“What they need is a system that follows people back to the house they came out of.”

[presence]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/surveillance-planes-spotted-in-the-sky-for-days-after-west-baltimore-rioting/2015/05/05/c57c53b6-f352-11e4-84a6-6d7c67c50db0_story.html





Surveillance planes spotted in the sky for days after West Baltimore rioting



By Craig Timberg (http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/craig-timberg) May 5 at 8:21 PM


As Benjamin Shayne settled into his back yard to listen to the Orioles game on the radio Saturday night, he noticed a small plane looping low and tight over West Baltimore — almost exactly above where rioting had erupted (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/04/28/a-freddie-gray-primer-who-was-he-how-did-he-why-is-there-so-much-anger/) several days earlier, in the aftermath of the death of a black man, Freddie Gray, in police custody.
The plane appeared to be a small Cessna, but little else was clear. The sun had already set, making traditional visual surveillance difficult. So, perplexed, Shayne tweeted (https://twitter.com/scanbaltimore/status/594671214028836864): “Anyone know who has been flying the light plane in circles above the city for the last few nights?”


That was 9:14 p.m. Seven minutes later came a startling reply (https://twitter.com/pete_cimbolic/status/594673137691848704/photo/1). One of Shayne’s nearly 600 followers tweeted back a screen shot of the Cessna 182T’s exact flight path (https://twitter.com/pete_cimbolic/status/594673137691848704/photo/1) and also the registered owner (http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=539MY) of the plane: NG Research, based in Bristow, Va.


“The Internet,” Shayne, 39, told his wife, “is an amazing thing.”


What Shayne’s online rumination helped unveil was a previously secret, multi-day campaign of overhead surveillance by city and federal authorities during a period of historic political protest and unrest.
https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/05/06/National-Security/Graphics/2300-baltimore-flights.jpg?uuid=_64dQPOIEeS8pSG1G735Pg

Discovery of the flights — which involved at least two airplanes and the assistance of the FBI — has prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to demand answers about the legal authority for the operations and the reach of the technology used. Planes armed with the latest surveillance systems can monitor larger areas (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/new-surveillance-technology-can-track-everyone-in-an-area-for-several-hours-at-a-time/2014/02/05/82f1556e-876f-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html) than police helicopters and stay overhead longer, raising novel civil liberties issues that have so far gotten little scrutiny from courts.


Civil libertarians have particular concern about surveillance technology that can quietly gather images across dozens of city blocks — in some cases even square miles at a time — inevitably capturing the movements of people under no suspicion of criminal activity into a government dragnet. The ACLU plans to file information requests with federal agencies on Wednesday, officials said.


“A lot of these technologies sweep very, very broadly, and, at a minimum, the public should have a right to know what’s going on,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU specializing in privacy and technology issues.


The FBI declined to comment on the flights. Capt. Eric Kowalczyk, a Baltimore Police Department spokesman, referred questions about the flights to the FBI.
A government official familiar with the operations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters not approved for public release, said the flights were aerial support that Baltimore police officials requested from the FBI.


Flight records maintained by the Web site Flightradar24 (http://www.flightradar24.com) show two Cessnas — one a propeller plane, the other a small jet (http://www.flightradar24.com/2015-05-03/03:06/12x/C560/6289664) — flying precise formations over the part of West Baltimore where the rioting had occurred. The smaller Cessna conducted flights in the area on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, always after dark. The planes used infrared technology to monitor movements of people in the vicinity, the official said.


The exact reach of the infrared technology is not clear. Civil libertarians have long warned that the ability to track the movements of individuals (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/blimplike-surveillance-crafts-set-to-deploy-over-maryland-heighten-privacy-concerns/2014/01/22/71a48796-7ca1-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html) — even if their names are not initially known — can allow authorities to identify people, intruding on personal privacy and chilling the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association.
“We have the right to demand to know what’s happening,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group based in San Francisco. “Whether the government will respond to that, that’s the question.”


The Twitter follower who unearthed the first round of facts about the surveillance flights was Pete Cim*bolic, a former ACLU employee and current aviation buff who lives in North Baltimore. He had grown accustomed to following the Twitter feed of Shayne, 39, a fellow Baltimorean who runs Scanbaltimore.com (http://scanbaltimore.com/), a Web site that monitors police activity and live-streams the ongoing chatter on official radio channels.


When Cimbolic saw Shayne’s query about the flights (https://twitter.com/scanbaltimore/status/594671214028836864), he checked the aviation radar Web site and began tracking the first, smaller Cessna as it was still in the air.
It showed a continuous, circling path that appeared to have its center directly above the intersection of Pennsylvania and North avenues, where the most violent unrest was centered after Gray’s funeral on April 27. Six police officers (http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/overnight-calm-in-baltimore-as-tensions-remain-and-protests-expected/2015/05/01/00e07e7a-efe6-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html) have been charged with crimes related to Gray’s death.


That plane was registered to NG Research in Bristow, near Manassas Regional Airport. Searches of public records revealed little about the company, which could not be reached. Cimbolic initially thought it was part of Northrop Grumman, a leading government contractor, and made reference to his hunch in a tweet (https://twitter.com/pete_cimbolic/status/594678715373776898). The company told The Washington Post on Wednesday that it had no relationship with NG Research.


Cimbolic also linked to a long Reddit posting (http://www.reddit.com/r/nova/comments/2bgj1p/plane_circling_over_mcleanlangley_area_last_few/) that included reports of seeing the same plane — tail number N539MY — circling above Langley and McLean in Northern Virginia last year.


“The fact that at any point the government or a contractor for the government could have a wide view or a large picture of what’s going on on block after block of the city is really concerning,” Cimbolic said. “It’s scary.”


Cimbolic was beginning to worry that he had overreacted when he noticed, on the same flight-radar Web site, the second plane flying higher in the sky, carving bigger loops above West Baltimore. The Web site reported that this plane was a Cessna 560 Citation V, a small jet. But it showed no tail number, offering no possible trail to Federal Aviation Administration records. This only heightened his curiosity.


Cimbolic soon contacted the ACLU of Maryland, which forwarded the issue to the national ACLU office, which is planning to file information requests with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and the FAA.


The U.S. Marshals Service would be of particular concern because, as the Wall Street Journal (http://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-cellphones-targeted-in-secret-u-s-spy-program-1415917533) reported in November, it has used cellphone-tracking devices called “IMSI catchers” in airplanes to track the movements of people in U.S. cities. But the Marshals Service said it had no planes in Baltimore last weekend.


FBI spokesman Christopher Allen declined to comment on whether the bureau had planes in the Baltimore area last weekend, but he said the bureau had not used “cell-site simulators” — the FBI’s term for the IMSI catchers — in any operation related to the recent unrest in that city.


In Cimbolic’s research, he also came across a Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/new-surveillance-technology-can-track-everyone-in-an-area-for-several-hours-at-a-time/2014/02/05/82f1556e-876f-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html), from February 2014, that described how an Ohio-based company called Persistent Surveillance Systems was using airborne surveillance to monitor 25-square-mile swaths of cities to re*cord images of crimes as they happen.


But the head of that company, Ross McNutt, said in an interview on Monday that his company was not involved in the Baltimore operation. He said the kinds of sensors used in most government surveillance flights can see at least a five-block-by-five-block area.
McNutt said a wider view would be more useful in tracking down people who had committed crimes.




“What they need is a system that follows people back to the house they came out of.”

[ClydeCoulter]

"This is a test of the ... new system"

[VIDEODROME]

"This is a test of the ... new system"

Is Sharpton watching this, while he's being watched to?

[presence]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/new-surveillance-technology-can-track-everyone-in-an-area-for-several-hours-at-a-time/2014/02/05/82f1556e-876f-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html


New surveillance technology can track everyone in an area

The Post's Craig Timberg describes an aerial camera setup from Persistent Surveillance Systems that acts almost like a time machine for police, letting them watch criminals—and everyone else. (Davin Coburn/The Washington Post)







By Craig Timberg (http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/craig-timberg) February 5, 2014


DAYTON, Ohio — Shooter and victim were just a pair of pixels, dark specks on a gray streetscape. Hair color, bullet wounds, even the weapon were not visible in the series of pictures taken from an airplane flying two miles above.


But what the images revealed — to a degree impossible just a few years ago — was location, mapped over time. Second by second, they showed a gang assembling, blocking off access points, sending the shooter to meet his target and taking flight after the body hit the pavement. When the report reached police, it included a picture of the blue stucco building into which the killer ultimately retreated, at last beyond the view of the powerful camera overhead.


“I’ve witnessed 34 of these,” said Ross McNutt, the genial president of Persistent Surveillance Systems, which collected the images of the killing in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, from a specially outfitted Cessna. “It’s like opening up a murder mystery in the middle, and you need to figure out what happened before and after.”
As Americans have grown increasingly comfortable with traditional surveillance cameras, a new, far more powerful generation is being quietly deployed that can track every vehicle and person across an area the size of a small city, for several hours at a time. Although these cameras can’t read license plates or see faces, they provide such a wealth of data that police, businesses and even private individuals can use them to help identify people and track their movements.
Already, the cameras have been flown above major public events such as the Ohio political rally where Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) named Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, McNutt said. They’ve been flown above Baltimore; Philadelphia; Compton, Calif.; and Dayton in demonstrations for police. They’ve also been used for traffic impact studies, for security at NASCAR races and at the request of a Mexican politician, who commissioned the flights over Ciudad Juárez.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/an-unblinking-eye-in-the-sky/2014/02/05/d8eb65f0-8ea8-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_graphic.html)

A surveillance system designed by a Dayton, Ohio-based company can track crimes in real time, as they occur.
Video: A time machine for police, letting them watch criminals — and everyone else.

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/national/new-eyes-in-the-sky-for-police/2014/02/05/87d72b84-8e82-11e3-b46a-5a3d0d2130da_video.html)

Defense contractors are developing similar technology for the military, but its potential for civilian use is raising novel civil liberties concerns. In Dayton, where Persistent Surveillance Systems is based, city officials balked last year when police considered paying for 200 hours of flights, in part because of privacy complaints.
“There are an infinite number of surveillance technologies that would help solve crimes . . . but there are reasons that we don’t do those things, or shouldn’t be doing those things,” said Joel Pruce, a University of Dayton postdoctoral fellow in human rights who opposed the plan. “You know where there’s a lot less crime? There’s a lot less crime in China.”
The Supreme Court generally has given wide latitude to police using aerial surveillance as long as the photography captures images visible to the naked eye.
McNutt, a retired Air Force officer who once helped design a similar system for the skies above Fallujah, a battleground city in Iraq, hopes to win over officials in Dayton and elsewhere by convincing them that cameras mounted on fixed-wing aircraft can provide far more useful intelligence than police helicopters do, for less money.
A single camera mounted atop the Washington Monument, McNutt boasts, could deter crime all around the Mall. He said regular flights over the most dangerous parts of Washington — combined with publicity about how much police could see — would make a significant dent in the number of burglaries, robberies and murders. His 192-megapixel cameras would spot as many as 50 crimes per six-hour flight, he estimated, providing police with a continuous stream of images covering more than a third of the city.
“We watch 25 square miles, so you see lots of crimes,” he said. “And by the way, after people commit crimes, they drive like idiots.”
From 10,000 feet up, tracking an entire city at one glance


View Photos


Ohio-based Persistent Surveillance Systems is trying to convince cities across the country that its surveillance technology can help reduce crime. Its new generation of camera technology is far more powerful than the police cameras to which America has grown accustomed. But these newer cameras have sparked some privacy concerns.








What McNutt is trying to sell is not merely the latest techno-wizardry for police. He envisions such steep drops in crime that they will bring substantial side effects, including rising property values, better schools, increased development and, eventually, lower incarceration rates as the reality of long-term overhead surveillance deters those tempted to commit crimes.
Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl, a supporter of McNutt’s efforts, has proposed inviting the public to visit the operations center to get a glimpse of the technology in action.


“I want them to be worried that we’re watching,” Biehl said. “I want them to be worried that they never know when we’re overhead.”

Technology in action


McNutt, a suburban father of four with a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is not deaf to concerns about his company’s ambitions. Unlike many of the giant defense contractors that are eagerly repurposing wartime surveillance technology for domestic use, he sought advice from the American Civil Liberties Union in writing a privacy policy.
It has rules on how long data can be kept, when images can be accessed and by whom. Police are supposed to begin looking at the pictures only after a crime has been reported. Fishing expeditions are prohibited.


The technology has inherent limitations as well. From the airborne cameras, each person appears as a single pixel indistinguishable from any other person. What people are doing — even whether they are clothed or not — is impossible to see. As technology improves the cameras, McNutt said he intends to increase their range, not the precision of the imagery, so that larger areas can be monitored.


The notion that McNutt and his roughly 40 employees are peeping Toms clearly rankles. The company made a PowerPoint presentation for the ACLU that includes pictures taken to assist the response to Hurricane Sandy and the severe Iowa floods last summer. The section is titled: “Good People Doing Good Things.”


“We get a little frustrated when people get so worried about us seeing them in their backyard,” McNutt said in his operation center, where the walls are adorned with 120-inch monitors, each showing a different grainy urban scene collected from above. “We can’t even see what they are doing in their backyard. And, by the way, we don’t care.”
Yet in a world of increasingly pervasive surveillance, location and identity are becoming all but inextricable. One quickly leads to the other for those with the right tools.
During one of the company’s demonstration flights over Dayton in 2012, police got reports of an attempted robbery at a bookstore and shots fired at a Subway sandwich shop. The cameras revealed a single car moving between the two locations.


By reviewing the images frame by frame, analysts were able to help police piece together a larger story: A man had left a residential neighborhood at midday and attempted to rob the bookstore, but fled when somebody hit an alarm. Then he drove to Subway, where the owner pulled a gun and chased him off. His next stop was a Family Dollar Store, where the man paused for several minutes. He soon returned home, after a short stop at a gas station where a video camera captured an image of his face.
A few hours later, after the surveillance flight ended, the Family Dollar Store was robbed. Police used the detailed map of the man’s movements, along with other evidence from the crime scenes, to arrest him for all three crimes.


On another occasion, Dayton police got a report of a burglary in progress. The aerial cameras spotted a white truck driving away from the scene. Police stopped the driver before he got home and found the stolen goods in the back of the truck. A witness identified him soon afterward.


Privacy concerns


In addition to normal cameras, the planes can carry infrared sensors that permit analysts to track people, vehicles or wildlife at night — even through foliage and into some structures, such as tents.


Courts have put stricter limits on technology that can see things not visible to the naked eye, ruling that they can amount to unconstitutional searches when conducted without a warrant. But the lines remain fuzzy as courts struggle to apply old precedents — from a single overflight carrying an officer equipped with nothing stronger than a telephoto lens, for example — to the rapidly advancing technology.


“If you turn your country into a totalitarian surveillance state, there’s always some wrongdoing you can prevent,” said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert with the American Civil Liberties Union. “The balance struck in our Constitution tilts toward liberty, and I think we should keep that value.”


Police and private businesses have invested heavily in video surveillance since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Although academics debate whether these cameras create significantly lower crime rates, an overwhelming majority of Americans support them. A Washington Post poll (http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/12/21/National-Politics/Polling/release_282.xml) in November found that only 14 percent of those surveyed wanted fewer cameras in public spaces.


But the latest camera systems raise new issues because of their ability to watch vast areas for long periods of time — something even military-grade aerial cameras have struggled to do well.


The military’s most advanced experimental research lab is developing a system that uses hundreds of cellphone cameras to watch 36-square-mile areas. McNutt offers his system — which uses 12 commercially available Canon cameras mounted in an array — as an effective alternative that’s cheap enough for local police departments to afford. He typically charges between $1,500 and $2,000 per hour for his services, including flight time, operation of the command center and the time that analysts spend assisting investigations.


Dayton police were enticed by McNutt’s offer to fly 200 hours over the city for a home-town discount price of $120,000. The city, with about 140,000 people, saw its police force dwindle from more than 400 officers to about 350 in recent years, and there is little hope of reinforcements.


“We’re not going to get those officers back,” Biehl, the police chief, said. “We have had to use technology as force multipliers.”
Still, the proposed contract, coming during Dayton’s campaign season and amid a wave of revelations about National Security Agency surveillance, sparked resistance. Biehl is looking for a chance to revive the matter. But the new mayor, Nan Whaley, has reservations, both because of the cost and the potential loss of privacy.


“Since 2001, we haven’t had really healthy conversations about personal liberty. It’s starting to bloom about a decade too late,” Whaley said. “I think the conversation needs to continue.”
To that end, the mayor has another idea: She’s encouraging the businesses that own Dayton’s tallest buildings to mount rooftop surveillance cameras capable of continuously monitoring the downtown and nearby neighborhoods. Whaley hopes the businesses would provide the video feeds to the police.


McNutt, it turns out, has cameras for those situations, too, capable of spotting individual people from seven miles away.

[paulbot24]

"What we need is a system that causes DHS and TSA agents to go crawling back to the hole they came out of...."

[Anti Federalist]

Just another day in AmeriKa, where freedom means being under Total Surveillance.

Enjoy your brave new world.