Obscure Analytics Tool Helps Cops Make Sense Of All That Location Data They're Grabbing Without A Warrant

from the flying-under-the-radar-love dept

FOIA requests, leaked documents, data breaches, Congressional testimony… all of these have led to the outing of cellphone surveillance tech utilized by law enforcement. As far back as 2014, Chris Soghoian -- former ACLU "technologist" and current Senator Wyden advisor -- was telling cops their "secret" Stingray devices weren't all that secret anymore.

But the market for tracking people via their cellphones remains uncornered. For the most part, Stingrays (cell tower spoofers) need warrants to operate. The same goes for demanding weeks or months of historical cell site location data from service providers.

The courts may be deciding there's a bit more Fourth Amendment to go around these days, but cops seem to be deciding there's more Fourth than ever that should be avoided. New tools, toys, and tactics are in play. "Reverse warrants" contain the word "warrant," but they demand info on every cellphone user in a certain area at a certain time, flipping probable cause on its head. Data brokers collecting location data from apps sell access to law enforcement agencies, allowing them to engage in tracking that would be unconstitutional if it involved cell service providers.

There's a lot of data flowing towards law enforcement agencies. But it's useless if it can't be analyzed. That's where a little known company steps in, giving cops a way to wrangle all that subpoenaed data into something actionable. The Intercept's Sam Richards has the details.

Until now, the Bartonville, Texas, company Hawk Analytics and its product CellHawk have largely escaped public scrutiny. CellHawk has been in wide use by law enforcement; the software is helping police departments, the FBI, and private investigators around the United States convert information collected by cellular providers into maps of people’s locations, movements, and relationships. Police records obtained by The Intercept reveal a troublingly powerful surveillance tool operated in obscurity, with scant oversight.

CellHawk’s maker says it can process a year’s worth of cellphone records in 20 minutes, automating a process that used to require painstaking work by investigators, including hand-drawn paper plots. The web-based product can ingest call detail records, or CDRs, which track cellular contact between devices on behalf of mobile service providers, showing who is talking to whom. It can also handle cellular location records, created when phones connect to various towers as their owners move around.

It's yet another law enforcement middle man. Service providers and brokers collect data. Law enforcement asks for this data -- often without a warrant. CellHawk ensures the data is usable. And it's apparently been flying under the radar for years, mainly because it's not engaged in harvesting this info.

But CellHawk isn't a harmless interloper. It's maximizing the impact of data gathered from hundreds of apps and innate cellphone behavior. The company claims it can turn ride-hailing app data into usable "intelligence" and morph millions of GPS data points into a rich tapestry of movements and interpersonal connections.

While CellHawk remains mostly diplomatic on its website, materials sent to potential customers bluntly inform them how powerful the company's analytic software is. Marketing materials tell investigators they'll not only be able to determine whether a suspect was at a crime scene, but CellHawk will let them know where they spend most of their time, whether they've been anywhere "unusual," and the most likely location of their bedroom.

The software has plenty of law enforcement fans. And those fans are writing their own rules to use the tool, since it appears to fall between the cracks of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. This is the gap where law enforcement does a lot of work, guided only by their certainty that rights haven't been violated in this particular way in their jurisdiction prior to their deployment of tools like CellHawk. While Supreme Court precedent suggests warrants are best for tracking people via cellphone data, agencies like the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department (MN) seem to believe a lower standard applies.

It stated that the office needed “[r]easonable suspicion,” which was deemed “present when sufficient facts are established to give … a basis to believe that there is, or has been, a reasonable possibility that an individual or organization is involved in a definable criminal activity or enterprise.”

Make hay while law remains unsettled, as the saying goes. Hawk Analytics is roping in as many law enforcement customers as it can, taking advantage of the lack of on-point court rulings to sell data analytics to agencies engaged in questionable harvesting of location-tracking data. The Intercept's informal FOIA poll found CellHawk in use in multiple states by multiple departments. It appears the FBI is also a fan of CellHawk's work, which means the company now has nationwide coverage (so to speak), even if it has yet to find local buyers.

Hawk Analytics is smart. It's built for the long run. Even if courts find mass collections of location data worthy of Fourth Amendment protections, cops will still be looking for someone to help them parse all the data they've obtained. Third-party data brokers may see their fortunes fall, but CellHawk will still be there to analyze the output of those that survive.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, analytics, cellhawk, law enforcement, location data, police, private data
Companies: hawk analytics

Trump's Police Commission Suggests Doing The Same Things That Haven't Worked For Years Will Reduce Violent Crime

from the let's-see...-steal-more-cash,-give-more-money-to-drug-warriors... dept

[Note: this is one in a series of posts on the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement's lengthy report on all things police-related.]

During his, shall we say… tumultuous single term as president, Donald Trump made it clear law enforcement people were better than regular people, even though a whole lot of regular people were saying otherwise at the time.

President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.

SPOILER ALERT: the Trump Administration did not end it. In fact, he and the DOJ's coddling of law enforcement may have made it worse. The DOJ scaled back its civil rights investigations of police departments and police departments responded by killing people just as often as they ever did, despite historic dips in violent crime rates. And when a white cop kneeled on an unarmed black man's neck until he was dead (and for three minutes after another officer failed to detect a pulse), the country exploded.

Six months prior to this explosion, Trump ordered the formation of a commission on policing. All positions were filled by cops and prosecutors. A little more than a year later, its report [PDF] has been delivered. The report blames pretty much everyone but cops for the lack of respect shown to law enforcement. It also says several bad things about encryption and strongly suggests Congress mandate backdoors for easy law enforcement access.

But the report also hopes to address other law enforcement issues, including some recent spikes in violent crime around the nation. While the Commission does recognize some underlying social issues contribute to criminal activity, it also thinks the nation can police itself out of this current uptick in crime.

It says police should focus more on violent crime, which no one actually disagrees with… except maybe the police. Law enforcement agencies solve less than a third of rapes and less than two-thirds of murder cases. If you want to rob somebody, there's a 70% chance you'll get away with it. Meanwhile, cops camp out on interstates or highways running through small towns, hoping to hand out expensive speeding tickets or shake people down for their cash. The DEA, ATF, and FBI all engage in sting operations that sound a whole lot more like entrapment to ensure a steady stream of criminal defendants but do nothing to actually lower crime rates or take dangerous criminals off the street.

The Commission is concerned about violent crime, even if its target audience doesn't appear to be.

Despite notable decreases in national crime rates over the past three decades, there remain many communities—especially in rural, tribal, and urban jurisdictions—that suffer from disproportionately high levels of violence and victimization. No citizen and no community should be left behind from crime reduction efforts. The rule of law must apply everywhere and to all people for it to properly guarantee citizens their peace and liberty. Unfortunately, violent gangs and drug trafficking organizations, empowered and armed by the illicit firearms trade, still terrorize neighborhoods. Criminals continue to abuse vulnerable populations, including women and children, at unacceptable rates in the form of human trafficking, sex abuse, and domestic violence.

But while the Commission says high-crime communities shouldn't be "left behind," the report speaks to (and for) a nation of law enforcement agencies that has decided (and gotten courts to agree with it) that people in high-crime areas are criminals and should be subjected to things like stop-and-frisk programs and highly-questionable gang databases. Their mere existence in high-crime areas makes them inherently suspicious, allowing cops to harass people who are already suffering from the impact of near-constant criminal activity.

The Commission has suggestions for reducing violent crime. And some of them are very problematic.

First, it suggests something called "pulling levers." This is basically "problem-oriented policing" -- a tactic that involves targeting one specific form of crime and using increased policing/deterrence in hopes that the ripple effect will reduce other associated crimes. One report (albeit one funded and overseen by the DOJ) says this works. But in other cases, POP/"pulling levers" produced no noticeable or sustainable gains in the fight against violent crime.

The Commission also suggests more of the same stuff law enforcement has been doing for years, like forming gang task forces. It says local agencies should partner with federal agencies, like the ATF, DEA, and FBI to combat gang violence. This has been done for forever and has been a failure, according to the Commission's own (inadvertent) reckoning.

Gangs are increasingly more numerous in number and membership. The number of gang members in the United States likely exceeds one million. The FBI states that “approximately 33,000 violent street gangs, motorcycle gangs, and prison gangs are criminally active in the U.S. today.

It's unclear how doing things that have already been done will curb this growth market, but the Commission clearly believes enough repetition will turn the tide of violent gang crime. Adding agencies best known for scoring their own goals in wars on crime/terror (when not just relieving people of their cash) isn't going to help anything. At best, things will continue at this pace, which presumably means 100% of American citizens will be gang members within the next 25 years.

Going down the list, things get even more negligible. More task forces. More gun task forces. Harsher gun sentences. More ballistic forensic training. More money dumped into ballistic forensics. More ATF agents to do all of the above, even if the ATF is best known for giving people illegal guns and busting them for trying to bust fake stash houses containing zero drugs, zero drug dealers, and zero contraband of any kind.

The report also big-ups asset forfeiture, something abused so frequently and easily cops refer to it as "shopping" and citizens refer to it as "legalized theft."

One useful tool in disrupting illegal enterprises is asset forfeiture, which deprives criminals of the proceeds of their illegal activity. It also helps to deter crime and the seizures can be used to restore property to the victims. The DOJ has made use of criminal and civil asset forfeiture as an effective mechanism to counter sophisticated criminal actors. Since 2002, the DOJ has transferred more than $8.5 billion in forfeited funds to victims of crime, and notably, forfeited funds are reinvested back into state and local law enforcement through the Equitable Sharing Program to promote and enhance cooperation among federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies. In the last five years, the DOJ has equitably shared approximately $1.75 billion with state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies.

While the Commission pats the DOJ on the back for seizing so much stuff, its own stats on crime increases, the prevalence of gangs, and law enforcement's inability to slow the flow of drugs into this country despite a 50-year head start undercut the narrative that forfeiture does anything other than enrich the agencies that participate in it. Doubling down on the wrongness, the Commission calls for more drug task forces (mainly known for legalized theft, no-knock warrants, and plenty of rights violations) and more surveillance of interstate highways (a great place for harassing motorists out of their cash). How this will suddenly impact drug cartels is unknown, considering this is something that has also been done for decades and has had almost zero effect on the drug trade.

The Commission also asks for more en masse rights violations. It suggests the federal government create a national license plate reader database. It also says the US Postal Service should be able to search more packages without a warrant.

It also recommends better enforcement and investigation of domestic violence cases, which is good. But nowhere in the report does it acknowledge law enforcement officers commit acts of domestic violence at a higher rate than those being policed by them.

If America's cops are going to start bringing violent crime rates back down, they'll need better ideas than this. Then again, they may not need to do anything at all. What's being observed can't be called a trend. A few outliers during a time of historic crime lows is to be expected. What it shouldn't be is the impetus for repeating the failures of the past.

Filed Under: doj, donald trump, fbi, law enforcement, police, policing, presidential commission on law enforcement

Still Not 'Going Dark:' Device Encryption Still Contains Plenty Of Exploitable Flaws

from the good-news-and-bad-news-(which-some-might-consider-good-news) dept

Law enforcement -- especially at the federal level -- has spent a great deal of time complaining about an oddity known only to the FBI and DOJ as "warrant-proof" encryption. Device users and customers just call this "encryption" and realize this protects them against criminals and malicious hackers. The federal government, however, sees device encryption as a Big Tech slap in the face. And so they complain. Endlessly. And disingenuously.

First off, law enforcement has access to a wide variety of tech solutions. It also has access to plenty of communications and other data stored in the cloud or by third parties that encryption can't protect. And it has the users themselves, who can often be persuaded to allow officers to search their devices without a warrant.

Then there's the protection being handed out to phone users. It's got its own problems, as Matthew Green points out:

Authorities don't need to break phone encryption in most cases, because modern phone encryption sort of sucks.

More specifically, even the gold standard (Apple's) for encryption still leaves some stuff unencrypted. Once unlocked after a period of rest (say, first thing in the morning), the phone is placed into an "AFU" (after first unlock) state where crypto keys are stored in the phone. These stay in memory until erased. Most common use of phones won't erase them. And they're only erased one at a time, leaving several sets resident in memory where cops (and criminals!) using phone-cracking tech can still access them.

A report [PDF] put together by Matthew Green, Maximilian Zinkus, and Tushar Jois highlights the exploitable flaws of device encryption efforts by Apple, Google, and other device manufacturers. And there's not a lot of darkness going on, despite law enforcement's protestations.

This reaction is best exemplified by the FBI’s “Going Dark” initiative, which seeks to increase law enforcement’s access to encrypted data via legislative and policy initiatives. These concerns have also motivated law enforcement agencies, in collaboration with industry partners, to invest in developing and acquiring technical means for bypassing smartphone security features. This dynamic broke into the public consciousness during the 2016 “Apple v. FBI” controversy, in which Apple contested an FBI demand to bypass technical security measures. However, a vigorous debate over these issues continues to this day. Since 2015 and in the US alone, hundreds of thousands of forensic searches of mobile devices have been executed by over 2,000 law enforcement agencies, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, which have purchased tools implementing such bypass measures.

The research here shows there's no need for legislative mandates or court orders to access most of the contents of suspects' iPhones. There's plenty to be had just by exploiting the shortcomings of Apple's built-in encryption.

[W]e observed that a surprising amount of sensitive data maintained by built-in applications is protected using a weak “available after first unlock” (AFU) protection class, which does not evict decryption keys from memory when the phone is locked. The impact is that the vast majority of sensitive user data from Apple’s built-in applications can be accessed from a phone that is captured and logically exploited while it is in a powered-on (but locked) state.

This isn't theoretical. This has actually happened.

[W]e found circumstantial evidence in both the DHS procedures and investigative documents that law enforcement now routinely exploits the availability of decryption keys to capture large amounts of sensitive data from locked phones. Documents acquired by Upturn, a privacy advocate organization, support these conclusions, documenting law enforcement records of passcode recovery against both powered-off and simply locked iPhones of all generations.

Utilizing Apple's iCloud storage greatly increases the risk that a device's contents can be accessed. Using iCloud to sync messages results in the decryption key being uploaded to Apple's servers, which means law enforcement, Apple, and malicious hackers all have potential access. Device-specific file encryption keys also make their way to Apple via other iCloud services.

Over on the Android side, it's a bigger mess. Multiple providers and manufacturers all use their own update services. Devices are phased out for ongoing protection by both, resulting in user confusion as to which devices still offer software updates and the latest in encryption tech. Cheaper devices sometimes bypass these niceties entirely, leaving low-cost options the most vulnerable to exploitation. And, while the DOJ and FBI may spend the most time complaining about Apple, it only commands about 15% of the smartphone market. This means most devices law enforcement seizes aren't secured by the supposedly "impenetrable" encryption provided by Apple.

Google's cloud services offer almost no protection for Android users. App creators must opt in to certain security measures. In most cases, data backed up to Google's cloud services is only protected by encryption keys Google holds, rather than the user uploading the data. Not only is encryption not much of a barrier, but neither is the legal system. A great deal of third party data -- like the comprehensive data sets maintained by Google -- can be accessed with only a subpoena.

The rest of the report digs deep into the strengths and limitations of encryption offered to phone users. But the conclusion remains unaltered: law enforcement does have multiple ways to access the contents of encrypted devices. And some of these solutions scale pretty easily. While it's not cheap, it's definitely affordable. While there will always be those who "got away," law enforcement isn't being hindered much by encryption that provides security to all phone users, whether or not they're suspected of criminal activity.

Filed Under: encryption, going dark, law enforcement, vulnerabilities

No Surprises Here: Presidential Commission On Law Enforcement Repeats Calls For Anti-Encryption Legislation

from the another-pile-of-garbage-ideas dept

[Note: this is one of multiple posts covering the Commission's 332-page report.]

The Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement -- ushered into existence by a 2019 Executive Order -- has released its report [PDF], just in time for the man who ordered it to move out of the White House. President Trump spent his four years defending and praising law enforcement, no matter how often law enforcement's actions provoked criticism elsewhere. This report does the same thing, even as it pretends to offer an objective opinion on the challenges facing the law enforcement community.

The Commission is composed solely of law enforcement officials and officers, which makes its findings one-sided and, of course, suspect. The report calls for an end to the "disrespect" shown to law enforcement. But it does little to address the roots of this perceived disrespect. At best, the report suggests the public is just "misinformed" about law enforcement's role in society and posits it's "progressive prosecutors" and opportunistic legislators causing most of the reputational damage, rather than the things cops do when their leash is long enough.

The report also has nothing good to say about device encryption. Using lingo provided to it by consecutive FBI directors and former AG Bill Barr, the report claims something called "warrant-proof encryption" (a.k.a., regular encryption) should have backdoors legislated into it.

The lack of lawful access to encrypted information controlled by technology companies is presently one of the greatest obstacles to law enforcement in its efforts to combat crime. The rule of law cannot exist in a space—digital or otherwise—that deliberately insulates criminals from law enforcement investigation. The substantial danger to individual victims and general safety posed by warrant-proof encryption demands a prompt and decisive policy action. Because the prominent technology companies have increasingly elected to implement data systems that prevent law enforcement access, the Commission has concluded that a legislative solution may be necessary to optimally balance the interests of personal privacy and public safety.

Ah, but the rule of law can exist in such a space. It's doing it right now. The FBI may have claimed it had nearly 8,000 devices "insulated" from "investigation" in its possession, but after being questioned by Congress about its struggles with encryption, it revealed it couldn't accurately count physical items. We're still waiting for an updated number -- one promised to us nearly three years ago.

At least the Commission recognizes law enforcement has never had more tech options at its disposal. But it suggests law enforcement make use of some of its most questionable options more frequently.

New methods of electronic surveillance and digital investigation hold considerable promise, and the Commission recommends that law enforcement take a proactive approach to developing and innovating technologies to combat crime instead of reactively catching up to the technological innovations of the day. Accordingly, the Commission encourages law enforcement to specifically consider—with appropriate contemplation of competing policy interests— developing and adapting crime reduction technologies, such as unmanned aerial systems (quadcopters), acoustic gunshot detection technologies, real time crime centers, and facial recognition software, to add to their crime-fighting arsenal.

Shot spotters. Predictive policing. Facial recognition. This is a list of things that don't work well and, in the latter two cases, are made worse by the inclusion of biases the tech is supposed to be removing.

Heading back to encryption, the report contains testimonial statements from an agency that shouldn't be allowed to bitch about encryption until it can be honest about how many encrypted devices are in its possession. Here's another call for legislated backdoors by Darrin Jones, the FBI's Assistant Director for Science and Technology:

“The impact and magnitude of the lawful access crisis in the United States has grown to a point where the public safety trade-off to the citizens of this country can and should no longer be made privately and independently in the corporate boardrooms of tech companies. It must, instead, be returned to the halls of the people’s democratically elected and publicly accountable representatives.”

But we don't know the "impact" or the "magnitude." The FBI says both are enormous. But the FBI has also overstated the number of locked devices in its possession -- something it routinely leveraged to push claims of a looming criminal apocalypse that has completely failed to materialize. Until it can provide an accurate count, it really shouldn't opine about the "impact" of device encryption. And its testimony shouldn't be the basis for legislation seeking to weaken encryption.

The report goes on to complain about Facebook adding encryption to its Messenger service and Zoom (sort of...) doing the same for its users. Then it claims this is pretty much the first time law enforcement hasn't been able to obtain evidence when it has a warrant.

Companies that have chosen to adopt end-to-end user encryption have effectively upended more than 200 years of jurisprudence by placing evidence beyond the reach of a court-ordered search warrant.

Right. Because no one's destroyed or hidden evidence prior to this point in history. No one held conversations in person to assure no record remained of criminal conspiracies. Just because phones now contain a wealth of potential evidence does not mean the tables have been turned because something more than a physical door separates cops from the stuff they want to take. Any number of third parties store communications and other data in unencrypted form. And no one in law enforcement feels like honestly discussing the phone-cracking tools that are available or how often suspects consent to searches.

The Commission asks for backdoors:

Congress should require providers of communications services and electronic data storage manufacturers to implement strong, managed encryption for stored data and data in motion while ensuring lawful access to evidence pursuant to court orders.

Then it claims it doesn't want backdoors:

The Commission considered but rejected the idea that lawful access equates to back-door access. Almost all mobile device manufacturers, operating system vendors, and app providers maintain their own “upgrade” back doors, which enables providers to routinely change functions and settings of a device or service. Law enforcement does not seek such direct access, nor does it wish to hold any encryption “keys.” Instead, law enforcement seeks to have tech companies develop and manage for themselves the capability to respond to a lawful court order. Having tech companies themselves remain in control of this process is actually privacy enhancing, ensuring law enforcement is afforded only specific, limited access to data as defined in each case by a specific warrant.

The government won't be honest about the challenges encryption actually poses -- beginning with its refusal to tell Americans how many devices it can't crack open. And it's not honest about its desires. A door is a door -- a hole in encryption that doesn't exist until it's mandated. Refusing to call it a "backdoor" doesn't change what it is.

Then there's this, which implies legislators should look into stripping tech companies of protections they currently enjoy… solely to make it easier for law enforcement to access device contents.

Civil liability immunity statutes that were adopted during the infancy of many tech companies may unintentionally encourage such companies to pursue and market user-only access and end-to-end encryption models. Absent any risk of financial liability, the routine cost–benefit analysis— which most companies use to determine whether to dedicate resources to harm-mitigation strategies—may not influence some of these technology companies into a willingness to facilitate lawful access.

According to the Commission, the only way out of this mess is to strip companies of this liability shield... unless they agree to undermine the protections they give to their customers.

As long as tech companies are immune from liability, the Commission assumes that these companies perceive any development or maintenance of lawful access capabilities to be a drain on profits, which allows the tech companies to hide their financial motivations under the guise of a desire to enhance users’ privacy. Ultimately, this behavior enables plausible corporate ignorance and allows criminals to use these systems for illegal purposes. If corporations are to continue to benefit from civil immunity, Congress should mandate that these companies develop and maintain a lawful access solution capable of producing clear text data in response to court-ordered search warrants.

The Commission also says legislators should implement regulations that allow it to wiretap real-time communications that are currently encrypted. Somehow this proposal starts with stored communications and ends with ordained MITM attacks.

The Stored Communications Act of 1986 requires data to be stored for up to 180 days upon request by the government. Providers must also disclose private information in emergency cases where individuals or groups may be in danger. In addition, a “court order is required for access to digital information. An administrative subpoena may be issued to gain access to specific data such as usernames, addresses, telephone numbers, and call transcripts.”

Recently, the FBI investigated a gang task force case where it was revealed that the primary suspect of a homicide case used FaceTime to orchestrate the crime. Because Apple uses end-to-end encryption, it allows criminals to coordinate their crimes through this avenue. If law enforcement is given lawful access, they can then intercept the plans of criminals and gain evidence to prosecute those who break the law.

The government appears to hate tech companies. Combined with the recent attacks on Section 230, Trump and his law enforcement buddies are apparently still entertaining any option that might let them score a win over Big Tech and its supposed anti-conservative/anti-law enforcement bias.

These are dangerous suggestions. Fortunately, they're being offered up by a lame duck Commission that will presumably expire along with a lot of other Trump mandates following his exit from office. Bill Barr has already resigned. Whoever replaces him presumably can't be as terrible as he was.

Law enforcement faces a lot of challenges. But it also has access to more tools, data, and information than it's ever had before. Undermining user security in exchange for law enforcement convenience isn't the way forward. It's a step backwards -- one that places the government's wants over the needs of the people it's supposed to be serving.

Filed Under: doj, encryption, executive order, fbi, going dark, law enforcement, presidential commission on law enforcement

Presidential Commission On Law Enforcement Says Pretty Much Everyone But Cops Are To Blame For The Shitty State Of American Policing

from the building-relationships-through-[re-reads-report]-blaming-taxpayers dept

[Note: this is one of what will probably be several posts covering the Commission's 332-page report. There's a lot to cover in here and one post simply isn't enough to cover everything in it. Stay tuned.]

President Trump took office and immediately declared war on Americans. The only good people are government people. And the best people of all are law enforcement people, who were immediately elevated above those they served by the new leader of our nation.

One of the fundamental rights of every American is to live in a safe community. A Trump Administration will empower our law enforcement officers to do their jobs and keep our streets free of crime and violence. The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.

First, there is no right to "live in a safe community." Second, Trump failed to end the "dangerous anti-police atmosphere." The "atmosphere" isn't wrong, as cops proved again and again. It's deserved. And it needs more than presidential proclamation to turn it around.

Four exceedingly long years have passed. Trump is a few weeks away from exiting the office he was incapable of running. But one final shot is being delivered by his Justice Department -- the culmination of months of research and years of pro-cop agitation.

The Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice has released its report -- one mandated by a 2019 Executive Order. In it, Trump ordered the Commission (now missing its chief rabble rouser, recently-resigned AG Bill Barr) to conduct a "modern study of the state of American policing." The report is supposed to give America guidance on fighting crime and addressing multiple law enforcement issues. Perhaps more importantly, the report is supposed to "promote the rule of law," a term Trump has used repeatedly during his tenure, but only when the rules and laws aren't being applied to him.

The report [PDF] lists the issues the Commission attempted to address. It leads off with presumably the most important issue: the perceived screwing of law enforcement agencies by all and sundry.

Respect for the Rule of Law and Law Enforcement focused on the trend of diminished respect for law enforcement and the laws they enforce. The group specifically evaluated how under-enforcement of the criminal law in certain jurisdictions affects public safety, public perception of law enforcement and the laws it enforces, police resources and morale, and the rule of law. The group also evaluated how to increase respect for law enforcement and how a lack of respect for law enforcement impacts public safety and the rule of law.

"Diminished respect." This should have forced the Commission to examine why respect has been diminished. Instead, the Commission focuses on non-cops and non-issues. There's definitely a problem here. It just isn't what the Commission thinks it is.

The report says it's not the protests, it's the riots -- ignoring the fact that there was plenty of needless escalation by law enforcement during the policing of these protests. Being angry about police violence apparently threatens public safety, folks.

This new public safety dynamic—while hopefully temporary—is exacerbated by the confluent civil unrest events and protests against law enforcement that continue to unfold in the aftermath of several high-profile use-of-force incidents. In particular, on May 25, 2020, the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sparked protests in cities and towns across the nation, which were sometimes overtaken by those intent on exploiting the situation for their own means. Law enforcement is sworn to uphold the constitutionally protected activities of those whose only intent is to exercise their legitimate right to protest, yet radical elements that bring violence and property destruction further strain law enforcement resources.

Fortunately, the Commission isn't as short-sighted as the man directing its efforts. There's a balance to be struck. But the lack of respect for law enforcement can't be laid at the feet of the policed. Respect is something earned, not something assumed. And law enforcement has done little to ensure its respect is earned. That's not how the Commission sees it, though.

Disrespect for law enforcement, unfortunately, readily becomes a disrespect for the law itself, which threatens the social order. Following the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, which transpired during the work of this Commission, the civil protests against alleged police abuses were accompanied by significant lawlessness and increases in crime across many jurisdictions, and are a timely reminder of the importance that citizens have collective trust in their law enforcement to protect and serve their communities. The Commission’s review of law enforcement, therefore, rests on the foundational principle that law enforcement officers are the primary guarantors of communal safety. As such, government policies and programs should foremost promote public trust in law enforcement, but also deter abuses by police that undermine that trust.

While it's nice to see the Commission recognize law enforcement has played a role in its current disrespect quandary, these agencies have had years to fix endemic problems. But instead of fixing it, they've chosen to ignore, if not actually condone, officer misconduct. This problem didn't develop overnight. The current protests are the end result of years of indifference. The report recommends positive changes…

To that end, the Commission has recommended jurisdictions enhance officer training on using force and develop special procedures for investigating and prosecuting officer-involved shootings which promote accountability, transparency, impartiality, and due process.

… before stating that it's non-cop Americans who are really the problem:

Ultimately, however, the first and greatest reason for the use of force by police remains that individuals do not respect or comply with the lawful commands of law enforcement officers.

Resisting abuses of power is unamerican. Take your beating and hire a lawyer, says the Commission.

The criminal justice system affords many avenues for citizens to challenge the actions of police officers―it does not allow them to do so through physically resisting officers, nor does it allow law enforcement officers to surrender their duties to public safety whenever a subject resists. Because law enforcement has a duty to secure compliance by force, and because individuals have a legal right to challenge law enforcement force in subsequent proceedings, the Commission asserts that the primary prevention of unwarranted force by law enforcement is for citizens to “Comply, Then Complain.”

That's right, citizens: do what the Commission says. It's the only way cop business can be conducted as usual. Take the abuse and deal with the criminal charges.

The report ignores the reality of the situation. Most (97% [!!]) criminal charges result in plea deals, not an adjudication of the charges on their merits. Legal fees and settlements from misconduct lawsuits are paid by taxpayers. And that's only if the touted "avenue" actually pays off. In most cases, litigants are left with nothing, having paid for a lawsuit only to see it dead-ended by qualified immunity, a shield officers wield successfully in far too many lawsuits.

The report then goes further, absolving officers of almost any responsibility for their actions.

The police did not create and cannot resolve the social conditions that stimulate crime. They did not start and cannot stop the convulsive social changes that are taking place in America. They do not enact the laws that they are required to enforce, nor do they dispose of the criminals they arrest. The police are only one part of the criminal justice system; the criminal justice system is only one part of the government; and the government is only one part of society.

Helpfully, the report says cops can't do it all and suggests increased funding for social and mental health services. It also recommends some revamps of the criminal justice system, including greater transparency around plea deals, use of treatment courts and/or reentry services for certain crimes, and a better bail system that doesn't punish people just for being poor.

But the report doesn't suggest shifting funds away from law enforcement agencies to accomplish this. Instead, it suggests anything that meddles with the discretion of law enforcement officers will lead to greater disrespect and higher crime rates. The report goes on the attack against prosecutors who've decided to stop prosecuting some low-level crimes and suggests any politician who criticizes law enforcement is doing it solely to score political points.

Then it offers up a proactive Nuremberg defense of police officers: they shouldn't be treated with disrespect just because they're following orders.

Police officers may be the first and primary contact between the criminal justice system and the community, but they should not suffer the brunt of all social discontent simply because they are the agents of a system that the public primarily encounters.

It is therefore important to emphasize that law enforcement officers have an important but limited responsibility to execute the law, and that criticism towards officers should be accordingly limited to how they discharge that responsibility.

Completely failing to read the room, the Commission bemoans the fate of poor, poor ICE, which has been unfairly maligned just for enforcing the law.

Recent events in the arena of immigration law exemplify the detriment to law enforcement that occurs when executive non-enforcement violates the separation of powers. In or around 2017, after a change of presidential administration resulted in increased enforcement of immigration laws, critics of those laws attacked and vilified federal immigration law enforcement officials―the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)―for simply enforcing the laws they were sworn to uphold. The misdirected hostility towards ICE stemmed from the fallacy that it was the executive branch, not the United States Congress, that determined what laws to enforce.

It's not that this part of the report is all bad. But it serves mostly to exonerate cops and encourage them (and prosecutors) to leverage low-level crime as a way to control communities And it does this even as it calls for law enforcement agencies to focus on the most dangerous criminals and the most violent crimes -- the ones that harm communities the most.

The report says prosecutors shouldn't be allowed to exercise blanket discretion, deeming small-time possession and non-violent crimes unworthy of their attention or resources. It says qualified immunity should remain intact, despite its contribution to the same misconduct and excessive force the Commission says cops should strive to address.

Unfortunately, even when the report is good, it's still pretty bad. The Commission calls for building relationships with communities, but quotes Houston PD chief Art Acevedo, who is best known these days for allowing corrupt, lying cops to run wild, culminating in the killing of two Houston residents during a no-knock raid predicated on the statements of a nonexistent informant.

The Commission says law enforcement agencies should make public their internal guidelines for use of force and their investigative processes for officers accused of deploying excessive force. It calls for states to pass legislation demanding independent investigations of misconduct and excessive force deployment in cases that result in death or injury.

But in the end, the Commission's suggestions imply it's the public that's to blame for failing to educate itself , rather than the law enforcement agencies that have been anything but open and transparent since their inception.

Law enforcement agencies should prioritize community outreach and developing and maintaining strong, positive relationships with various segments of the community, while providing knowledge of and appreciation for the daily responsibilities of law enforcement.

The whole thing is skewed towards placing the burden of meeting cops in the middle on the general public. The report seems to assume (based on facts not in evidence) that cops have been engaged in good faith outreach efforts for years, only to see these efforts derailed by political opportunists and "progressive" prosecutors.

The fact is that cops have cultivated an "us vs. them" mindset for years. And now that they're reaping what they've spent years sowing, they're looking around for anything that serves the narrative they prefer. The targets are the same ones listed in the Commission's report: activists, politicians, community leaders, and reformers -- anyone that threatens their status quo. The Commission says some of the status quo must change if things are going to get better. But every suggestion for change is coupled with blame (direct and implied) for the people who act as their oversight or pay their salaries.

Filed Under: donald trump, law enforcement, police, presidential commission on law enforcement

Schools Are Using Phone-Cracking Tech To Access The Contents Of Students' Devices

from the brave-new-hellscape dept

To the detriment of our nation's future, the future of our nation is increasingly being subjected to law enforcement's presents (and presence). On the plus side, it will help students grow up with a healthy distrust of their government.

We've put cops in schools so kids can be subjected to the same brutality adults receive. Disciplinary problems long-handled by schools and parents are now handled with handcuffs and criminal charges. The same questionable science that leads cops to believe future criminal acts can be predicted by algorithms and checklists is being wielded against children, turning their bad grades and spotty attendance records into criminal predicates.

Now, there's this: the use of high-tech hacking tools to forensically scrape kids' phones for evidence of alleged criminal acts.

In May 2016, a student enrolled in a high-school in Shelbyville, Texas, consented to having his phone searched by one of the district’s school resource officers. Looking for evidence of a romantic relationship between the student and a teacher, the officer plugged the phone into a Cellebrite UFED to recover deleted messages from the phone. According to the arrest affidavit, investigators discovered the student and teacher frequently messaged each other, “I love you.” Two days later, the teacher was booked into the county jail for sexual assault of a child.

While this may have resulted in something that actually prevented further harm to a student, the fact that schools possess tools capable of bypassing device encryption is… well, horrifying. We're talking about minors here, not dangerous criminals. This case is not a great argument for the acquisition and use of phone-cracking tools by educators. There were many ways to approach this problem, but this one was the easiest. And it shows those selling phone-cracking tech don't really care who buys it or what they use it for.

Cracking a phone to scrape it for evidence gives investigators easy access to communications and other private info even a consenting minor wouldn't agree to share with others. But the tools can't make that distinction. And investigators assume consent for a search means looking at everything the tools give them access to.

The Cellebrite used in this case was owned by the local sheriff's office. That it decided it was appropriate to use on a minor's phone is disturbing, to say the least. It seems the same thing could have been accomplished by the minor providing them with access to the messages, which could have been documented and downloaded without engaging in a forensic search of the phone.

This isn't some sort of anomaly. As Gizmodo reports, multiple school districts are buying phone-cracking tech to access the content of students' devices.

In March 2020, the North East Independent School District, a largely Hispanic district north of San Antonio, wrote a check to Cellebrite for $6,695 for “General Supplies.” In May, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD near Houston, Texas, paid Oxygen Forensics Inc., another mobile device forensics firm, $2,899. Not far away, majority-white Conroe ISD wrote a check to Susteen Inc., the manufacturer of the similar Secure View system, for $995 in September 2016.

According to Gizmodo, only eight districts in the US acknowledge publicly (via their websites) that they own device-cracking tech. The actual number is definitely much higher. This total doesn't include law enforcement agencies that own or have access to the tech, and whose "school resource officers" might decide is necessary to investigate students or their accusations against school employees.

Deploying this tech to search students' phones isn't just irresponsible, it's dangerous. Cops and prosecutors have rarely been reluctant to turn consensual sharing of intimate images into the "production" of "child pornography." Dig deep enough into someone's phone and you'll find something incriminating. And that's if the cops are simply looking for evidence. Some cops like to look at stuff just because they have the access and the power to demand compliance. Access to this tech guarantees abuse. But in these cases, the victim will be a minor -- people who are assumed to be more vulnerable and whose lives can be ruined before they can even be started.

Filed Under: education, encryption, law enforcement, phone cracking, schools, surveillance
Companies: cellebrite, susteen

New Report Shows Cellphone Encryption Isn't Really Stopping Cops From Searching Phones

from the complaining-that-99%-access-isn't-100%-access dept

We're still hearing quite a bit about law enforcement's supposedly endless string of losses to criminals and their device encryption. Citing facts not in evidence, consecutive FBI directors -- along with outgoing Attorney General Bill Barr -- have claimed the implementation of encryption has pretty much made it impossible to successfully prosecute criminals.

We know this isn't true for several reasons. But let's begin with the FBI, which has relied on overstated numbers to press the "going dark" theory for a few dozen months at this point. After admitting it couldn't do math -- even when aided by a spreadsheet -- the FBI has refused to update its overblown number of locked devices in its possession. The FBI has not corrected its math for 931 days at this point.

Criminal prosecutions haven't slowed down either. When almost every prosecution ends in a plea deal, it's pretty rich for prosecutors and law enforcement to complain they're being beaten by criminals. And a bunch of federal agencies pad their own numbers, engaging in borderline entrapment to ensure a steady stream of prosecutorial wins.

A new report shows just how little of an effect device encryption has had on law enforcement efforts. Some of the report's highlights are touched on by Lawfare's Susan Landau. We've heard the complaints encryption is keeping law enforcement out of seized cellphones. The reality is much more worrying. Not only is encryption not much of a barrier, but law enforcement tech allows investigators to access pretty much everything before trimming it down to what's been asked for in warrant affidavits.

These forensic tools are quite sophisticated. FBI Director Christopher Wray once complained that “warrant-proof encryption,” like that used on iPhones, prevents law enforcement access to crucial evidence. But Upturn found that the forensic tools copy all the data found on a cellphone. The tools then sort the data so that law enforcement can easily search through it. And MDFTs include some features that make law enforcement’s job even easier. For example, Cellebrite, perhaps the most sophisticated MDFT, can compare a facial image, such as from a police database, to any of the faces in photos stored on the phone. Others MDFTs classify text conversations by topic, such as drugs, money or family.

The MDFTs work on a variety of sophisticated phones. Cellebrite says it can extract data from “all iPhone devices from iPhone 4S to the latest iPhone 11 / 11 Pro / Max running the latest iOS versions up to the latest 13.4.1.” The company claims to be able to handle even locked iPhones and Android devices.

"Going dark" is nothing more than rhetoric. The reality is encryption isn't much of a roadblock. The report by DC think tank Upturn shows there's little standing in the way of law enforcement forensic extractions, no matter how much federal officials claim otherwise. The business of cracking/scraping phones is largely automated -- plug-and-play invasive searches that pretty much ignore efforts owners might make to secure their devices against government intrusion.

Mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs) are so powerful, Upturn recommends the ban on consensual searches of cellphones, given what investigators can access when they're deployed. This makes some sense, given the specious reasons given for some cellphone searches. But that's going to be a really difficult thing to sell to legislators when one of the most recognized exceptions to the Fourth Amendment is the voluntary waiver. (Counterpoint: the definition of "voluntary" could use more examination by courts, which have decided the third-party doctrine applies even when voluntary consent isn't obvious, but still side with law enforcement agencies who have coerced confessions and "consent.")

People may think these powerful tools will only be aimed at the worst criminals -- drug kingpins, child molesters, financial services firms, etc. But they're not. They're used for everything because they're cheap, easy, and convenient.

Law enforcement use these tools to investigate not only cases involving major harm, but also for graffiti, shoplifting, marijuana possession, prostitution, vandalism, car crashes, parole violations, petty theft, public intoxication, and the full gamut of drug-related offenses.

Anti-encryption enthusiasts like FBI directors Chris Wray and James Comey have somewhat acknowledged some powerful tools render device encryption moot. But even while (sort of) admitting their "going dark" claims were overblown, proponents of encryption backdoors claim success rates are too low, tools are too expensive, and solutions provided by government contractors won't scale. Upturn's report says otherwise.

Our records show that at least 2,000 agencies have purchased a range of products and services offered by mobile device forensic tool vendors. Law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia have these tools. Each of the largest 50 police departments have purchased or have easy access to mobile device forensic tools. Dozens of district attorneys’ and sheriff’s offices have also purchased them. Many have done so through a variety of federal grant programs. Even if a department hasn’t purchased the technology itself, most, if not all, have easy access thanks to partnerships, kiosk programs, and sharing agreements with larger law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.

So, there's plenty of access. Funding isn't a problem. Vendors have solutions that scale because there's plenty of access and plenty of funding. But the complaints continue. And the complaints continue despite how much is being extracted with each deployment.

MDFTs pull every photo on the device, extracting metadata that shows when and where photos were taken. It pulls data from every app that generates it, including location data, which allows law enforcement to track movement without a warrant. The extraction tools can also pull deleted data, allowing investigators to perform digital trash pulls for additional evidence.

Then there's the third parties themselves. While the FBI and others complain about a lack of access, any data/communications stored by cloud services can be recovered without having to deal with device encryption.

The wealth of data available to law enforcement allows them to engage in fishing expeditions for evidence of other crimes. The only thing stopping them is the courts, so it's worth their while to dig through everything, considering the worst case scenario is a dismissed case, rather than fines, fees, sanctions, or anything else that might hurt them more directly.

A city or state might ban facial recognition searches, but cops can still do this without violating the specifics of the ban, thanks to built-in tools.

Cellebrite offers a “search by face” function, whereby law enforcement can compare an image of a face to all other images of faces found on the phone.

They can also look for anything else conceivably incriminating (or titillating) without having to screw with their tools' default settings.

Cellebrite also allows law enforcement to define new image categories by feeding its software a small set of example images to search for (for example, searching for hotel rooms by giving the software a set of five images of hotel rooms that were taken from Google images). As another example, Magnet Forensics’ AXIOM can employ text classification models in attempts to detect “sexual conversations,” or to filter conversations by topics ranging from family, drugs, money, and police.

Even if encryption is the default option, a variety of software and hardware exploits renders this useless in most cases. Patches from developers and manufacturers make this somewhat of an arms race, but this race remains a tie, at worst. Law enforcement isn't losing. And if it's losing access, it's only temporary.

There's another "war" at play here -- one that's rarely referenced by law enforcement officials. Every vendor wants more customers, so they're always improving their tech. The healthy competition makes tools more powerful while dropping their price, ensuring equal access for law enforcement agencies across the nation. The public records obtained by Upturn show there's not a single state in the Union that doesn't have access to forensic tools capable of cracking or bypassing encryption. Funding isn't an issue, given the federal government's interest in making encryption a non-issue.

That means there's thousands of extractions a year -- something that undercuts the FBI's "warrant-proof encryption" narrative at least as much as its inability to count physical items accurately.

The records of use we’ve assembled from 44 law enforcement agencies represent at least 50,000 extractions of cellphones between 2015 and 2019.

There is no going dark. If legislators want to believe there is, they're going to have to do so by ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. What law enforcement wants is convenience -- the ability to crack open phones without having to hook them up to a machine or beat the submission out of an arrestee. The options are there and agencies are obviously using them. Every argument that says encryption is locking law enforcement out is not just disingenuous -- it's dishonest.

Filed Under: access, doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, law enforcement, prosecutors

Another Drug Lab Scandal -- One That Took Kids From Their Parents -- Ends In Prison Time

from the behold-the-motherfuckery-of-your-tax-dollars-at-work dept

Another horror story involving the government and a drug-testing lab is finally coming to a close. And the owner of the drug lab is going to jail.

Unlike others we've covered, this drug lab didn't contain employees who falsified drug tests that landed people in jail. But the outcome for the innocent was nearly as miserable. Faked drug tests performed by Brandy Murrah, the owner of A & J Lab Collections, resulted in parents losing their children.

As Ozark police continue to investigate reports of falsified drug and paternity cases involving a company contracted by the Department of Human Resources, families are coming forward with claims forged documents impacted their homes.

Jennifer Seavers is one of them.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t cry, and I just want to bring my babies home as any parent would want to do,” Seavers said.

Seavers says she used the Department of Human Resource’s Pike County drug testing vendor, Brandy Murrah of A & J Lab Collections, as part of her custody battle for her youngest girls, Madilyn and Jennifer Grace.

Seavers said Murrah provided false positive drug tests, which prompted a judge to order restrictions on her access to her children - further complicating the custody battle.

This victim dug into the lab work supposedly performed by Murrah and found her test had been faked. The doctor that supposedly signed off on it had never seen the paperwork or reports generated by Murrah, who forged the doctor's signature on the documents.

The county also began digging into Murrah's drug testing and found more of the same.

Murrah had an agreement with the Dale County Department of Human Resources to perform drugs test on individuals involved in dependency, or custody, cases. She was not involved in any criminal cases.

Investigators said they launched their probe May 2 after evidence of drug screening reports that were provided to the Dale County Department of Human Resources by Murrah were found to be falsified. Ozark police Sgt. Cody Evans said multiple other drug screening reports provided to DHR are also believed to have been forged by Murrah.

It's unclear whether Murrah's actions were prompted by animosity towards her victims or just plain laziness. It really doesn't matter. Her actions ripped families apart and destroyed people's futures. But in the end, at least some justice was served.

Judge William Filmore decided Murrah, the former owner of an Ozark lab test collection company, will spend 15 years in prison after hearing testimony from those who said she falsified lab reports that led to their children being taken away.

Murrah pleaded guilty in September, agreeing to 15 years on a felony charge of perjury and 12 months on each of 16 misdemeanor counts of forgery to run concurrently.

This will give victims some closure. But it will only provide limited comfort. Their lives went through serious upheaval. Seavers isn't the only victim. Grace Newton went through the same nightmare. She fought through her drug problems to get her kids back only to have the state take away her three-month-old infant after a drug test handled by Murrah came back positive. This was reversed after a negative drug test, but for three weeks, the state became her baby's new parent, thanks to Murrah.

But here's the thing: it shouldn't take citizens wronged by a government contractor to suss out malfeasance and wrongdoing. The system residents are paying for with their tax dollars needs to be more proactive with its oversight. Rigorous oversight is difficult. But, ultimately, it's worth the time and effort. It's better to be perceived as skeptical than as a group of public servants willing to throw the public to the subcontracted wolves.

Filed Under: brandy murrah, drug testing lab, forged results, law enforcement
Companies: a&j lab collections

Mississippi City Trying To Turn Residents' Doorbell Cameras Into Law Enforcement Surveillance Network

from the Jackson-city-council-just-saying-the-quiet-part-loud dept

The Ring doorbell/camera has become a fixture of American life, thanks in part to Ring's partnership with law enforcement agencies. In exchange for steering people towards Ring's snitch app, the company has been giving deeply discounted doorbell cameras to police, who then hand them out to homeowners with the implied assumption homeowners will return the favor by handing footage over to cops any time they ask.

There are millions of cameras out there and Ring-enabled portals for law enforcement officers to request footage. If warrants seem to be too much trouble, Ring lets police know they can always approach the company with a subpoena to access recordings stored in Ring's cloud.

Some enterprising city legislators are narrowing the gap between cops and homeowners' cameras. A trial program is underway in Mississippi that would give police direct access to cameras, as Edward Ongweso Jr. reports for Vice. (h/t FourthAmendment.com]

On Tuesday, Jackson, Mississippi's city council signed off on a 45-day pilot program that would let police access Ring surveillance cameras in real time.

In partnership with technology companies PILEUM and Fūsus, the pilot program will run through the police department’s surveillance hub, the Real Time Crime Center, from which Jackson’s police department can stream Ring surveillance camera footage.

The goal, of course, is to fight crime. But the methods are concerning, to say the least. The expansion of law enforcement's surveillance network in Jackson co-opts cameras owned by private citizens. The police feel this would be a boon for their "Real Time Crime Center," allowing them to seamlessly access any footage instantly near scenes of reported crimes. According to the mayor, this is a net win for everyone, but it provides the most benefit to the local government, which won't have to spend money to purchase more CCTV cameras.

None of this is mandatory. Businesses and private citizens have to sign a waiver to grant the police real-time access to their cameras. But this move towards more pervasive surveillance comes at a strange time for the city, which recently took steps to limit local law enforcement's access to surveillance tech.

This may come as a surprise to those who remember that just a few months ago, Jackson was the first city in the South to ban police from using facial recognition technology.

That might explain why this surveillance hub isn't much of a hub at this point. According to Vice's report, there are only five private participants in this program. As for Ring, it's distancing itself from this co-opting of its cameras, stating that this isn't a Ring program and the company has had no participation in this program. And while that may be true in this case, the company hasn't been shy about pushing cameras on citizens via law enforcement and encouraging law enforcement to lean on recipients for camera footage.

This may not be Ring's doing, but that's always been the implicit promise of its hundreds of partnerships with law enforcement agencies: an expanded surveillance network that costs cops almost nothing. It hasn't always worked out the way Ring suggests it will, but this trial program makes it clear others will step up to create a network of their own if Ring can't or won't help out.

Filed Under: doorbells, jackson, law enforcement, mississippi, police, real-time, ring, surveillance
Companies: amazon, fusus, pileum

The DOJ Will Finally Allow Local Cops To Wear Body Cameras When Working With Federal Agencies

from the years-after-the-tech-has-become-ubiquitous dept

The federal government is finally coming around to body cameras. While law enforcement agencies around the nation continue to buy body cameras for their officers, federal agencies have been less receptive to these tools of incremental accountability and transparency.

First, let's address body cameras. They're not a panacea. They don't turn bad cops into good cops. They're far more useful to prosecutors then they are to criminal defendants or plaintiffs in civil rights lawsuits. They tend to "malfunction" with alarming regularity during confrontations with members of the public. And they can be manipulated to act as corroboration for falsified police reports.

That being said, they do offer one thing we haven't seen since the advent of dashcams: another version of events normally only memorialized by exonerative statements and questionable report narratives.

Five years ago, the DOJ was throwing federal money at body camera programs. But only for local law enforcement agencies. The feds wanted none of it. A mandate issued by the DOJ said its agencies wouldn't partner with cop shops using the tech, even if the cameras were purchased with federal money. According to the DOJ, it was "looking into the issue," but strongly felt the presence of body cameras would "expose police methods." It said this with a straight face despite "police methods" remaining largely unchanged since the invention of the door ram.

Five years later -- and while under the now-temporary thumb of cop cheerleader Bill Barr -- the DOJ has finally decided to join the present (already in progress).

Today, the Justice Department announced that it will permit state, local, territorial, and tribal task force officers to use body-worn cameras on federal task forces around the nation. The department’s policy will permit federally deputized officers to activate a body-worn camera while serving arrest warrants, or during other planned arrest operations, and during the execution of search warrants.  

This doesn't mean federal officers and agents will be wearing body cameras. Oh my no. That accountability bridge will presumably be crossed sometime in the next decade. But it will no longer require local officers to leave their cameras at the station before assisting in warrant service. According to the DOJ's official guidance [PDF], this will finally allow the local boys to stop violating their own policies when performing arrests or searches.

To the extent state and local law enforcement agencies mandate BWCs [body-worn cameras] for TFOs [task force officers] while engaged in federal task force operations, the Department will permit federally deputized TFOs from those agencies to use their BWCs under the following circumstances.

How gracious of the federal government to allow local agencies to follow their own policies. But there are some catches. And one of those catches will allow officers to engage in searches without providing unbiased documentation of the search.

TFOs are authorized to activate their BWCs upon approaching a subject or premises, and must deactivate their BWCs when the scene is secured as determined by the federal supervisor on the scene as designated by the sponsoring federal agency.

More DOJ caveats await, ensuring even fewer recordings will occur.

TFOs are prohibited from recording: (1) undercover personnel; (2) confidential informants or confidential sources; (3) on-scene witness interviews prior to or after the operation; (4) personnel using specialized or sensitive investigative techniques or equipment; or (5) onscene actions by any non-law enforcement persons who are assisting law enforcement personnel prior to or after the operation.

So, the FBI will continue to conduct "interviews" without unbiased documentation and nearly anything involved with a task force operation will go unrecorded because pretty much everything other than breaching an entrance or placing someone in cuffs will fall into these expansive, malleable exceptions.

And if the public wants access to this footage, good luck with that. Whatever local policies and laws that normally govern public access to recordings are null and void. According to the DOJ, it retains control of recordings and will preemptively declare all recordings exempt from public records requests.

In all circumstances, TFO BWC recordings shall be treated as law enforcement sensitive information, the premature disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings, and as potential evidence in a federal investigation subject to applicable federal laws, rules, and policy concerning any disclosure or dissemination; and therefore deemed privileged absent appropriate redaction prior to disclosure or dissemination. Nothing in this policy shall be deemed to provide a right of public access to TFO BWC recordings.

The good news is there is one exception: if anyone on the task force -- federal or otherwise -- kills or seriously injures someone, the recordings will be "expeditiously reviewed" and approved for public release as soon as is "practical." Granted, the dictionary definition of "expeditious" and "practical" will differ greatly from the DOJ's definition of those terms. But it's something. And it's something that fills a void the DOJ proactively chose to leave unfilled for years.

Filed Under: body cameras, doj, federal agencies, law enforcement, transparency