ES&S machines are not reliable and have a dubious history. When Diebold was caught tampering with election results, they changed their name to Premier Election Services. PES was later bought out by ES&S.
There were also discrepancies in the Monroe County, Alabama voting. In several precincts, the exact same number of votes were cast. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s just easier today to discover the vote rigging that is going on.
British police intend on keeping track of and gathering personal information suspected radicals and political activists in the UK. The initiative was intended to gather data on radicalization and recruitment into Islamic terrorist groups, but has now spread to other organizations.
Political activists who have no association with terrorism could now find themselves monitored by authorities mandated to discover information about their friends, family, neighbours, political beliefs, use of the internet and even psychological traits.
Police and security agencies have agreed to monitor “agents” who adhere to ideologies potentially involving violence. The documents define targets for the surveillance as people involved in “extreme right/left, Islamist, nationalist, anti-globalisation” groups.
Europol, a EU law enforcement agency, has been asked to produce a list of people involved in either promoting such groups, or in trying to recruit members.
The problem with these measures is that anyone can be identified as someone with ideologies potentially involving violence. It is far too broad a category.
The UK government has also been criticised over Prevent, a programme aimed at stopping Muslims being lured into violent extremism. The initiative was branded a mass surveillance project after it was found it was being used to gather intelligence on innocent people who were not suspected of involvement in terrorism.
Essentially, Prevent received a lot of bad press, as it should have, and the British government is now doing the same thing just under an EU directive.
Under the new, approved, EU scheme, states have acquired a 70-question list on “agents of radicalisation” under their watch. Much of the information presumes a high-degree of intrusive monitoring, obtainable only via covert surveillance techniques, such as phone tapping.
It is assumed, for example, that law enforcement agencies will obtain information about a person’s “feelings” about a group that could be “considered as the enemy”. One section asks for information about “oral comments” made by targets, while others ask about religious knowledge, behaviour, and socio-economic status.
Under “relevant psychological traits”, law enforcement agencies are asked to collate and share information on “psychological disorders, charismatic personality, weak personality, etc”. Another question asks: “Is there a prior relationship between the agents? Schoolmates, friends, relatives, shared time in prison, etc.”
Really? They’re going to ask about your feelings? If they do that, I would be added to the list because my answers would put me on a list of people who want to destroy the government.
This system, like so many others, will be set forth as a means to prevent terrorism and it will be abused. It’s been done in the past and it will continue to be done. British citizens need to continue to point out how these schemes only alienate communities, just as they did with Prevent. It can be stopped and, hopefully, governments will stop trying to implement such ridiculous programs.
For the past few years, incidents of innocent citizens being arrested for taking photos of the police has been increasing. The police, apparently fear this more than being shot at or stabbed and believe that they can’t do their job if someone is watching them. Now, they want the right not to be photographed while in the course of doing their jobs.
Carlos Miller at the Photography Is Not A Crime website offers an explanation: “For the second time in less than a month, a police officer was convicted from evidence obtained from a videotape. The first officer to be convicted was New York City Police Officer Patrick Pogan, who would never have stood trial had it not been for a video posted on Youtube showing him body slamming a bicyclist before charging him with assault on an officer. The second officer to be convicted was Ottawa Hills (Ohio) Police Officer Thomas White, who shot a motorcyclist in the back after a traffic stop, permanently paralyzing the 24-year-old man.”
When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop.
It is highly hypocritical that the police have no problem filming ordinary citizens at their whim, however, they do not want the reverse to be done to them. Normal citizens are told every day that they should have no expectation of privacy in public, so why should to police be exempt from this policy as well?
The police are civil servants. If we do not watch them, who will? They get to carry a badge and a gun and get to tell people what they can and can’t do, the people get to film you. It’s that simple. If you do not like it, do not become a police officer. We are too far past the point of automatic trust. Until the police stop lying and become trustworthy, we should never take their word for what occurred.
The legal justification for arresting the “shooter” rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where “no expectation of privacy exists” (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.
If this is the case, how are cctv in stores exempt from this police? If you go in and rob a store, you have not given consent to be video taped. Is any video of you captured then inadmissible in court? I would be surprised if it wasn’t.
Happily, even as the practice of arresting “shooters” expands, there are signs of effective backlash. At least one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed the right to video in public places. As part of a settlement with ACLU attorneys who represented an arrested “shooter,” the police in Spring City and East Vincent Township adopted a written policy allowing the recording of on-duty policemen.
This should be happening in every state. If you are placed in a position of authority over people, there should be checks on your behavior and actions to ensure everyone is treated equally. It’s a start, but more people need to involved to change this nationwide.
You can start by writing to your senators and congressmen and ask them to draft a bill and pass it into law that would create a federal law allowing the recording of police officers.
Quietly, the New South Wales government in Australia has been collecting data on its citizens with the goal being a compilation of every person’s face in the country. The need for such a system is argued to be so that every CCTV camera can recognize an individual as soon as they are captured on CCTV.
Experts said yesterday few people realised their facial features were being recorded in an RTA database of drivers licence photos that the Government has allowed both state and federal police to access
The federal body CrimTrac has asked NSW for its database so it can be mined nationally by police using the facial recognition information contained in it.
Problems will arise from such a monumental undertaking as facial recognition is not anywhere near 100% accuracy.
University experts in facial recognition said the correct match rate was as low as 90 per cent, meaning the names of people with faces sharing a similar structure to criminals could be returned in searches.
Dr Carolyn Semmler from the University of Adelaide said police wanted to eventually use facial recognition in smart CCTV cameras allowing people to be tracked anywhere there was a camera.
While some may say that they don’t care if their information is collected so long as it prevents crime, a 90% accuracy rate is not good enough. This means that in large cities, such as London, up to 3000 people per day are wrongly identified. Will you still understand when the police barge in your house at 3am and make you and your children lie face down on the floor because you’ve been pegged as a pedophile, rapist, drug dealer or terrorist?
NSW Opposition police spokesman Mike Gallacher said most people were unaware their face had been mapped when they applied for or had their licences renewed, allowing them to potentially be tracked.
There is a fundamental problem with the government when they freely invade people’s privacy and then neglect to tell them that it is even happening. The RTA has been compiling this new database since last December, meaning that anyone who has renewed their license in that time has had their facial features mapped and placed into the database.
While this is being done in the name of national security and the prevention of using driver’s licenses fraudulently, it is a huge invasion of privacy. Before removing residents’ civil liberties, there should have been debate and discussion. Instead, the New South Wales government felt it necessary to not inform anyone of what was occurring. This is, most likely, because no one would have wanted it.
Couple the facial recognition to CCTV with the GO card, and ANPR and you’ve got a very nice system that can personally track you every single step of your day. Everyone hopes that none of this technology will be abused, however, we’ve seen time and again that it can and is on a regular basis.
I don’t intentionally break the law. I do everything possible to preserve my privacy, but being tracked and misidentified is not something I can control. I cannot trust those with the power to not abuse it, leaving me with the only recourse possible. Everyone needs to write to their MPs now while there’s still a chance to change things.
