Programs like the ShotSpotter system were already in place in 44US cities by 2009, and in recent years the company has only addedmore names to its list of customers that can learn about gunactivity the second shots are fired. ShotSpotter’s developersdescribe it as “a gunfire alert and analysissolution” that uses specialized sensors and software totriangulate and pinpoint the precise location of each spent roundwithin seconds, and dozens of law enforcement agencies across theUnited States have signed-on.
When it’s a matter of life or death, though, seconds can meanall the difference. That’s the reasoning, at least, for why anumber of police departments across America are relying not just onsystems like ShotSpotter but other, more Orwellian surveillancetechniques to spy on citizens and predict problems before they evenoccur. The result, depending on who you ask, means a drop in crime.It also, however, could mean no one is safe from the ever watchingeye of Big Brother.
Predictive policing programs that rely on algorithms andhistoric data to hypothesize the location and nature of futurecrimes are already being deployed New York City and other towns.Last month, in fact, Seattle, Washington Mayor Mike McGinn announced that two precincts there werestarting to use predictive policing programs, promising “Thistechnology will allow us to be proactive rather than reactive inresponding to crime.”
“The Predictive Policing software is estimated to be twice aseffective as a human data analyst working from the sameinformation” Seattle Police Chief John Diaz told reporters.“It’s all part of our effort to build an agile, flexible andinnovative police department that provides the best servicepossible to the public.”
But specialized software and sensors aren’t the only tools lawenforcement officers are using to look into suspicious activity. InLos Angeles, one police department has at least one officer on theclock 24 hours a day patrolling social media sites for unusualactivity.
Tweets, Facebook posts and even Instagram photos are all subjectto surveillance, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Capt. MikeParker admits to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Parker works withthe eight-member Electronic Communications Triage, or eComm Unitthat monitor public social media posts at all hours of the day inorder to see if advertised parties and other get-togethers couldbenefit from a surprise visit by the police.
"They're watching social media and Internet comments thatpertain to this geographic area, watching what would pertain to ouragencies so we can prevent crime, help the public," Parkersays. "And now they're going to be ramping up more and more withmore sharing and interacting, especially during crises, whetherit's local or regional."
Tribute writer Brenda Gazzar cites unspecified incidents in LAwhere teenagers attend parties, drink heavily and engage in illegalactivity. “The partygoers usually get high, get a girl druggedup and then sexually assault her,” Gazzar quotes Capt. Parker.“Often gang members will show up, start fighting over a girl andend up shooting or stabbing someone.”
"We are absolutely and completely convinced that we arepreventing wild assaults from our efforts with these illegal socialmedia advertised parties,” Capt. Parker says, adding that theeComm unit has already thwarter around 250 “illegal parties”in Los Angeles County.
So-called “illegal parties” aren’t the only thing beingsearched for, though. The Tribune goes on to say that“unsanctioned protests” are also put under the magnifyingglass by officers with the eComm unit who actively scour to Web tosee what demonstrations are being planned and by whom.
Capt. Parker says the eComm unit doesn’t search for specificpeople, just certain activity, and stands by the system so far.With a number of other law enforcement agencies usingstate-of-the-art technologies to try and stop crime, though, it’sforcing more and more Americans to submit to a society where thepolice become privy to their personal activity, whether they likeit or not.
Karen North, director of the University of Southern California’sAnnenberg Program on Online Communities, tells the Tribune thatscouring social media sites for suspicious activity is “a smartmove” on behalf of law enforcement, and that "All peopleshould know that anything you put up on social media ispublic.”
“Even if you put it up on your private Facebook feed, youshould still assume it's public" she tells the Tribune. Whensocial media analysts have access to other implements, however, itraises all sorts of questions about what activity is fair game forthe fuzz.
Evgeny Morozov, a Bulgarian writer and researcher, reports for the UK’s Observer this week thatpolice agencies are starting to combine more and more of the datathat enters eComm divisions and other units in agencies across theUnited States. In New York City, for example, Morozov acknowledgesthat the NYPD’s recently rolled-out Domain Awareness System doesn’tstart and end with real-time gunshot alerts. That system, he says,“syncs the city's 3,000 closed-circuit camera feeds with arrestrecords, 911 calls, licence plate recognition technology andradiation detectors.”
“It can monitor a situation in real time and draw on a lot ofdata to understand what's happening. The leap from here topredicting what might happen is not so great,” he says.
The thousands of surveillance cameras on the island of Manhattanalone have existed for years, and the American Civil LibertiesUnion and other groups have led relentless campaigns against theNYPD’s all-watching spy system and otherconstitutional-questionable behavior that brings every step in theCity that Never Sleeps subject to police scrutiny. On the otherside of the country, though, Seattle, Washington is soon becomingthe surveillance capital of America. Earlier this year it wasrevealed that the major Pacific Northwest hub is in the midst ofinstalling 30 surveillance cameras that will create a “wirelessmesh network security system” on the city’s harbor that can be monitored by law enforcementagencies across the region. Coupled with other activity, though,Seattle’s eye-in-the-sky programs might be more serious than oncesuspected.
When Seattle recently signed onto the ShotSpotter system at acost of $950,000 over two years for installation and operation, thecity agreed to install 52 mobile gunshot locators that can collectintelligence up to 600 feet away using high-tech microphones andcameras.
“Having a private corporation control more than fiftyaudio/video surveillance stations in Seattle is likely to attractexternal interest,” security researcher Jacob Appelbaumtweeted over the weekend. A resident of Seattle, Appelbaum wrote onTwitter that he was looking for more information about theon-the-rise spy program being constructed in his city. “I findit rather depressing that surveillance/dataveillance programs arecreated and are used without so much as a public discussion,”he tweeted. “It would be interesting to learn how much money itcosts to spin up the system and to FOIA the real data as input intothe system.”
With public discourse on the subject sparse in many cities,though, obtaining, processing and sharing information with otherconcerned residents isn’t as commonplace as Appelbaum and othersmight want it to be. When many cities sign contracts withShotSpotter, press write-ups are few and far between. In otherlocales, cameras that monitor car traffic are accepted as anecessity to curb red-light runners and other haphazard drivers.Rarely, however, is it discussed what other intelligence thesecameras collect, and with whom it’s being shared with.
Predictive policing “may very well end up reducing crime to acertain degree,” Loyola Law School professor Stan Goldman toldNational Public Radio in a 2011 interview. “The question is atwhat cost, at what price?”
According to a CBS report, a predictive policing program in an area of Los Angelesdrove burglaries down by one-third in a matter of only five months.And when ShotSpotter was first installed in Saginaw, Michigan,crime soon dropped by 30 percent. As for the price,however, consider this: if each of the 52 ShotSpotter sensors inSeattle can collect data within a radius of 600 feet, then roughly58,780,800 square feet of the city under surveillance — or over 2square miles where privacy ceases to exist. That, of course, isn’teven taking into account the other surveillance systems in place,including the one on the city’s harbor.
And don’t even think about sharing this story on Facebook.
