Tag Archive for: Cops

Clearview Was A Toy For Billionaires Before It Became A Toy For Cops

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Clearview’s claims that its controversial facial recognition program is only for use by law enforcement agencies continues to be exposed as a lie. Documents obtained by BuzzFeed showed the company has sold its tech to a variety of private companies, including major retailers like Kohl’s and Walmart.

It’s also expanding its reach across the globe, pitching its products to dozens of countries, including those known mostly for their human rights violations. Even when it limits itself to law enforcement agencies, it still can’t help lying — exaggerating its success and assistance in criminal investigations.

Before Clearview became a plaything for government agencies and private corporations, it was a toy for the rich and powerful. Kashmir Hill — who broke the first story about Clearview’s problematic image-scraping operation — has a followup in the New York Times detailing the company’s unpleasant origin story.

One Tuesday night in October 2018, John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes grocery store chain, was having dinner at Cipriani, an upscale Italian restaurant in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, when his daughter, Andrea, walked in. She was on a date with a man Mr. Catsimatidis didn’t recognize. After the couple sat down at another table, Mr. Catsimatidis asked a waiter to go over and take a photo.

Mr. Catsimatidis then uploaded the picture to a facial recognition app, Clearview AI, on his phone. The start-up behind the app has a database of billions of photos, scraped from sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Within seconds, Mr. Catsimatidis was viewing a collection of photos of the mystery man, along with the web addresses where they appeared: His daughter’s date was a venture capitalist from San Francisco.

“I wanted to make sure he wasn’t a charlatan,” said Mr. Catsimatidis, who then texted the man’s bio to his daughter.

That’s just one anecdote. There are others. Investors approached by Clearview, like venture capitalist Hal Lambert, explored the power of Clearview’s app in pretty irresponsible ways. Lambert allowed his school-aged daughters access to the app. And it appears actor/investor Ashton Kutcher was given access to the app. He described an app that sounds exactly like Clearview when he appeared on the YouTube series “Hot Ones” last September.

“I have an app in my phone in my pocket right now. It’s like a beta app,” Mr. Kutcher said. “It’s a facial recognition app. I can hold it up to anybody’s face here and, like, find exactly who you are, what internet accounts you’re on, what they look like. It’s terrifying.”

It is terrifying. And far more people have had access to it than Clearview has admitted. Plenty of potential investors were given access to the app. It’s not clear how many still have access, but it appears their use of the app went unmonitored/uncontrolled by Clearview. Understandably, investors want to know if the thing they’re looking to invest in works, but Clearview did nothing to ensure this access was limited or used responsibly. That same attitude has carried over to its pitches to law enforcement, which encourages cops to use friends and family members as guinea pigs for tech it claims should only be used for legitimate law enforcement efforts.

Power and responsibility are supposed to go hand-in-hand. There’s none of that happening here. Clearview compiled a database by scraping images from hundreds of websites and is now selling this access to pretty much anyone willing to buy it.

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Police Department Shells Out $50,000 To Man After His Camera Catches Cops Fabricating Criminal Charges Against Him

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The Connecticut State Police have agreed to pay $ 50,000 to a man its officers subjected to a bunch of Constitutional violations on their way to issuing tickets to him for violations he never committed.

Here’s a brief description of how this whole thing started:

On September 11, 2015, Picard was protesting near a police DUI checkpoint in West Hartford. One of the defendants, John Barone, approached him under the pretext of public complaints and confiscated Picard’s camera and lawfully carried pistol. Unbeknownst to the troopers, the camera was recording when Barone brought it to where co-defendants Patrick Torneo and John Jacobi were talking.

That’s just part of what happened before the recording the officers weren’t aware of captured them colluding to make up crimes to charge Michael Picard with.

There’s more detail in the opinion [PDF] the court handed down last fall, which gave the State Police notice its officers were unlikely to escape Picard’s lawsuit. One officer knocked Picard’s video camera to the ground. When he picked it up to continue recording the officers, one of them did something really stupid.

While defendants discussed plaintiff, plaintiff picked up his video camera off the ground and aimed it at the three defendants.

Barone then walked back to plaintiff. He grabbed plaintiff’s video camera and told him, “It’s illegal to take my picture.” Defendants have admitted that Barone “told plaintiff that it was illegal to take his picture without permission to do so;” and that Barone “secured” plaintiff’s camera.

Once they had it in their possession, the cops ignored the camera. This is important because they later argued they seized it because they thought it might be a gun. If they really thought the camera posed a threat to them, you’d think they would have examined the camera. But they didn’t.

If they had examined the camera, they might have noticed it was still recording. This is what the camera caught as it laid on top of the officers’ vehicle.

Torneo spoke by phone to Lieutenant Allan to determine whether plaintiff had any “grudges;” asked why plaintiff was challenging them at the DUI spot checks; and discussed plaintiff’s past demonstrations.

Defendants Torneo and Barone verified that plaintiff’s pistol permit was valid, that his gun was not stolen, and that there were no warrants for his arrest.

On the video camera recording, Barone can be heard stating, “punch a number on this or do what? Gotta cover our ass.” Torneo can be heard saying, “Let’s give him something,” and “then we claim in backup that we had multiple people stop and complain … but they didn’t want to stay and give a statement.”

Here’s the recording Picard’s camera made — one that captures officers colluding to create bogus criminal charges against a citizen.

Picard was charged with two criminal infractions. Both were dropped by the prosecutor. More importantly, the court refused to extend qualified immunity to these officers on Picard’s Fourth Amendment violation allegations. It also refused QI on Picard’s First Amendment retaliation claim. With three officers facing a jury trial, the State Police has decided to buy its way out of this using taxpayer money.

This incident shows why recording police officers isn’t just important, it’s necessary. While it may be difficult to record officers’ discussions once they’re back in their vehicle, having a recording device visible and present may deter cops from fabricating charges just because they don’t like the legal activity you’re engaged in. Officers are usually pretty careful to ensure their own illegal activity goes unrecorded, but it’s tough for them to control devices operated by citizens.

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AG Bill Barr Pretends The Nation Was Better Off Being Bullied By Cops, Lies About The Success Of ‘Tough On Crime’ Policies

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Bill Barr continues to burn the bridge between him and the public he’s supposed to represent. And why shouldn’t he? It’s not like the administration will rein him in, not when he’s willing to act as flak-catcher for the president we’ve all been forced to serve.

It’s good work if you can get it, and by “get it,” I mean subvert the idea of “justice” to mean what it apparently means to Bill Barr. The man has already declared war on the general public, and the encryption the general public uses to protect itself against criminals and state-sponsored hackers. What does “justice” mean to a man like this? It means destroying the populace to ensure cops aren’t unduly burdened by the everyday life of the people they are under no obligation to protect and serve.

Barr’s recent sermon to the converted contains more of the same. The administration that has made a mockery of the phrase “rule of law,” still insists the rule of law is the best thing since improperly-jailed black teens. Barr spoke to a conference you would swear I was making up if I couldn’t produce a link — “Major County Sheriffs of America Winter Conference.” And he delivered just what they wanted to hear: invective insulting anyone who might have the temerity to suggest we (as a nation) jail people far too frequently for far too long.

There have been a few “progressive” prosecutors elevated to the office of District Attorney. This makes Barr sad. But it makes him mostly angry. No one should be allowed to plug up the prison pipeline, not even those who realize the country is not best served by people who think the “fullest extent of the law” is the best interpretation of thousands of vague laws.

So, Barr attacks “progressive” DAs — the one who see prison is not the rehabilitation paradise so often promised by the people Barr fronts for. In fact, it can be argued Barr gives zero shits about rehabilitation. All he cares about is punishment, so it should be painfully aware he should not be heading up an agency with the word “justice” in its title.

Barr’s speech twists facts and hurls invective at those who dare to suggest the best path out of a life of crime might not run through the US penal system.

But before we get to that, let’s get to this outright lie:

You and your deputies face unprecedented challenges. Every day, deputies head out on patrol, never knowing precisely what trials they will face. And the list of assignments we give our deputies and officers keeps getting longer and longer. We no longer merely ask them to keep us safe – we ask them to manage the fallout from a vast range of social pathologies, such as mental illness, widespread homelessness, and drug abuse. It is quite a lot to ask men and women trained to protect the public from dangerous criminals to simultaneously do the jobs of social workers and psychiatrists. Yet our committed law enforcement officers do their best to carry these ever-expanding burdens.

While it’s true we do ask law enforcement officers to handle social problems, it is not truthful to say officers carry this out with the best of their abilities. Law enforcement agencies generally do not train their employees to handle these problems with a different tool set. Instead, they send them out armed with the usual tool set (guns, force deployment) that makes bad situations worse, and results in the wounding or killing of our most marginalized members of society.

But this is Barr’s biggest lie. He claims these new progressives will return us to violent crime’s heyday of the 1990s. And he does this using “facts” that claim the 90s were the safest time of all for Americans.

Another similar problem is the increasing number of district attorneys who have fashioned for themselves a new role of judge-legislator-prosecutor. These self-styled “social justice” reformers are refusing to enforce entire categories of law, including law against resisting police officers. In so doing, these DAs are putting everyone in danger.

Their policies are pushing a number of America’s cities back toward a more dangerous past. Under the district attorney in Philadelphia, the murder rate in that city is at its highest point in over a decade. Other cities with these “progressive” DAs – like San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago, and Baltimore – have all suffered historic levels of homicide and other violent crime. This is while crime nationwide, generally, is going down.

Barr is right. Nationwide violent crime is on the decline. That a few outliers are producing spikes has nothing to do with “progressive DAs” and everything to do with regression to the mean. No one can say definitively why crime has declined so much, but to pin it on Reagan-era policies (as Barr does) is fucking ridiculous.

We have seen these policies before. They reigned supreme at the state level from the 1960s to the early 1990s. During this time, violent crime rates tripled in our country. They peaked in 1991 and 1992. By that time, the country had had enough. Following the lead of the policies of the Reagan, H.W. Bush administrations, the states started to make their systems tougher on crime.

This is a lie. There is no way around this. Nobody was being “progressive” about crime/incarceration during that 30-year span. Reagan kicked off a whole new wave of “tough on crime” politicians. And his tough-talking inspired a new generation of short-sighted legislators who increased incarceration rates while crime spiraled to unparalleled levels. Perhaps Barr should be pointed to Prohibition, where its enactment caused violent crime to spike while resulting in an unprecedented number of cops being killed. It was peak “Tough on Crime,” and it resulted in more crime and more dead law enforcement officers than at any other time in our nation’s history.

Anyway, fuck this guy. Let’s hear what he has to say about “progressive DAs:”

The policies of these DAs also sabotage the effectiveness of community policing and “precision” policing, which depend heavily on obtaining information from members of the community. When DAs engage in catch-and-release and revolving-door policies, people in the neighborhood who might otherwise provide information are scared to come forward.

Hmm. Let’s just swap the words “law enforcement officials” for “DAs” in that paragraph and see if we can’t suss out why people might not trust the police.

The policies of these [police officials] also sabotage the effectiveness of community policing and “precision” policing, which depend heavily on obtaining information from members of the community. When [police officials] engage in catch-and-release and revolving-door policies, people in the neighborhood who might otherwise provide information are scared to come forward.

Law enforcement agencies operate the worst revolving door — one that allows bad cops to whitewash their past and return to work with zero lessons learned. The near-constant application of qualified immunity to rights violations makes this worse. And police unions have generated enough power politicians are afraid to cross them when implementing accountability policies, stripping them of their teeth and usefulness.

William Barr has presumed everyone but government employees to be guilty. That’s why we don’t deserve relief from the US’s world-leading incarceration rate or the protection that device encryption gives us. The general public is presumed guilty and the only people with unvarnished halos are hovering above an agency willing to sacrifice its morals to appease the man on top.

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Amazon: Cops Can Get Recordings From Ring, Keep Them Forever, And Share Them With Whoever They Want

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Even more alarming news has surfaced about Amazon’s Ring doorbell/camera and the company’s ultra-cozy relationship with police departments.

Since its introduction, Ring has been steadily increasing its market share — both with homeowners and their public servants. At the beginning of August, this partnership included 200 law enforcement agencies. Three months later, that number has increased to 630.

What do police departments get in exchange for agreeing to be Ring lapdogs? Well, they get a portal that allows them to seek footage from Ring owners, hopefully without a warrant. They also get a built-in PR network that promotes law enforcement wins aided by Ring footage, provided the agencies are willing to let Ring write their press releases for them.

They also get instructions on how to bypass warrant requirements to obtain camera footage from private citizens. Some of this is just a nudge — an unstated quid pro quo attached to the free cameras cops hand out to homeowners. Some of this is actual instructions on how to word requests so recipients are less likely to wonder about their Fourth Amendment rights. And some of this is Ring itself, which stores footage uploaded by users for law enforcement perusal.

If it seems like a warrant might slow things down — or law enforcement lacks probable cause to demand footage — Ring is more than happy to help out. Footage remains a subpoena away at Ring HQ. And, more disturbingly, anything turned over to police departments comes with no strings attached.

Statements given to Sen. Edward Markey by Amazon indicate footage turned over to cops is a gift that keeps on giving.

Police officers who download videos captured by homeowners’ Ring doorbell cameras can keep them forever and share them with whomever they’d like without providing evidence of a crime, the Amazon-owned firm told a lawmaker this month.

Brian Huseman, Amazon’s VP of Public Policy, indicates the public is kind of an afterthought when it comes to Ring and its super-lax policies.

Police in those communities can use Ring software to request up to 12 hours of video from anyone within half a square mile of a suspected crime scene, covering a 45-day time span, Huseman wrote. Police are required to include a case number for the crime they are investigating, but not any other details or evidence related to the crime or their request.

Ring itself maintains that it’s still very much into protecting users and their safety. Maybe not so much their privacy, though. The company says it takes the “responsibility” of “protecting homes and communities” very seriously. But when it comes to footage, well… that footage apparently belongs to whoever it ends up with.

Ring… “does not own or otherwise control users’ videos, and we intentionally designed the Neighbors Portal to ensure that users get to decide whether to voluntarily provide their videos to the police.”

It’s obvious Ring does not “control” recordings. Otherwise, it would place a few more restrictions on the zero-guardrail “partnerships” with law enforcement agencies. But pretending Ring owners are OK with cops sharing their recordings with whoever just because they agreed to share the recording with one agency is disingenuous.

Ring’s answers to Markey’s pointed questions are simply inadequate. As the Washington Post article notes, Ring claims it makes users agree to install cameras so they won’t record public areas like roads or sidewalks, but does nothing to police uploaded footage to ensure this rule is followed. It also claims its does not collect “personal information online from children under the age of 13,” but still proudly let everyone know how many trick-or-treaters came to Ring users’ doors on Halloween. And, again, it does not vet users’ footage to ensure they’re not harvesting recordings of children under the age of 13.

The company also hinted it’s still looking at adding facial recognition capabilities to its cameras. Amazon’s response pointed to competitors’ products utilizing this tech and said it would “innovate” based on “customer demand.”

While Ring’s speedy expansion would have caused some concern, most of that would have been limited to its competitors. That it chose to use law enforcement agencies to boost its signal is vastly more concerning. It’s no longer just a home security product. It’s a surveillance tool law enforcement agencies can tap into seemingly at will.

Many users would be more than happy to welcome the services of law enforcement if their doorbell cameras captured footage of criminal act that affected them, but Ring’s network of law enforcement partners makes camera owners almost extraneous. If cops want footage, Ring will give it to them. And then the cops can do whatever they want with it, even if it doesn’t contribute to ongoing investigations.

These answers didn’t make Sen. Markey happy. Hopefully, other legislators will find these responses unsatisfactory and start demanding more — both from law enforcement agencies and Ring itself.

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