Cameras in the UK
The UK police are considering mandating the quality of commercial CCTV cameras to ensure that the images meet their evidence standards.
Entries Tagged "police"
Page 20 of 28
Citizen Counter-Terrorists
The greater Manchester police want everyone to help them find terrorists:
In a new anti-terror drive, a tip-off hotline is being relaunched and an advertising campaign will urge people to report any suspicious behaviour. It asks:
* Do you know anyone who travels but is vague on where they’re going?
* Do you know someone with documents in different names for no obvious reason?
* Do you know someone buying large or unusual quantities of chemicals for no obvious reason?
* Handling chemicals is dangerous, maybe you’ve seen goggles or masks dumped somewhere?
* If you work in commercial vehicle hire or sales, has a sale or rental made you suspicious?
* Have you seen someone with large quantities of mobiles?
* Have you seen anyone taking pictures of security arrangements?
* Do you know someone who visits terrorist-related websites?
* Have you seen any suspicious cheque or credit card transactions?
* Is someone is asking for a short-term let on a house or flat on a cash basis for no apparent reason?
This reminds me of TIPS, the ill-conceived U.S. program to have meter readers and the like—people who regularly enter people’s homes—report suspicious activity to the police. It’s just dumb; people will report each other because their food smells wrong, or they talk in a funny language. The system will be swamped with false alarms, which police will have to waste their time following up on. This sort of state-sponsored snitchery is something you’d expect out of the former East Germany, or the Soviet Union—not the U.K.
For comparison’s sake, here’s a similar program that I actually liked.
The Difficulty of Profiling Terrorists
Interesting article:
A recently completed Dutch study of 242 Islamic radicals convicted or accused of planning terrorist attacks in Europe from 2001 to 2006 found that most were men of Arab descent who had been born and raised in Europe and came from lower or middle-class backgrounds. They ranged in age from 16 to 59 at the time of their arrests; the average was 27. About one in four had a criminal record.
The author of the study, Edwin Bakker, a researcher at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, tried to examine almost 20 variables concerning the suspects’ social and economic backgrounds. In general, he determined that no reliable profile existed—their traits were merely an accurate reflection of the overall Muslim immigrant population in Europe. “There is no standard jihadi terrorist in Europe,” the study concluded.
In an interview, Bakker said that many local police agencies have been slow to abandon profiling, but that most European intelligence agencies have concluded it is an unreliable tool for spotting potential terrorists. “How can you single them out? You can’t,” he said. “For the secret services, it doesn’t give them a clue. We should focus more on suspicious behavior and not profiling.”
Canadian Anti-Terrorism Law News
The court said the men, who are accused of having ties to al-Qaeda, have the right to see and respond to evidence against them. It pointed to a law in Britain that allows special advocates or lawyers to see sensitive intelligence material, but not share details with their clients.
In its ruling, the court said while it’s important to protect Canada’s national security, the government can do more to protect individual rights.
But the court suspended the judgment from taking legal effect for a year, giving Parliament time to write a new law complying with constitutional principles.
Critics have long denounced the certificates, which can lead to deportation of non-citizens on the basis of secret intelligence presented to a Federal Court judge at closed-door hearings.
Those who fight the allegations can spend years in jail while the case works its way through the legal system. In the end, they can sometimes face removal to countries with a track record of torture, say critics.
And that’s not the only piece of good news from Canada. Two provisions from an anti-terrorism law passed at the end of 2001 were due to expire at the end of February. The House of Commons has voted against extending them:
One of the anti-terrorism measures allows police to arrest suspects without a warrant and detain them for three days without charges, provided police believe a terrorist act may be committed. The other measure allows judges to compel witnesses to testify in secret about past associations or pending acts. The witnesses could go to jail if they don’t comply.
The two measures, introduced by a previous Liberal government in 2001, have never been used.
“These two provisions especially have done nothing to fight against terrorism,” Dion said Tuesday. “[They] have not been helpful and have continued to create some risk for civil liberties.”
Another article here.
Boston Police Blow Up Traffic Counter
Is the Boston police trying to become a national laughing stock?
It’s not just the Mooninite blinkies. In 2004, the Boston police harrassed a protester by pretending he might be standing on a bomb.
I’m beginning to think that something is seriously wrong with the police chain of command in Boston.
Boston PD: Putting the “error” in “terror.”
Private Police Forces
In Raleigh, N.C., employees of Capitol Special Police patrol apartment buildings, a bowling alley and nightclubs, stopping suspicious people, searching their cars and making arrests.
Sounds like a good thing, but Capitol Special Police isn’t a police force at all—it’s a for-profit security company hired by private property owners.
This isn’t unique. Private security guards outnumber real police more than 5-1, and increasingly act like them.
They wear uniforms, carry weapons and drive lighted patrol cars on private properties like banks and apartment complexes and in public areas like bus stations and national monuments. Sometimes they operate as ordinary citizens and can only make citizen’s arrests, but in more and more states they’re being granted official police powers.
This trend should greatly concern citizens. Law enforcement should be a government function, and privatizing it puts us all at risk.
Most obviously, there’s the problem of agenda. Public police forces are charged with protecting the citizens of the cities and towns over which they have jurisdiction. Of course, there are instances of policemen overstepping their bounds, but these are exceptions, and the police officers and departments are ultimately responsible to the public.
Private police officers are different. They don’t work for us; they work for corporations. They’re focused on the priorities of their employers or the companies that hire them. They’re less concerned with due process, public safety and civil rights.
Also, many of the laws that protect us from police abuse do not apply to the private sector. Constitutional safeguards that regulate police conduct, interrogation and evidence collection do not apply to private individuals. Information that is illegal for the government to collect about you can be collected by commercial data brokers, then purchased by the police.
We’ve all seen policemen “reading people their rights” on television cop shows. If you’re detained by a private security guard, you don’t have nearly as many rights.
For example, a federal law known as Section 1983 allows you to sue for civil rights violations by the police but not by private citizens. The Freedom of Information Act allows us to learn what government law enforcement is doing, but the law doesn’t apply to private individuals and companies. In fact, most of your civil right protections apply only to real police.
Training and regulation is another problem. Private security guards often receive minimal training, if any. They don’t graduate from police academies. And while some states regulate these guard companies, others have no regulations at all: anyone can put on a uniform and play policeman. Abuses of power, brutality, and illegal behavior are much more common among private security guards than real police.
A horrific example of this happened in South Carolina in 1995. Ricky Coleman, an unlicensed and untrained Best Buy security guard with a violent criminal record, choked a fraud suspect to death while another security guard held him down.
This trend is larger than police. More and more of our nation’s prisons are being run by for-profit corporations. The IRS has started outsourcing some back-tax collection to debt-collection companies that will take a percentage of the money recovered as their fee. And there are about 20,000 private police and military personnel in Iraq, working for the Defense Department.
Throughout most of history, specific people were charged by those in power to keep the peace, collect taxes and wage wars. Corruption and incompetence were the norm, and justice was scarce. It is for this very reason that, since the 1600s, European governments have been built around a professional civil service to both enforce the laws and protect rights.
Private security guards turn this bedrock principle of modern government on its head. Whether it’s FedEx policemen in Tennessee who can request search warrants and make arrests; a privately funded surveillance helicopter in Jackson, Miss., that can bypass constitutional restrictions on aerial spying; or employees of Capitol Special Police in North Carolina who are lobbying to expand their jurisdiction beyond the specific properties they protect—privately funded policemen are not protecting us or working in our best interests.
This op ed originally appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
EDITED TO ADD (4/2): This is relevant.
Is Everything a Bomb These Days?
In New Mexico, a bomb squad blew up two CD players, duct-taped to the bottoms of church pews, that played pornographic messages during Mass. This is a pretty funny high school prank and I hope the kids that did it get suitably punished. But they’re not terrorists. And I have a hard time believing that the police actually thought CD players were bombs.
Meanwhile, Irish police blew up a tape dispenser left outside a police station.
And not to be outdone, the Dutch police mistook one of their own transmitters for a bomb. At least they didn’t blow anything up.
Okay, everyone. We need some ideas, here. If we’re going to think everything weird is a bomb, then the false alarms are going to kill any hope of security.
EDITED TO ADD (3/3): If you’re having trouble identifying bombs, this quiz should help. And here’s a relevant cartoon.
CYA Security
Since 9/11, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars defending ourselves from terrorist attacks. Stories about the ineffectiveness of many of these security measures are common, but less so are discussions of why they are so ineffective. In short: much of our country’s counterterrorism security spending is not designed to protect us from the terrorists, but instead to protect our public officials from criticism when another attack occurs.
Boston, January 31: As part of a guerilla marketing campaign, a series of amateur-looking blinking signs depicting characters in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a show on the Cartoon Network, were placed on bridges, near a medical center, underneath an interstate highway, and in other crowded public places.
Police mistook these signs for bombs and shut down parts of the city, eventually spending over $1M sorting it out. Authorities blasted the stunt as a terrorist hoax, while others ridiculed the Boston authorities for overreacting. Almost no one looked beyond the finger pointing and jeering to discuss exactly why the Boston authorities overreacted so badly. They overreacted because the signs were weird.
If someone left a backpack full of explosives in a crowded movie theater, or detonated a truck bomb in the middle of a tunnel, no one would demand to know why the police hadn’t noticed it beforehand. But if a weird device with blinking lights and wires turned out to be a bomb—what every movie bomb looks like—there would be inquiries and demands for resignations. It took the police two weeks to notice the Mooninite blinkies, but once they did, they overreacted because their jobs were at stake.
This is “Cover Your Ass” security, and unfortunately it’s very common.
Airplane security seems to forever be looking backwards. Pre-9/11, it was bombs, guns, and knives. Then it was small blades and box cutters. Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane, and suddenly we all have to take off our shoes. And after last summer’s liquid plot, we’re stuck with a series of nonsensical bans on liquids and gels.
Once you think about this in terms of CYA, it starts to make sense. The TSA wants to be sure that if there’s another airplane terrorist attack, it’s not held responsible for letting it slip through. One year ago, no one could blame the TSA for not detecting liquids. But since everything seems obvious in hindsight, it’s basic job preservation to defend against what the terrorists tried last time.
We saw this kind of CYA security when Boston and New York randomly checked bags on the subways after the London bombing, or when buildings started sprouting concrete barriers after the Oklahoma City bombing. We also see it in ineffective attempts to detect nuclear bombs; authorities employ CYA security against the media-driven threat so they can say “we tried.”
At the same time, we’re ignoring threat possibilities that don’t make the news as much—against chemical plants, for example. But if there were ever an attack, that would change quickly.
CYA also explains the TSA’s inability to take anyone off the no-fly list, no matter how innocent. No one is willing to risk his career on removing someone from the no-fly list who might—no matter how remote the possibility—turn out to be the next terrorist mastermind.
Another form of CYA security is the overly specific countermeasures we see during big events like the Olympics and the Oscars, or in protecting small towns. In all those cases, those in charge of the specific security don’t dare return the money with a message “use this for more effective general countermeasures.” If they were wrong and something happened, they’d lose their jobs.
And finally, we’re seeing CYA security on the national level, from our politicians. We might be better off as a nation funding intelligence gathering and Arabic translators, but it’s a better re-election strategy to fund something visible but ineffective, like a national ID card or a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
Securing our nation from threats that are weird, threats that either happened before or captured the media’s imagination, and overly specific threats are all examples of CYA security. It happens not because the authorities involved—the Boston police, the TSA, and so on—are not competent, or not doing their job. It happens because there isn’t sufficient national oversight, planning, and coordination.
People and organizations respond to incentives. We can’t expect the Boston police, the TSA, the guy who runs security for the Oscars, or local public officials to balance their own security needs against the security of the nation. They’re all going to respond to the particular incentives imposed from above. What we need is a coherent antiterrorism policy at the national level: one based on real threat assessments, instead of fear-mongering, re-election strategies, or pork-barrel politics.
Sadly, though, there might not be a solution. All the money is in fear-mongering, re-election strategies, and pork-barrel politics. And, like so many things, security follows the money.
This essay originally appeared on Wired.com.
EDITED TO ADD (2/23): Interesting commentary, and a Slashdot thread.
"Stop and Frisks" in New York
Interesting data from New York. The number of people stopped and searched has gone up fivefold since 2002, but the number of arrests due to these stops has only doubled. (The number of “summonses” has also gone up fivefold.)
Good data for the “Is it worth it?” question.
Non-Terrorist Embarrassment in Boston
The story is almost too funny to write about seriously. To advertise the Cartoon Network show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” the network put up 38 blinking signs (kind of like Lite Brites) around the Boston area. The Boston police decided—with absolutely no supporting evidence—that these were bombs and shut down parts of the city.
Now the police look stupid, but they’re trying really not hard not to act humiliated:
Governor Deval Patrick told the Associated Press: “It’s a hoax—and it’s not funny.”
Unfortunately, it is funny. What isn’t funny is now the Boston government is trying to prosecute the artist and the network instead of owning up to their own stupidity. The police now claim that they were “hoax” explosive devices. I don’t think you can claim they are hoax explosive devices unless they were intended to look like explosive devices, which merely a cursory look at any of them shows that they weren’t.
But it’s much easier to blame others than to admit that you were wrong:
“It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme,” Mayor Thomas Menino said. “I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates for any and all expenses incurred.”
And:
Rep. Ed Markey, a Boston-area congressman, said, “Whoever thought this up needs to find another job.”
“Scaring an entire region, tying up the T and major roadways, and forcing first responders to spend 12 hours chasing down trinkets instead of terrorists is marketing run amok,” Markey, a Democrat, said in a written statement. “It would be hard to dream up a more appalling publicity stunt.”
And:
“It had a very sinister appearance,” [Massachusetts Attorney General Martha] Coakley told reporters. “It had a battery behind it, and wires.”
For heavens sake, don’t let her inside a Radio Shack.
I like this comment:
They consisted of magnetic signs with blinking lights in the shape of a cartoon character.
And everyone knows that bombs have blinking lights on ‘em. Every single movie bomb you’ve ever seen has a blinking light.
Triumph for Homeland Security, guys.
And this one:
“It’s almost too easy to be a terrorist these days,” said Jennifer Mason, 26. “You stick a box on a corner and you can shut down a city.”
And this one, by one of the artists who installed the signs:
“I find it kind of ridiculous that they’re making these statements on TV that we must not be safe from terrorism, because they were up there for three weeks and no one noticed. It’s pretty commonsensical to look at them and say this is a piece of art and installation,” he said.
Right. If this wasn’t a ridiculous overreaction to a non-existent threat, then how come the devices were in place for weeks without anyone noticing them? What does that say about the Boston police?
Maybe if the Boston police stopped wasting time and money searching bags on subways….
Of the 2,449 inspections between Oct. 10 and Dec. 31, the bags of 27 riders tested positive in the initial screening for explosives, prompting further searches, the Globe found in an analysis of daily inspection reports obtained under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
In the additional screening, 11 passengers had their bags checked by explosive-sniffing dogs, and 16 underwent a physical search. Nothing was found.
These blinking signs have been up for weeks in ten cities—Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia—and no one else has managed to panic so completely. Refuse to be terrorized, people!
EDITED TO ADD (2/2): Here’s some good information about whether the stunt broke the law or not.
EDITED TO ADD (2/3): This is 100% right:
Let’s get a few facts straight on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force sign fiasco:
1. Attorney General Martha Coakley needs to shut up and stop using the word “hoax.” There was no hoax. Hoax implies Turner Networks and the ATHF people were trying to defraud or confuse people as to what they were doing. Hoax implies they were trying to make their signs look like bombs. They weren’t. They made Lite-Brite signs of a cartoon character giving the finger.
2. It bears repeating again that Turner, and especially Berdovsky, did absolutely nothing illegal. The devices were not bombs. They did not look like bombs. They were all placed in public spaces and caused no obstruction to traffic or commerce. At most, Berdovsky is guilty of littering or illegal flyering.
3. The “devices” were placed in ten cities, and have been there for over two weeks. No other city managed to freak out and commit an entire platoon of police officers to scaring their own city claiming they might be bombs. No other mayor agreed to talk to Fox News with any statement beyond “no comment” when spending the day asking if this was a “terrorist dry run.”
4. There is nothing, not a single thing, remotely suggesting that Turner or the guerilla marketing firm they hired intended to cause a public disturbance. Many have claimed the signs were “like saying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” Wrong. This was like taping a picture of a fire to the wall of a theater and someone freaked out and called the fire department.
And this is also worth reading.
EDITED TO ADD (2/6): More info.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.