Loss of Privacy

As if the TIPS program wasn’t bad enough, the LAPD now has a program called iWatch, which encourages others to report anything that doesn’t seem right.

“You report, let the police decide” is their mantra.  It is incredibly creepy and should be smacked out of existence as soon as possible.

By the way, the guy who says, “My name is Chris Matthews,” is lying.  He’s just an actor.  It’s likely that all the people in this video are actors who don’t really care about iWatch, the LAPD, and/or their communities.

If you see, hear or smell something suspicious … Report it

Can I report the LAPD or are they exempt from iWatch and will I get arrested for doing so?

It is absolutely insane to ask citizens to spy on their neighbors and report them for the slightest little thing.  I do not live in Ceauşescu’s Romania nor Stasi filled East Germany.  Then again, you already can’t make coffee in the nude at 530am in your own house because the neighbors call the cops on you.

I wish I had the guts to do this at the airport, but I turn into a wuss every time.

If researchers get their way, you may, one day, be able to walk through the airport as freely as you did before 9/11.  That’s the good news.  Unfortunately, it means that every single movement you make will be scrutinized, creating an even more disturbing airport experience than already exists.

The Homeland Security-funded project is Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST. Instead of focusing on whether you have hidden explosives or whether you’re carrying a weapon, sensors and cameras located at security checkpoints would measure the natural signals coming from your body — your heart rate, breathing, eye movement, body temperature and fidgeting.

Those physiological signs, measured together, will indicate whether you might have the desire or intent to do harm, project manager Robert Burns said.

Or, it could be something else.  You’re in an airport.  You’re afraid of flying.  You’re already freaking out.  Now, you freak out more about accidentally tripping the sensors, except you freaked out too much and did, indeed trip the sensors.

You could also be drunk, high, or smoking a cigarette.  These all alter your heart rate.

FAST could be used wherever there are special security concerns, including stadiums, convention centers, federal buildings, mass transit centers and airports.

Civil liberties groups maintain this screening technology is an invasion of privacy.

“Nobody has the right to look at my intimate bodily functions, my breathing, my perspiration rate, my heart rate, from afar,” said Joe Stanley of the ACLU.

While this is an invasion of privacy, it’s even more so when added to the fact that the airlines already keep a record of your race, sex, destination, length of vacation, what credit cards you use, and what’s in your luggage.  Now, you must ensure that you have the right emotions as you saunter through the airport.

Making people FEEL safe is not a good idea.  It’s security theater.  Invading people’s privacy only serves to piss them off.  We are guaranteed the right to be secure in our persons.  Using technology that may or may not detect perceived behavior is never a good idea.  Thinking something is not doing something.  If it were, I’d have murdered about 527 people by now.  I hate waiting on lines.  If I’m in line for more than five minutes.  The longer I wait, the angrier I get.  Every time I fly, I have about 15 people that I’d like to kill so I can get through the line quicker.

This program will, in the end, be used to profile “certain” individuals instead of being used for its intended purpose.  It’s just a way of hiding that fact.  A few drug traffickers are likely to be caught with this system and it will be hailed as a great device that everyone needs.  In the end, we’ll lose a little bit more of our privacy, having been subjected to naked xray body scans and behavioral scanning, but we’ll still believe we’re safe because nothing has blown up.  Using general measures to detect specific actions is flawed from the start and is why we should cut our losses while we can, lest we not learn from failed systems we’ve already spent millions on.

First, we had neighborhood watches.  They were designed to have neighbors keep an eye out for all the bad things that could happen while you were away.  Everyone thought it was a good thing.  Now, Los Angeles police Cmdr. Joan McNamara and police Chief William Bratton have developed iWatch, which they call their 21st century version of Neighborhood Watch.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association, headed by Bratton and composed of the chiefs of the 63 largest police departments in the U.S. and Canada, endorsed iWatch at the group’s conference Saturday.

Using brochures, public service announcements and meetings with community groups, iWatch is designed to deliver concrete advice on how the public can follow the oft-repeated post-Sept. 11 recommendation, “If you see something, say something.”
Program materials list nine types of suspicious behavior that should compel people to call police, and 12 kinds of places to look for it. Among the indicators:

–If you smell chemicals or other fumes.
–If you see someone wearing clothes that are too big and too heavy for the season.
–If you see strangers asking about building security.
–If you see someone purchasing supplies or equipment that could be used to make bombs.

The important places to watch include government buildings, mass gatherings, schools and public transportation.

You could be called a terrorist for watching these places too.  Not only are we supposed to stalk our neighbors’ every move, now we’re supposed to know all the components in making a bomb?  And how does knowing that information not make us suspected terrorists too?  How are we to prove that we only know this information because the government asked us to know it to find terrorists and that we aren’t terrorists ourselves?

The program also is designed to ease reporting by providing a toll-free number and Web page the public can use to alert authorities. Los Angeles put up its Web site this weekend.

We now have a toll-free number that will get people calling saying, “I saw a Muslim looking man asking about building security.”  The man ends up being harassed because he’s really Hindu and he was asking about building security because he was supposed to report there to pick up a badge that allowed him in a building.  People are going to use their own racism, stereotypes, biases, and bigotry to get innocent people into trouble with the law.

If someone reports something based on race or ethnicity, the police will not accept the report, and someone will explain to the caller why that is not an indicator of suspicious behavior, McNamara said.

Instead of reporting, “some Muslim looking guy” the person will just describe what the person is wearing.  Bias isn’t removed from the equation.  It’s just given a wink and a nudge and we pretend we aren’t being racist bastards.

The Bush Administration tried to do this with postal works, firemen, emergency workers, and others and it failed because it was too intrusive on individual privacy.  The fact is people hold too many biases to make informed decisions.  They are rash, jump to conclusions, and rarely gather and facts before accusing someone of being a terrorist.

People reporting things that are out of place is not a bad thing.  Encouraging people to scrutinize ever thing another human being does is.  We should have erred on the side of caution when initiating such a program instead of enlisting the help of normal, every day people who are not qualified or trained in dealing with the identification of who may or may not be a terrorist.