Entries Tagged "law enforcement"

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London's Security Cameras Don't Help

Interesting article. London’s 10,000 security cameras don’t reduce crime:

A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.

In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average.

EDITED TO ADD (10/11): This is a follow-up to a 2005 article.

Posted on September 20, 2007 at 2:03 PM • View Comments

Terrorist Plot Foiled in Germany

Score one for the good guys.

EDITED TO ADD (9/7): The more I read about this, the more obvious it is that intelligence and investigation is what caught these guys, and not any wholesale eavesdropping or data mining programs.

EDITED TO ADD (9/18): This article is a detailed writeup of the actual investigation. While it seems that intercepted emails were instrumental at several points during the investigation, the article doesn’t explain whether the intercepts were the result of some of the wholesale eavesdropping programs or specifically obtained for this case.

Posted on September 6, 2007 at 11:57 AM • View Comments

Computer Forensics Case Study

This is a report on the presentation of computer forensic evidence in a UK trial.

There are three things that concern me here:

  1. The computer was operated by a police officer prior to forensic examination.
  2. The forensic examiner gave an opinion on what files construed “radical Islamic politics.”
  3. The presence of documents”in the “Windows Options” folders was construed as evidence that that someone wanted to hide those documents

In general, computer forensics is rather ad hoc. Traditional rules of evidence are broken all the time. But this seems like a pretty egregious example.

Posted on August 31, 2007 at 6:13 AM • View Comments

Thieves Steal Drug-Sniffing Dog

Okay; this is clever:

Rex IV, a highly trained Belgian Malinois sheepdog with a string of drug hauls behind him, was checked on to a flight from Mexico City this week with seven other police dogs bound for an operation in the northern state of Sinaloa.

But when the dogs arrived at Mazatlan airport, Sinaloa, their police handlers discovered a small black mongrel puppy inside Rex IV’s cage, with the sniffer dog nowhere to be seen.

Whatever drug lord ordered that hit probably saved himself a whole lot of grief.

EDITED TO ADD (8/29): The dog was found in a park:

Working on a tip, federal police found Rex IV—a highly trained Belgian Malinois sheepdog with a string of drug hauls to its name—tied to a tree in a park in the gritty Iztapalapa neighborhood, a Public Security Ministry spokesman said.

“When they realized the police were onto them, they abandoned him in a park,” the spokesman told Reuters, adding that the dog’s identity was confirmed by scanning an embedded electronic chip.

Why didn’t they just slit the dog’s throat? I take it back: not so clever.

Posted on August 29, 2007 at 6:59 AM • View Comments

Stupidest Terrorist Overreaction Yet?

What? Are the police taking stupid pills?

Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.

The competition is fierce, but I think this is a winner.

What bothers me most about the news coverage is that there isn’t even a suggestion that the authorities’ response might have been out of line.

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14.

“You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know,” she said. “It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We’re thankful it wasn’t, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out.”

Translation: We screwed up, and we want someone to pay for our mistake.

Posted on August 27, 2007 at 2:34 PM • View Comments

On the Ineffectiveness of Security Cameras

Information from San Francisco public housing developments:

The 178 video cameras that keep watch on San Francisco public housing developments have never helped police officers arrest a homicide suspect even though about a quarter of the city’s homicides occur on or near public housing property, city officials say.

Nobody monitors the cameras, and the videos are seen only if police specifically request it from San Francisco Housing Authority officials. The cameras have occasionally managed to miss crimes happening in front of them because they were trained in another direction, and footage is particularly grainy at night when most crime occurs, according to police and city officials.

Similar concerns have been raised about the 70 city-owned cameras located at high-crime locations around San Francisco.

[…]

Four homicides have occurred in the past 12 months at the intersection of Laguna and Eddy streets—at the corner of the Plaza East public housing development—including the daytime killing of a 19-year-old in May. A security camera is trained on that corner but so far has not proven useful in making any arrests, Mirkarimi said.

Both the Housing Authority and city have many security cameras in the area, and it wasn’t clear Monday whether the camera in question was purchased by the Housing Authority or city. In any case, the camera hasn’t helped make arrests in the crimes, Mirkarimi said.

“They’re feeling strongly that they don’t work,” Mirkarimi said of Western Addition residents’ views of the security cameras. “They’re just apoplectic why they can’t figure out why nothing comes of this.”

He added that he thinks the cameras may have “a scarecrow effect” in that they give residents the feeling they are safer when they actually have little impact on crime.

That’s not a scarecrow effect. A scarecrow is security theater that works: something that doesn’t actually prevent crime, but deters it by scaring off criminals. Mirkarimi is saying that they have the opposite effect; the cameras make victims feel safer than they really are.

Posted on August 17, 2007 at 1:25 PM • View Comments

Paid Informants in Muslim Communities

This is a good article about the use of paid informants in Muslim communities, and how they are both creating potential terrorists where none existed before and sowing mistrust among people.

Defense lawyers in a number of other terrorism suspect cases accused informants of solely seeking financial boon by creating so-called terrorists that did not exist.

According to court records, Eldawoody was paid $100,000 over a period of 3 years.

Since Siraj’s conviction, Eldawoody has his rent covered and receives a monthly stipend of $3,200.

According to The Washington Post, a police spokesman indicated the direct payments to Eldawoody would likely continue “indefinitely.”

With such incentives, critics argue, informants are likely to be created out of thin air to join the “inform-and-cash” industry.

Meanwhile, the Muslim community across the country is feeling the heat of being closely watched.

“This is creating mistrust between our community and law enforcement officials,” Ayloush said.

In light of their extensive criminal records, Ayloush added, these individuals would neither qualify as police officers nor as FBI agents, yet they are on the payroll of law enforcement agencies and are allowed to do law enforcement work.

“We all respect hardworking law enforcement agents,” Ayloush said. “But mercenary informants? Hardly.”

Posted on August 13, 2007 at 12:50 PM • View Comments

Police Data Mining Done Right

It’s nice to find an example of the police using data mining correctly: not as security theater, but more as a business-intelligence tool:

When Munroe took over as chief two years ago, his department was drowning in crime and data. Police had a mass of data from 911 calls and crime reports; what they didn’t have was a way to connect the dots and see a pattern of behaviour.

Using some sophisticated software and hardware they started overlaying crime reports with other data, such as weather, traffic, sports events and paydays for large employers. The data was analyzed three times a day and something interesting emerged: Robberies spiked on paydays near cheque cashing storefronts in specific neighbourhoods. Other clusters also became apparent, and pretty soon police were deploying resources in advance and predicting where crime was most likely to occur.

Posted on August 10, 2007 at 6:51 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.