Does The Government Have The Right To Keep And Arm Bears (With Cameras)?

Privacy

from the never-mind-the-theoreticals dept

No matter what differences of opinion I might have with Volokh Conspiracy contributors, it must be said the site (now hosted at Reason after a brief run at the Washington Post) manages to surface truly interesting cases on a regular basis.

This is one of them. I’ll let Ilya Somin of the Volokh Conspiracy lead things off because he’s the one who first unearthed this Fourth Amendment lawsuit that cannot possibly have any directly applicable precedent:

A case recently filed in a federal district court in Connecticut alleges that a state government agency violated the Fourth Amendment by attaching a camera to a bear they knew frequented the plaintiff property owners’ land.

Go ahead and re-read that a couple of times. Once you’re done, feel free to move on to the mugshot of the alleged curtilage violator:

Here’s the complaint [PDF], which notes this particular bear was a frequent trespasser on the plaintiffs’ property.

During all times mentioned in this complaint, the defendant knew that bears, including a bear the defendant had tagged as Number 119, frequented the said property [belonging to the plaintiffs].

On an unknown date prior to May 20, 2023, but subsequent to January 1, 2023, the defendant affixed a collar to Bear Number 119 which contained a camera. The defendant thereupon released the camera-carrying bear in the vicinity of plaintiffs’ property.

At approximately 9:30 a.m. on May 20, 2023, Bear Number 119 approached to within 200 yards of the plaintiffs’ residence, which is located near the center of their property. It was wearing the aforesaid camera at the time and, upon information and belief, that camera was activated and taking and transmitting pictures or video of the interior of the plaintiffs’ property to the defendant.

The bear-mounted cam was allegedly supplied (and mounted by a particularly brave employee of) the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). According to the complaint, the plaintiffs have been accused of “illegally” feeding bears on their property. So, this cambear appears to be part of DEEP’s efforts to prove the allegations against the couple (Mark and Carol Brault).

This surveillance attempt failed when the couple noticed the bear and its digital appendage. As far as the Braults know (at least at this point prior to discovery), no warrant was obtained before DEEP converted an apparent regular visitor to the Braults’ property into a confidential non-human source.

The Braults say this is a Fourth Amendment violation, with the bear acting as a government agent, albeit one incapable of being directly controlled. Orin Kerr, also writing for the Volokh Conspiracy, isn’t quite so sure this is an illegal search.

First, Kerr says the definition of the term “curtilage” doesn’t generally cover areas 200 yards from the actual residence. That may be so, but DEEP had no idea how close to the home the bear would wander, much less have any way of preventing it from encroaching on the curtilage. So, that seems to be a point in the Gaults’ favor.

This point seems just as questionable:

There’s reason to doubt the bears are covered by the Fourth Amendment.  Does putting a camera around a bear’s neck make the bear a state actor, like a person?  This isn’t necessarily a new question.  There’s lots of lower-court caselaw on drug-detection dogs that are brought to a car and then jump into the car and sniff for drugs, alerting to drugs inside. Most (but not all) of that caselaw holds that, if the dog jumped into the car unprompted by a human officer, then it’s not action attributable to the government. If that caselaw applies here, then it seems dubious that the bears are covered by the Fourth Amendment at all.

It may not be a “government actor” in the sense it was never paid nor directly controlled by the government. But the camera says something different. The camera is the government’s and it’s the state actor. That it was carried by a bear, rather than a human, seems like the more pertinent question to be addressed.

If all bears in the area wore cameras for non-surveillance reasons (for unknown wildlife preservation reasons or whatever), and some of them happened to wander onto this property and caught someone doing something illegal, I can see this being a legitimate “not a state actor” argument. But, if the allegations are true, DEEP placed this camera on this specific bear because it knew the bear, more likely than not, would wander onto the Gaults’ land and perhaps capture footage of something incriminating. That sure makes it seem like it’s a state actor, even if it’s definitely non-traditional.

On the other hand, you can’t make a bear testify. So, it’s the government’s word against the Gaults’ without the benefit of cross-examining the bear to see if it had any vested government interest in approaching their home.

But it seems pretty clear this was state action. Whether or not it was actually a Fourth Amendment violation is up to the court to decide. And I have to believe this court will be thrilled to dive into the intricacies of wildlife-mounted surveillance efforts, because how often do judges get to deal with something that’s actually novel in the best sense of the word? And we should all look forward to the eventual opinion, which will hopefully contain plenty of bear puns and perhaps some Yogi Bear-centric hypotheticals. Stay tuned!

Filed Under: 4th amendment, bears, cameras, connecticut, ct deep, state actor

Teslas Are A Privacy Nightmare: Staff Regularly Shared Camera Recordings, Made Memes & Jokes At Customers’ Expense

Privacy

from the your-car-shouldn't-spy-on-you dept

Ever since Tesla first made the news, I had thought it would be a great car to own. The last few years have really disabused me of that notion, given the serious questions raised about the integrity of the company’s CEO. But even so, I’m pretty shocked by this latest Reuters report detailing how Tesla employees regularly would not only view images from Tesla’s built in cameras, but also make jokes and memes out of them and share them around the office.

This is the kind of behavior you’d expect in an late 90s dot com bubble era startup before it got serious, but Tesla is big enough and prominent enough that it is seriously troubling to learn it does not have basic controls to prevent this sort of privacy invasion:

But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees.

Some of the recordings caught Tesla customers in embarrassing situations. One ex-employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked.

Also shared: crashes and road-rage incidents. One crash video in 2021 showed a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area hitting a child riding a bike, according to another ex-employee. The child flew in one direction, the bike in another. The video spread around a Tesla office in San Mateo, California, via private one-on-one chats, “like wildfire,” the ex-employee said.

Other images were more mundane, such as pictures of dogs and funny road signs that employees made into memes by embellishing them with amusing captions or commentary, before posting them in private group chats. While some postings were only shared between two employees, others could be seen by scores of them, according to several ex-employees.

Serious, professional companies put in place controls and security systems to prevent this sort of thing, because if they don’t, everyone knows what will happen — which is exactly what appears to have happened in the Elon Musk-led company.

I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise at all that a company run by a guy with the maturity of a insecure 15-year-old would not really give two shits about people’s privacy and make jokes and pass around private videos. Of course, fair play: it looks like the Tesla employees also spied on Elon Musk’s own garage.

The boss’s lax attitude towards anyone else’s rights or concerns seems to have trickled down to his employees:

Two ex-employees said they weren’t bothered by the sharing of images, saying that customers had given their consent or that people long ago had given up any reasonable expectation of keeping personal data private.

Indeed, the Reuters report seems to suggest that the boss’s obsession with memes and stupid, sophomoric jokes was encouraged among the young people at the office:

Tesla staffed its San Mateo office with mostly young workers, in their 20s and early 30s, who brought with them a culture that prized entertaining memes and viral online content. Former staffers described a free-wheeling atmosphere in chat rooms with workers exchanging jokes about images they viewed while labeling.

According to several ex-employees, some labelers shared screenshots, sometimes marked up using Adobe Photoshop, in private group chats on Mattermost, Tesla’s internal messaging system. There they would attract responses from other workers and managers. Participants would also add their own marked-up images, jokes or emojis to keep the conversation going. Some of the emojis were custom-created to reference office inside jokes, several ex-employees said.

One former labeler described sharing images as a way to “break the monotony.” Another described how the sharing won admiration from peers.

“If you saw something cool that would get a reaction, you post it, right, and then later, on break, people would come up to you and say, ‘Oh, I saw what you posted. That was funny,’” said this former labeler. “People who got promoted to lead positions shared a lot of these funny items and gained notoriety for being funny.”

Literally: the privacy of Tesla owners is a joke to Tesla employees. Thankfully, at least some people who worked there had a conscience.

“It was a breach of privacy, to be honest. And I always joked that I would never buy a Tesla after seeing how they treated some of these people,” said one former employee.

Another said: “I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected … We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”

One former employee saw nothing wrong with sharing images, but described a function that allowed data labelers to view the location of recordings on Google Maps as a “massive invasion of privacy.”

Later on in the story, we get at least a few more Tesla employees with a conscience:

In interviews, two former employees said in their normal work duties they were sometimes asked to view images of customers in and around their homes, including inside garages.

“I sometimes wondered if these people know that we’re seeing that,” said one.

“I saw some scandalous stuff sometimes, you know, like I did see scenes of intimacy but not nudity,” said another. “And there was just definitely a lot of stuff that like, I wouldn’t want anybody to see about my life.”

As an example, this person recalled seeing “embarrassing objects,” such as “certain pieces of laundry, certain sexual wellness items … and just private scenes of life that we really were privy to because the car was charging.”

And, clearly, someone who saw all this reported it to the Reuters journalists.

This does raise questions about whether or not this use of the images and videos violates various regulations around data protection and privacy. While the US doesn’t have a federal privacy law, there are some state privacy laws in effect that this might violate, and the FTC usually doesn’t take kindly to the idea that data is used for purposes that the consumer did not realize they were consenting too. And it seems like the head of the FTC is already none too pleased with Elon Musk.

But, of course, there may be more serious problems in the EU where this would likely raise some big GDPR concerns. While I have many issues with the GDPR, at the very least this seems like exactly what that law is supposed to prevent.

Incredibly, the article ends by noting top performing data labelers could win the use of a Tesla for a day or two (it’s not like Tesla paid its data labelers enough to afford its cars themselves), but some of those who won felt uncomfortable claiming the prize, as they worried about invasions of their own privacy.

I often think that many of the privacy concerns people discuss regarding the internet are totally overblown. People don’t mind sharing certain data in exchange for something valuable, but the key elements for dealing with privacy is that users should (1) understand the trade-offs involved, with knowledge of what data they’re giving up and what concrete benefit they’re getting in exchange, and (2) they should have some control and visibility into that data to make sure that the trade-offs remain aligned.

I can’t see how Tesla employees making memes of the images and videos they took inside people’s garages of occasionally intimate and private situations, even when the car is off, meets any of those criteria.

Filed Under: cameras, data labeling, elon musk, memes, privacy, surveillance, videos
Companies: tesla

It Took Months For Anker To Finally Admit Its Eufy Cameras Weren’t Really Secure

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the let's-just-pretend-this-never-happened dept

Last November, The Verge discovered that Anker, the maker of popular USB chargers and the Eufy line of “smart” cameras, had a bit of a security issue. Despite the fact the company advertised its Eufy cameras as having “end-to-end” military-grade encryption, security researcher Paul Moore and a hacker named Wasabi found it was pretty easy to intercept user video streams.

The researchers found that an attacker simply needed a device serial number to connect to a unique address at Eufy’s cloud servers using the free VLC Media Player, giving them access to purportedly private video feeds. When approached by The Verge, Anker apparently thought the best approach was to simply lie and insist none of this was possible, despite repeated demonstrations that it was very possible:

When we asked Anker point-blank to confirm or deny that, the company categorically denied it. “I can confirm that it is not possible to start a stream and watch live footage using a third-party player such as VLC,” Brett White, a senior PR manager at Anker, told me via email.

Not only that, Anker apparently thought it would be a good idea to purge its website of all of its past promises related to privacy, thinking this would somehow cause folks to forget they’d misled their customers on proper end to end encryption. It didn’t.

It took several months, but The Verge kept pressing Anker to come clean, and only this week did the company finally decide to do so:

In a series of emails to The Verge, Anker has finally admitted its Eufy security cameras are not natively end-to-end encrypted — they can and did produce unencrypted video streams for Eufy’s web portal, like the ones we accessed from across the United States using an ordinary media player.

But Anker says that’s now largely fixed. Every video stream request originating from Eufy’s web portal will now be end-to-end encrypted — like they are with Eufy’s app — and the company says it’s updating every single Eufy camera to use WebRTC, which is encrypted by default. Reading between the lines, though, it seems that these cameras could still produce unencrypted footage upon request.

I don’t know why anybody in tech PR in 2023 would think the best response to a privacy scandal is to lie, pretend nothing happened, and then purge your company’s website of past promises. Perhaps that works in some industries, but when you’re selling products to techies with very specific security promises attached, it’s just idiotic, and kudos to The Verge for relentlessly calling Anker out for it.

Filed Under: cameras, encryption, eufy, privacy, security, smart home, video, video surveillance
Companies: anker

You No Longer Own What You Buy: Arlo Cameras Lose Updates, Cloud Storage

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the you-don't-own-what-you-buy dept

One of the common themes here at Techdirt over the last decade is how the very meaning of “ownership” and “property” has changed — often for the worse. In the broadband connected era, firmware updates can often eliminate functionality promised to you at launch, as we saw with the Sony PlayStation 3. And with everything now relying on internet connectivity, companies can often give up on supporting devices entirely, often leaving users with very expensive paperweights as we saw after Google acquired Revolv.

The latest example of this phenomenon comes courtesy of Arlo, which has announced that the company is eliminating numerous features from their Arlo cameras courtesy of a new penny pinching measure.

The update is part of Arlo’s new “end-of-life policy,” which reserves the right to eliminate all cloud functionality — including push notifications, email alerts, or other “bundled services or features” — for any camera more than four years old. Many of these users bought these products specifically because they promised free cloud functionality.

Reddit users shared the email from Arlo which puts it this way:

These cameras may continue to be operated after April 1, 2023 by all existing Arlo owners to live stream video, receive motion notifications, and store video clips locally with a compatible Arlo base station. These cameras also can utilize Arlo’s new cloud storage, which is available with the Arlo Secure subscription service, though the EOL’d cameras themselves may lose some functionality over time, as they will not be provided with further firmware upgrades.

Basically, Arlo is informing users they need to pay a subscription fee if they want the camera they purchased to continue working normally. If not, it’s up to them to use local storage (a feature that may not even work with many of these models). All basically because Arlo wants to both drive users to subscription services, and cut costs when it comes to supporting its own products.

It’s generally not a great trend, as this kind of penny pinching also often extends to security updates for such products. It’s likely to result in a class action lawsuit for Arlo, which is usually what awaits companies that begin charging users for functionality that used to be free.

Filed Under: cameras, cloud storage, consumer rights, end of life, firmware updates, functionality, iot, ownership, security, video hardware
Companies: arlo

Anker Highlights What Not To Do When Your Crappy Security Standards Are Exposed

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the bang-up-job,-everybody dept

A few weeks ago, The Verge discovered that Anker, the maker of popular USB chargers and the Eufy line of “smart” cameras, had a bit of a security issue. Despite the fact the company advertised its Eufy cameras as having “end-to-end” military-grade encryption, security researcher Paul Moore and a hacker named Wasabi found it was pretty easy to intercept user video streams.

The researchers found that an attacker simply needed a device serial number to connect to a unique address at Eufy’s cloud servers using the free VLC Media Player. When approached by The Verge, Anker apparently thought the best approach was to simply lie and insist none of this was possible, despite repeated demonstrations that it was very possible:

When we asked Anker point-blank to confirm or deny that, the company categorically denied it. “I can confirm that it is not possible to start a stream and watch live footage using a third-party player such as VLC,” Brett White, a senior PR manager at Anker, told me via email.

Two weeks later, The Verge circled back around to see if Anker had meaningfully addressed the flaw or answered the news outlet’s questions about how the flaw was possible.

It hadn’t. Instead, the company decided to purge its website of nearly all previous promises related to privacy, such as phrases like “we’re taking every step imaginable to ensure your data remains private, with you,” and “your recorded footage will be kept private. Stored locally. With military-grade encryption. And transmitted to you, and only you.”

So basically Anker’s response to proven allegations of flimsy security was to lie and insist the flaw didn’t exist, then delete any references to its past promises on privacy, now proven false. Just some really inspiring work all around, and fairly representative of the “smart” device space in general.

Filed Under: cameras, consumers, encryption, privacy, security
Companies: anker

Facebook Says It Violates The Terms Of Service Of Their New Snoopervision Glasses If You Cover The 'I'm Recording You' LED

Say That Again

from the like-that'll-work dept

You’ve likely heard by now that Facebook has launched their own version of sunglasses with a built-in camera, in partnership with Ray Ban, called “Ray Ban Stories” (because, seriously, which brand is cooler right now? Facebook? Or Ray Ban?). Lots of people are comparing it to the failed disaster that was Google Glass (which gave rise to the term “Glassholes”) or SnapChat’s similar product, and lots of people are calling out the potential privacy issues associated with these snoopervision glasses. To be honest, personally I feel like at least some of those concerns are typical moral panics, akin to people freaking out when the camera itself was invented, such as this story about early Kodak cameras:

The appearance of Eastman’s cameras was so sudden and so pervasive that the reaction in some quarters was fear. A figure called the “camera fiend” began to appear at beach resorts, prowling the premises until he could catch female bathers unawares. One resort felt the trend so heavily that it posted a notice: “PEOPLE ARE FORBIDDEN TO USE THEIR KODAKS ON THE BEACH.” Other locations were no safer. For a time, Kodak cameras were banned from the Washington Monument. The “Hartford Courant” sounded the alarm as well, declaring that “the sedate citizen can’t indulge in any hilariousness without the risk of being caught in the act and having his photograph passed around among his Sunday School children.”

And, frankly, if someone wants to record people surreptitiously, there are tons of ways to do so today already that are a lot easier (and often a lot cheaper) than an ugly pair of sun glasses. I think the bigger issue in the long run is going to be coming up with a new set of social norms and social cues for what is and what is not appropriate here. But that’s a debate for another day.

What amazes me about the rollout of Facebook’s glasses is that they seem to think that they can stop people from covering the LED light that goes on when you’re recording… by claiming that it’s a terms of service violation. That’s what a Facebook VP told Buzzfeed writer Katie Notopoulos, whose article on the whole Facebook glasses thing is absolutely worth reading. But this bit is just pure silliness and makes Facebook look ridiculous:

Although you can?t turn off the light on the glasses or through the app, I was able to do this the old fashion way: I put a tiny piece of masking tape over the LED light and colored the tape black with a Sharpie. It covered it up perfectly.

Sometimes to stop the creeps, you have to become…a creep.

Alex Himel, VP of AR at Facebook Reality Labs, informed me over a Zoom chat that taping over the LED light was a violation of the terms of service of the glasses, which prohibit tampering with the device. Be warned.

Yeah, that’s not how any of this works. Claiming that putting a piece of tape over a light is “tampering” that violates the terms is highly questionable. Second, thinking that that even matters is just exceptionally silly. If people want to cover the light, they’ll cover the light. At least confront that head on rather than with a “ooooh, you’ll break your warranty” kind of nonsense. But this is Facebook and Facebook is going to do Facebook type things and believe that the terms of service rules all.

Beyond the ridiculousness of this response, it drifts into right to repair territory and questions of ownership. Facebook has taken over enough of people’s lives as is. They shouldn’t be out there telling you what you can do with physical products you purchased, even if they’re associated with the product.

Filed Under: cameras, glasses, led lights, ownership, privacy, ray ban stories, right to repair, stories, sunglasses, tape, terms of service
Companies: facebook, ray ban

Ring Will Now Require Law Enforcement Requests For Camera Footage To Be Made Publicly

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the forcing-cops-to-form-a-better-relationship-with-those-they-serve dept

Ring, Amazon’s doorbell camera acquisition, has long considered itself to be an integral part of law enforcement. It has aggressively pursued partnerships with local governments, offering up cheap (or free) cameras in exchange for recommendations and installations by law enforcement agencies.

Hundreds of law enforcement agencies have decided Ring provides a welcome new stream of surveillance footage, all captured by private cameras. Although Ring suggests users only capture their immediate doorsteps (or the interiors of their houses), plenty of cameras provide users (and law enforcement) with an insight into the movements of other people as they traverse nearby sidewalks and streets.

Ring has racked up an impressive amount of negative press over the last couple of years — mainly because it appears to consider owners of cameras as little more than footage portals for government agencies. It has provided guidance to law enforcement agencies on how to bypass warrant requirements and given them cameras to hand out with the implicit suggestion the favor will be returned whenever officers come asking for recordings.

It appears Ring has realized its aggressive courting of law enforcement isn’t doing much for its reputation. Its parent company, Amazon, recently extended its moratorium on providing facial recognition tech to government agencies. Its doorbell/camera subsidiary hasn’t said much lately about its facial recognition plans (and there’s nothing stopping cops from running Ring footage through their own tech), but it is stepping up to make its relationship with law enforcement more transparent. (via CNBC)

Beginning next week, public safety agencies will only be able to request information or video from their communities through a new, publicly viewable post category on Neighbors called Request for Assistance. Public safety agencies can use these posts to notify residents of an incident and ask their communities for help related to an investigation. All Request for Assistance posts will be publicly viewable in the Neighbors feed, and logged on the agency’s public profile. This way, anyone interested in knowing more about how their police agency is using Request for Assistance posts can simply visit the agency’s profile and see the post history.

This is the best way to approach this. And I assume there’s a little bit of public pressure in play. Neighbors might lean on other neighbors when something violent or destructive goes down in their neighborhood but some Ring owners aren’t playing ball with the local PD. That may increase “engagement,” but probably only slightly.

On the other hand, it will deter law enforcement agencies from engaging in fishing expeditions for footage that they feel might provide some insight or just want to use for other purposes, like keeping an eye on people engaged in First Amendment activities.

Warrants served by law enforcement agencies won’t be posted to this portal. This is just for informal requests for assistance. And that’s fine. Warrants need probable cause and a judge’s signature, which obviously doesn’t guarantee probable cause exists to demand footage, but is far more oversight than the nothing at all that accompanies direct requests to Ring owners via Ring-enabled law enforcement portals. And law enforcement can always approach Ring directly with subpoenas and warrants, bypassing Ring owners completely, so there’s a built-in way to avoid interacting with the public if that’s what agencies prefer to do.

This is a positive step away from the precipice by Ring. The company has long considered its customers to be little more than contributors to ever-expanding law enforcement surveillance networks. Its move towards more transparency suggests it has been listening to its critics and the concerns of its customers, which is something it really hasn’t done since its emergence as a major player in the home camera market.

Filed Under: cameras, law enforcement, police requests, ring, ring doorbell, video doorbells
Companies: amazon

Putin's Crackdown On Demonstrators Adds A Sadistic Twist: Using Surveillance Cameras To Identify People, But To Arrest Them Only Days Or Months Later

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the waiting-for-the-knock-on-the-door dept

It’s hardly news that Vladimir Putin is cracking down on supporters of Alexey Navalny, or on the journalists who are brave enough to report on the wave of protests in support of the imprisoned opposition leader. But there are some interesting wrinkles to how this is happening. For example, in a move that will not surprise Techdirt readers, Moscow’s massive facial recognition camera network — supposedly set up to enforce quarantine restrictions, and to catch criminals — has been re-purposed, as Bloomberg reports:

Police tapped the surveillance system to identify and detain dozens of people who attended last week’s protests in the Russian capital in support of jailed Kremlin foe Alexey Navalny. More than 50 were picked up over the following days, including several journalists, according to OVD-Info, an independent human-rights monitoring group that gathers information on detentions.

Nothing too surprising there, perhaps. But the RFERL.org site points out an important shift in the Russian authorities’ tactics. In the past, the police detained thousands of people who had participated in unsanctioned demonstrations. This time, a token two to three percent of the protesters at a rally were arrested, apparently allowing the rest to go free. However, this is actually part of a new, and even more cruel approach:

in recent days, Russian police have unveiled a new strategy, using surveillance-camera footage and other techniques to identify demonstrators and track them down, days after the event.

The opposition politician and political analyst Leonid Gozman explains:

“Now we have a different situation,” he continued. “They are signaling to everyone: ‘Go ahead and march, guys, but a year from now you can expect we’ll come, expect a knock at your door. And we’ll come or not as we wish….’ Now they have placed everyone in that position.”

It’s a clever approach. It means anyone coming away from attending a demo is unsure whether they have been identified there. The absence of any immediate action by the authorities no longer means protesters have escaped notice. Instead, a kind of digital sword of Damocles hangs over them, waiting to fall at some future, unknown date. The painful uncertainty this generates will probably be enough to dissuade many people from taking part in future demos — a big win for the authorities, obtained at very low cost.

This cat-and-mouse game with protesters is only possible thanks to Moscow’s blanket surveillance cameras and advanced facial recognition systems. Where, in the past, police could only arrest people at a demonstration on the spot, because there was no sure way to find them afterwards, now their faces on CCTV are enough. Once photographed and identified, there is no need to arrest them immediately, which allows the authorities to create this new and debilitating anxiety among protestors that one day there will be that dreaded knock on the door.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: cameras, facial recognition, free speech, protests, russia, surveillance

North Carolina Cops Fired After Their In-Car Camera Catches Them Talking About Wiping Black People 'Off The (Expletive) Map'

Failures

from the sounds-like-a-very-north-carolina-discussion dept

Sometimes cop cameras do what they’re supposed to. In most cases, camera footage captured by cops is used by prosecutors to build cases. But every so often, they provide the accountability we were promised when cameras began rolling out.

In-car footage of officers engaging in a bigoted discussion of current protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd has resulted in some of that accountability we’ve heard so much about. Three Wilmington (NC) police officers have been fired for comments they made while sitting in their squad cars.

This wasn’t the result of a citizen’s complaint. Rather this horrific “discussion” was seen by a supervisor during a routine audit of recordings.

According to documents released by the police department, a sergeant was conducting a video audit as part of a monthly inspection and was reviewing footage from Piner’s car that had been classified as “accidental activation.” After the sergeant listened to the conversation and determined comments made by Piner and Moore were “extremely racist,” she contacted the department administrator for the camera system.

We can guarantee this was an “accidental activation.” No cop would have knowingly taped a conversation where officers discussed the current unrest using racist language or expressed a desire to engage in a war against black people to set them back decades in the fight for equality. No one would have believed this conversation ever took place if it wasn’t for the recording the officers didn’t know they were creating.

In addition to referring to a black female and a black magistrate judge as “niggers,” an officer also used a gay slur and expressed a desire to “go out and start slaughtering them (expletive) Blacks.”

The was Officer Kevin Piner. Officer Birian Gilmore was the one delivering the gay slur. Another officer, Corporal Jessie Moore, was part of a phone conversation with Officer Piner, in which Piner went even further.

Piner then told Moore that he felt a civil war was needed to “wipe them off the (expletive) map. That’ll put them back about four or five generations.” Moore told Piner he was “crazy,” and the recording stopped a short time later.

The officers did not deny that those were their voices or that they had made these comments. They had an excuse though. You know how it is when life gets tough and you just start adopting random disturbing beliefs because the pressure is getting to you.

While the officers denied that they were racists, they blamed their comments on the stress on law enforcement in light of the protests over the death of George Floyd.

Look, I can only speak for myself but I have never had this experience. I’ve undergone a tremendous amount of stress at various points in my life and not once did I decide that the earth was flat, or that enemas curb masturbation, or that an entire race needs to be “slaughtered” and “wiped off the map.” Maybe the stress is different in Cop Land. I don’t know. But this seems like the weakest excuse for expressing things you fervently believe — one summoned in a panic after realizing your racist diatribe has been recorded.

Not only are the officers being fired, but cases they’ve been involved in are now being reviewed for criminal activity (committed by these officers) or biased behavior. I’m sure investigators will find something, but it might be difficult to separate these officers’ own bigotry from the systemic racism of police culture. Still, I wish investigators the best of luck.

Thank god for inadvertent activations. Without them, these officers would have continued to be racists with guns and a whole lot of power — able to inflict misery on people they hate until easing into a fully-funded retirement. But for now — pending the inevitable lawsuit/arbitration — they’re just a few bigoted citizens whose irrational hatred was exposed by their own technical incompetence.

Filed Under: cameras, north carolina, racist cops

London's Facial Recognition Rollout Trips Over The Pandemic As Facemasks Render The System Even More Useless

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the of-course,-some-people-still-refuse-to-wear-them-so... dept

The rollout of London’s facial recognition cameras — hundreds of them — is being held up by unexpected developments. No, it’s not the efforts of legislators, privacy activists, or some sudden concern about the unreliability of the tech. It’s the global pandemic, which has taken away many of the facial features the cameras are looking for. (h/t Jeffrey Nonken in the TD Chat window)

The Metropolitan Police is considering whether to pause its use of facial recognition cameras because so many Londoners are wearing face masks.

Use of the technology, which was deployed across London from January in a bid to spot serious criminals, is regarded as controversial by civil liberties campaigners.

One assembly member, Caroline Pidgeon, made the obvious point that a rollout during a pandemic necessitating face mask use isn’t the best timing for tech that already has demonstrated an inability to correctly recognize unmasked faces.

This point is driven home in a letter composed by Pidgeon and Sian Berry, another assembly member. The letter says the tech’s failures — and the lack of public input or oversight — means Londoners should only expect bad things from a large-scale rollout of live facial recognition.

In a letter published [PDF] on the London Assembly website, the two elected representatives said: “We both believe that the way in which LFR [live facial recognition] is being rolled out as an operational tool in London is ill-advised, and that this technology will have a chilling effect on civil liberties if it is not used with clarity, accountability and with full democratic consent.”

The letter says the tech used by the Metropolitan Police isn’t merely error-prone. It’s pretty much all errors, all the time.

In a recent answer to a written question, the Mayor made clear that in the first two deployments of LFR this year more than 13,000 faces were scanned. Out of these 13,200 people scanned only six individuals were stopped. However, of those six, five were misidentified and incorrectly stopped by the police, not being wanted for any crime. Furthermore, of the total of eight people who created a ‘system alert’, seven were incorrectly identified. This is a concerning pattern of inaccuracy and misidentification of innocent people, which was also identified during the trials of this technology.

The letter also points out that London’s law enforcement has refused to cooperate with the government’s oversight of this tech, telling legislators to refer to previously published documents rather than directing them to anything more recent that might provide insight on the current state of the technology. The assembly members say the available documents do not fully address tests mandated by the London Policing Ethics Panel. They also note that while the Ethics Panel has suggested this tech only be used to investigate “serious crimes,” the Metropolitan Police has made it clear it has no intention to comply with this guideline.

The letter asks more questions of the MPS which will likely also go unanswered. The assembly members want assurance these systems won’t be deployed during protests, demonstrations, or public events. They also want to know if the forces of law and order are cool with blowing off Parliamentary directives.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has called for a halt to the police’s use of live facial recognition, until relevant regulations are in place. Do you feel comfortable ignoring Parliament?

The answer to the last one is probably “yes.” The Metropolitan Police has continued to deploy the tech despite a constant stream of false positives. The only thing standing between it and a full rollout is the pandemic itself. The MPS can’t honestly say its system will be a useful crime fighting tool when people’s faces are partially hidden from view. The MPS couldn’t honestly say this prior to en masse mask-wearing, but at least the system still had access to full faces. Continuing the rollout would show the police care more about playing with their toys then ensuring the safety and well-being of London residents.

Filed Under: cameras, covid-19, face masks, facial recognition, london, metropolitan police, privacy