"Baltimore Police Respond To Report Of Secret Aerial Surveillance Program"

CBS Baltimore:  The Baltimore Police Department held a press conference on the matter Wednesday afternoon, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake put out a statement around the same time.

“I was recently made aware of the Persistent Surveillance Systems Inc. work with our city,” Rawlings-Blake wrote.

“The pilot program, funded by an anonymous donor, is cutting edge technology aimed at making Baltimore safer. My top priority, which I have continuously communicated to Commissioner Davis, has been to keep our city safe. His team sought opportunities to find new technology that works hand in hand with our robust Citiwatch program. This technology is about public safety. This isn’t surveilling or tracking anyone. It’s about catching those who choose to do harm to citizens in our city.”

The program is “not an unmanned drone or a secret surveillance program,” Baltimore Police Department spokesman T.J. Smith began the Wednesday press conference by saying.

“Years ago, when we embarked on our CitiWatch program, there were similar anxieties and that’s understandable,” Smith said. “We expect this technology to be used for other public safety concerns, like Silver Alerts, Amber Alerts, floods, sinkholes, fires, terrorist attacks, and more. It adheres to our CCTV policies. We currently know that there are existing technologies that are out there in the world and in place, like red light cameras, speed cameras, license plate readers, other CCTV and facial recognition. All of those programs received the same level of scrutiny. This is a 21st century technology that other large cities across the country are also testing.”

Smith ended his initial remarks by saying “the only people that should be concerned in the city of Baltimore are criminals.” (Video at the link)

"The new way police are surveilling you"

"Calculating your threat ‘score’"

While officers raced to a recent 911 call about a man threatening his ex-girlfriend, a police operator in headquarters consulted software that scored the suspect’s potential for violence the way a bank might run a credit report.

The program scoured billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and the man’s social- media postings. It calculated his threat level as the highest of three color-coded scores: a bright red warning.

The man had a firearm conviction and gang associations, so out of caution police called a negotiator. The suspect surrendered, and police said the intelligence helped them make the right call — it turned out he had a gun.

As a national debate has played out over mass surveillance by the National Security Agency, a new generation of technology such as the Beware software being used in Fresno has given local law enforcement officers unprecedented power to peer into the lives of citizens. (read more)

Smile For The Camera

One of the masterminds of the terrorist attacks in Paris, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was video recorded on the evening of the attacks in the Metro station east of the French capital. On Friday, the station BFMTV published a photo showing the 28-year-old on November 13 in the Croix de Chavaux Metro station in Montreuil.  link to original (in German)

This is important because I believe that this was not some investigator saying days after the attack "hey look who I saw on Candid Camera?" No, this was probably the first piece of evidence. This is how the Boston Bombers was were identified. 

"Feds fight to end phone secrecy after Paris attacks"

Tech companies have taken a stronger stance on the issue [of cooperating with government agencies] since whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the U.S. government’s massive surveillance programs, in which tech companies under court order provided data to the National Security Agency.

To many tech companies, the revelations were an embarrassment that also endangered their bottom lines.

“I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services,” Apple CEO Tim Cook says in an open letter on the company’s site. “We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.”

Tech companies have insisted that building in any kind of guaranteed access for the government would breach consumer privacy and build weaknesses into the technology that would allow criminals to hack into devices just as easily as law enforcement.

Law enforcement sources argue that Snowden’s revelations led terrorists and criminals to go dark and move to encrypted devices, intensifying the need for companies to cooperate with police.

...The White House has sided with technology companies, saying last month it would not pursue legislation requiring firms to give law enforcement access to encrypted data.

“There shouldn’t be venom” between law enforcement and Silicon Valley, [FBI Director Comey]  said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing in September. “We should all care about the same thing.”

...Some believe that if the attacks on Paris don’t change the dynamic, nothing will.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/260537-feds-fight-to-end-phone-secrecy-after-paris-attacks

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Is Director Comey right that tech companies and government security agencies should care about the same thing?

The Paris attacks were horrific, but I question logic of  compromising our individual privacy and security, both social and financial. The French are in shock, but to borrow a phrase from a comment I saw at another site, Americans have the constant background noise of mass shootings, so the Paris event doesn't evoke in us the terror felt by the French. 

"The FBI's aviation program is not secret"

"Specific aircraft and their capabilities are protected for operational security purposes." [Christopher] Allen [FBI Spokesman] added that the FBI's planes "are not equipped, designed or used for bulk collection activities or mass surveillance."

But the planes can capture video of unrelated criminal activity on the ground that could be handed over for prosecutions.

Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they're not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is rare.

Details confirmed by the FBI track closely with published reports since at least 2003 that a government surveillance program might be behind suspicious-looking planes slowly circling neighborhoods. The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights since late April orbiting both major cities and rural areas.

One of the planes, photographed in flight last week by the AP in northern Virginia, bristled with unusual antennas under its fuselage and a camera on its left side. A federal budget document from 2010 mentioned at least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, in the FBI's surveillance fleet.

Wait until Rand Paul finds out about this.

"Rand Paul gets standing ovation at Berkeley: ‘Your right to privacy is under assault’"

"Delivering a rare speech for a Republican at this bastion of liberalism, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday was given multiple standing ovations by the left-wing audience after railing against government surveillance and warning the students: “Your right to privacy is under assault.”

“I am here to tell you that if you own a cell phone, you’re under surveillance,” he told the crowd.

Paul’s address at the Berkeley Forum on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley focused on the National Security Agency’s collection of telephone metadata and the debate over privacy.

During his remarks, the potential 2016 Republican candidate discussed California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s claim that the CIA had spied on her congressional staff, and announced that he plans to call for a special committee on Capitol Hill to investigate the domestic spying by government agencies .

“No one should be allowed to invade your privacy,” Paul said. “That’s why I’m announcing today that when I return to Washington, I will push for a select committee styled after the Church Committee that investigated the abuses of power of the intelligence committee in the 70s. It should be bipartisan. It should be independent, and wide reaching. It should have full power to investigate and reform those who spy on us in the name of protecting us.”

Added Paul: “It should watch the watchers.”

Meanwhile, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been lying (apparently) about his knowledge of the NSA domestic spying programs.

"Edward Snowden to Speak at SXSW Interactive Via Videoconference"

"On Monday, March 10 at 11:00 am, join us for a conversation between Edward Snowden and Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist of the American Civil Liberties Union. The conversation will be focused on the impact of the NSA's spying efforts on the technology community, and the ways in which technology can help to protect us from mass surveillance. Hear directly from Snowden about his beliefs on what the tech community can and must do to secure the private data of the billions of people who rely on the tools and services that we build."

This session will be moderated by Ben Wizner, who is director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project and Edward Snowden’s legal advisor. Audience members will have the opportunity to ask questions.

However, if you cannot be at SXSW Interactive on Monday, March 10 at 11:00 am CST, then you can watch a free livestream of the session courtesy of The Texas Tribune.

If you had the opportunity, what would ask Snowden?

I would ask Snowden for his thoughts on his obfuscating, neighbor invading, missile test lunching host, Vladimir Putin. But, maybe, I would not be allowed to ask that.

SXSW Interactive

"I am actually turned off when I look at an account and don’t see any selfies"

"But a well-stocked collection of selfies seems to get attention. And attention seems to be the name of the game when it comes to social networking. In this age of too much information at a click of a button, the power to attract viewers amid the sea of things to read and watch is power indeed. It’s what the movie studios want for their products, it’s what professional writers want for their work, it’s what newspapers want — hell, it’s what everyone wants: attention. Attention is power. And if you are someone people are interested in, then the selfie provides something very powerful, from the most privileged perspective possible."  Says James Franco, in a selfie parody for the New York Times.

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Meanwhile, Slate has posted a cartoon from 20 years ago, it says to find "disturbingly prescient".

UPDATE: N.S.A. Phone Surveillance Is Lawful, Federal Judge Rules

"Snowden cites Orwell in Christmas message"

"Speaking directly into the camera from Moscow, where he took refuge after leaking vast troves of information on NSA spying, Snowden said government surveillance methods far surpass those described in Orwell’s dystopic novel “1984.”

“The types of collection in the book — microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us — are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go,” he said. “Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.”

New York Post via Drudge tweet (Read more for video)

"Careful what you tweet: Police, schools tap social media to track behavior"

If you share something publicly on social media, "you should expect the world to read it," said Andy Sellars, a staff attorney at the Digital Media Law Project. "And you should expect that world to include law enforcement."

Expect, in fact, anybody — now more than ever. Beyond the feds, marketers and cops, there is a growing customer base for Internet-monitoring contractors who sift through personal details readily available on the Internet.

"Monitor large public events, social unrest, gang communications and criminally predicated individuals," suggests the online pamphlet for the BlueJay browser tool, which reads like a mission statement for George Orwell's Ministry of Truth. "Identify potential witnesses and indicators for evidence."

"We could stop bad things from happening if we install cameras in everyone’s bedroom in America," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told NBC News. "Which trade-off are we willing to accept? Every word, every fleeting thought we type into a search engine and every product we think about buying gets recorded by a large database, not to help us but to exert power over us."

"Spying is the nature of our society," Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said recently an an event in New York City.

NBC News

On Bypassing Government Internet Surveillance

Eben Moglen talks about free software that will enable the general public to bypass government surveillance. Also, here is a second video with a speech by Mr. Moglen, followed by a small round table discussion.