AUS - Riders still living in police state

OFF THE WIRE
by Mark Hinchliffe
Queensland riders are still living in a police state where they could be harassed, detained, charged and imprisoned for looking like a bikie and/or associating with them.
When elected in January 2015, the new Labor Government promised a Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission review of the controversial so-called VLAD (Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment) Laws by November.
Now it appears the CCC taskforce has extended its reporting deadline to March.
Meanwhile, the police argument to the taskforce to keep the current laws is based on the assumption that “outlaw bikies” (a term that is not clearly defined), are 25% more likely to commit crime.
If the same could be statistically proven for a particular race of people, should we then have punitive enforcement and penalties for all people of that race?
Of course not.
That would simply be wrong, wrong, wrong.
Apart from the enormous insult to basic human rights that this argument represents, the VLAD approach to pigeon-hole policing has not been a success, anyway.
So far, 100 people have been charged under the VLAD Laws and only one has been convicted – and he was a drug smuggler with no association to any motorcycle club. He even used a plane to smuggle drugs, not a motorcycle.
Over-eager policing straight after the introduction of the VLAD Laws led to innocent riders being harassed and inconvenienced, including one man wearing a Sons of Anarchy t-shirt. Granted, that inept policing has waned in recent months.
However, riders should still be concerned about the existence of the ineffective VLAD Laws as they are spreading to other states.
The only state that has refused to go down this track is Victoria, under the new Labor Government.

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BABE OF THE DAY

The Future of Policing Is Here, and It's Terrifying

OFF THE WIRE

By Peter Moskowitz

Backscatter vans, crowd dispersal microwaves, lasers that make you vomit—welcome to the future of law enforcement, and all the icky questions the technology raises.

Last month, the local press in New York confirmed what civil rights advocates had been saying for years: the NYPD has been driving around in unmarked vans chock full of X-ray equipment and scanning for... something.

It was a major story, mostly because not much is known about “Z Backscatter” vans other than that they cost somewhere between $729,000 and $825,000. Yet, there’s no way to know for sure what they're capable of because the NYPD refuses to talk about them, even though the ACLU won a lawsuit that required the department to reveal records about the vans (including their potential health impacts on people who might be exposed to X-rays without knowing it). “The devices we have, the vehicles if you will, are all used lawfully and if the ACLU and others don’t think that’s the case, we’ll see them in court—where they’ll lose!” Commissioner Bill Bratton told the New York Post.

The X-ray vans bring up all kinds of concerns about privacy, health, and general ickiness—no one wants to walk around New York wondering whether some bored cop in a van is checking out your skivvies—but by today’s police tech standards, the vans are actually relatively low-tech and benign. Departments large and small are using a host of new gadgets—from laser light weapons that can induce vomiting to surveillance systems that can predict crimes before they happen.

And what’s scariest of all is the majority of these technologies are being funneled down from the U.S. Military, down into neighborhoods that are most definitely not war zones. “After 15 years of war, there’s a demand for all these companies to find new markets for all these technologies,” said Joel Pruce a professor of human rights at the University of Dayton who studies police technology. “So it trickles down from the military to police.” The revelations about the backscatter vans were just one more sign that the future of policing is here, and it's terrifying.

Here's a glimpse of what's out there.

Group 1: Crowd Control

There’s a video from the U.S. Military that shows soldiers acting like mock protesters in a grassy field. Then, a vehicle with what looks like a satellite on top shows up, and the protesters scatter. If it weren’t for the narrator on the video, you wouldn't be able to tell why: they’re being microwaved.

The pain ray cannon (“Active Denial System” in police-talk) is essentially a microwave for humans. It uses microwave beams to stimulate a body’s water and fat molecules and heat up people until they run away. The system isn’t currently in use, but it’s being tested and could theoretically wind up at local police departments soon.

But there are already some weapons in use that make the old-fashioned forms of breaking up protests—batons and tasers and the like—seem like antiquities. There’s the sound cannon, a favorite of the NYPD. The tool, technically called a Long Range Acoustic Device (probably because that sounds less destructive than a sound canon) transmits a super-loud high-pitched scream that can, “shape the behavior of potential threats.” The sound is so loud it’s literally too painful to be around. It can also cause hearing loss. The sound cannon is used in many departments, from New York to Toronto to Ferguson, Missouri.

The other increasingly popular crowd control device: the “dazzler” laser gun, which looks like it was designed by Sigourney Weaver’s Alien prop stylist. Cops can hold the weapon and shoot out rays of laser light to disorient people who might be approaching them, restricted areas, or causing any sort of ruckus. “You can’t look directly at it or you become extremely disoriented,” said Lindsey J. Bertomen, a retired police officer, criminal justice professor and weapons reviewer for PoliceOne. “If the timing is done correctly you lose balance and fall off your feet. Even the person using it has to be careful and not look directly at it either.”

If you want to prevent eye damage, you can’t look directly at it either—a soldier in Iraq once accidently flashed the dazzler in his rearview mirror, and damaged the retina of a soldier sitting behind him.

Group 2: Surveillance

The real boom market these days is in surveillance technology. It’s impossible to know just how much is being used by police departments, and at what cost—there’s no central clearinghouse for information about local police departments—but it’s likely if you’re walking outside in a city these days, you’re being recorded. The market for video surveillance alone grew from $11.5 billion in 2008 to $37.5 billion in 2015. One estimate says there are 30 million surveillance cameras across the country, and those are being used in new and invasive ways.

Facial recognition software (another wartime import) is being used in dozens of police departments. In 2014, the Boston Police Department was caught testing out new facial recognition software made by IBM on an unsuspecting crowd of music festival attendees. According to the ACLU, departments are also experimenting with ways to gain access to and link together networks of private security cameras so they can expand their surveillance without installing new hardware. And body cameras, which police reform advocates thought might be a great way to hold cops accountable after a spate of killings of unarmed black men and women this year, could instead be used as surveillance devices.

But thousands of surveillance cameras monitoring street corners is a pretty inefficient way to monitor an entire city or county, so now police are figuring out ways to monitor large groups of people from the sky. In several cities departments have deployed planes with high-resolution cameras that, paired with software, can tag and trace people as they move over many miles.

“What if at some point they decide not to follow a burglary, but to follow activists back to their house?” Pruce said. “There are often no checks and balances.”

Group 3: The Crystal Ball

If you were worried you’d make it through this article without a reference to The Minority Report, too bad, here it comes: Predictive policing is all the rage these days. Cops are using software programs that use algorithms to analyze surveillance, GPS coordinates, and crime data to pinpoint specific areas where, and specific people who, might at some point commit a crime.

Here’s how it works: computers compile a bunch of information—historical crime data, known associations between people who’ve committed crimes in the past (and even their associations social media networks) and the location info about where crimes have been committed—analyze that data using, and spit out a list of names of people who might be at risk of committing a crime. Say you've dealt drugs at one point in your life, you live in a high-crime area, and you tweeted something about smoking weed recently—a piece of predictive policing software might tell cops to pay a visit to your house. It’s basically Minority Report minus those women in the pool.

"It’d be nice if law enforcement worked hand in hand with civil rights groups to figure this stuff out. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen."

Twitter

The Chicago PD now has a program where police do preventative visits to dozens of young men whom the department’s algorithm has determined are at risk of committing a crime. In one survey, 70 percent of police departments said they were using some kind of predictive policing. “Policing in the future is going to be about managing information on a large scale” said Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at UC Davis who studies police technology. “They want to be like Amazon or Google and collect as much data as possible.”

The problem from a civil rights perspective is that data isn’t neutral—many crimes never go recorded, and the ones that are recorded are often a product of controversial, potentially racist policing, like stop-and-frisks in black neighborhoods. The algorithms have the potential to intensify the biases that already exist in police departments.

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All told, these new technologies are only as good as the people using them (i.e. cops), and if the last year in policing was any indicator, law enforcement aren’t great at moderating their use of any tool they get their hands on, which is a frightening thought, considering those tools include tanks. These new devices require tons of radical (and expensive) training and new policy, something local municipalities are hesitant to create under the watchful eye of the public. Police departments, however, say that they’re implementing these technologies in ways that don’t violate the civil rights of Americans. “It’s actually pretty tedious to introduce new technology,” Bertomen said. “It’s a liability-prone environment, so training takes a long time.”

The problem is, it’s hard for the public to know whether that’s true. As the NYPD’s reluctance to even acknowledge their X-ray vans shows, police are resistant to opening up their process to scrutiny. “It’d be nice if law enforcement worked hand in hand with civil rights groups to figure this stuff out,” Pruce said. “But that doesn’t seem likely to happen.”

How To Find, Disable iPhone Feature That Tracks All Your Movements

OFF THE WIRE
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) — What if someone had a list of everywhere you go, along with the exact time you arrive and leave there each day?
You may be surprised to know that it’s on your iPhone, which has a feature that is likely tracking your every move.

The feature – Frequent Locations – is not new, but most people don’t exactly know where to find it on their iPhone.

Here’s how:

Click Settings, Privacy, Location Services …

Settings Privacy Location Services

scroll down, System Services, then Frequent Locations.

System Services Frequent LocationsOnce there, most are shocked by what they find: every location they’ve been to, including the time arrived and left.

It even labels your assumed home and work addresses, based on the amount of time you spend there.

One of the concerning things is the feature is hidden from you in your iPhone. Privacy experts like Noah Swartz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation have long been concerned about the implications of this hidden information.

“This could be used by abusive partners. It could be used by police in an investigation,” said Swartz. “It could be used by your boss or your company if you gave them access to your phone or if you’re using a work phone.

Cell phone data can also be subpoenaed for both criminal and civil cases, such as divorce proceedings.

Frequent Locations are meant to provide you with personalized services, like predictive traffic routing. You opt into sharing your location with Apple when you first set up your iPhone and start using its Maps app.

Apple says the data is stored only on your device, unless you “opt in to improve Maps” – then Apple says it stores your data anonymously.

Bill: Give Cops Up to 10 Years in Prison for Warrantless Phone Tracking

OFF THE WIRE
By Steven Nelson

The maximum penalty 'is there as a deterrent,' the bill's co-sponsor says.                              

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, left, and Democratic Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont say authorities should get a warrant before intercepting cellphone transmissions.

Police officers and federal agents who track Americans' cellphones without a judge’s permission could face up to 10 years in prison if new bipartisan legislation becomes law.

The Stingray Privacy Act, introduced Monday, would require authorities to get a warrant under most circumstances before using cell-site simulators. The devices, commonly known as Stingrays, imitate cell towers to acquire real-time location information and other data from nearby phones.
“The penalty is there as a deterrent,” says Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., an original co-sponsor of the bill. ”[But] the warrant requirement is really the most important part and it’s pretty easy to comply with.”
The bill comes following a steady trickle of information about authorities’ use of the devices and about two months after the Justice Department announced it would begin requiring many federal agents – but not state or local law enforcement – to get warrants before using the technology. The new bill would apply to all federal and local authorities.

[EARLIER: Police Use of Stingrays Unaffected by New Federal Warrant Rule]
“The abuse of Stingrays and other cell-site simulators by individuals, including law enforcement, could enable gross violations of privacy,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, warned in a statement Monday.
Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, was joined by Welch and Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan as initial co-sponsors, and singled out the use of Stingrays by the Internal Revenue Service as a concern.
The IRS’ use of the devices, revealed by the Guardian last week, “raises serious questions about who is using this technology and why,” he said. “These questions demonstrate the need for strict guidelines that carry the weight of the law."
But some see the proposed legal guidelines as not strict enough.
[FBI DIRECTOR: Authorities 'Will Go to Jail' If They Look at Snapchats Without Warrant]

The act allows warrantless use of the devices pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Service Act, or in emergencies that involve imminent threat of death or serious injury, “conspiratorial activities threatening the national security interest” or “conspiratorial activities characteristic of organized crime” when there’s grounds for a warrant but insufficient time to get one.
Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the warrant exceptions should be tightened to ensure they are not abused.
Under the bill as drafted, he says, “you potentially have a very low bar for emergency use” – a concern even though the bill does require warrants be sought within 48 hours of emergency use and that data be purged if a warrant is not approved.

The StingRay II, manufactured by 

Harris Corporation, is used for surveillance purposes.

Jaycox says he’s also concerned that the bill grants an exception for Stingray use under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“This is a bill that’s implicated in a lot of the mass spying and bulk collection being done,” he says, “so that is a cause for concern because we simply don’t know how that will play out. A lot of that is classified.”
Chaffetz was unavailable to discuss the bill Tuesday, but Welch brushed off concern about FISA, saying the exception merely incorporates existing law.
“This legislation would require that if a Stingray is being used to get personal information you need to get a warrant,” Welch says. “There’s a recognition in our legislation that there could be exigent circumstances in great public safety threats and all uses of this Stingray are not the same.”
Judges and juries, Welch says, would decide the appropriate penalties for violators depending on individual circumstances.
State and local police departments often acquire the pricey devices using federal grants and the FBI appears to routinely require them to sign nondisclosure agreements, historically resulting in courtroom exchanges where police officers refuse to supply information to judges.

[READ: Prosecutors Rally Against Sentencing Reform, Say Build More Prisons]
Last year, Maryland prosecutors withdrew tracking evidence after a judge threatened to hold a police officer in contempt for refusing to explain the Stingray-derived information, citing a nondisclosure agreement with the FBI. In Sarasota, Florida, the U.S. Marshals Service snatched Stingray records from local police in June after the department agreed to show them to the American Civil Liberties Union.
ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, a prominent advocate of privacy protections against Stingray use, told U.S. News in September the Justice Department likely could foist a warrant requirement on many state and local law enforcement agencies by requiring warrant-seeking agreements before providing funds or by withholding an apparently required FBI-signoff on sales without such agreement.
A law requiring warrants would be preferable, Jaycox says, because the Justice Department often interprets privacy rights in a manner detested by policy advocates, including opposing an ongoing fight in federal courts for a warrant requirement for historical cellphone location data.
ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani says the influential advocacy group wants to be sure legislation is passed restraining the use not only of Stingrays, but also future technologies, and that loopholes be tightened.
“Congress needs to pass comprehensive legislation that prohibits the collection of sensitive location data without a warrant,” she says. “It's important that legislation addresses not only Stingrays, but also the surveillance devices of tomorrow that collect similar information. Otherwise, we risk creating a law that is quickly made obsolete by advances in technology.”