The DEA and ICE Are Hiding Surveillance Cameras In Streetlights (qz.com) 158
According to federal contracting documents, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have hidden an undisclosed number of covert surveillance cameras inside streetlights around the country. Quartz reports: According to government procurement data, the DEA has paid a Houston, Texas company called Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC roughly $22,000 since June 2018 for "video recording and reproducing equipment." ICE paid out about $28,000 to Cowboy Streetlight Concealments over the same period of time. It's unclear where the DEA and ICE streetlight cameras have been installed, or where the next deployments will take place. ICE offices in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio have provided funding for recent acquisitions from Cowboy Streetlight Concealments; the DEA's most recent purchases were funded by the agency's Office of Investigative Technology, which is located in Lorton, Virginia. "We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures," Christie Crawford, who owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, told Quartz. "Basically, there's businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that's what we do. They specify what's best for them, and we make it. And that's about all I can probably say."
Re:Why would they need to "hide" them there? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, fuck you buddy, why the hell are you blaming Crete for this shit?
Have you ever been to Crete? No.
Do they have public surveillance in Crete? No.
Do they even have good cell phone access in Crete? No.
If you can manage to comprehend the story, this is being done by Fucking Texans!
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Whoosh! Kinda flew right over your head, huh, bub?
Re:Why would they need to "hide" them there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do they have public surveillance in Crete? No.
Oh really? https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
Do they even have good cell phone access in Crete? No.
Crete is actually rather small and has cell phone coverage everywhere.
If you can manage to comprehend the story, this is being done by Fucking Texans!
Texans? What a bunch of cretins. [merriam-webster.com]
Re: Why would they need to "hide" them there? (Score:2, Insightful)
Woosh. Typical you missed the humor.
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Hey, fuck you buddy, why the hell are you blaming Crete for this shit?
Was this your high school?
https://www.niche.com/k12/cret... [niche.com]
Re:Why would they need to "hide" them there? (Score:5, Funny)
The big Q is, "Are you pro Crete or con Crete?"
Re: Why would they need to "hide" them there? (Score:2)
After a long hard session in the bathroom, I've decided I'm an ex-crete
Re: Why would they need to "hide" them there? (Score:1)
I hope this is humor.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't for the life of me imagine why people will gladly run to totalitarian solutions with arms wide open just because they think it will solve some other problem. It won't, but now you've just given the government more power and more control, and good luck clawing that back.
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The one time they've tried to change things and voted for Brexit, their rulers were outraged and are attempting to nullify the result.
That is just so full of lies and/or stupid I don't know where to begin.
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More lies from an idiot.
Brexit, their rulers were outraged and are attempting to nullify the result.
May is outraged? Johnson is outraged? Raab? Hunt? Reese-Mogg? Hell, even Corbyn?
You're yet again simply lying about stuff because you want to blame teh ibruhls for things and in your view anything you can think of no matter how wild is true.
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You have truly scaled the cliffs of inanity, who done.
You keep blithering about the rulers yet literally ignoring all the rich ruling toffs who want to leave.
As for your laughably idiotic assessment of May's negotiating... you clearly think there's some magical way of winning against very experienced negotiators when you have the weakest hand and everyone knows it.
And it's especially stupid when we have promised several mutually exclusive things on the Ireland border. I'll bet you have no solution for that
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You will stand for the national anthem, not kneel.
(Look to JK Rowling's recent tweets about Trump and remember than 1984 had lots of camera)
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The places are publicly owned and accessible.
Things that happen there CAN still be private: when you look around, and see that no other person is there or nearby, then you have a reasonable expectation of almost complete privacy.
Also, if somebody records your voice without the consent of at least one party to the conversation, then you have what is called an illegal recording; A.K.A. illegal unauthorized wiretap.
Re: Good (Score:1)
Actually in most cases, 9 out of ten at least, it's lawless dangerous savages attacking cops and getting shot.
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the savages killing innocents is thousands of times bigger the problem and why they need to be gunned down when a danger to others. Like that "gentle giant" in Ferguson, actually a dangerous violent huge primate
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I didn't say anything about race, talked about behavior. How typical of those that imagine themselves enlightened, raising the race smokescreen to hide the truth that we have violent dangerous lawless people making our inner cities a war zone.
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People tend to notice a set of CCTV like camera equipment to capture driver and passengers faces next to a citizenship question road stop with the citizenship alerting K9 units.
Workers for telcos also notice law enforcement requests for their city, states networks.
A "hide' lets all enforcement with federal funding get past local telco workers and any need for their new equipment to be seen in the open.
State and country violations abound! (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to installing equipment on telephone poles and street lights, it's all tightly regulated. If they are doing this without any notification then they are likely violating multiple city/county regulations and state laws.
Food for thought.
Re:State and country violations abound! (Score:4, Interesting)
And that's why the cameras are concealed: so that the city/county/state doesn't notice them.
Parallel construction solves the problem for the DEA bringing a case to court. The ICE doesn't even need to worry about that.
Re:State and country violations abound! (Score:4, Interesting)
Until the lamp goes out or the city/county/state sends Bubba up with his ladder truck to do periodic maintenance.
"Aw sheeeit! Must be all these extra gol durn wires that messed up the light."
Takes side cutters, removes all the crap he doesn't recognize and re-lamps the fixture. Fixed. I've worked in the utility biz. Their database of who owns what is atrocious. They just go out and fix lights that the public report as being out. No sense risking complaints because "our records don't show who is responsible for that hardware."
Re:State and country violations abound! (Score:4, Insightful)
If your city actually fixes streetlights when their out, it's doing OK. It has its pension costs under control. Good on em. Last city I lived in in California just turned them all off to save money. Of course, that led to people stealing the copper out of the street lights, so a huge net loss long term, but that's Cali for you. (Fremont eventually gave in and fired a couple of government workers, the horror, and was back in the business of street lights and even filling pot holes, but it took years.)
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Streetlights are an interesting thing. There are federal grants for installing streetlights for safety. The local governments tout their safety bonafides by installing them. Then the power bill goes up to keep em on, which wasn't accounted for in the budget. Sorta like medicare expansion, sure its "free" money, but the states have to come up with what? 30%? Same problem.
What "bulb"? (Score:2)
If the installer of the surveillance equipment did their job properly, why would Bubba be doing more than just changing the bulb?
What bulb? This is an LED fixture.
While I haven't yet found a picture of it, the LED fixtures that are getting installed where I drive seem to have integral LEDs. It looks like "Relamping" them means replacing the fixture.
And that actually maekes sense (Score:2)
It looks like "Relamping" them means replacing the fixture.
And that actually makes sense. LEDs are still more than a factor of two short of 100% efficient and still improving. By the time these fixtures need relamping it would probably be better to replace them even if the "lamps" were a replaceable part.
So why make them more complicated and expensive by making what amounts to the entire guts a removable unit, in the hopes somebody will buy some more of that piece ten or twenty years later?
Re:State and country violations abound! (Score:4, Insightful)
Generally cities own the streetlights. They have to repair them over time so they would notice. Many cities are moving to add sensors and the like to save money, so someone would notice soon enough. So if there are cameras I suspect that there's an agreement about them.
Note that there are cameras on or near traffic lights even when not used to catch those who run the lights. Many are being used to count cars to estimate traffic patterns.
Re:State and country violations abound! (Score:5, Funny)
In times of crisis, sometimes the government has to go beyond the law. And clearly we are in a crisis, since illegal immigrants are murdering you right now.
https://politics.theonion.com/... [theonion.com]
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Just wait until The Caravan gets here. They'll be plagues of Biblical Proportions. Right thinking Evangelicals will be forced to sacrifice their long cherished banks accounts. Kids will be learning...I hate to say this in public...Spanish! The KKK will ride to defend the U.S. against hordes of Muslims, drug pushers, and pimps...all disguised as migrant Central Americans trying to escape the chaos inflicted on their homelands because of the U.S.'s endless demand for illegal drugs.
Re: State and country violations abound! (Score:2)
Oh that would be the religion that systematically molests and rapes people with it's deviant leaders, caused the crusades that mass murdered millions, turned millions over to brainwashed government for murder and torture, held back human progress for over a thousand years, causes people guilt and mental issues over normal behavior? What would we want more of that ilk in our country?
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"hidden an undisclosed number of covert surveillance cameras inside streetlights around the country.... the DEA has paid a Houston, Texas company called Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC roughly $22,000"
So, they installed 20 or 30 across the country, assuming the cowboys made a profit.
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Nothing about this has to do with federal law. There is no federal law stating they must or even can take these measures.
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What you'all gonna do about it ? Nothing.
There's a big club, and you're not in it.
We'll be reading similar article in 2 years time.
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What you'all gonna do about it ? Nothing.
Actually, rights groups sue the federal government. This does lead to reforms. You can stick you nose up and proclaim, "naw-aww!" but it happens.
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When it comes to installing equipment on telephone poles and street lights, it's all tightly regulated.
Erhm... Its not just that. Private property: the federal government doesn't own it, they can't load crap on those poles.
The state or municipality owns the land the poles are on, generally. If they're on private property, then the landowner's permission is required to put something on the poles, and nobody can just hang streetlights or cameras, or whatever they feel like without permission of
Bait and switch. (Score:2)
Red light cameras are sold as, among other things, reducing accidents, by reducing the number of people who run the light.
Turns out they increase them. They do it by reducing the number of people who run the red light, too.
At intersections with red light cameras, some drivers who notice the light went yellow (but missed the event and don't know just how long ago it happened) slam on the brakes rather than risk a ticket - and get rear-ended by someone who knew there was plenty of time left.
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So don't tailgate?
Clearly, the maths (Score:4, Interesting)
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I wonder just exactly how many fixtures, retailing at $22k and $28K, could've been purchased for this insidious TLA deployment?
TFA said the DEA paid $22k and ICE $28k, not per fixture, but total. It seems unlikely that they each bought only one fixture for that money.
These could be a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of installing them (especially if a new lamppost is needed to put it where they want it).
At last... (Score:3)
We can finally put an end to those terrible weed smokers and migrant workers.
Well, probably not.
But all it cost us was our rights and our privacy.
And somewhere north of a trillion dollars.
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The President is an old fashioned booze and night club sort of guy. Weed is anathema to people into that. The guy owns an actual casino, for pete's sake.
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Trump doesn't drink at all. His older brother died of alcoholism.
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A Casino that managed to *lose* money.
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Legalizing weed federally has always seemed like an "only Nixon could go to China" problem. Only the Republicans can do it. That doesn't mean they ever will, but Trump is more likely than most. Seems like a good play to me: few socons still care much about it, and it would bring the weedbertarians into the fold.
The GOP coalition is falling apart and I strongly suspect we'll see a new one over the next couple of years, so plenty of room for negotiation.
Handful of cams - meh (Score:1)
Based on the amounts paid, this barely covers 8 cameras in total, probably a lot less if you factor in the cost of the software to support them.
Their use is often quite limited as the cellular charges for the things can get out of hand. Mostly used for tactical specific investigation, and not blanket surveilance for that reason.
Full disclosure - I have worked with this kind of camera and support them in their use, but not the brand indicated above AFAIK.
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If you have nothing to hide (Score:2)
then don't shoot out streetlights. /s
Seriously, the streetlight across from my house sways so much in even a minor wind that it is out for hours at a time.
I can't imagine the impact repeated electrical outages would have on electronics,
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traffic control cams
Some of these don't feed video back to a headquarters*. They just drive object detection software to sense vehicles present and trigger the signal cycle. They replace inductive traffic loops, which are high maintenance items.
*But you can never be sure.
Yet another example (Score:1)
Of all terrorist groups DEA, NSA and ICE are among the country's most vile enemies.
This is just one more piece of evidence on the ever-expanding pile that shows every last one of them hates all of us for our freedoms and will stop at nothing to annihilate what's left of the ideals of democracy, freedom and justice for all.
They are armed, dangerous, and have openly declared war (both through "on drugs" and "on terrorism") on the entire citizenry of the United States. Every last one of them must stop existing
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The fish rots from the head.
Badly underpaid (Score:4, Funny)
You need a better sales/marketing dept.
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I used to make concealments. (Score:5, Interesting)
It really doesn't take much effort to make a "good enough" concealment. Basically, the higher off the ground, the easier. Make them look like they're part of the utility infrastructure, and you're home free. The hard part is weatherproofing and hot days in the sun with no wind. For being rain-proof you want no holes, yet to cool down you do, since heat sinks are hard to hide.
We primarily made concealments containing steerable high-zoom video cameras, the same ones used in high-end security systems, mounted to extremely accurate miniature PTZ bases. The cameras had internal image stabilization, but we also added external stabilization. Then we added automatic subject tracking, so no remote operator on a joystick was needed.
They were bought by TLAs (Three Letter Agencies), and generally needed a warrant to be mounted and activated.
When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started, we were asked to modify our technology to provide 360-degree surveillance for forward fire bases, who never had enough soldiers to use as sentries 24/7. Our systems turned out so good that we next had to integrate them with C4I systems, just as was done with the video from Predator drones. We initially built the systems into concealments, but soon found that beige paint was good enough, and we simply used sturdy tripods.
When Somali pirates became a problem, we modified our systems so they could be mounted to ships to again provide 360 degree surveillance.
We were riding high, a small company (well under 100 employees) who was by far the largest provider in a specialty market. Then the Budget Sequestration of 2011 hit, and all of our government customers not only became unable to buy our new products, they couldn't even fund support contracts or repairs. The guillotine fell, but fortunately we had already started a pivot toward vertical integration, to provide the communication systems needed to relay the surveillance video.
We entered that market in the right way at the right time, and soon had a long list of prospective customers. But our reduced income caused us to burn through our cash stockpile, and then the banks to stop lending to us: The company folded just as our new products were ready to go into production. That really hurt.
Looking back, my favorite product was the firebase surveillance system. We were told it had helped prevent countless sneak attacks.
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Did you guys attend NATIA?
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I was in Engineering: I never got to go to the shows and conventions, so I didn't pay much attention to which ones the company attended. However, I did get involved when prospective customers came to visit: I often was one of the ponies in the dog and pony show!
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I performed design and manufacturing functions for a similar but much smaller organization although the company's primary focus was software. Interesting work but I was also laid off in February and then decided to retire.
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I've operated that forward base system. Can confirm your last. It also allowed me to look in the "windows" of the mud huts miles out, and catch the small boys f&cking in the poppy fields at night.
Neat toy.
Surveillance (Score:5, Insightful)
It is bad enough to have a surveillance state. I understand the need for security cameras, general traffic cameras, and even SOME surveillance cameras. But I personally draw the line at *concealed* cameras [and microphones]. I don't think they have any place in a free society... public or private, government or business. Government wants one installed? Get probable cause, get a time-limited warrant, they must be temporary and have a clear, present, and provable objective.
When the libby libs say we should abolish ICE (Score:3)
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Homeland security thinks its the national police now. Every day there is news of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), formerly Customs Investigations, arresting people for crimes that have no apparent customs or border nexus. Its a major overreach and almost no one knows about. HSI seems to be involved in major ICE related investigations these days as well, but ICE just handles removals. All of DHS needs to go. HSI, ICE, TSA, ETC!
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Used to be... (Score:2, Insightful)
Used to be if you said something like "The Government is Hiding Surveillance Cameras In Streetlights", you'd be labelled as a paranoid nut and probably locked up for you own good.
Difference is, in 2018 it's actually true.
Cowboy Conceilments? (Score:2)
Look up more (Score:2)
For the last year or so I have been working on Building Management Software (BMS).
Nice change for me since I have a long financial background, and tend to get head hunted by banks etc.
So since I am working with BMS I've started looking up a LOT more, because I need to talk to those camera's mounted in the ceiling, that fire detector over there etc. so I
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Most buildings have camera's in their elevators, think you are alone in the elevator and can scratch your balls?
Making the people watching the video walls watch me scratch my balls is the only revenge available to me...
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Having that as a goal in life is very depressing...
But fyck I can relate.
Old (Score:2)
A total of $50,000? (Score:2)
I don't understand. Either this was a very specific operation limited to a small area or these things have gotten much cheaper than I realized.
It's too early in the morning for me to read the whole article.
I mean I bought some decent but very reasonably priced security cams for my home in the last year, but they're nothing stealthy. (I keep telling myself that's a feature, not a bug).
But compared to prices I hear for red light cameras or body cameras for cops or whatever, how can this be so cheap unless i
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Or we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
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The TL;DR version: "I can dish it out but I can't take it."
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Please explain how a hosts file protects against speculative execution vulnerabilities.
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My dog to the rescue!