Government collecting millions of records on American drivers, study says

Law enforcement agencies across the United States are using automatic scanners to amass millions of digital records on the location and movement of vehicles, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The scanners – which can be affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings --  capture images of moving or parked vehicles that include such details as location and license plate numbers.
The images are then uploaded into police databases and kept for weeks or sometimes indefinitely.

While the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a judge's approval is needed to track a car with GPS, the ACLU says the image scanning raises concerns about government possibly over-intruding in the lives of everyday citizens.

"There's just a fundamental question of whether we're going to live in a society where these dragnet surveillance systems become routine," said Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the ACLU, which wants police departments to immediately delete records of cars not linked to a crime. Read more >>

Sheriff proposes ankle monitors for some seniors

A northern Utah sheriff's office is floating a unique and unproven idea for keeping seniors with Alzheimer's disease and dementia safe: Give them ankle monitors normally used on criminals on house arrest or parole.

Davis County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Fielding says the monitors would allow deputies to quickly find a person who has wandered off. That would save lives and save taxpayer funds by avoiding time-consuming searches.

The monitors would be offered to residents at a cost of about $4 a day.

Alzheimer's Association officials commend the agency for working to keep people with dementia and Alzheimer's safe. But they say using the bulky ankle monitors is not a realistic solution because people won't want to wear them.

They say people are already reticent to wear tracking devices that look like bracelets and necklaces offered by private health care providers and some law enforcement agencies.
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DHS agrees to track motorists using a database built by the insurance industry

Federal agencies are giving away data on the movements of innocent motorists in return for software and equipment provided by the insurance industry. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Tuesday released documents revealing in greater detail how federal agencies are using the data collected by automated license plate recognition systems (ALPR or ANPR in Europe). These devices are use cameras and computer algorithms to create an history of where people drive, and when. As first reported in Forbes, the new EPIC documents show the data generated by the cameras are being handed over to private insurance firms.

EPIC and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have been hitting government agencies with freedom of information requests regarding the use of license plate readers. Until now, the public has been kept in the dark about how their driving history is being used, or lead to believe the cameras would only be used to find specific, targeted vehicles on a "hot list" of stolen cars. Instead, the systems are building a history of the movements of people who have done nothing wrong.

"Our worst fears about license plate recognition technology appear to be unfolding," wrote Kade Crockford, Director of the Technology for Liberty Project of the ACLU of Massachusetts. "The government is creating large pools of our location information and sharing it widely among law enforcement agencies nationwide, absent any mention of connections to investigations or criminal activity." Read more >>

FBI to launch nationwide facial recognition service

Image via WikipediaThe FBI by mid-January will activate a nationwide facial recognition service in select states that will allow local police to identify unknown subjects in photos, bureau officials told Nextgov.

The federal government is embarking on a multiyear, $1 billion dollar overhaul of the FBI's existing fingerprint database to more quickly and accurately identify suspects, partly through applying other biometric markers, such as iris scans and voice recordings.

Often law enforcement authorities will "have a photo of a person and for whatever reason they just don't know who it is [but they know] this is clearly the missing link to our case," said Nick Megna, a unit chief at the FBI's criminal justice information services division. The new facial recognition service can help provide that missing link by retrieving a list of mug shots ranked in order of similarity to the features of the subject in the photo.

Today, an agent would have to already know the name of an individual to pull up the suspect's mug shot from among the 10 million shots stored in the bureau's existing Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Using the new Next-Generation Identification system that is under development, law enforcement analysts will be able to upload a photo of an unknown person; choose a desired number of results from two to 50 mug shots; and, within 15 minutes, receive identified mugs to inspect for potential matches. Users typically will request 20 candidates, Megna said. The service does not provide a direct match. More...

RAND Corporation Blueprint for US Gestapo Force

Image via Wikipedia

William Grigg
RAND Corporation Blueprint for Militarized “Stability Police Force”

The RAND Corporation, one of the most fecund research arms of the Military-Industrial-Homeland Security Complex, has released a study entitled A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Creating U.S. Capabilities.

The SPFOR (to use the inevitable acronym) would be a “hybrid” military/law enforcement unit created within the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) for use “in a range of tasks such as crowd and riot control, special weapons and tactics (SWAT), and investigations of organized criminal groups” — both abroad, in UN-directed multilateral military operations, and at home, as dictated by the needs of the Regime.

Initially as small as 2–6,000 personnel, the SPFOR’s size “could be increased by augmenting it with additional federal, state, or local police from the United States” as necessary.

The RAND study, which was conducted for the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, recommended using the Marshals Service rather than the US Army’s Military Police as host for the SPFOR in order to avoid conflicts with the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids (albeit in principle more than in practice) the domestic use of the military as a law enforcement body.

“The USMS hybrid option … provides an important nondeployed mission for the force: augmenting state and local agencies, many of which currently suffer from severe personnel shortages,” states the report without explaining how the SPFOR could at once “augment” those under-manned agencies while at the same time being “augmented” by them if necessary.

That little lapse in logic is one of several indications that the report’s authors weren’t so much addressing a “problem” as making a case for a preordained “solution” — in this case, creating the vanguard of a militarized internal security force.

Building the SPFOR within the Marshals Service “would place it where its members can develop the needed skills under the hybrid staffing option,” summarizes the document. “Furthermore, the USMS has the broadest law enforcement mandate of any U.S. law enforcement agency…. [This model] provides significant domestic policing and homeland security benefits by providing thousands of additional police officers across the United States.” (Emphasis added.)

Back in 1961, the U.S. Government produced a document entitled “Freedom From War” that envisioned the creation of a globe-spanning United Nations “Peace Force” that would work in collaboration with a militarized “internal security” force in each country. Since that time, critics of the UN have anticipated the day when foreign “peacekeepers” would be assigned to police American streets and, if necessary, confiscate privately owned firearms.

While the monstrosity headquartered on the East River is a proper target of our scorn and hostility, the new RAND study underscores the fact that if “peacekeepers” end up patrolling American streets, they probably won’t be foreigners in blue berets, but homegrown jackboots commanded by Washington.