Local law enforcement in the United States is all set up to monitor civilians in more than a few ways. We may have learned by now how to protect ourselves from NSA spying and FBI surveillance by securing our mobile phones and using personal VPNs. But are we prepared for the level of surveillance being conducted 24/7 by the police? After 9/11, the homeland security projects began getting a budget of close to 800 million dollars. And although local law enforcement agencies are not willing to share how much they have received and spent – nor are they required to report this to the federal government – below are some projects and numbers that can give us a general idea.
Cameras
Globally, video surveillance spending has increased threefold in less than a decade. In the US, thousands upon thousands of cameras have been installed all around different cities and towns. In some places, police are also leveraging private security systems. Many cities have control over cameras on every city block. In Chicago, there were already about 10,000 police and private cameras linked up to provide comprehensive surveillance in 2013. In the same year, the city of Manhattan already had 4,000 police installed cameras. In New York, the number of street cameras alone is around 6,000, and about 4,000 of these are from private systems. The NYPD controls another 11,000 cameras in subways and public housing areas combined. This is nothing compared to the half a million cameras installed all around London, but it is enough to raise the hairs on the backs of our necks.
During the time of the Boston Marathon bombings, the city’s metropolitan area had 600 cameras. The combined efforts of those with mobile phone footage, private CCTV systems and those who saw what happened aided the police in capturing or killing the suspects. The success of cameras in leading to this prompted the city to call for more cameras to help in solving crimes – but cameras are not effective in preventing them.
Social Media
Law enforcement agencies all around the country have assigned personnel to monitor social media activity. Whenever social media users post about activities and associations, they are there to check for any interesting locations and photos. The government also hires private companies to do the same kind of monitoring. These agencies and companies store the information for later use by any interested government agency. This monitoring is done on any user, not only those who are suspects in crimes or their known associates.
These searches are called fishing expeditions, and setting your privacy to the maximum will not stop them from seeing your data. Many times, police officers create accounts under assumed names and are trained to befriend users. They also at times use coercion to get login credentials from associates of the people they are most interested in tracking. One woman whose identity the cops stole and used to track drug distribution in 2010 filed a case and won a 134,000 dollar settlement. If only others who are abused this way could be equally compensated.
Biometric Identification
Police were criticized a few months ago for their aggressive “data gathering” missions. Recall the article we published where two citizens on separate occasions complained when they were photographed and swabbed without cause. Facial recognition systems are being used now by some police departments to help them fill a database that will help them identify suspects and their associates later on. Facebook is also using highly developed software that can identify a user from a photo even when their backs are turned. The systems that police have been testing for a few months now can identify people using several other biometrics unique to them – their way of walking and standing, their voices, the shapes and sizes of body parts (especially the hands) and of course any identifying marks.
Stingrays
Our mobile phones can be tracked by law enforcement as long as they are getting a signal from cell towers. The police are not collecting data from your provider, but they are intercepting it from International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers that are hiding in plain sight, disguised as cell towers. Our phones are designed to automatically connect to the nearest of these towers to give us the best signal possible at all times. Police are leveraging this to track criminal suspects. But tens of thousands of Stingrays deployed all over the country are gathering the location data of millions of innocent phone subscribers. California passed Senate Bill 741 on mobile communications privacy and the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA) this last September to reel in law enforcement agencies who are endangering innocents with their use of IMSI catchers. Hopefully other states will quickly follow suit.
Automated License Plate Readers and Automatic Toll Readers
ALPRs are cameras hooked up to a database that work to take the license plates of any and all passing vehicles and store the data on a server. In Los Angeles, about three million plates are taken each week. These systems are monitored by local law enforcement and serve to help them create profiles of drivers. Very detailed records of where a car goes every day can be formed, and although this can help the cops track down bad guys, it violates the privacy of innocent civilians. We also published an article about these readers recently, where you can find out about a discovered vulnerability in these systems that endangers the public. In New York, the police use ALPRs in a more sinister way. They are not just capturing random license plates for their database but are actively tracking the Arab and Muslim population. The NYPD has also included those coming in and out of Newark, New Jersey.
Automatic Toll Readers are also being leveraged by law enforcement to build records of peoples’ movements. These electronic toll booths conveniently scan cars that have RFID chips or their license plates to connect them with the owners’ accounts. The data collected is put into searchable databases like those used with ALPR systems. Anywhere there’s an electronic toll booth, cars and their registered owners are being tracked and filed.