• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied on a Whole City

BobStackFan4Life

BobStackFan4Life

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 17, 2011
Messages
31,661
Reaction score
1,538
This did not involve drones but a civilian aircraft, though I imagine with the increasing ubiquity of drones it will be even easier and cheaper in the future.
In a secret test of mass surveillance technology, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department sent a civilian aircraft over Compton, California, capturing high-resolution video of everything that happened inside that 10-square-mile municipality.

Compton residents weren't told about the spying, which happened in 2012. "We literally watched all of Compton during the times that we were flying, so we could zoom in anywhere within the city of Compton and follow cars and see people," Ross McNutt of Persistence Surveillance Systems told the Center for Investigative Reporting, which unearthed and did the first reporting on this important story. The technology he's trying to sell to police departments all over America can stay aloft for up to six hours. Like Google Earth, it enables police to zoom in on certain areas. And like TiVo, it permits them to rewind, so that they can look back and see what happened anywhere they weren't watching in real time.

If it's adopted, Americans can be policed like Iraqis and Afghanis under occupation–and at bargain prices:

McNutt, who holds a doctorate in rapid product development, helped build wide-area surveillance to hunt down bombing suspects in Iraq and Afghanistan. He decided that clusters of high-powered surveillance cameras attached to the belly of small civilian aircraft could be a game-changer in U.S. law enforcement.

“Our whole system costs less than the price of a single police helicopter and costs less for an hour to operate than a police helicopter,” McNutt said. “But at the same time, it watches 10,000 times the area that a police helicopter could watch.”

A sargeant in the L.A. County Sheriff's office compared the technology to Big Brother, which didn't stop him from deploying it over a string of necklace snatchings.

Sgt. Douglas Iketani acknowledges that his agency hid the experiment to avoid public opposition. "This system was kind of kept confidential from everybody in the public,"he said. "A lot of people do have a problem with the eye in the sky, the Big Brother, so to mitigate those kinds of complaints we basically kept it pretty hush hush." That attitude ought to get a public employee summarily terminated.
Click to expand...
He later explains that while the public may think its against this, we'll get used to it:

I'm sure that once people find out this experiment went on they might be a little upset. But knowing that we can't see into their bedroom windows, we can't see into their pools, we can't see into their showers. You know, I'm sure they'll be okay with it. With the amount of technology out in today's age, with cameras in ATMs, at every 7/11, at every supermarket, pretty much every light poll, all the license plate cameras, the red light cameras, people have just gotten used to being watched.

The CIR story reports that no police department has yet purchased this technology, not because the law enforcement community is unwilling to conduct mass surveillance of their fellow citizens without first gaining the public's consent, but because the cameras aren't yet good enough to identify the faces of individuals. It's hard to imagine that next technological barrier won't be broken soon.
Click to expand...
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/04/sheriffs-deputy-compares-drone-surveillance-of-compton-to-big-brother/360954/
 
And of course this test wasn't done over affluent communities like Bel Air or Beverly Hills.
 
BobStackFan4Life said:
And of course this test wasn't done over affluent communities like Bel Air or Beverly Hills.
Click to expand...

This is hardly anything new. Here in the bastion of the RW, it is not unusual at all to see helicopters watching from the sky. Hell in the UK there are CCtV cameras on almost every corner.
 
RJKarl said:
This is hardly anything new. Here in the bastion of the RW, it is not unusual at all to see helicopters watching from the sky. Hell in the UK there are CCtV cameras on almost every corner.
Click to expand...

We call them ghetto birds in the hood.
 
They used drones to try to track the guy who killed a cop and couple of others in OC and fled to Big Bear. Monte Carlo has had cameras on every street for over thirty years.
 
RJKarl said:
They used drones to try to track the guy who killed a cop and couple of others in OC and fled to Big Bear. Monte Carlo has had cameras on every street for over thirty years.
Click to expand...

So you're okay with this type of mass surveillance? Should it be directed at all citizens or just the poorer communites?
 
HB ain't exactly a poor community. Lots of weekends there are choppers up there.

If you don't the Beverly Hills PD doesn't have access to cameras you are being naive.

Do I like it ? No, but it's reality. You can't turn the hands of technology back.
 
RJKarl said:
HB ain't exactly a poor community. Lots of weekends there are choppers up there.

If you don't the Beverly Hills PD doesn't have access to cameras you are being naive.

Do I like it ? No, but it's reality. You can't turn the hands of technology back.
Click to expand...
I'm talking about the surveillance done in the original post.
 
As they said in the article, cameras are already nearly ubiquitous. I really don't think drones will be used that much due to cost. Remember, you still have to have live people to watch the feeds.
 
RJKarl said:
HB ain't exactly a poor community. Lots of weekends there are choppers up there.

If you don't the Beverly Hills PD doesn't have access to cameras you are being naive.

Do I like it ? No, but it's reality. You can't turn the hands of technology back.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but what bsf4l posted is some Batman shit. I know we are in a surveillance state, but that is too far IMO. Democracy...
 
RJKarl said:
As they said in the article, cameras are already nearly ubiquitous. I really don't think drones will be used that much due to cost. Remember, you still have to have live people to watch the feeds.
Click to expand...

i'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, but this is what fascist states do.
 
People think it exists already. It sucks but it's the way it is.

Hey, maybe you could open a costume shop in Compton. Everyone could wear masks.
 
RJKarl said:
Like the UK, Germany and Monaco?
Click to expand...

Yep.

It's telling that you never see these types of surveillance tactics open for public debate. I wonder how this kind of thing would do as a ballot measure...
 
In the places I named they would pass overwhelmingly.

Hell in Germany, they have no problem with allowing the government to take the car registration fees from their bank account if they haven't paid and are late.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top