Meet "Beware" - The New Police Tool That Data-Mines Your Life
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
As officers respond to calls, Beware automatically runs the address. The searches return the names of residents and scans them against a range of publicly available data to generate a color-coded threat level for each person or address: green, yellow or red.
Exactly how Beware calculates threat scores is something that its maker, Intrado, considers a trade secret, so it is unclear how much weight is given to a misdemeanor, felony or threatening comment on Facebook. However, the program flags issues and provides a report to the user.
– From the Washington Post article: The New Way Police are Surveilling You: Calculating Your Threat ‘Score’
When it comes to life on planet earth in 2016, it increasingly feels as if we are all livestock constantly being monitored, prodded and surveyed by the oligarchy and its minions. The latest example revolves around a software program for police called Beware, developed by Intrado, which consists of a secret algorithm that determines an individual’s threat levels based on a multitude of unknown factors.
Does it work? Does it violate civil liberties? Is there any public debate? These questions and more are addressed in a recent Washington Post article. Here are a few excerpts:
FRESNO, Calif. — While officers raced to a recent 911 call about a man threatening his ex-girlfriend, a police operator in headquarters consulted software that scored the suspect’s potential for violence the way a bank might run a credit report.
The program scoured billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and the man’s social- media postings. It calculated his threat level as the highest of three color-coded scores: a bright red warning.
As a national debate has played out over mass surveillance by the National Security Agency, a new generation of technology such as the Beware software being used in Fresno has given local law enforcement officers unprecedented power to peer into the lives of citizens.
In many instances, people have been unaware that the police around them are sweeping up information, and that has spawned controversy. Planes outfitted with cameras filmed protests and unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. For years, dozens of departments used devices that can hoover up all cellphone data in an area without search warrants. Authorities in Oregon are facing a federal probe after using social media-monitoring software to keep tabs on Black Lives Matter hashtags.
But perhaps the most controversial and revealing technology is the threat-scoring software Beware. Fresno is one of the first departments in the nation to test the program.
As officers respond to calls, Beware automatically runs the address. The searches return the names of residents and scans them against a range of publicly available data to generate a color-coded threat level for each person or address: green, yellow or red.
Exactly how Beware calculates threat scores is something that its maker, Intrado, considers a trade secret, so it is unclear how much weight is given to a misdemeanor, felony or threatening comment on Facebook. However, the program flags issues and provides a report to the user.
Nabarro said the fact that only Intrado — not the police or the public — knows how Beware tallies its scores is disconcerting. He also worries that the system might mistakenly increase someone’s threat level by misinterpreting innocuous activity on social media, like criticizing the police, and trigger a heavier response by officers.
“It’s a very unrefined, gross technique,” Nabarro said of Beware’s color-coded levels. “A police call is something that can be very dangerous for a citizen.”
The Fresno City Council called a hearing on Beware in November after constituents raised concerns. Once council member referred to a local media report saying that a woman’s threat level was elevated because she was tweeting about a card game titled “Rage,” which could be a keyword in Beware’s assessment of social media.
Councilman Clinton J. Olivier, a libertarian-leaning Republican, said Beware was like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel and asked Dyer a simple question: “Could you run my threat level now?”
Dyer agreed. The scan returned Olivier as a green, but his home came back as a yellow, possibly because of someone who previously lived at his address, a police official said.
“Even though it’s not me that’s the yellow guy, your officers are going to treat whoever comes out of that house in his boxer shorts as the yellow guy,” Olivier said. “That may not be fair to me.”
The number of local police departments that employ some type of technological surveillance increased from 20 percent in 1997 to more than 90 percent in 2013, according to the latest information from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The most common forms of surveillance are cameras and automated license plate readers, but the use of handheld biometric scanners, social media monitoring software, devices that collect cellphone data and drones is increasing.
The surveillance creates vast amounts of data, which is increasingly pooled in local, regional and national databases. The largest such project is the FBI’s $1 billion Next Generation Identification project, which is creating a trove of fingerprints, iris scans, data from facial recognition software and other sources that aid local departments in identifying suspects.
This FBI project is something I’ve written about previously. See the 2014 post: The FBI Unveils its Controversial Facial Recognition Database with 52 Million Photos to be Stored.
This is not what freedom looks like.
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London calling.... Chicago can't afford them whewwhttp://hedgeaccordingly.com/2016/01/uk-police-move-toward-more-drone-sur...
Revolution is now the only way to break from this tyranny!
http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/12/as-events-spiral-ou...
Sounds like a fancy way of doing profiling.
Lessons of the day:
1. Never call the Criminal Fascist Militarized Police
2. Never talk to the Police or answer any questions.
You know, Eazy-E had a point.
From the article:
"A Police call can be something that can be very dangerous for a citizen."
I've been talking about this almost a year now. Glad people are finally starting to pay attention.
Interview with Intrado VP about 'Beware': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_s8sPrv1PI
How long before some family member gets gunned down by the local LEO because he was warned that the address was inhabited by 'really really really bright red' occupants and had an itchy trigger finger? Only later to find out they had the wrong address...
I'm going to impersonate my neighbor and post all kinds of "bad" things that will be scored "red" .. Then I'm gonna swat him.
I put one of those on the front of my house. After watching both UPS and FedEx drive across my lawn, tearing it up (they're in a hurry, you know...) I decided to record them doing so and submit the video with a landscaping bill. UPS/FedEx recognition.
Exactly how Beware calculates threat scores is something that its maker, Intrado, considers a trade secret...
Well of course it's a "trade secret!" Gotta keep that shit private while they use it to invade the privacy of every American!
Call me crazy, but I think any kind of law enforcement data-gathering technology should be completely open source, fully transparent, and subject to outside review. Stuff like this is the polar opposite, which is precisely why it's so dangerous. Why, exactly, are we to trust the results of something that can't even be publicly audited for accuracy? It's just as ludicrous as claiming I have a special potato that can prove someone is a child molester.
How does my magic potato work, you ask? Oh sorry, that's a trade secret...
precisely how the 3 WTCs were brought down is a trade secret
They probably just beefed up Zillows zestimate system (as awful as it was) and used that.
You have to know that this will glean information from property tax databases and assessment databases. Is this something that cities have a right to let intrado access? Have the citizens been asked about it?
Somehow I think if you asked citizens whether they think the City they live in has a right to use the various pieces of information in this way you'd get a big fat NO back.
This might be more lawsuit fodder...
well if you're going to profile then you can put everyone with a badge at red highest threat level "armed and extremely dangerous" "unpredictable, violent, and unstable" --"easily provoked, paranoid with limited intellect". "avoid if at all possible"---- just saying---
waste of money, I can spot the guy that is trouble.. facial tattos, dreadlocks, hat on sideways, pants falling off, 65 IQ
Obama bumper sticker.
Obamacare bumper sticker.
Fresno address. Poor Fresno is duch a dump.
Don't beat around the bush. Call a nigger a nigger.
I actually have a white friend with dread locks. It's a dreadful fashion choice. Oh well!
Those guys are usually only dangerous to a bag of Doritos.
And almost no mass murderers in history fit that proflie you just gave....
I've actually seen one of these threat assessments.
Chilling. I fear for the future.
The average American would be in danger of thoughtcrime if they had any.
I suspect that a form of slavery is presently quietly, inexorably and irreversibly spreading its tentacles far and wide.
I like it.
I'm stealing that one!
Sorry, but the guy walking out of his house wearing boxer shorts should be treated as a yellow.
Clothing police have spoken.
Next those fat ass kids getting on airplanes wearing sweatpants with "Juicy" splayed across their Ass.
And pillows, don't get me started.
Maybe the yellow boxer shorts were white until the SWAT team showed up.
You can take one of those out, for a cost of about £3 if you go about it thoughtfully.
I'm not yet sure that in the uk they should be opposed, (hard as it is to believe, sometimes the UK police do good work!) so for now I'll keep schtumm about the "how" part.
I bet they'll cost .gov closer to £30K with that nice big gimbal camera doohickey, so if they use 'em to tax the basic law abiding Joe, like they did with speed cameras, it'll have the same cost effectiveness as the speed cameras did once the bikers started burning them here in the UK. (And when word got out that they were using FLIR cameras to spot attic dope growing in birmingham the police helicopter went up in flames after a late night visit from at least one concerned member of the motorcycling public!) There ARE checks and balances sometimes, they don't have it all their own way all the time.
I could see some people being tempted to do that crime for the sake of acquiring the high grade drone and optical parts...
Land of the Free. (rolling eyes).
I know ZH will vote me down for saying this, while absolutely grotesque in it's use of an invisble scoring technique to effect police response level, this technically this isn't a freedom violation. Whatever you post on the internet is essentially public domain/record... if you don't want to be monitored, don't use services that monitor you. There are internet resources that do not involve you surrendering your life to the public record.
This data-gathering shit is little different from living in a small town in the 1800s, having the Sheriff remember everything you did in public, and judging how to deal with you based on what he's seen. If that sheriff sees you run around high on opiates with a loaded weapon in your hand, he's going to consider you a dangerous person. Don't like it? Don't use facebook, google, etc... They are simply stealing your life information, and they are not compensating you for the violation of privacy.
Wrong. What you did in public in the 1800's is not the same as what I do from the comfort of my home, through a computer in the vastness of the internet.
Sure. I can opt out of using some services. But the spying comes into my home by monitoring the behavior that takes place while I am here.
I would love to hear your thoughts on smart TVs.
No, you're wrong. There are absolutely no restrictions on internet access, it is effectively like broadcasting your thoughts on an open CB/Short-Wave channel, which means the government is absolutely free to use it as an information source on you. It may be comfortable and convenient to be able to sound off on political matters from a couch with your wife's mouth around your genitals, but it changes nothing about the fundamentally open nature of what it is you're doing.
I don't own a smart TV, and if I did, I would hardware firewall the fucker.
Hardware fire walling the IP of the TV would work but would kill services like Netflix, if you don't care about that then just don't connect the TV to a network at all. Other wise you need to identify the good IP's vs the Bad ones and only allow the good ones through. white listing.
I don't find it worth the time to try to whitelist everything. I've found it better to setup a very small computer with some version of linux to do all the streaming local/services for me. Displays should be dumb screens anyway, available at my command to display what I want, not at the whim of some unknown codebase that probably has rootkit-type stuff inserted into it.
I hear you, but I think data mining technology makes it near impossible for anyone in this day/age to escape this type of surveillance, whether using social media or not.
I'd put it even stronger, nuubee is full of shit.
Care to explain?
Rich people, really really rich people, can afford anything. Anything. One of their favorite things are mercenaries. They buy a lot of those, and nuubee wants to give them a pass on snooping against my (and most everybody else's) relatively meager resources?
The packets you transmit on the internet are released into a router-space that is totally open, this is just a fundamental truth of the internet. Generally your traffic will go the shortest route and it will pass through only privately owned routers, but there is no guarantee of this, and in truth your information could take 1 of any number of routes to its destination. The simple fact is you do not need NSA-level equipment to snoop on your neighbors at all, the internet is an open communications platform, they're not snooping on anything that is private to begin with.
Now, if you want to argue against the government outlawing true end-to-end encryption, or creating laws forcing people to divulge their encrypted information, then I will absolutely be on your side.
But posting your opinions to facebook and believing that they should be private? IF you believe that, you're retarded. That's literally like putting what you think into a classified newspaper ad, and then being surprised that people judge you by it.
Great, now some newby overseer can blow you out for brandishing a TV remote when you answer the door because of digital analysis/threat grading of your FarceBonk postings; let's let the human filters ultimately in place in all of these systems give an LEO a preformed opinion to further narrow his options on how to deal with you.
I want fewer layers of non human intervention to deflect/absorb the blame when this shit fails in real world application.
Nope, that's really not true. For every data mining technology, there are 10 technologies available to confound it's ability to profile you as a person. You just gotta use your brain and consider any computer hooked up to the internet as basically a potential telemarketer looking at you if you don't pay attention to what you're doing.
Well, wouldn't it be interesting for each of us to see a hardcopy of a threat assessment run on us. It is real, these reports are being run today.
I'm not certain I'm green, but I will say that if I am Red it means I've been lazy lately.
But...
You can't even find out if you on the/a watchlist...
Big three: Name, Address, D.O.B.
Always vary the spelling, month/year/numerical value etc. then they can't be linked up so easy...
If you smoke dope then you have destroyed any chance of being reliable (according to the propaganda), so who's going to be surprised if you provide data with accuracy like an early onset alzheimers patient?
If you don't think
having the police watching, listening, and recording your every movement,
purchase, email, texting, and phone call
would have a 'chilling' effect on what you would say, or others say to you.
or whom you would associate, or others who might associate with you,
... and believe that "freedom" has not been lessened,
then you must have a very shallow idea of freedom for yourself and others,
and a very naive understanding of how little it may take for the government
to treat you (or your associates& relatives) as a "threat".
@nuubee So are you saying that a living being must consent to acts against their free will that they would otherwise refuse to provide consent to just to be able to live free in order to operate like a typical everyday average monster, animal, nightmare or straw man that chooses through ignorance or consent to live enslaved inside of a global criminal enterprise?
(IMPORTANT NOTE: Keep in mind I never opt out. I never consent to the criminal enterprise except against my free while will under express or implied threat, duress or coercion. There is a significant difference.)
And are you also saying knowing that the global criminal enterprise frequently threatens or kills the chicken to scare the monkey (e.g. terrorism under all forms of government) as a direct means of maintaining the status quo of the criminal enterprise that the illegal ends justify the illegal means for the common good?
I would appreciate your thoughts.
Nubee is saying that he doesn't think there is any difference between an 1800s sherriff watching what you do in public and deciding if you are a good guy or a bad guy; and the government watching what you do in private and in public and haveing a computer program decide if you are a good or bad guy without answering to anyone about what methods are used to make that decision. I think there is a huge difference. Even in 1800 a sherriff answered to his constituents.
And like the forced enthusiam the crowds of peasants have for military dictactor's marching soldiers, Americans better be standing up, hat removed, hand over heart, singing the National Anthem with a passion at every sporting event. They're watching.