Mass surveillance
Scapegoating Face Recognition Technology As Privacy Wormhole Doesn’t Solve Anything
Facial recognition technology is facing a blitz of negative media with wormhole-like theories that this technology results in mass surveillance, destroys anonymity, and will forever change the way people behave in public. Advocates of this theory are calling for federal privacy regulation that will give a face a right of privacy it has never had […]
Unwiring City Wide Video Surveillance
Coupled with the steep growth of population, ever increasing area of a city, and the severely outnumbered police and security officials, a city not only becomes a near impossible task to “watch over” but also cost-prohibitive to man every corner and street of a city. Eventually making the city unsafe for its residents and susceptible […]
In New Jersey, A Call For More Video Surveillance At Atlantic City Casinos
Long view of the Maryland Live Casino poker room. Facial images have been blurred by the casino to protect player identities. (Courtesy photo.) Long view of the Maryland Live poker room, via one of the casino’s pan-tilt-zoom surveillance cameras. Faces in the screencap have been blurred by casino officials to protect player identities. (Courtesy photo.) In my story on the front page of Sunday’s print edition about the surveillance operation at Maryland Live Casino , I mentioned that Rob Norton, the property’s president and general manager, asked me at one point if I’d ever seen “Casino.” He was specifically referring to the scene where Robert De Niro — who plays Tangiers boss Ace Rothstein – explains the way things work in the gambling world: In Vegas, everybody’s gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I’m watching the casino manager. And the eye in the sky is watching us all. “You can quote from that,” Norton told me. “It’s still pretty accurate.” But the notion that every casino is watching (or at least recording) everybody, at all times, isn’t exactly true. Consider what’s happening in New Jersey, where one lawmaker has proposed legislation that would require Atlantic City casinos to put surveillance […]
Source www.washingtonpost.com
At Maryland Live Casino, Relentless Surveillance Operation Targets Cheats, Thieves
Behind an unmarked door, the secret surveillance bunker in the bowels of Maryland’s largest casino was humming with activity. A manager on the gambling floor at Maryland Live had called in some suspicious behavior from one of the table-game pits, and the surveillance supervisor was blurting camera numbers like a quarterback calling an audible. Radios were crackling, and automated announcements were piped into the room every time a secured door opened on the massive Arundel Mills property. But the focus was on the bank of 42-inch monitors at the front of the room. The surveillance team was quickly trying to determine whether a customer’s odd behavior indicated cheating or . . . something else. “See that?” a surveillance operative asked. “I don’t know,” another one said, staring at the screens on the wall. The eyes in the sky never blink at Maryland Live, where officials are nearly as obsessive — and surreptitious — about spycraft as their neighbors at the National Security Agency. And for good reason. Every month hundreds of thousands of gamblers stream into the casino, leaving behind more than $50 million in revenue. Protecting that gold mine from thieves, cheats, drunks and other threats: a security force of 200 officers and a separate state-of-the-art surveillance operation. At Maryland Live, they’re always watching, pan-tilt-zooming, searching for wrongdoing in a place where somebody, somewhere is probably doing something they shouldn’t — usually at the expense of the casino’s bottom line. More than 1,200 cameras in and around the casino are […]
Source www.washingtonpost.com
NYPD Wants Stores To Turn Security Cameras Toward Streets
Kevin Samson Activist Post New York City has become the epicenter of a massive apparatus of citizen surveillance, harassment, and control. It’s a place rife with biometrics, a city-wide camera system supplying real-time data to law enforcement, and a militarized physical presence that has turned the city into an armed encampment. New York, in fact, is the testing ground for the implementation of military-level counterterrorism operations on American soil. According to a 60 Minutes interview with Commissioner Ray Kelly , he commands a force larger than the FBI, consisting of 35,000 uniformed officers and 15,000 civilian employees. New York’s surveillance city – aka Ring of Steel – has no rival in the realm of Big Brother worship. But so far this is mostly confined to the center. However, in outlying districts, the surveillance society is yet to be imposed full force. The NYPD is now asking for businesses to cooperate in helping to make that happen. Citing a rise in violent crime in the 32nd Precint, Harlem, Commander Rodney Harrison is proposing a cooperation with local businesses dubbed “Grid Search.” The (disarmed) residents seem to be all for it: Many nearby residents said it was a splendid idea. “You’ve got a lot of these gang members out here attacking people for no reason,” said one neighbor, Dwayne. “They need to just put a lot of cameras up in storefronts to lower the crime rate.” However, the (also disarmed) business owners aren’t embracing the idea as enthusiastically: But some business […]
Source www.activistpost.com
American Cities Installing Ominous Surveillance Tech Despite NSA Scandal
American cities installing ominous surveillance tech despite NSA scandal Never mind the negative press the NSA has received in recent weeks after Edward Snowden began leaking top-secret documents to the media pertaining to the United States’ spy group’s broadly scoped surveillance programs. Law enforcement agencies and local leaders in major American cities are nevertheless signing on to install new systems that are affording officials the power to snoop on just about anyone within range. Seattle, Washington and Las Vegas, Nevada are among the latest locales in the US to acquire surveillance tools, the likes of which were both discussed in regional media reports over the weekend that are making their rounds across the Web and causing privacy advocates around the world to raise their voice. Neither West Coast city has announced plans to acquire telephone metadata or eavesdrop on email traffic, and combined their operations likely pale in comparison to what the NSA has accomplished. Civil liberties activists are sounding the alarm regardless, however, after new reports revealed what kind of information city officials could collect using newly installed equipment. In Seattle, a city of around 635,000, the police department recently used a Department of Homeland Security grant for $2.6 million to purchase and put up a number of wireless access devices that together create “mesh networks” which law enforcement officials can connect to and in turn more quickly share large chunks of data, such as surveillance camera recordings and other high-res information. Those access points, or APs, do […]
Source www.scenereleases.eu
On Proliferating State And Local Surveillance Technologies
Over at Security States, I have this piece up , about the proliferation of city- and state-operated surveillance technologies—and the need to pair collection rules for these technologies with effective use and access rules. The piece begins: The New York Times reports today that “ Privacy Fears Grow as Cities Increase Surveillance .” The main theme is that municipal police and law enforcement agencies around the country are deploying new and more sophisticated data gathering and analysis technology, some of it bought with counter-terrorism funds, stoking privacy concerns among residents and watchdog groups. As with much of the early reporting of National Security Agency surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden, the Times piece is heavy on what the systems collect and how they store and combine information. Only near the end of the piece, however, does it address accompanying rules and guidelines being developed to regulate such issues as who can access this information, for what purposes, under what supervision, and with what checks. Rapid technological development and lower price-tags for it are inevitable, and the most important question is whether regulation for how surveillance technology and data may be used can keep up. It is no surprise that local governments are deploying technologies like video surveillance systems, license plate readers, drones, networks of sensors, and systems for aggregating and analyzing the information streams they produce. The New York Police Department has been out in front of other cities in this regard, on account of its size, resources, threats, […]
Source www.lawfareblog.com