Loss of Privacy

From the New York Times:

An overlapping array of justices were divided on the rationale for the decision, with the majority saying the problem was the placement of the device on private property.

But five justices also discussed their discomfort with the government’s use of or access to various modern technologies, including video surveillance in public places, automatic toll collection systems on highways, devices that allow motorists to signal for roadside assistance, location data from cellphone towers and records kept by online merchants.

You can read the opinion at the supreme court [pdf] .

The Nelson County Sheriff’s department in North Dakota were tasked with finding six missing cows on a farm, but were chased off by three men with rifles. Sheriff Kelly Janke was afraid of a standoff with the three men, so he went for overkill in calling for help.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

This wasn’t the first time the police have used drones in the area either.

Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

These drones are setting a dangerous precedent in allowing military drones to cross the lines into civilian use.

The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.

Officials in charge of the fleet cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that cite “interior law enforcement support” as part of their mission.

Though it hasn’t been widely publicized, the increased use of spy drones on US citizens should be a concern. There was no public debate on the use of drones and no one quite knows what legal authority they operate under.

In 2008 and 2010, Harman helped beat back efforts by Homeland Security officials to use imagery from military satellites to help domestic terrorism investigations. Congress blocked the proposal on grounds it would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from taking a police role on U.S. soil.

Given the fact that a spy drone could watch a single individual for up to twenty hours at a time should concern citizens.

“Any time you have a tool like that in the hands of law enforcement that makes it easier to do surveillance, they will do more of it,” said Ryan Calo, director for privacy and robotics at the Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.

Because law enforcement is keen to use spy drones without any public input or discussion, it is almost a given that it will be misused and overused.

The story of Sheriff Janke on the Brossart farm is a prime example of misuse.

The six adult Brossarts allegedly belonged to the Sovereign Citizen Movement, an anti-government group that the FBI considers extremist and violent. The family had repeated run-ins with local police, including the arrest of two family members earlier that day arising from their clash with a deputy over the cattle.

So, the sheriff automatically jumped the gun and said an armed standoff was currently occurring, which it was not. The drone then watched the Brossarts for four hours before the sheriff withdrew until daybreak. They returned the next morning.

Around 10 a.m., the video showed the three Brossart brothers riding all-terrain vehicles toward a decommissioned Minuteman ballistic missile site at the edge of their property. The sensor operator in Grand Forks switched to thermal mode, and the image indicated the three men were unarmed.

A SWAT team then moved in and arrested the unarmed men.

A search of the property turned up four rifles, two shotguns, assorted bows and arrows and a samurai sword, according to court records. Police also found the six missing cows, valued at $6,000.

Rodney Brossart, his daughter Abby and his three sons face a total of 11 felony charges, including bail jumping and terrorizing a sheriff, as well as a misdemeanor count against Rodney involving the stray cattle. All have been released on bail. Calls to Rodney Brossart were not returned Saturday. The family is believed to be living on the farm.

If one looks at this case objectively, many questions remain. Why did the sheriff not explain that someone else’s cows had strayed onto the Brossart property? It is likely that, given that it is rumored the Brossarts belong to Sovereign Citizens Movement, they’ve had run-ins with the law before. This probably makes them automatically hostile to the sheriff.

What does it matter that the family owns a few hunting weapons. They live in rural North Dakota and probably hunt as well as use their guns for protection from wild animals. Consider that six people live on the farm, are roughly ten to twelve weapons and unreasonable find?

Why is Rodney Brossart facing a misdemeanor charge concerning the stray cattle? Exactly what is the charge? Why is anyone being charged with anything concerning the stray cattle?

What are the eleven felony charges? They story doesn’t list them or explain what the charges are. Why is Rodney also being charged with terrorizing a sheriff? Did he do more than tell the sheriff to get off his land? We don’t know. We simply know that the Brossarts are bad guys because the police and the newspapers are telling us that they are.

There are still too many questions not reported in the news to determine why the Brossarts were arrested at all. What is abundantly clear is that civilian police departments are far too willing to encroach on civil liberties and private spaces to do their jobs properly. Spy drones are now normal on America’s northern and southern borders and they’re quickly moving into everyday life with alarming frequency. North Dakota seems to think this is okay. Do you?

The FBI is adding facial scanning, iris scanning, and palm scanning to its biometrics databases at the Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS) and its getting some help from the DOD to accomplish this mission.

CJIS is responsible for information repositories–such as the National Crime Information Center, the Interstate Identification Index, and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System–that provide law-enforcement officers with real-time data on people’s criminal history, stolen property, missing persons, and other information.

The additional biometric information will be added to the system that can already track fingerprints.

CJIS processes about 140,000 requests a day through the system, double the number it could handle on a good day a few years ago, he said. Moreover, the algorithm is allowing the FBI to match fingerprints at 99% accuracy versus 92%, which was the previous norm.

The FBI also added facial-recognition and iris-scan systems to its biometrics matching system–which is gradually replacing its predecessor, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System–and next year will be able to match palm prints for the first time, he said.

To further its work in biometrics, the FBI is teaming with the Department of Defense to build a Biometrics Technology Center on its FBI campus in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Cutherbertson said. The center, which will focus on research to advance biometrics technology, is due to be completed in spring of 2014. “It will be a tremendous resource to carry us into the future,” Cutherbertson said.

With the inclusion of multiple points of biometric data, the FBI hopes to improve security at home. The research conducted at the new Biometrics Technology Center will also allow the FBI to accomplish one of its other goals, biometrically identifying individuals on the internet.

Shopper Tracker does just what it says it does, track shoppers as they move throughout the grocery store. The new twist in this tracker is that it uses a Microsoft Kinect to do so.

It analyzes customer movements to provide traffic flow analysis and heat maps indicating which shelves are attracting shoppers and which products they touch or take. This can be tied to conversion data by product SKU to help merchants optimize where products are placed within their stores.

To attain similar market research, merchants typically have to pay observers or use equipment and surveys that are expensive, inaccurate, and influence the behavior of the people they’re studying. With Shopper Tracker, multiple shoppers can be simultaneously tracked around the clock. As it doesn’t cost much more to conduct longer studies, merchants can get more confident results and do A/B testing.

The data can then be used by the store to determine which items are more popular and why customers go to a particular item, but never purchase it. The system is also capable of tracking multiple people simultaneously.

Shopper Tracker: tracking real world conversions like web analytics from Administrator Agile Route on Vimeo.

All the following metrics and reports can be filtered for any date/time range.

Visitors: people that are detected in the tracking zone. Associated metrics:
Visits and Visit duration

Zones: places where Visitors may physically be (e.g.: right in front of a particular part of the shelf). Associated metrics:
% Visitors through Zone and Average time in Zone

Area: a 3 dimensional space containing products the Visitor may touch (e.g.: an imaginary box right in front of one particular SKU in the shelf)
Event: an Event occurs when a Visitor touches an Area in the shelf. Associated metrics:
Total Events and Events per Area
Average Event time
Visits with Event and Events / Visit Ratio

Conversion: grabbing a product from an Area (requires image captures post-processing). Associated metrics:
Conversions and Conversions per Area
Average Conversion time
Conversions / Events
Visits with Conversion and Conversion / Visit

Goals: grabbing a SKU of interest (e.g.: own product SKU). Associated metrics:
Goal Funnels
Product traction

Other type of reports: Heat Maps
Available reports:
- Visitor transit paths
- Visitor touch location in the shelf
- Conversion locations in the shelf