Internet Eyes

By: Cameron Ghazzagh

In October, a newly formed U.K. company came out with a novel and practical idea for commercial surveillance: Take the live feeds from store security cameras around London and stream them online, then pay people from anywhere in the world to monitor the live video for shoplifting. The site is interneteyes.co.uk, and they are attempting to address the following issue that faces most UK storeowners: Although nearly all retail stores have security cameras to record theft, too often the footage is seen after the crime has been committed, and the chances of apprehending the thief drop dramatically.

For a monthly fee, Internet Eyes hosts and transmits the video feed from store cameras to individuals around the world who have applied to become an auditor with the site. An auditor works as a kind of contract police, monitoring four different video streams at once, and, at first sign of suspicious behavior, clicks a “report” button on his or her screen. This immediately alerts the storeowner to the possible theft via text message, and even includes a snapshot of the suspect. Storeowners in the United States face similar issues with store theft, apprehension, and surveillance. Given this, I have several reasons for why this type of global, internet-based contract policing would be very effective in the context of the U.S. laws and types of surveillance we’ve discussed in class.

Based in Common Law, storeowners in the U.S. have the right to engage in merchant’s privilege if they suspect someone of shoplifting. The benefits of using Internet Eyes to apprehend shoplifters are twofold: Fewer losses for the storeowner due to theft, and less time and resources spent by law enforcement pursuing the thief post-incident. Over time, this type of surveillance would even act as deterrence for potential shoplifters, who would be under the constant possibility of being caught.    

Another benefit for storeowners comes from the global scale of Internet Eyes. By allowing anyone in the world to become an auditor, and by simultaneously giving them four different video streams to audit, the price for labor is driven down, which creates affordable contract policing for smaller shops. This innovative new form of commercial policing would offer storeowners in the U.S. an extremely effective tool in assisting with shoplifting, and also serves local law enforcement in catching shoplifters pre-theft.

Government Surveillance

By: Dega Gebre

The amount of government interest in our everyday lives is alarming. The methods of which are in use to monitor one’s every move is even more astonishing, especially when one takes into account the rate at which they do it. Unfortunately, you cannot take a restraining order out on the government as you could a stalker, and this lack of restraint exercised by the government is utterly despicable in my view. In this recent article I read, the FBI is urging companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google to not oppose a law that would require them to “build in back doors for government surveillance.” The legislative bill would require the firms to ensure that “their products are wiretap-friendly.” So, not only is the government already an extremely intrusive entity, bypassing the U.S. Constitution on a regular basis and infringing on our right to privacy in clandestine ways not known to the majority of the population, but they are now trying to make it U.S. law for large information corporations to make their systems wiretap-friendly; all to perpetuate this illegal accumulation of our private information.

To find this appalling would be an understatement, for not only are they illegally gathering our information, but they are now trying to make it a law for corporations to make it easier for them to conduct their illegal business. I usually don’t look at the government as a criminal entity, but I wouldn’t say it would be a stretch to label them as a group that engages in criminal activity, as defined by law.

The overarching umbrella for this class, up to this point so far, seems to be the government’s use of technology to monitor people’s every move. The world around us today is filled with cameras and various recording devices to monitor every move made by every person. This conglomeration of information is vast, ranging from internet surveillance to cameras in stores and to the swipe of your credit cards. All this information get’s recorded, stored, analyzed and dated. Super computer algorithms are currently being used to pretty much predict what you’ll do before you even do it. In a second article I read, I picked up on the fact that there is now a company that utilizes information from all surveillance cameras all around the U.S. This company is comprised of former officials from the C.I.A, NSA, FBI and other government surveillance agencies who all work together to analyze information available from surveillance cameras. By using facial recognition software, these officials tap into all cameras and monitor your every move. So whether you’re at a community park watching your child play, or shopping at a mall, or sitting on your laptop, just know that you are being watched.

Surveillance, as we know, has its pros and cons. 20 years ago, you could go about your day and perform your normal routine, without having to worry about your every move. Nowadays, you must watch your every move, for in the next 20 years, the proliferation of garnering data to monitor people is going to reach levels we never would have imagined. These two articles introduced me to a whole new perspective on surveillance. Not so much that surveillance is happening on an enormous scale, but rather the injustices that are being committed on an even larger scale. Why is it when the founder of Wikileaks releases information pertinent to our everyday lives for free, he gets thrown in jail, but Mark Zuckerberg collects our information, sometimes illegally, on a massive scale and sells it for profit, and wins Time’s Person of the Year award? Why has society allowed such and evolution to occur? This dichotomy that exists is eventually going to be the downfall of our nation. The destruction of the Constitution is so blatant, so obvious, that eventually we will be living in a police state

NSA Surveillance

By: Alexander Juha 

August 2012, flying back to San Francisco, from Beirut, Lebanon.  The expression of the immigration officer who processed my passport was not good.  After, I was searched and questioned.  The question that intrigued me the most “did you receive any special training while in Lebanon?” I did not need to ask for an explanation, I knew the answer.  Two weeks prior to this my friend posted a message on my Facebook that would not sit well with anyone, especially the United States government.

An important aspect we learned in class is the collection of information.  With the advancements in technology, information collection has become too easy.  Anything and everything we do is now recorded and evaluated.  One reason, a reason the government goes by, is trying to figure out if someone is friend or enemy.  After 9/11, the gloves were off and national intelligence agencies realized they were to blame, and that they should do something about it. Since then, intelligence agencies have come up with different methods for invading the lives of its citizens.  They were able to accomplish this through technology.  The book Supervision, talks about surveillance and how everything we do is tracked.  Gilliom and Monahan also make an argument that this change in surveillance is changing the capabilities of the government, and other groups with power.   With the adoption of new surveillance capabilities, the rule and guidelines that the government goes by are being stretched, torn, and even recreated.

In an article by wired magazine, author James Bamford, talks about the Utah Data Center.  The NSA in early 2011 began construction of this center, where all information can be stored and reviewed.  All information, emails, phone calls, Google searches purchases made by credit card and more, will be routed to this center.   According to the article, the purpose of this 2 billion dollar project is “ to intercept, decipher, analyze and store immense information of the world communication. Foreign and Domestic.”  This was built to help the intelligence community fight cyber security.  The intelligence community will also use this to fight terrorism.  The center will house super computers that are capable of cracking any code.  This includes information that has been encrypted by people for privacy protection.  These computers will look for keywords and patterns used in communication.  If a keyword is discovered that piece of information will be looked into, and its creator will be searched.  The center will be capable of storing all the information that anyone creates.  The intelligence community will essentially have a portfolio of everyone that uses communication.

This of course violates privacy, but the NSA and U.S government have found ways around that.  I believe systems like this will change the rules of society.  Since we live in a world of terrorism, our world of laws will change to fit the new world.  I also believe this new center, and other surveillance by the government, is used like the system of stop and frisk talked of in class.  The NSA will notice something about a person’s communication, that person gets flagged, and their profile searched. If it comes up clean they are forgotten, if not then more information will be collected of that person.  This is what happened to me, I was flagged, searched, and once they realized I was not a threat, they let me go.

Homeless People’s Bill of Rights

By: Catherine Hall

If you didn’t realize it while reading the “Banished” book, homeless people are disproportionately criminalized and negatively affected by our law enforcement and justice systems. 

In “Banished”, Beckett & Herbert discuss how people are given stay-away orders that demand they do not trespass into certain areas of a city, often disrupting their daily lives and their necessary activities. This tactic of dealing with unwanted people is not new, nor is it geographically restricted to the Pacific Northwest. One can draw the comparison between Seattle and its equally liberally-leaning California counterpart, Berkeley. Like Seattle, we here in the East Bay have struggled with our own anti-homeless laws, most poignantly Measure S (perhaps more commonly known as Sit/Lie). As Captain Upson said in his talk, Measure S was defeated in November - but let me qualify that by saying it was barely defeated, and with the probability of again being a bone of contention on our ballot next time around. The clash between Berkeley storeowners and the homeless population is intense and definitely not going away anytime soon. 

To be fair, I get it: seeing the visibly homeless makes you uncomfortable. It reminds you of all those frightening rumors your roommate told you about physical assaults perpetrated by the People’s Park community. It makes you clutch your purse a little tighter as you walk by, and hope that no one asks you for the change you might have at the bottom of your backpack. It brings out the inequalities that exist within our system, a system that has been proven to be exponentially more divided along class lines as time progresses. And honestly, no one likes the pungent stench of an unbathed body that has been victim to the natural elements for days without a shower or toilet. 

Stay-away orders and Sit/Lie laws are just two of the many ways local governments attempt to sweep people who are homeless out of their districts. Some cities have been known to provide one-way bus tickets out of town, and others prefer to make the social act of sharing food illegal. But all of these legal “solutions” are really just bandaids that move the untouchables to another location for another government to deal with. In no way do they get at the root causes of homelessness, consequently perpetuating the vicious cycle that a homeless person must face as they try to find a place to simply exist. 

“Why don’t they just go sleep in a shelter?” “Why don’t they go find a bathroom to use?” “Why don’t they go hang out at the shelter so they don’t have to sit on the sidewalks?” The answer is simple: the resources do not currently exist. Shelters do not provide enough beds to house every person who is homeless. And even if they did, many shelters have rules and regulations that restrict a person’s way of life, like mandatory get-out times and curfews which make it difficult to have your own schedule. Public bathrooms are few and far between, some even cost a few coins, and most storeowners often will not allow you to use the bathroom unless you buy something from them. Many shelters are not open during the day, for lack of funding or for other reasons, so clients are mandated to be somewhere else even if they have no place to go. A person must first be provided with the opportunity to legally participate in life-sustaining activities, like spending daytime or sleeping in a shelter or using a bathroom to relieve bodily functions, before they are criminalized for doing so. If not, their very existence is made illegal. 

To respond to all of this, the California Homeless Person’s Bill of Rights, or AB5, is a new piece of legislation that would protect people who are homeless from being unfairly discriminated against by our law enforcement and justice systems. The original authors, homelessness advocacy organizations like Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) and Jericho, got their inspiration from Rhode Island, where a Homeless Bill of Rights was passed just this last summer. It is currently being backed by State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a democrat from San Francisco. 

A December 4^th article from the Berkeley Daily Planet, part of which I quote here, clearly describes the main points of AB5 - “The Act would guarantee homeless people freedom from discrimination in law enforcement, employment, housing and shelter, and public benefits. It protects people’s right to use public space, to keep personal property, and to engage in life-sustaining activities. It also guarantees people the right to counsel in any case where they’re being prosecuted.” Importantly, it would establish the need for public hygiene centers so that people could take care of business in a clean and private manner (one thing that I am skeptical about, though, is where funding for this project would come from, considering our debt-ridden state…). 

Currently, there are several debates surrounding a few key parts of the bill, two of which I include here because I find them to be the most important. In the most recent version of the bill that came back from Tom Ammiano's office, it is stipulated that local laws would supersede the Bill. So for example, if Measure S had passed in Berkeley, the passage of the Bill in its current form would still allow enforcement of no sitting and lying on the sidewalks. Obviously, this knocks out the teeth of the Bill and would most likely cause local municipalities to hurriedly create a myriad of local anti-homeless laws. Second, there is a very valid debate surrounding the fact that having a Bill of Rights for a specific category of our population is unfair and gives certain privileges and protections to those within that category. As an LA Times article asserts, it “essentially turns the homeless into a protected class”. That would be fair to say if people who are homeless were on an equal level to those who are housed - but they are not, and therefore their right to exist must be protected.

Deterring the Undeterrable: Targeting the Marginalized

By: Christina A. Henriquez

The policies of policing and surveilling the marginalized people discussed in Gilliom’s Overseers of the Poor and Beckett and Herbert’s Banished are depicted as policy failures. These policies fail in part because they aim at deterring the undeterrable. Deterrence depends on the idea that a rational actor calculates his costs and benefits of a certain action in order to decide whether he should take that action. Deterrence works by raising the expected costs of an action above the expected benefits. This can occur by either raising the costs of certain actions or increasing the likelihood of being caught and punished for doing those actions. But in order for deterrence to work there must be an alternative action, so when the cost of the undesirable action exceeds the cost of the alternative, the alternative will be taken. However, most of those who are banished or resort to welfare aid do not perceive they have a viable alternative.                                        

These deterrent policies have a minimal chance of working; they merely increase the costs of the only choice the marginalized have. Beckett and Herbert found the policy of banishment to be effective only in cases where people could avoid entering the restricted areas, when there was an alternative. However, both welfare recipients and the banished described their actions as necessary because they lacked an alternative. Welfare moms needed more money to survive on welfare because survival on welfare was impossible. The banished needed the crucial services provided by the restricted areas. They lacked an alternative; they perceived their only choice was violating the policies surveilling and policing them.

These deterrent policies were also ineffective because they aimed at some irrational actors, on whom deterrence would not work. Part of the population targeted widely by these banishment policies referred to by Beckett and Herbert are the mentally ill; which are, by definition, incapable of fully rational calculations. The U. S. Supreme Court applied this analysis  in recent cases regarding the death penalty for actors who are not considered to be fully rational. 

The U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down the death penalty in instances where it would not deter crime meriting capital punishment. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for juveniles as unconstitutional in part because deterrence could not be expected to work on juvenile offenders in the same way as it does on adults. Imposing the death penalty would be a cruel and unusual punishment because it would lack justification; it would be ineffective as a policy. Justice Kennedy, delivering the opinion of the Court, cites an amicus brief which provides evidence that juveniles often act irrationally because of their lessened mental capabilities. The Court views this decision as an extension of its 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia where it revealed that executing the mentally ill is unconstitutional. The New York Times has an article describing both of these decisions. 

A new approach is needed to control unwanted behavior if the deterrent approach does not work. Beckett and Herbert suggest addressing the underlying issues causing the problems.

Unmanned Drones Flying Over Campus

By: Celene Garnica

In a recent article by Fox News, I was astonished to find that more and more higher education institutions such as Georgia Tech and Cornell University, to name just a couple, are and have been filing for permits to fly unmanned drones above school grounds with the Federal Aviation Administration.

The most amazing part about this story is that the reasons listed for flying the unmanned drones are mainly scientifically based. Over all, these institutions list reasons that sound as simple and innocent such as “to collect atmosphere and weather data”  however, to me, the possible ulterior motives are still lingering up in the air (pardon the pun.) According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) they had to file suit with the department of Transportation (DOT) demanding the data as to the real number of filings and the specific reasons listed for the filing of permits to fly the unmanned aircrafts. 

As we have learned in this class, we must strive to analyze and ultimately understand the real reasons and implications of such actions, especially if and when pubic funds are being utilized for such efforts. Another disturbing point this article claims is that most students of these institutions may not be aware of these fillings or the reasons rendered.

According to the same article, in 2012, 80 permits were filed with the Federal Aviation Administration. Amazingly enough, 34 of them were from higher education institutions.

As we have learned thus far, surveillance is now a big part of our society and our lives in this country. The question is: Where do we stop? As we have also learned from our reading materials such as the Gilliom and Monahan readings, to some, surveillance is not longer a luxury but also a necessity. And so it seems our higher learning institutions feel the same way.

Do You Trust The Police?

By: Genesis Garcia

Something that was discussed in the Zimring reading was an aggressive stop or Terry stop. These types of stops are supposed to be proactive and are supposed to be targeted towards individuals who look suspicious or threatening. However, the problem with this is that the main targets are young men who are mainly Black and Latino. It is critiqued as a way of racially profiling someone. It is also critiqued as being unfair and prejudiced.

In the article, The Impact of Stop and Frisk Policies Upon Police Legitimacy, by Tom Tyler and Jeffrey Fagan, it is shown that stop and frisks that are done “wrongly” actually hurt the police force instead of benefitting them. It is understandable why police would want to stop someone who looks suspicious and that may commit a crime, but it is important for police to do it with respect and politeness (of course if the one being stopped also cooperates). Tyler and Fagan use other research to prove that when police act rude, the attitudes of how the public feels about them become negative. Their legitimacy and credibility is reduced. Drawing from my own experience, I recently went to a retreat and one of the activities was to have everyone line up in a horizontal line. One person would ask a series of questions and depending on our answer we would have to step forward or step back. One of the questions was if we believed the police acted in a respectful manner and if help was needed, we could trust in the police. Alas, about a handful of people out of thirty stepped forward saying they agreed with the statement. While this in no way represents the general public, it does lead to questions of why the police are not trusted so much. Stop and frisks may not be the entire reason, but they definitely have something to do with the mistrust.

Police can try to garner positive reactions from the public through acting respectfully, being able to have a reason for the stop, and being sensitive to concerns. When the police act in such a manner, the community is more likely to feel secure and heard. The public also is more likely to comply with the law and be wiling to cooperate with the police. Additionally, in this article it is stressed that when coming up with policies, such as that of Terry stops, the police must consider various points. It should of course consider whether this would aid in their goal of crime suppression, but also must consider how these policies will affect the public perceives the police’s legitimacy.

What is your opinion of the Terry stops? Do you feel that if you’re ever in need of help the police are reliable to seek? Finally, do you have any other ways in which police can garner more legitimacy?