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Atlas of Surveillance

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Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#101

Post by easterncalculus »

peacelilly wrote: post #89
srameshc wrote: post #31

> Police Department signed an agreement with Amazon's home surveillance equipment company, Ring, in 2019 to gain special access to the company's Neighbors app this is the most scary part.

We really need these things to be Closed Circuit by law. Want the data? Get a warrant and seize the device physically. Centralized databases of surveillance information needs to be outlawed criminally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

It would go against this and lots of legal precedent supporting it, so definitely an uphill battle.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#103

Post by throwawayway9 »

peacelilly wrote: post #89
srameshc wrote: post #31

> Police Department signed an agreement with Amazon's home surveillance equipment company, Ring, in 2019 to gain special access to the company's Neighbors app this is the most scary part.

We really need these things to be Closed Circuit by law. Want the data? Get a warrant and seize the device physically. Centralized databases of surveillance information needs to be outlawed criminally.

Warrants are extremely easy to get, basically rubber stamped. It's so bad that LE will put in things they know are outright unconstitutional, knowing the magistrate won't really read it or care about citizen's rights.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#104

Post by na85 »

saghm wrote: post #88
Cactus2018 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/shotspotter-de... .... Wrapped in a weatherproof container roughly the size of a watermelon, each ShotSpotter sensor combines microphones, hardware, software and a clock linked to the Global Positioning System, which uses satellites and radio navigation to pinpoint precise times and locations. In the cacophonous urban environment, sensors are calibrated to ignore all soun…

> sensors are calibrated to ignore all sounds except for those that most closely match the “impulsive” sound of an explosion > The blast of a gun is different from other explosive sounds > “It’s a very, very sharp wave,” Beldock said. “No other sound works that way.” > Other impulsive sounds — including fireworks, backfires and helicopters — can also trigger the remote sensors They're calibrated just to hear explosio…

It's no doubt referring to the "whap whap whap" sound of the tail rotor's wake causing interference patterns with the main rotor's wake.

Next time you're near a helicopter in flight, notice that the "whap whap whap" chopping sound is more prominent at certain angles. Because it's constructive interference the pressure wave can be quite large and sharp... just like a gunshot, I guess?

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#105

Post by refurb »

tarmon wrote: post #95
saghm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sensors are calibrated to ignore all sounds except for those that most closely match the “impulsive” sound of an explosion > The blast of a gun is different from other explosive sounds > “It’s a very, very sharp wave,” Beldock said. “No other sound works that way.” > Other impulsive sounds — including fireworks, backfires and helicopters — can also trigger the remote sensors They're calibrated just to hear explosio…

Well technically helicopters are propelled by explosions. :)

Most helicopters are turbine driven. Still an explosion? Kind of one long continuous explosion from start to stop.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#106

Post by refurb »

_ah wrote: post #40
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, that they lied about how they got te evidence. Eg, they plant a hidden camera in your house, see you packing drugs and puting them in your car in your own garage, and driving away. Since they got the info that you had the drugs from illegally set cameras, they can't just stop and search your car, but they can "randomly" stop you for a traffic check, and just "randomly" have a drug sniffing dog present…

This already happens. I once had a conversation with a Homeland Security officer at a backyard BBQ, and he said: "When you see on the news that Police randomly stopped a car and discovered a huge cache of drugs... you don't actually think that's random, do you?" TBH I had never thought about it before but now I recognize this pattern everywhere.

Most of the time that’s from confidential informants. Not parallel construction.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#107

Post by refurb »

lmkg wrote: post #13
pc86 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious, in what context is it perjury? My understanding of parallel construction is: 1. Officer receives information $A through inadmissible means (which may be illegal, but not necessarily) 2. With information $A, officer is able to "prove" that a suspect perpetrated a given crime 3. Officer pieces together proof from possible unrelated, but admissible evidence - $B and $C, let's say. 4. And this is the p…

The principle of the "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree" says that if $A is inadmissible, then evidence derived from $A is inadmissible. The perjury is claiming (possibly a lie by omission) that $B was not derived from $A. Sometimes this involves a (more direct) lie inventing an alternate history for $B. Perjury may or may not be the correct or most applicable transgression. Point is, if $A is what led to the collection of…

Not quite. If someone says “Jim told me that Matt killed the guy”. That’s inadmissible hearsay, but it doesn’t mean the cops can’t go interrogate Matt and generate admissible evidence.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#108

Post by pininja »

throwawayway9 wrote: post #99
saghm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sensors are calibrated to ignore all sounds except for those that most closely match the “impulsive” sound of an explosion > The blast of a gun is different from other explosive sounds > “It’s a very, very sharp wave,” Beldock said. “No other sound works that way.” > Other impulsive sounds — including fireworks, backfires and helicopters — can also trigger the remote sensors They're calibrated just to hear explosio…

I forget where I had read it, but the spotters were also picking up and recording conversations. Inadvertently, of course.

These sensors are usually on rooftops, and while I believe they could pick up conversations if we’re next to it or yelled loudly (as in, physically capable of capturing frequencies of human voices), I don’t believe they have a use for recording lots of audio to some permanent storage. Their main purpose seems to be posting time stamped events of a particular sound occurrence with a couple seconds of sound surrounding the event. [0]

> Only two seconds before a gunshot and four seconds after a gunshot are recorded, the company claims.

If they were recording full conversations on purpose without permission that would expose a lot of liability, and unless every customer is in on it (I doubt these distributed public entities are coordinated) I think there would be some documented story by now.

[0] https://splinternews.com/is-nyc-s-new-gunshot-detection-syst...

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#109

Post by scarier »

saghm wrote: post #88
Cactus2018 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/shotspotter-de... .... Wrapped in a weatherproof container roughly the size of a watermelon, each ShotSpotter sensor combines microphones, hardware, software and a clock linked to the Global Positioning System, which uses satellites and radio navigation to pinpoint precise times and locations. In the cacophonous urban environment, sensors are calibrated to ignore all soun…

> sensors are calibrated to ignore all sounds except for those that most closely match the “impulsive” sound of an explosion > The blast of a gun is different from other explosive sounds > “It’s a very, very sharp wave,” Beldock said. “No other sound works that way.” > Other impulsive sounds — including fireworks, backfires and helicopters — can also trigger the remote sensors They're calibrated just to hear explosio…

For what it's worth, neither bullets nor helicopters are propelled by explosions. While the distinction is somewhat technical, gunpowder doesn't explode--it just burns really fast. This is less important for small arms than for, say, artillery, but being able to control burn rates is critical for the design of most firearms/cannons and things like solid-fuel rocket motors (which function as one big propellant grain)--in many of these cases, detonation would likely prove catastrophic.

All that to say that helicopter blades can create similar pressure waves as gunshots. Supersonic bullets passing overhead make very distinctive sounds, but the noise of the gunshot itself is much less unique. I never really got comfortable living in places with a large number of cars that backfired a lot, because I couldn't easily tell it apart from gunfire.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#110

Post by blintz »

Anyone notice that the facial recognition points north of SF are errors? They contain information about programs in Nebraska and Florida. I wonder what led to the error and if there are more.
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