Microsoft, NYC Marketing Vast Surveillance System To Other Cities 60
Presto Vivace writes with this snippet from the New York Times: "'In the six months since the Domain Awareness System was unveiled, officials of Microsoft, which designed the system with the New York Police Department, said they have been surprised by the response and are actively negotiating with a number of prospective buyers, whom Microsoft declined to identify.' Don't want this in your city? You might want to let your local leadership know how you feel."
Herr Bloomberg... (Score:5, Funny)
"As a user-object within the Domain Awareness System you have the permissions to set 'read deny' on your access control list. Any of your attributes can and may be used against you."
Re: Herr Bloomberg... (Score:2, Funny)
In the Domain Awareness System the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the fascists who try to control everything, and the technologists who supports them.
But who watches the watchers? (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual, no information about oversight, abuse detection, or anything similar. It's the same old "just trust us, we won't use our powerful new toy for anything bad, we promise." Puh-lease. The same people who claim that law abiding citizens with nothing to hide shouldn't care about privacy-invading constant surveillance are also the peopel who do their utmost to make darn sure no one can oobserve *their* activities or punish *them* for any infractions. "We don't trust you at all, but we expect you to just trust us." I'm so filled with confidence.
Re:But who watches the watchers? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Jim Pasco was quite straightforward about it.
Police officers, he told NPR, “need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be.” He added that law enforcement authorities believe “that anything that’s going to have a chilling effect on an officer moving — an apprehension that he’s being videotaped and may be made to look bad — could cost him or some citizen their life.”"
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And not watching the police can cost lives, too.
Here in the nation's capitol (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:But who watches the watchers? (Score:5, Interesting)
He shouldn't worry. Here's how the London Metropolitan Police handled the execution, er, tragic death of a Brazilian man, Jean Charles de Menezes, misidentified as a terrorist in 2005 [wikipedia.org].
Police do something they don't want recorded for the public to see, the surveillance equipment will coincidently be malfunctioning at that time.
Re:But who watches the watchers? (Score:5, Insightful)
With a sufficiently advanced system, such malfunctions could probably even be automated for greater safety and efficiency!
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Installing systems like this should come with harsh fines if it malfunctions.
Public safety, in all. :-)
Re:But who watches the watchers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tough shit for the police. They have to deal with the same shit everyone else does, poor things. Guess what - we ALL would like to be able to act "without worrying about adverse consequences" - that sure would be nice! Golly, I know I'd like it if my employer promised not to monitor me. I'm apprehensive about being videotaped, too, but I can't do anything about it.
If you're a cop and can't do your job without worrying that you'll violate someone's rights on camera and get caught, well - QUIT NOW, thanks.
I'm not saying cops should have to get permission in triplicate before taking any action, but their actions should be recorded just like citizens are recorded, those recordings should be accessible to the puiblic, and police should be held accountable for their actions. What Jim Pasco seems to think is that it's OK for police to record citizens in case they are breaking the law, but not OK for police to be recorded in case *they* are breaking the law.
Re:But who watches the watchers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Please don't mistake my quotation for agreement. As it happens, Joe Pasco is a slimy shitbag even by the relaxed standards of lobbyists, he has quite the history, and the idea that '[police officers] “need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be.”' is nothing more than a flowery way of saying "We must be given impunity, or the terrorists or somebody win."
New York doesn't quite have LA's pure sleaze; but they make up for it in a more efficient, technocratic, vision of surveillance dystopia(As icing on the cake, a number of totally-ethically-unimpeachable corporate actors, mostly financial sector, even have cozy deals that provide them with access to the surveillance centers, just to keep a watchful eye on their interests...) Heartwarming place, really.
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Yeah - Finch's machine manages to always stay up.
The interface leaves something to be desired, though.
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The Police Department says it is scrupulous about ensuring the system is not misused.
That's their level of oversight. Feel comfortable yet?
I'm sure super-NYC cops aren't prone to corruption, right folks?
The people of NYC voted for this at some point though, to me this $30bn is just another sign the terrorists did exactly what they set out to do, which is kill freedom.
Riiiiiight... (Score:2)
The {New York] Police Department says it is scrupulous....
Sure it is.
And I'm the Queen of England.
Helllllloooooooooo!
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"If you have nothing to hide..." (Score:1)
> Microsoft, NYC Marketing Vast Surveillance System
and
> officials of Microsoft, which designed the system
Looks like Apple's "1984" commercial was directed against the wrong company.
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This is how it begins (Score:1)
Microsoft plays the part of IBM
mission creepy (Score:3)
it has figured in a number of investigative coups that went beyond the systemâ(TM)s original purpose of counterterrorism in Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attack
They aren't even pretending it's just anti-terrorism.
it was developed by cops for cops
I'm sure it doesn't track every movement of every person in New York and store it in a database indefinitely. That will be version 2.0.
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I'm sure it doesn't track every movement of every person in New York and store it in a database indefinitely. That will be version 2.0.
No, version 2.0 will include a facial-recognition system which has the ability to automatically exclude individuals who happen to wear a badge, or make the right amount of "contribution" to the local police fund.
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I'm sure it doesn't track every movement of every person in New York and store it in a database indefinitely. That will be version 2.0.
No, version 2.0 will include a facial-recognition system which has the ability to automatically exclude individuals who happen to wear a badge, or make the right amount of "contribution" to the local police fund.
or own enough Microsoft stock
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I for one don't care. Yes I'm one of those "if you have nothing to hide" people when it comes to location. I could really care less if the government knew exactly where I was at any given time. If the government turns evil and wants to kill all the dissidents... then my input on these cameras won't be requested it'll just happen anyway.
I'm in public. In public people can see what I'm doing. If they are really interested in me they'll just hire a private investigator or cop to follow me discreetly. I hav
What really irritates me is that (Score:5, Interesting)
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After the fact, you pick up the hijacker with a spatula.
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Because cameras cost orders of magnitude less.
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education, health care
Half of all state revenue plowed into "education," almost a quarter of the US Federal budget plowed into "healthcare" and we instantly mod up any mope with the brilliance to point out how little money we appear to have for "education" or "healthcare."
Useful idiots indeed.
Remember what we learned from the TSA (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't trust a word of what we're told, only what we can see. Like their scanners, we were first told they couldn't record images, then that turned to "well, they can but only in testing mode", then that turned to "well, they can on production machines, but they can't be pulled off them", then that turned into stories of TSA agents emailing around pictures of passengers to their friends.
Plus ca change, ... (Score:2)
... officials of Microsoft, which designed the system with the New York Police Department ...
Microsoft has such a stellar record wrt security. What nitwit fell for those fools' marketing shpiel?
I can almost see members of Anonymous fighting each other to get to the head of the line to break into this thing and post the results on YouTube.
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Give me 6 lines (Score:2)
But it's microsoft selling this? I feel much better now - it'll never work well enough...