Posted on 09/26/2016 3:28:35 PM PDT by Lorianne
The proliferation in local police departments’ use of surveillance technology, which in most places has occurred without any community input or control, presents significant threats to civil rights and civil liberties that disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income communities.
Here is a list of costly and invasive surveillance technologies that might be recording you, your family, and your neighbors right now:
1.) Closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras
CCTV allows the police to monitor us any time we are in a public space, even if they have no reason for doing so. Despite proof that CCTV is ineffective in reducing crime, these cameras are widely deployed, especially in communities of color and low-income communities.
2.) Stingrays
The device mimics a cell phone communications tower, causing your cell phone to communicate with it. Once linked, the Stingray can track your location and intercept data from your phone, including your voice and typed communications. Used often without a warrant, these devices can sweep in the information of hundreds or thousands of phones at a time, while interfering with your cell phone’s signal.
3.) Electronic toll readers or E-Z Pass
Although the devices are sold as toll-payment devices, they are frequently used for non-toll purposes without the badge holder’s knowledge or permission. The data captured by electronic toll readers can be used to monitor traffic patterns and create a record of where you travel.
4.) Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs)
Mobile or fixed-location cameras that take photographs of license plates, digitize them, and enable the captured data to be stored, processed, and searched in real time or over the course of months or years. The data collected allows the government to track where you travel in in your car, including where you sleep at night.
5.) Surveillance enabled light bulbs
LED surveillance light bulbs are presented as energy efficient upgrades to incandescent light bulbs, but they can actually conceal tiny cameras and microphones that can stealthily monitor their surroundings and transmit their feeds back to a central monitoring station. If installed on streetlamps and put into widespread use, privacy would become as old-fashioned as the incandescent bulbs they are replacing.
6.) X-ray vans
The mobile technology uses x-ray radiation to see what no human eye can, including through clothing and car exteriors. Government purchasers of these vans have not disclosed exactly how they are using them, but it could be unconstitutional and a possible threat to public health to deploy them on public streets in non-emergencies without a warrant.
7.) Social media monitoring software
This software can be used to covertly monitor, collect, and analyze your public and private social media data from platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, mapping your private relationships and activities. It improperly affects scores of innocent people — disproportionately from communities of color — with the potential to discourage freedoms of speech, assembly, and association online.
8.) Biometric surveillance technology
Biometric technologies allow you to be identified and tracked using a physical trait, run against DMV, social network, and other databases. Technological limitations and biased engineering practices can lead to false-positives, especially amongst people of color, which results in innocent people unjustifiably drawing the attention of law enforcement.
9.) Hacking software and hardware
These tools allow the government to hack into to your personal laptop, cell phone, and other devices as well as your password-protected websites or accounts. They can be activated in person and remotely without your permission. Because these tools leverage vulnerabilities in commonly used software and services, they make the systems protecting your private information more vulnerable to criminals.
10.) Predictive policing software
Predictive policing software uses mathematical and analytical techniques to attempt to predict future criminal activity, offenders, and victims. Historically biased data is input into an algorithm of unknown accuracy, which produces biased results that will only continue the trend of over-policing communities of color and low-income communities.
And the government is using this on us, while the savages run free
Let’s not forget the good old unmarked car, on which police have spilled oceans of cash to make it ever more stealthy. Now so-called patrol cars feature lightbars hidden behind the windshield just under the roofline, black-lettering-on-black-vehicle-paint to comply (only just) with ‘police cars must be marked as such’ laws, etc.
I have a long screed against unmarked cars to be posted elsewhere someday but a larger and larger percentage of police fleets are unmarked cars.
Electronic toll readers or E-Z Pass
Although the devices are sold as toll-payment devices, they are frequently used for non-toll purposes without the badge holder’s knowledge or permission. The data captured by electronic toll readers can be used to monitor traffic patterns and create a record of where you travel.
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So my son and his friend went north recently. Son provided transport, friend provided gas and tolls and took easypass out of his own vehicle to use in son’s vehicle.
Son was dinged for no ezpass. It was explained that each one is tied to the vehicle.
It is a tracker not a payer.
As we become more enslaved.
Multiple vehicles can be tied to one EZ Pass.
” If installed on streetlamps and put into widespread use, privacy would become as old-fashioned as the incandescent bulbs they are replacing.”
Speaking from experience, kids + slingshots.
That certainly isn’t the case with FasTrak here in California. We have two transponders and four cars. Sometimes we forget to get a transponder when we use one of the alternative vehicles. As long as the vehicle is listed as being on a given transponder (you can list several cars on one unit), we never get tagged. I mean what do they do when the transponder occasionally fails to work? They compare the photo taken at the toll plaza where the malfunction occurred and add the crossing to our bill. When that happens often enough, we get a letter asking us to trade in the old unit for a new one. They are battery-powered and the batteries do go dead.
The other thing we do is we keep the transponders in an anti-stat bag in the console, and only expose it when it’s needed to pay a toll. The FasTrak people actually provided the bag when they advised that they were going to “help CalTrans” by tracking the movements of their customers. So much to say, they allowed everyone who wanted to, to “opt out!”
ping Prepper
All real and happening now but maybe a nut job ping?
;-)
Unmarked cars are there to create cash flow.
If they wanted you to actually slow down their cars would be distinctively marked as a reminder to at least stay close to the limits.
Enriching city coffers is not a proper function of ‘law enforcement’.
My brother moves his EZPass from his car to his truck all the time. It may be that both vehicles have to be preregistered with the DMV. (I don’t know the answer)
This is not a wrong thing nor a gov’t conspiracy. If it were not so, thousands of cars would have their windshields smashed and EZPasses stolen.
The closest street lamp to my place is six plus miles good luck getting a picture from there.
My wife had the same situation years ago, though I believe they changed that in recent years here in NJ; she can bring it in another car and it will be fine.
One incident I remember after EZ Pass was launched was the assurance that it wouldn’t be used for law enforcement; at its most basic it could determine your average speed between toll plazas/readers exceeded the speed limit. A couple of years in, a restaurant owner was killed here in north Jersey and the police admitted they caught the perps by tracking the EZ Pass of the owner’s stolen car (which the killers apparently didn’t realize was in it).
Thankfully I have little use for EZ Pass; I rarely use toll roads.
So the police will watch you all day long and spy on you all day long but if you take pictures of them or video of them in public they’ll lose their minds and beat you, kill you, or arrest you for breaking a non-existent law.
Because it’s okay when they watch you but it’s not okay when you watch them.
The Beast Technology is here now.
And yes, it’s ok for them to beat & kill you for infringing on their privacy.
Ping.
mark
We are the ones they want to control. The savages they protect.
The police are watching for criminals; Blacks hardest hit.
Wow, surprising take on this.
I don’t want to increase the budget either but perhaps it’s time for the DMV enforcement and real, live police work to be separated into separate forces.
Expired tags etc are a flimsy pretext for traffic stops, vehicle searches etc and those 2 hr roadsides fishing expeditions mean another 2 hrs a cop is sidelined while burglaries etc continue apace.
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