Michael Robertson - ALPR (automated license plate readers)

[Thor]

Besides Tracking Your Every Move Online, The Government Is Tracking Where You Travel - We're All Under Investigation By The Government All The Time


The US has been rocked the last week by explosive revelations of massive spying on its own citizens by our own government - the kind you read about police states doing. A traitor/hero sits in a Hong Kong hotel room after disclosing that the secretive NSA is storing massive data on every citizen's digital life (email, calls, etc). Many might also be surprised to learn that the government is recording where you drive and warehousing that into a massive database.

Local law enforcement agencies are recording your license plates and the locations of where you park and are using this information to building a profile of where you travel. Police, sheriff, highway patrol and other official vehicles are being equipped with automated license plate readers (ALPR) devices. These cameras digital scan for a license plate and record every license plate they encounter along with the location using GPS. ALPRs are also on city street lights and signs and even repo men now have them. These cameras can scan up to 1800 plates per minute collecting a mountain of data on unsuspecting drivers.

If these cameras were used solely for spotting stolen cars or parking deadbeats while on patrol, their use would be unobjectionable, but the usage goes far beyond that.

The government is gathering data from all of these sources, compiling a database to track where citizens travel, and the government is storing this information for years. Collection is not limited to those suspected of criminal wrongdoing and no court is required to approve the monitoring and storage. Law officers can consult this database and track where citizens have traveled and on what dates. Access is not restricted to local police, but FBI, DEA, ICE and Homeland Security have access to this information.

In my hometown of San Diego, this program has been in effect for at least 3 years and they've collected 40 million scans or about 15 locations for every registered vehicle in the county. SANDAG is the government agency in the county which is combing this data from many sources into a single searchable database.

I asked for access to the data under the California Public Records Act. Initially SANDAG objected, claiming the records were "privileged or confidential". When I explained that I was seeking only data related to my personal vehicle, SANDAG initially said they have "the potential to provide the information" but that I would need to verify I was the owner of the vehicle. I sent them a scan of my vehicle registration showing my name and license plate.

After complying with their request to verify it was my vehicle, they changed their mind and refused my request. They said they would not turn over the information because it was part of an investigation. They cited CA code section 6254(f) which allows the government to withhold information from the public related to an ongoing investigation.

I'm not aware of any crime for which I'd be under investigation, so the government should not be collecting information on me. Apparently government officials at SANDAG believe that all 3 million people in San Diego County are currently under investigation by law enforcement. I reached out to Paul Nicholas Boylan, an attorney who specializes in government transparency and public record access. He agreed to work with me.

"This case appeals to me on many levels," Paul told me. "Above and beyond the question of whether a local governmental agency should be permitted to place ordinary citizens under surveillance, is the question of whether an ordinary citizen like you can find out what that same governmental agency knows about you. In this case, SANDAG is basically arguing that they can follow you, track you, build a profile on you, but you can’t ever learn what SANDAG knows about you, because they are following and tracking you for the purposes of some kind of criminal investigation that they never explain or justify. That just doesn’t feel right to me," Paul said.

Two weeks ago I filed a lawsuit against SANDAG, asking a Judge to order them to let me see the information they’ve collected about me. I don't believe the government should be collecting info on all of its citizens. If it does have information, it should be public for all to examine – especially if it is information pertaining to the individual asking to see the information.

"The California Constitution grants every citizen the right to examine public information created or held by public officials or governmental agencies," Paul said. "This has to include personal information the government has collected on any individual person. If a citizen cannot examine what the government knows about them, then what good is the right to access public information and records?"

Those that defend widespread surveillance of citizens by police forces will contend that it helps catch molesters, terrorists, murders, pedophiles or other bad actors. We're told we must sacrifice individual freedoms for security. The flaw in this logic is that government officials are no more or less moral than the average person and will certainly abuse this info, as we're seeing with the recent IRS, EPA, and DOJ scandals. The 4th amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. I hope my case will shine light on this unconstitutional police action and put a stop to it.

-- MR

http://michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=376

[HOLLYWOOD]

Not only that... Washington DC is using LPRs in conjunction with facial recognition and cell phone tracking systems... Washington DC uses a system which puts the triad of information together, with a histogram of every day of your life.

They know EVERYTHING you do, when you arrive in the city, your route(s), you parking, shopping, eating, all your positions.

NOTE: When Obama was elected president, the NSA and their partner's in crime installed LPR on the entire eastern seaboard tracking every single vehicle for the months up to the inauguration.


The Shadow government is protecting their palaces as well as their puppets... and we all are forced to pay for it.

[libertyjam]

pretty much on par with Stratfor and Trap wire, revealed last year with very little brouhaha or exclaim-

Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system
http://rt.com/usa/stratfor-trapwire-abraxas-wikileaks-313/

Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.

The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing.

Hacktivists aligned with the loose-knit Anonymous collective took credit for hacking Stratfor on Christmas Eve, 2011, in turn collecting what they claimed to be more than five million emails from within the company. WikiLeaks began releasing those emails as the Global Intelligence Files (GIF) earlier this year and, of those, several discussing the implementing of TrapWire in public spaces across the country were circulated on the Web this week after security researcher Justin Ferguson brought attention to the matter. At the same time, however, WikiLeaks was relentlessly assaulted by a barrage of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, crippling the whistleblower site and its mirrors, significantly cutting short the number of people who would otherwise have unfettered access to the emails.

On Wednesday, an administrator for the WikiLeaks Twitter account wrote that the site suspected that the motivation for the attacks could be that particularly sensitive Stratfor emails were about to be exposed. A hacker group called AntiLeaks soon after took credit for the assaults on WikiLeaks and mirrors of their content, equating the offensive as a protest against editor Julian Assange, “the head of a new breed of terrorist.” As those Stratfor files on TrapWire make their rounds online, though, talk of terrorism is only just beginning.

Mr. Ferguson and others have mirrored what are believed to be most recently-released Global Intelligence Files on external sites, but the original documents uploaded to WikiLeaks have been at times unavailable this week due to the continuing DDoS attacks. Late Thursday and early Friday this week, the GIF mirrors continues to go offline due to what is presumably more DDoS assaults. Australian activist Asher Wolf wrote on Twitter that the DDoS attacks flooding the servers of WikiLeaks supporter sites were reported to be dropping upwards of 40 gigabits of traffic per second. On Friday, WikiLeaks tweeted that their own site was sustaining attacks of 10 Gb/second, adding, "Whoever is running it controls thousands of machines or is able to simulate them."

According to a press release (pdf) dated June 6, 2012, TrapWire is “designed to provide a simple yet powerful means of collecting and recording suspicious activity reports.” A system of interconnected nodes spot anything considered suspect and then input it into the system to be "analyzed and compared with data entered from other areas within a network for the purpose of identifying patterns of behavior that are indicative of pre-attack planning.”

In a 2009 email included in the Anonymous leak, Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence Fred Burton is alleged to write, “TrapWire is a technology solution predicated upon behavior patterns in red zones to identify surveillance. It helps you connect the dots over time and distance.” Burton formerly served with the US Diplomatic Security Service, and Abraxas’ staff includes other security experts with experience in and out of the Armed Forces.

What is believed to be a partnering agreement included in the Stratfor files from August 13, 2009 indicates that they signed a contract with Abraxas to provide them with analysis and reports of their TrapWire system (pdf).

“Suspicious activity reports from all facilities on the TrapWire network are aggregated in a central database and run through a rules engine that searches for patterns indicative of terrorist surveillance operations and other attack preparations,” Crime and Justice International magazine explains in a 2006 article on the program, one of the few publically circulated on the Abraxas product (pdf). “Any patterns detected – links among individuals, vehicles or activities – will be reported back to each affected facility. This information can also be shared with law enforcement organizations, enabling them to begin investigations into the suspected surveillance cell.”

In a 2005 interview with The Entrepreneur Center, Abraxas founder Richard “Hollis” Helms said his signature product “can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists.” He calls it “a proprietary technology designed to protect critical national infrastructure from a terrorist attack by detecting the pre-attack activities of the terrorist and enabling law enforcement to investigate and engage the terrorist long before an attack is executed,” and that, “The beauty of it is that we can protect an infinite number of facilities just as efficiently as we can one and we push information out to local law authorities automatically.”

An internal email from early 2011 included in the Global Intelligence Files has Stratfor’s Burton allegedly saying the program can be used to “[walk] back and track the suspects from the get go w/facial recognition software.”

Since its inception, TrapWire has been implemented in most major American cities at selected high value targets (HVTs) and has appeared abroad as well. The iWatch monitoring system adopted by the Los Angeles Police Department (pdf) works in conjunction with TrapWire, as does the District of Columbia and the "See Something, Say Something" program conducted by law enforcement in New York City, which had 500 surveillance cameras linked to the system in 2010. Private properties including Las Vegas, Nevada casinos have subscribed to the system. The State of Texas reportedly spent half a million dollars with an additional annual licensing fee of $150,000 to employ TrapWire, and the Pentagon and other military facilities have allegedly signed on as well.

In one email from 2010 leaked by Anonymous, Stratfor’s Fred Burton allegedly writes, “God Bless America. Now they have EVERY major HVT in CONUS, the UK, Canada, Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC as clients.” Files on USASpending.gov reveal that the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense together awarded Abraxas and TrapWire more than one million dollars in only the past eleven months.

News of the widespread and largely secretive installation of TrapWire comes amidst a federal witch-hunt to crack down on leaks escaping Washington and at attempt to prosecute whistleblowers. Thomas Drake, a former agent with the NSA, has recently spoken openly about the government’s Trailblazer Project that was used to monitor private communication, and was charged under the Espionage Act for coming forth. Separately, former NSA tech director William Binney and others once with the agency have made claims in recent weeks that the feds have dossiers on every American, an allegation NSA Chief Keith Alexander dismissed during a speech at Def-Con last month in Vegas.

[Anti Federalist]

Whassa on TV?

*belch*

[Anti Federalist]

God help us...when this trap slams shut, millions will die.

[tsai3904]

Story from SF Chronicle today:


License plate readers tracking cars

After the city of San Leandro purchased a license plate reader for its Police Department in 2008, computer security consultant Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city for a record of every time the scanners had photographed his car.

The results shocked him.

The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log thousands of license plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. Katz-Lacabe said it had photographed his two cars on 112 occasions, including one image from 2009 that shows him and his daughters stepping out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway.

That photograph, Katz-Lacabe said, made him "frightened and concerned about the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection." The single patrol car in San Leandro equipped with a plate reader had logged his car once a week on average, photographing his license plate and documenting the time and location.

...

The intelligence center database will store license plate records for up to two years, regardless of data retention limits set in place by local police departments.

More:
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/License-plate-readers-tracking-cars-4622476.php?t=20f260152647b02379

[WM_in_MO]

"The California Constitution grants every citizen the right

let me stop you right there.

[HOLLYWOOD]

This will raise an eyebrow...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14srbY_jg-I

[Uriel999]

Wow, just wow. My mind is blown. And I am pissed off.

[jllundqu]

I know for a fact that Kansas City PD uses ALPRs and passes the info to local urban area fusion centers (like the Kansas City Terrorism Early Warning Center) and the MIAC.

ACLU knows about it too... they have cases pending I think

[HOLLYWOOD]

ref Stratfor, Trap Wire, & Ntrepid: Have you seen what this guy has 'peeled-back' the layers of the deception onion? This is from early in April...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14srbY_jg-I


pretty much on par with Stratfor and Trap wire, revealed last year with very little brouhaha or exclaim-

Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system
http://rt.com/usa/stratfor-trapwire-abraxas-wikileaks-313/

Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.

The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing.

Hacktivists aligned with the loose-knit Anonymous collective took credit for hacking Stratfor on Christmas Eve, 2011, in turn collecting what they claimed to be more than five million emails from within the company. WikiLeaks began releasing those emails as the Global Intelligence Files (GIF) earlier this year and, of those, several discussing the implementing of TrapWire in public spaces across the country were circulated on the Web this week after security researcher Justin Ferguson brought attention to the matter. At the same time, however, WikiLeaks was relentlessly assaulted by a barrage of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, crippling the whistleblower site and its mirrors, significantly cutting short the number of people who would otherwise have unfettered access to the emails.

On Wednesday, an administrator for the WikiLeaks Twitter account wrote that the site suspected that the motivation for the attacks could be that particularly sensitive Stratfor emails were about to be exposed. A hacker group called AntiLeaks soon after took credit for the assaults on WikiLeaks and mirrors of their content, equating the offensive as a protest against editor Julian Assange, “the head of a new breed of terrorist.” As those Stratfor files on TrapWire make their rounds online, though, talk of terrorism is only just beginning.

Mr. Ferguson and others have mirrored what are believed to be most recently-released Global Intelligence Files on external sites, but the original documents uploaded to WikiLeaks have been at times unavailable this week due to the continuing DDoS attacks. Late Thursday and early Friday this week, the GIF mirrors continues to go offline due to what is presumably more DDoS assaults. Australian activist Asher Wolf wrote on Twitter that the DDoS attacks flooding the servers of WikiLeaks supporter sites were reported to be dropping upwards of 40 gigabits of traffic per second. On Friday, WikiLeaks tweeted that their own site was sustaining attacks of 10 Gb/second, adding, "Whoever is running it controls thousands of machines or is able to simulate them."

According to a press release (pdf) dated June 6, 2012, TrapWire is “designed to provide a simple yet powerful means of collecting and recording suspicious activity reports.” A system of interconnected nodes spot anything considered suspect and then input it into the system to be "analyzed and compared with data entered from other areas within a network for the purpose of identifying patterns of behavior that are indicative of pre-attack planning.”

In a 2009 email included in the Anonymous leak, Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence Fred Burton is alleged to write, “TrapWire is a technology solution predicated upon behavior patterns in red zones to identify surveillance. It helps you connect the dots over time and distance.” Burton formerly served with the US Diplomatic Security Service, and Abraxas’ staff includes other security experts with experience in and out of the Armed Forces.

What is believed to be a partnering agreement included in the Stratfor files from August 13, 2009 indicates that they signed a contract with Abraxas to provide them with analysis and reports of their TrapWire system (pdf).

“Suspicious activity reports from all facilities on the TrapWire network are aggregated in a central database and run through a rules engine that searches for patterns indicative of terrorist surveillance operations and other attack preparations,” Crime and Justice International magazine explains in a 2006 article on the program, one of the few publically circulated on the Abraxas product (pdf). “Any patterns detected – links among individuals, vehicles or activities – will be reported back to each affected facility. This information can also be shared with law enforcement organizations, enabling them to begin investigations into the suspected surveillance cell.”

In a 2005 interview with The Entrepreneur Center, Abraxas founder Richard “Hollis” Helms said his signature product “can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists.” He calls it “a proprietary technology designed to protect critical national infrastructure from a terrorist attack by detecting the pre-attack activities of the terrorist and enabling law enforcement to investigate and engage the terrorist long before an attack is executed,” and that, “The beauty of it is that we can protect an infinite number of facilities just as efficiently as we can one and we push information out to local law authorities automatically.”

An internal email from early 2011 included in the Global Intelligence Files has Stratfor’s Burton allegedly saying the program can be used to “[walk] back and track the suspects from the get go w/facial recognition software.”

Since its inception, TrapWire has been implemented in most major American cities at selected high value targets (HVTs) and has appeared abroad as well. The iWatch monitoring system adopted by the Los Angeles Police Department (pdf) works in conjunction with TrapWire, as does the District of Columbia and the "See Something, Say Something" program conducted by law enforcement in New York City, which had 500 surveillance cameras linked to the system in 2010. Private properties including Las Vegas, Nevada casinos have subscribed to the system. The State of Texas reportedly spent half a million dollars with an additional annual licensing fee of $150,000 to employ TrapWire, and the Pentagon and other military facilities have allegedly signed on as well.

In one email from 2010 leaked by Anonymous, Stratfor’s Fred Burton allegedly writes, “God Bless America. Now they have EVERY major HVT in CONUS, the UK, Canada, Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC as clients.” Files on USASpending.gov reveal that the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense together awarded Abraxas and TrapWire more than one million dollars in only the past eleven months.

News of the widespread and largely secretive installation of TrapWire comes amidst a federal witch-hunt to crack down on leaks escaping Washington and at attempt to prosecute whistleblowers. Thomas Drake, a former agent with the NSA, has recently spoken openly about the government’s Trailblazer Project that was used to monitor private communication, and was charged under the Espionage Act for coming forth. Separately, former NSA tech director William Binney and others once with the agency have made claims in recent weeks that the feds have dossiers on every American, an allegation NSA Chief Keith Alexander dismissed during a speech at Def-Con last month in Vegas.