*Routing for you*
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Friday, October 25, 2019
JUDICIARY: CHAIRMAN NADLER STATEMENT AT SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING ON “ONLINE PLATFORMS AND MARKET POWER, PART III: THE ROLE OF DATA AND PRIVACY IN COMPETITION” - October 18, 2019
Washington, D.C. – Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) delivered the following opening remarks during a Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law hearing on “Online Platforms and Market Power. Part III: The Role of Data and Privacy in Competition.”
"Digital technologies have provided Americans with a remarkable array of services. It has never been easier to share news and information, to publish content, and to communicate with loved ones, all at a moment’s notice.
"But, as with technological revolutions of the past, this transformation has upended the balance of power across our economy. It is important for Congress to study and understand how these imbalances are affecting Americans, what is causing these asymmetries of power, and whether these new and growing inequalities are compatible with our democratic values. The Committee’s ongoing oversight of competition in digital markets is a key part of this process.
"Today’s hearing will examine the role that data plays in creating and maintaining inequalities of power and how this affects competition. As previous hearings have shown, a growing share of commerce and communications is now controlled by a small number of companies. Because these platforms are, in essence, large intermediaries, they are perfectly positioned to closely track each transaction and communication that passes through their channels.
"While intermediaries have long-collected information on the economic activity that flows through their platforms, the large firms of the digital economy have unprecedented ability to track and surveil users across the Internet. This data collection includes information not only about a person’s shopping and reading habits, but also about the time that they wake up and go to sleep, their precise location at each hour of the day, and the content of their most private communications.
"Because several of these platforms derive the vast majority of their revenue through digital advertising, these firms also have an incentive to collect as much information as possible so that they can target consumers with precision. This trove of personal information can also be used by companies in even more nefarious ways to discriminate based on a user’s race, gender, or income, or otherwise to intrude on personal privacy.
"In light of these trends, there are at least two questions that I hope will be addressed in today’s hearing. First, how are digital technologies—and the constant data-collection they enable—affecting competition? Is there something unique about digital markets that enables firms to acquire and maintain market power in novel ways?
"In digital markets, maximizing data collection can provide a company with a significant competitive advantage. A large and constantly growing set of user data allows firms both to improve existing products and services and to expand into new lines of business, often with a competitive edge.
"Frequently, the most dominant companies in the digital economy are those that have captured the most data from as many sources as possible. In recent years, scholars have described this dynamic as leading to ‘winner-take-all’ markets, where the first company to establish a competitive lead wins the market, crushing any potential competition.
"In other words, competitors in digital markets have a strong incentive to collect as much information on users as possible—as quickly as possible—as part of a long-term strategy to compete in the marketplace and to achieve market dominance.
"This raises serious questions about whether it is good for society for unrelenting data collection to be the key dimension on which companies are looking to out-compete one another. The fact that several major digital platforms make most of their profits by selling targeted advertisements heightens these incentives.
"The second question that I hope will be addressed in today’s hearing is how data collection increases the number of ways that dominant companies can abuse their market power. Does the collection and use of data enable new forms of conduct that lawmakers and regulators should recognize as anti-competitive? For example, platforms that serve as intermediaries for commerce have critical insight into their rivals’ business models, a dynamic that raises significant competition concerns.
"With these issues in mind, I look forward to hearing from our esteemed panel of witnesses today, and I yield back the balance of my time."
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
Thursday, October 3, 2019
When Rashida Tlaib & Her DNC Reparations Stealin' Talking Points Go Horribly Wrong
 |
| "Will Prince Archie get a reparations check, too?" |
That should be fun.
Will there be any due process to challenge being omitted from this reparations check classed based animus?
I will ask her.
After all, she is the best person to represent African-Americans when it comes to discrimination of due process.
Gotta have an operationalized tool of measurement when it comes to handing out those reparations economic development contracts.
TARP ran out, you know.
Then, there is that pesky issue with identifying individuals who are not formally recognized as U.S. citizens, or have multiple identities, or victims of child trafficking, or are brought as foreign political operatives....oh, the list of legally established measurable variables goes on and on for those privatized local governments known as sanctuary cities.
Which foreign corporation is the administrator of record of the data?
DPD Chief Craig outraged at Rashida Tlaib's race remarks
DETROIT (FOX 2) - Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib told Chief James Craig on Monday that analysts who work with the facial recognition software should be African-American only.It is something Tlaib, a lawyer, later told FOX 2 wouldn't even be legal to hire someone solely on race.
DPD Chief fires back at Tlaib comments
 |
| http://www.dataworksplus.com/partners.html https://opencorporates.com/companies? jurisdiction_code=&q=Dataworks+Plus&utf8=%E2%9C%93 |
On Monday Tlaib said in a Detroit News online video: "Also, analysts need to be African-Americans, not people that are not. No, it happens all the time, it is true. I think non-African-Americans think African-Americans all look the same."
Craig responded in that video saying, "I trust people who are trained. Regardless of race, regardless of gender."
FOX 2: "Are her comments racist?"
"I think they are racist, I don't know (if) we can call it what we want," Craig said Wednesday.
Chief James Craig is not mincing words after showing how the hotly debated facial recognition technology works to the congresswoman who has been adamantly against it.
Her concerns are regarding the reliability in identifying people of color.
"The facial recognition software is racist in itself," Tlaib said.
The Detroit News was rolling when Tlaib said analysts who work to identify potential criminals with the software should be African American…not, non-African American.
"It's a double standard," Craig said. "Certainly as the police chief of this city, if I had made a similar comment, people would be outraged and they would be calling for my resignation."
FOX 2: "Do you wish you would have said it differently?"
"I'm trying to say it needs to be reflective and if you look at the video I think you can see I'm trying to respectfully disagree," Tlaib said.
Tlaib cited several studies for support on how people of one race identify another.
"The science supports what I'm saying," Tlaib said.
FOX 2: "I'm not asking what the science is saying I'm asking what you're saying?"
"I repeated what the science said," Tlaib said. "I think if you talk, not just to me ... "
FOX 2: "The science says that black analysts should be hired?"
"No," she said. "It says there are mistaken people that cannot identify African-Americans, no, no, no, it's okay, we aren't going to get into an argument about this.
"Please ask African-Americans in my district."
Craig says the software is one tool for investigators and although it isn't 100 percent accurate, trained analysts fill in the gaps.
"I'm not even going to try and understand why the comments were made," Craig said. "Let's just simply say it was improper, it wasn't right and we should be talking about other things."
Tlaib says many of her constituents are against facial recognition - that's why she has been so outspoken. She is actually behind two bills to ban the technology and prevent the cameras from going into public housing.
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
Saturday, July 20, 2019
CONYERS: FBI Broke the Law and General Counsel’s Office, Headed by Valerie Caproni, Sanctioned It and Must Face Consequences - April 14, 2010
MARCH 20, 2007
FBI Use of National Security Letters
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on an independent report of the inspector general on the use of national security letters by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Witnesses testified about the amount and type of information reported to Congress on the use of the letters to gather information on individuals, civil rights concerns, and operational procedures used by the FBI in domestic surveillance.
 |
Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.
|
"Today’s hearing showed that the FBI broke the law on telephone records privacy and the General Counsel’s Office, headed by Valerie Caproni, sanctioned it and must face consequences," said Conyers. "I call upon FBI Director Mueller to take immediate action to punish those who violated the rules, including firing them from the agency. This must include the FBI Office of General Counsel, headed by Valerie Caproni, which the IG testified today had ‘approved [the] continued use’ of exigent letters and ‘provided legal advice that was inconsistent with’ federal law.
| Valerie Caproni |
"The FBI must fulfill its obligations to protect the rights as well as the security of all Americans. I share the concerns of my colleague, the former Republican chairman of the Committee James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who today said,
‘I’m extremely disappointed that every time Congress has tried to plug potential civil rights and civil liberties violations in our counterterrorism activities, the FBI seems to have figured out a way to get around it.’
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Meet Stacey Dixon, Detroit! NGA's Newest Deputy Director
If anyone has an issue about facial recognition, feel free to reach out to Stacey Dixon.
Stacey came from IARPA, the agency that developed facial recognition technology.
I am quite sure she could dispel any #coloredrevolution propaganda floating around Detroit in the realms of technology.
NGA announces Stacey Dixon as deputy director
Feel free to contact Stacey at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.
“It’s still under review, so we cannot move forward at this particular time," Commissioner Willie Bell said, explaining that discussions around that particular surveillance directive were still being hammered out with Police Chief James Craig and Mayor Mike Duggan.
While the facial recognition vote was put off, the board did move forward and approved (6-3, with one abstention) a related directive dealing with rules around cameras mounted onto traffic lights throughout the city's neighborhoods.
"Yes, the traffic light was dealing with face recognition, but we separated it out, they were combined together but they're two separate entities," said Bell.
More: Controversial Detroit facial recognition program prompts public meeting
More: See where Detroit has placed more than 500 surveillance cameras with Project Green Light
Community members, who spoke during the public comment period, expressed a different point of view, indicating that they saw the two issues as inextricably tied.
“I understand that you said facial recognition is not on the agenda today, but you moved forward and voted on traffic cameras that will have the capabilities of that technology," said Detroiter Tawana Petty.
“This facial recognition technology has been utilized for a couple of years without transparency and then the minute we get an opportunity to vocalize our concerns on it, it’s rushed through with little accountability," she continued. The city purchased facial recognition software in July 2017 for just over $1 million.
Willie Burton, one of the three commissioners who voted against the traffic directive, agreed with Petty stating that it was impossible to isolate the two directives.
"It was all presented together and now all of a sudden they want to separate it because they knew the community was coming out to speak against it," said Burton.
In a rundown of what occurred around the facial recognition directive and why it got pushed back, Gregory Hicks, the board's secretary, explained that the commissioners responded to the original facial recognition directive with 17 recommendations and Assistant Police Chief James White responded with the approval of all but two. The changes were then incorporated in the directive but "at last minute the department requested to pull back" the facial recognition vote.
Hicks said he does not know why the department pulled the directive and that as of now there is no new date for a vote.
Both directives involve the "Neighborhood Real-Time Intelligence Program," a new $9 million initiative that Duggan announced in March at his State of the City address. Using local and federal traffic modernization funds, the city will put high-definition cameras at various intersections in the neighborhoods. They will be monitored by Detroit Public Works staff at the Real Time Crime Center within the Detroit Police Department's Public Safety headquarters downtown. By the end of 2019, cameras are set to be installed at 11 intersections on the Greenfield and East Seven Mile corridors. Additionally, the Department of Public Works will add cameras to 29 intersections across the city. In 2020, an additional 400 cameras will be added.
“These are the traffic cameras we’re putting up. We will get shots of the perpetrators as they go past and we’ll be able to chase them down,” Duggan said at his State of the City.
Under the traffic-light directive that passed Thursday, Detroit police are prohibited from using the footage or images from the traffic light cameras to enforce traffic misdemeanors or pedestrian laws or to issue civil infractions of any kind. The cameras cannot be used to assess immigration status or engage in immigration enforcement. And DPD cannot use audio from the cameras unless there is a verified court order.
Footage and images obtained from the traffic light-mounted cameras can be used for "legitimate law enforcement purposes," defined as investigations into criminal activity, the pursuit of a criminal suspect, the monitoring of an ongoing situation "in which criminal activity is, or is reasonably expected to occur."
DPD is not prohibited from focusing cameras on handbills, flyers or other materials carried pursuant to the First Amendment, but they will "avoid" doing this.
While some checks are in place, critics remain concerned, especially when considering the yet to be voted on directive that deals with facial recognition.
Worries hit on privacy and the silencing of free speech to the actual efficacy of the technology.
Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of California tested images of members of Congress on "Rekognition" — Amazon's facial recognition tool. The organization found that of the 535 faces inputted, the software falsely matched 28 with people who had been arrested on criminal charges. Additionally, the software gave false matches for 39% of the minority members, who comprise only 20% of Congress.
Such issues were raised in a May inter-office memo sent to the commissioners. The document cited a January report that found that facial recognition technology showed a lower accuracy rate for African Americans and another that found that artificial intelligence assigned more criminal intent to black men based on difficulties interpreting emotions of black faces.
"That is enough to justify voting against it," said Eric Williams, an attorney working with the ACLU on a committee opposing the city's surveillance tactics. "If it said this for white men and women, this wouldn't even be considered."
Last month, San Francisco — seen by many as the center of the tech-universe — became the first major city to ban police use of the technology, citing several of the concerns Williams and other critics of the software have raised.
"We have an outsize responsibility to regulate the excesses of technology precisely because they are headquartered here," Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who sponsored the bill, told the New York Times at the time.
This point was raised by Petty during her public comment Thursday.
"The very technologists who created it said it’s harmful and biased. It doesn’t recognize darker skins," she said referencing an AI experiment that failed to recognize Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey.
"I have to push you all to at least understand the technology you’re implementing," she continued. "This will be the largest experiment on black people in the United States — 700,000 black people being submitted to an experiment that has already failed all over the world."
While the directives in question have been discussed in relation to the Neighborhood Real-Time Intelligence Program — the use of such technology and surveillance is not new in Detroit. This is just the latest surveillance project in an ever-expanding network.
The public-facing push to ramp up surveillance began in January 2016 when DPD launched Project Green Light. Starting with eight gas stations, the program has participating businesses pay for and install surveillance cameras on their property that feed directly to DPD's Real Time Crime Center. Additionally, as part of the program, businesses commit to ensuring they have robust lighting and a green light outside of their vicinity to let customers know they are a part of the program.
Today, more than 500 businesses — including churches, schools, and pharmacies — are a part of the program. There are also two "Green Light Corridors" and one public housing property signed on to be part of the program.
Prior to the launch of Project Green Light, however, city officials were thinking about surveillance and specifically facial recognition software.
In fall 2015, Detroit's Office of Contracting and Procurement was working on a request for proposal for "Facial Recognition Software solutions" to be utilized by DPD's Real Time Crime Center (live video feeds) and investigation personnel (static images).
In July 2017, the city entered into a three-year, $1,045,843, contract with South Carolina-based facial recognition software company DataWorks Plus, which pitched FACE Watch Plus in its bid for the contract.
"FACE Watch Plus tracks face images from live video surveillance, processes the images, then searches your database and alerts you when a match/hit has been made," the proposal explained. "It detects faces within surveillance footage in real-time, then uses cutting-edge facial searching algorithms to rapidly search through your agency's mugshot or watchlist database for positive matches."
The 2017 contract, which expired on Wednesday, explained that the purchase of facial recognition licensing, software and equipment was for "Project Green Light Locations."
Despite this stated use, a May report from Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology noted that nowhere on the Green Light website was the use of face recognition, real-time face surveillance, or any kind of automated face analysis technology mentioned.
This, according to Clare Garvie, a senior associate at the center and co-author of the report, is a problem.
"It should be up to communities to decide whether the benefits of face recognition outweigh the risks and whether these benefits to public safety mean that this technology can and should be used on them," said Garvie.
"What we found in Detroit is the decision to purchase not just face recognition — the ability to do investigations using face recognition — but the ability to do face surveillance was not something that was ever presented to the public," she continued. "It never appears to be presented to the Project Green Light partners, and yes that is absolutely a discussion that should have taken place before the city spends over a million dollars on a system."
For some of the Detroiters in attendance at the vote Thursday, the delay seemed to exacerbate questions of accountability.
"If you can’t even conduct a vote with integrity," asked Janice Gates, "how do you expect us to believe that you will use facial recognition with integrity?"
Detroiter Eric Blount echoed her sentiments.
"It feels like this meeting agenda switch is a sleight of hand switch, so many people came out here thinking they were going to understand and better express themselves on facial recognition and a last-minute switch," Blount said. "I just ask you to stick to the agenda, if there is any possibility that it will be changed, do it far in advance, because these meetings are very inconvenient for most people who have to work."
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
Stacey came from IARPA, the agency that developed facial recognition technology.
I am quite sure she could dispel any #coloredrevolution propaganda floating around Detroit in the realms of technology.
NGA announces Stacey Dixon as deputy director
Feel free to contact Stacey at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.
Our latest Geointeresting #podcast features NGA’s Director of Research & an NGA scientist discovering the latest in hyperspectral signatures – two women at different stages of their career, but both strong advocates for women in the #STEM field. Listen up! https://t.co/vK7Plnlr7w pic.twitter.com/JyOhUWZaUg— NGA (@NGA_GEOINT) June 25, 2019
Detroiters concerned over facial recognition technology as police commissioners table vote
The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners tabled a controversial vote Thursday around the use of facial recognition technology in city neighborhoods.“It’s still under review, so we cannot move forward at this particular time," Commissioner Willie Bell said, explaining that discussions around that particular surveillance directive were still being hammered out with Police Chief James Craig and Mayor Mike Duggan.
While the facial recognition vote was put off, the board did move forward and approved (6-3, with one abstention) a related directive dealing with rules around cameras mounted onto traffic lights throughout the city's neighborhoods.
"Yes, the traffic light was dealing with face recognition, but we separated it out, they were combined together but they're two separate entities," said Bell.
More: Controversial Detroit facial recognition program prompts public meeting
More: See where Detroit has placed more than 500 surveillance cameras with Project Green Light
Community members, who spoke during the public comment period, expressed a different point of view, indicating that they saw the two issues as inextricably tied.
“I understand that you said facial recognition is not on the agenda today, but you moved forward and voted on traffic cameras that will have the capabilities of that technology," said Detroiter Tawana Petty.
“This facial recognition technology has been utilized for a couple of years without transparency and then the minute we get an opportunity to vocalize our concerns on it, it’s rushed through with little accountability," she continued. The city purchased facial recognition software in July 2017 for just over $1 million.
Willie Burton, one of the three commissioners who voted against the traffic directive, agreed with Petty stating that it was impossible to isolate the two directives.
"It was all presented together and now all of a sudden they want to separate it because they knew the community was coming out to speak against it," said Burton.
“This tech has been removed from body cameras in other police depts, it’s banned in SF. The very technologists who created it said it’s harmful and biased. It doesn’t recognize darker skins” - Tawana Petty speaking against facial recognition tech today at police commissioner mtg pic.twitter.com/OKRDYa4jfM— Allie Gross (@Allie_Elisabeth) June 27, 2019
In a rundown of what occurred around the facial recognition directive and why it got pushed back, Gregory Hicks, the board's secretary, explained that the commissioners responded to the original facial recognition directive with 17 recommendations and Assistant Police Chief James White responded with the approval of all but two. The changes were then incorporated in the directive but "at last minute the department requested to pull back" the facial recognition vote.
Hicks said he does not know why the department pulled the directive and that as of now there is no new date for a vote.
“This tech has proven to be inaccurate/misidentifies particularly ppl of color, ppl who look like me, ppl who live/work in my community. I have every right to move thru this city w/o my movements being tracked/watched under the guise that this will make me safer” - Janice Gates pic.twitter.com/Pkg4AwWRCw— Allie Gross (@Allie_Elisabeth) June 27, 2019
Both directives involve the "Neighborhood Real-Time Intelligence Program," a new $9 million initiative that Duggan announced in March at his State of the City address. Using local and federal traffic modernization funds, the city will put high-definition cameras at various intersections in the neighborhoods. They will be monitored by Detroit Public Works staff at the Real Time Crime Center within the Detroit Police Department's Public Safety headquarters downtown. By the end of 2019, cameras are set to be installed at 11 intersections on the Greenfield and East Seven Mile corridors. Additionally, the Department of Public Works will add cameras to 29 intersections across the city. In 2020, an additional 400 cameras will be added.
“These are the traffic cameras we’re putting up. We will get shots of the perpetrators as they go past and we’ll be able to chase them down,” Duggan said at his State of the City.
Under the traffic-light directive that passed Thursday, Detroit police are prohibited from using the footage or images from the traffic light cameras to enforce traffic misdemeanors or pedestrian laws or to issue civil infractions of any kind. The cameras cannot be used to assess immigration status or engage in immigration enforcement. And DPD cannot use audio from the cameras unless there is a verified court order.
Footage and images obtained from the traffic light-mounted cameras can be used for "legitimate law enforcement purposes," defined as investigations into criminal activity, the pursuit of a criminal suspect, the monitoring of an ongoing situation "in which criminal activity is, or is reasonably expected to occur."
DPD is not prohibited from focusing cameras on handbills, flyers or other materials carried pursuant to the First Amendment, but they will "avoid" doing this.
While some checks are in place, critics remain concerned, especially when considering the yet to be voted on directive that deals with facial recognition.
Worries hit on privacy and the silencing of free speech to the actual efficacy of the technology.
Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of California tested images of members of Congress on "Rekognition" — Amazon's facial recognition tool. The organization found that of the 535 faces inputted, the software falsely matched 28 with people who had been arrested on criminal charges. Additionally, the software gave false matches for 39% of the minority members, who comprise only 20% of Congress.
Such issues were raised in a May inter-office memo sent to the commissioners. The document cited a January report that found that facial recognition technology showed a lower accuracy rate for African Americans and another that found that artificial intelligence assigned more criminal intent to black men based on difficulties interpreting emotions of black faces.
"That is enough to justify voting against it," said Eric Williams, an attorney working with the ACLU on a committee opposing the city's surveillance tactics. "If it said this for white men and women, this wouldn't even be considered."
Last month, San Francisco — seen by many as the center of the tech-universe — became the first major city to ban police use of the technology, citing several of the concerns Williams and other critics of the software have raised.
"We have an outsize responsibility to regulate the excesses of technology precisely because they are headquartered here," Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who sponsored the bill, told the New York Times at the time.
This point was raised by Petty during her public comment Thursday.
"The very technologists who created it said it’s harmful and biased. It doesn’t recognize darker skins," she said referencing an AI experiment that failed to recognize Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey.
"I have to push you all to at least understand the technology you’re implementing," she continued. "This will be the largest experiment on black people in the United States — 700,000 black people being submitted to an experiment that has already failed all over the world."
While the directives in question have been discussed in relation to the Neighborhood Real-Time Intelligence Program — the use of such technology and surveillance is not new in Detroit. This is just the latest surveillance project in an ever-expanding network.
The public-facing push to ramp up surveillance began in January 2016 when DPD launched Project Green Light. Starting with eight gas stations, the program has participating businesses pay for and install surveillance cameras on their property that feed directly to DPD's Real Time Crime Center. Additionally, as part of the program, businesses commit to ensuring they have robust lighting and a green light outside of their vicinity to let customers know they are a part of the program.
Today, more than 500 businesses — including churches, schools, and pharmacies — are a part of the program. There are also two "Green Light Corridors" and one public housing property signed on to be part of the program.
Prior to the launch of Project Green Light, however, city officials were thinking about surveillance and specifically facial recognition software.
In fall 2015, Detroit's Office of Contracting and Procurement was working on a request for proposal for "Facial Recognition Software solutions" to be utilized by DPD's Real Time Crime Center (live video feeds) and investigation personnel (static images).
In July 2017, the city entered into a three-year, $1,045,843, contract with South Carolina-based facial recognition software company DataWorks Plus, which pitched FACE Watch Plus in its bid for the contract.
"FACE Watch Plus tracks face images from live video surveillance, processes the images, then searches your database and alerts you when a match/hit has been made," the proposal explained. "It detects faces within surveillance footage in real-time, then uses cutting-edge facial searching algorithms to rapidly search through your agency's mugshot or watchlist database for positive matches."
The 2017 contract, which expired on Wednesday, explained that the purchase of facial recognition licensing, software and equipment was for "Project Green Light Locations."
Despite this stated use, a May report from Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology noted that nowhere on the Green Light website was the use of face recognition, real-time face surveillance, or any kind of automated face analysis technology mentioned.
This, according to Clare Garvie, a senior associate at the center and co-author of the report, is a problem.
"It should be up to communities to decide whether the benefits of face recognition outweigh the risks and whether these benefits to public safety mean that this technology can and should be used on them," said Garvie.
"What we found in Detroit is the decision to purchase not just face recognition — the ability to do investigations using face recognition — but the ability to do face surveillance was not something that was ever presented to the public," she continued. "It never appears to be presented to the Project Green Light partners, and yes that is absolutely a discussion that should have taken place before the city spends over a million dollars on a system."
For some of the Detroiters in attendance at the vote Thursday, the delay seemed to exacerbate questions of accountability.
"If you can’t even conduct a vote with integrity," asked Janice Gates, "how do you expect us to believe that you will use facial recognition with integrity?"
Detroiter Eric Blount echoed her sentiments.
"It feels like this meeting agenda switch is a sleight of hand switch, so many people came out here thinking they were going to understand and better express themselves on facial recognition and a last-minute switch," Blount said. "I just ask you to stick to the agenda, if there is any possibility that it will be changed, do it far in advance, because these meetings are very inconvenient for most people who have to work."
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
Thursday, October 11, 2018
DEFANGO: Amazon Altas Data Center Map Released | Wikileaks #questofrandomclues
We have everything, too.
Ready?
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
Saturday, July 21, 2018
Cocktails & Popcorn: Carter Page FISA Verified Application Is About The Money
 |
| Russian collusion in the 2016 election |
It was campaign financing.
These people laundered money through political campaigns, colluded, bribed and blackmailed candidates, financed smear campaigns, through social media and in real life compromises.
From the heavily redacted documents, it can be seen that this is about the money, and lots of it, to keep the ratlines running, like:
- trafficking tiny humans;
- human trafficking;
- uranium;
- oil;
- slave labor;
- pharmaceuticals;
- biomedical research
- dark weapons;
- gold; and,
- the list goes on.
Here Are the Secret Documents About the Surveillance of Ex-Trump Adviser Carter Page
The Justice Department has released hundreds of pages of documents relating to an FBI application for a secret warrant issued in October 2016 authorizing surveillance on former Donald Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
 |
| Carter Page, the FISA rabbit |
The records were obtained by Gizmodo Media Group (GMG), Splinter’s parent company, via a Freedom of Information Act request filed in April 2017. Other media and political organizations, including the New York Times, USA Today, and Judicial Watch, also filed FOIA requests.
The FBI submitted the application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which approved its request to surveil Page. The Times noted that the government’s release of this application was essentially unprecedented, since “no such application materials had apparently become public in the 40 years since Congress enacted [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] to regulate the interception of phone calls and other communications on domestic soil in search of spies and terrorists, as opposed to wiretapping for ordinary criminal investigations.”
The documents are heavily redacted in places, but what remains leaves little to the imagination. The FBI’s application for the secret warrant flatly asserts that Page is “an agent of a foreign power,” and adds, “The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian Government [redacted] undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law.”
Among the other highlights:
—The FBI also says that it “believes that the Russian government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1's campaign.” (Candidate #1 is Trump.)
The FBI claims that, according to a source, Page met with a Russian who raised the possibility that the Russian government could leak a damaging dossier about “Candidate #2" (Hillary Clinton) to the Trump campaign.
In February 2017, Page sent a letter to the DOJ alleging that Clinton’s campaign was subjecting him to a smear campaign.
Page—a former investment banker and oil industry consultant who, though he spent just five months advising the Trump campaign on foreign policy, has loomed large in the popular imagination thanks in part to his shadowy backstory and a series of questionable television appearances—later acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee that he met with Russian government officials during a July 2016 trip to Moscow. (He claimed that he made the trip as a private citizen, but that he briefed other Trump campaign officials about it after his return.) Splinter has reached out to him for comment on the FBI’s assertions. We have also reached out to the White House for comment.
The DOJ’s national security division initially countered the FOIA requests with a “Glomar response,” a refusal to confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of the records. In the context of national security, a Glomar response is commonly used when rejecting a FOIA request on any other grounds would implicitly acknowledge that an agency possess records whose very existence is classified.
In May 2017, GMG filed a lawsuit against the DOJ in a Federal District Court in Manhattan, arguing the existence of the FISA warrants had, for all intents and purposes, been declassified by President Trump on March 4 in a series of threetweets, the first of which read in part: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.”
The memo turned out to be self-defeating for the GOP for several reasons. First, it charged that in seeking the secret surveillance warrant, federal investigators had failed to inform judges that key evidence was obtained from a biased source—the so-called Steele dossier, which was initially written by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of Democrats. But a response memo published by the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee later debunked the accusation, revealing that the court had in fact been informed of the source’s political bias.
The memo also backfired by inadvertently confirming that the Steele dossier was not the primary factor jumpstarting the Russia inquiry. Instead, it acknowledged events previously reported by the New York Times: A former Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, came under the scrutiny of investigators in July 2016 after boasting that Russia had dirt on then-candidate Hillary Clinton to an Australian diplomat in London.
The Russia investigation is ongoing, but so far Special Counsel Robert Mueller has secured 32 indictments or guilty pleas. Among the five people who have pleaded guilty are Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates, and former White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Charges have also been brought against 26 Russian nationals, including 12 intelligence officers indicted on July 13, and three Russian companies.
The FISA warrant records pertaining to Page, which were delivered to GMG late on Saturday afternoon, can be read below in full. This story will be updated as reporters continue to pore over the documents.
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Friday, June 22, 2018
SCOTUS Rules On Preservation Of Evidence In Private Data
The issue with warrants and data have been previously addressed in Congress, but long forgotten, well, that is unless you do a metatag keyword search of data on my blog.
Statement of the Honorable John Conyers, Jr. on H.R. 699, “The Email Privacy Act”
Learn more: BEVERLY TRAN: Statement of the Honorable John Conyers, Jr. on H.R. 699, “The Email Privacy Act” http://beverlytran.blogspot.com/2015/12/statement-of-honorable-john-conyers-jr.html#ixzz5JAgDGCil
Stop Medicaid Fraud in Child Welfare
If SCOTUS rules law enforcement needs warrant to search private cellphone data, then, I shall assume, it applies to emails, and the emails & cellphone data of private corporations, because, after all, "corporations are people, too".
See, if law enforcement does not follow proper procedure in securing evidence in a criminal proceeding, then all that evidence can be thrown out which is why the Hillary Clinton email investigation is going through meticulous scrutiny in DOJ and FBI internal policies and operations.
One just might want to get this one right because this looks like we now have a backdoor into some regulation of those Public Private Partnerships and anything else dealing with privatization when it comes to national security, be it domestic or foreign.
What is interesting to keep in mind, in child welfare proceedings, there is an exception called "exigent circumstances" dealing with children where Child Protective Services will obtain personal information without need of warrant.
Supreme Court rules law enforcement needs warrant to search cellphone data
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that law enforcement in most cases has to obtain a warrant in order to search and seize long-term cell phone records that would show a person's location.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court held that the Fourth Amendment's protections against an unreasonable search protects people from having the government acquire their cell-site records from wireless providers in run-of-the-mill criminal investigations.
Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's four liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, to make up the majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy dissented along with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.
The case before the court centered on Timothy Carpenter, who argued the government violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure when it obtained records from his wireless provider revealing his location over 127 days.
Authorities used the data as evidence at his trial to convict him of a string of robberies at Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in Michigan and Ohio from December 2010 to March 2011.
The government claimed it was well within its right under the Stored Communications Act of 1986 to obtain the records through a court order, which requires police to show reasonable grounds to believe the information is relevant to their criminal investigation.
For a warrant, police have to show probable cause that the crime occurred. <===right there is the purpose of OIG investigations.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Carpenter, upholding the district court ruling, sentencing Carpenter to 1,395 months in prison.
The court held that no search occurred under the Fourth Amendment because Carpenter had no reasonable expectation of privacy in cell phone location records held by his service provider.
In reversing the lower court ruling, Roberts disagreed. He said Carpenter did have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
“As with GPS information, the time-stamped data provides an intimate window into a person’s life revealing not only his particular movements, but through them his familial, political, professional, religious and sexual associations,” he said. “These location records hold for many Americans the ‘privacies of life.’”
Roberts noted that location data has become so precise that it gives the government a near perfect surveillance. Unlike with GPS tracking, he said police don’t even need to know in advance who they want to follow or when.
“Whoever the suspect turns out to be, he has effectively been tailed every moment of every day for five years, and the police may — in the government’s view — call upon the results of that surveillance without regard to the constraints of the Fourth Amendment,” he said.
"Only a few without cell phones could escape this tireless and absolute surveillance.”
In a dissenting opinion, Kennedy said the court's ruling puts needed, reasonable, accepted, lawful and congressionally authorized criminal investigations at risk in serious cases.
"And it places undue restrictions on the lawful and necessary enforcement powers exercised not only by the federal government, but also by law enforcement in every state and locality throughout the nation."
But Roberts said law enforcement can obtain an exemption from the warrant requirement in urgent situations.
“Lower courts for instance, have approved warrantless searches related to bomb threats, active shootings and child abductions,” he said. “Our decision today does not call into doubt warrantless access to CSLI [cell-site location information] in such circumstances.”
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Saturday, May 26, 2018
Friday, May 18, 2018
Stingrays: We Have Everything
Senator freezes DHS cyber nominee over Stingray info
"And to think you could change your phones like you change your socks." ~ Me - 2016Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
Monday, May 7, 2018
Day 201.3. At Least Five Trump Associates Under Surveillance In Summer Campaign
They eat each other alive.
Campaign 2016: Spy v. Spy
Israel intel firm denies it was hired by Trump aides to discredit Obama officials
Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube has denied it was hired
by Donald Trump’s aides to dig up damaging information on former
officials close to Barack Obama who worked on the Iran nuclear deal.
The denial follows allegations, first reported by Observer, that people close to Trump had contacted private investigators a year ago to carry out a “dirty ops” campaign against key Obama administration figures who helped negotiate the Iran agreement.
“Referencing Black Cube has become an international sport during 2018,” the company said in a statement on Monday. “Black Cube has no relation whatsoever to the Trump administration, to Trump aides, to anyone close to the administration, or to the Iran nuclear deal.”
Ben Rhodes, one of Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, were the targets in the attempt to discredit the deal, the Observer reported. Trump has long denounced what he calls “the worst deal ever” and threatened to scrap the 2015 agreement by a 12 May deadline.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who refers to Tehran as a “terrorist regime”, has also been a vocal opponent, arguing the deal should be “fully fixed or fully nixed”.
The Observer article did not name the firm or say how much work was undertaken. However, following publication, Kahl said on Twitter there was “considerable evidence” that a person working for Black Cube had approached his wife last May.
“The fact that I even have to think about the possibility that my family was targeted by people working for the president is yet another sign of the fundamental degradation of our country that Trump has produced,” he said.
On Sunday, the New Yorker reported Rhodes’s wife, Ann Norris, was also contacted by a woman who said she intended to make a documentary on officials regarding topics including “nuclear negotiations with a hostile nation”.
Norris, a former state department official, was cited in the magazine as saying she never responded to the request, which the New Yorker claimed was an undercover Black Cube campaign.
The magazine cited documents related to the operation showing “Black Cube compiled detailed background profiles of several individuals, including Rhodes and Kahl, that featured their addresses, information on their family members and even the makes of their cars”.
The Guardian could not independently verify the claims against the Tel Aviv-based company made by Kahl and the New Yorker.
A source close to Black Cube said the investigation in question was not political but linked to one of its private sector clients, in relation to an alleged breach of Iran sanctions by a competitor.
Black Cube, which says it is staffed by “veterans from the Israeli elite intelligence units”, apologised in November after it was reported that the firm had helped Harvey Weinstein gather information on women accusing him of sexual harassment and assault.
The denial follows allegations, first reported by Observer, that people close to Trump had contacted private investigators a year ago to carry out a “dirty ops” campaign against key Obama administration figures who helped negotiate the Iran agreement.
“Referencing Black Cube has become an international sport during 2018,” the company said in a statement on Monday. “Black Cube has no relation whatsoever to the Trump administration, to Trump aides, to anyone close to the administration, or to the Iran nuclear deal.”
Ben Rhodes, one of Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, were the targets in the attempt to discredit the deal, the Observer reported. Trump has long denounced what he calls “the worst deal ever” and threatened to scrap the 2015 agreement by a 12 May deadline.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who refers to Tehran as a “terrorist regime”, has also been a vocal opponent, arguing the deal should be “fully fixed or fully nixed”.
The Observer article did not name the firm or say how much work was undertaken. However, following publication, Kahl said on Twitter there was “considerable evidence” that a person working for Black Cube had approached his wife last May.
“The fact that I even have to think about the possibility that my family was targeted by people working for the president is yet another sign of the fundamental degradation of our country that Trump has produced,” he said.
On Sunday, the New Yorker reported Rhodes’s wife, Ann Norris, was also contacted by a woman who said she intended to make a documentary on officials regarding topics including “nuclear negotiations with a hostile nation”.
Norris, a former state department official, was cited in the magazine as saying she never responded to the request, which the New Yorker claimed was an undercover Black Cube campaign.
The magazine cited documents related to the operation showing “Black Cube compiled detailed background profiles of several individuals, including Rhodes and Kahl, that featured their addresses, information on their family members and even the makes of their cars”.
The Guardian could not independently verify the claims against the Tel Aviv-based company made by Kahl and the New Yorker.
A source close to Black Cube said the investigation in question was not political but linked to one of its private sector clients, in relation to an alleged breach of Iran sanctions by a competitor.
Black Cube, which says it is staffed by “veterans from the Israeli elite intelligence units”, apologised in November after it was reported that the firm had helped Harvey Weinstein gather information on women accusing him of sexual harassment and assault.
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Friday, May 4, 2018
FISA Wiretaps For Everyone!
I just adore transposable models.
And you get a wire tap.
And he gets a wire tap.
And I get a wire tap.
And she gets a wire tap.
And Perkins Coie sucks.
NBC corrects Cohen story, removes details on wiretapping
NBC News on Thursday corrected its report that federal agents had placed a wiretap on phone lines associated with President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen.The news outlet updated its initial report to reflect that Cohen’s phones were subject to a "pen register," which allows investigators to create a log of phone calls associated with Cohen’s number.
Its original story, which reported the wiretap, cited two separate sources with knowledge of the proceedings. However, three senior U.S. officials later disputed the report, prompting the correction.
"Correction: Earlier today NBC News, and this reporter, said that Michael Cohen's phone lines were wiretapped. 3 Senior U.S. Officials now dispute that, saying the monitoring was limited to a log of calls (pen register) not a wiretap of Cohen's lines. We will continue to report," one of the story's reporters, Tom Winter, tweeted following the correction.
The distinction is significant. The use of a pen register allows investigators to track incoming and outgoing calls from a number, whereas a wiretap allows investigators to actually listen in on calls.
Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, said it’s far easier to obtain a pen register than a wiretap.
“While the latter records phone
calls and captures private information, the former only tracks phone
numbers dialed,” he said. “The Supreme Court has recognized that by
dialing a phone number, a person voluntarily shares that information
with the phone company, so there is a reduced expectation of privacy."
Glen
Kopp, a partner at Mayer Brown and former assistant U.S. attorney for
the Southern District of New York, added that pen registers are fairly
common in investigations.
“A judge has
to approve the use of a pen register, but the hurdles for obtaining
approval are way less than for a wiretap of someone’s telephone,” he
said.
The initial report sparked outrage from Rudy Giuliani, who represents President Trump in the Russia investigation.
"I am waiting for the attorney general to step in, in his role as defender of justice, and put these people under investigation,” Giuliani told The Hill.
The former New York City Mayor added that wiretapping Cohen's phone would amount to “gross misconduct” by the government.
The White House did not have any comment on the story when it was brought up at Thursday afternoon's press briefing.
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