him. (via FourthAmendment.com)

Unfortunately, there are still some hurdles standing between the plaintiff and the 75-inch TV and PlayStation 4 taken by the Sheriff's Office during a raid of his father's house. One set of hurdles has already been cleared. But it involved getting the Office to not only admit it was lying about taking the property, but also admitting it had likely liquidated the seized items before it had legal permission to do so.

Here's how the Florida Court of Appeals details the events [PDF] leading up to its findings in favor of the plaintiff.

The Sheriff’s Office initially denied having taken these items, but ultimately admitted that it had. By the time of the hearing below, the Sheriff no longer had the items and did not know where they were.

So, that's the first part of the puzzle. The Office lied to the plaintiff, if not the court itself. And it had apparently gotten rid of the seized property prior to giving the deceased's son a chance to ask for its return. Despite this, the Sheriff's Office argued it lawfully possessed the property it could no longer locate because the "title" to the seized property would have automatically transferred to the Sheriff's Office sixty days after the "conclusion of a legal proceeding." The death of the accused started the sixty-day clock, according to the Sheriff.

Wrong, says the court. That 60-day transfer only goes into effect if the contested items were seized "pursuant to a lawful investigation." That's a pretty low bar but the Sheriff's Office failed to meet it.

At the hearing below, the Sheriff did not address, and therefore did not prove, whether Appellant’s TV and PlayStation were lawfully seized from his bedroom during a search related to his late father’s drug charges.

And that's where the lower court went wrong. It never bothered to make the Sheriff's Office establish the items -- seized from the plaintiff's bedroom -- were linked to the charges facing his father. Back it goes to the lower court where the Sheriff's Office will have to offer some evidence linking the property it can no longer locate to the charges no longer pending against the plaintiff's dead father. Good luck with that. Just because items are inside a house belonging to someone who sells drugs doesn't mean every item in the house was purchased with ill-gotten gains.

If no tenuous link was asserted then, there's no link to a lawful seizure, which means the clock on automatic transfer to the cop shop inventory isn't 60 days, but four years. The items are likely long gone. But the Sheriff's Office may soon find itself shelling out its own ill-gotten gains to replace the ones it apparently unlawfully took from the plaintiff during its drug warring.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement, legalized theft, police