We all know that law enforcement has a serious Jonesing for new technology. They must spend an awful lot of time surfing Engadget and reading spy thrillers. It is way easier to get grant money for futuristic weapons and spy gadgets than it is to get salary to pay for new officers.
Hennepin County (my county) has decided to curb the fuzz’s techno-lust by shooting down a request for a new gadget. The Hennepin County Board voted 4 – 3 to not approve a request for a Kingfish cell phone tracking system. Not to worry though because the local lovable branch of the FBI will gladly let Hennepin County its’ Kingfisher system anytime it is available.
My guess is that we have not heard the last of this. There are always ways to go around the vote of the County Board. Also with the vote being 4-3 all Sheriff Rich Stanek needs to do is get one member to side with him and everything is a go.
If you still doubt that aerial drones, similar to ones used in military combat missions, will never be used at home then think again. Recent accounts of British police using them during criminal pursuits and large demonstrations are popping up weekly. There has been very little in the way of announcements from these police departments as I’m sure they fear public backlash. This method of testing new technology and then setting policy latter is a dangerous precedent for police tactics.
Police departments keep very quiet until they have documented evidence of their new tools having caught some horrific crime. They then go on the marketing offensive, touting cost savings and the safety they will bring to officers. Like CCTV these drones will be an even easier sell here in the US because of the boost these sectors will bring to the economy. People who come out against these new systems will be labeled as anti-law enforcement or even anarchists.
Before the police have the chance to roll out such tools we need to be proactive in our opposition to such tools. These drones are not flying at 10,000 ft like their military cousins but able drop down and look in windows of houses. The real push will come from the private sector which stands to make millions of dollars in the sale of these devices to local law enforcement.
It must be nice to be Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher. He is a kid in a candy store. Over the last couple of years he has been able to fulfill his techno lust for every crime fighting device imaginable.
First he is having money thrown at him to protect the Republican National Convention and now he is given grants to install spy systems that he doesn’t even have a plan for.
The RNC allowed him to outnumber anarchists 100 – 1, with the most frightening show of force that the mid-west has ever seen. With his share of the military convention budget he was able to stockpile enough weapons, armor, chemicals and vehicles to stop a modern day Visigoth invasion.
Now he is putting up cameras around the county without a plan to monitor them. These CCTV systems have been shown by studies and experts to be a questionable expense in fighting crime. But money is no object when we talking about descent.
I’m sure next year there will be opportunities for Sheriff Bob to broaden his toolbox to include drone planes.
It is a slippery slope and allowing cameras now will only show precedence when the next technology comes along.
The FBI is about to expand on it’s shared fingerprint database and give law enforcement access to a full arsenal of biometric identifiers. Network World has an article that show the great expanse the FBI is about to go through in their identification processing.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is expanding beyond its traditional fingerprint-focused collection practices to develop a new biometrics system that will include DNA records, 3-D facial imaging, palm prints and voice scans, blended to create what’s known as “multi-modal biometrics.”
Here are a few more details:
The next-generation FBI database system is under design by MorphoTrak and is expected to include DNA, iris scans, advanced 3-D facial imaging and voice scans among its multi-modal biometrics. Lower turnaround times for delivering information over wide-area networks are planned. The goal is to drop from a roughly two-hour response time for IAFIS urgent requests to less than 10 minutes.
The Hungry Hacker has a great list of text you can search for, using Google, to find accessible security cameras. They title of their blog post, “How to Hack into a Security Camera?”, is slightly misleading as you can’t do much more than move the camera around. You don’t have any administrative controls over it.
