Discover Top Posts Tagged with #your every move

Records show police agencies tap license-plate readers hundreds of thousands of times a year.

Then in May 2012, detectives turned to a new Automatic License Plate Reader system. ALPRs use digital cameras attached to buildings, street lights, and patrol cars to snap photos of passing cars. Computer-vision technology can determine the make and model of the car, and “read” the license plate—turning public streets into massive databases of almost every car on the road.

(...)The analysis was made possible by software provided by Palantir, Peter Thiel’s shadowy intelligence startup. The LAPD was one of Palantir’s first local law enforcementcustomers, after it had cut its teeth on Pentagon, CIA, and NSA contracts. Since signing with Palantir in 2009, the LAPD has spent more than $20 million on its software and hardware. Documents obtained through a public-records request suggest at least $5.8 million of that went to ALPR technologies.

(...)Together, the three departments make hundreds of thousands of searches a year.

It’s hard to put that number in perspective, because there are few statistics on police use of license plate readers. However, Peter Bibring, director of police practices for the American Civil Liberties Union of California, considers the total “enormous.” He says it shows that it is now standard practice for officers to use ALPR “as a surveillance tool” even when “officers have no reason to believe a driver was involved in any criminal activity.”

(...)Such systems traditionally have been used by law enforcement to help locate stolen vehicles. But when ALPR data is stored for years and then integrated with analytical systems like Palantir, it becomes much more powerful—and potentially open to abuse.

(...)In its latest version that went live in May 2016, called ALPR 2.0 or TBird, Palantir’s ALPR system requires users to enter a specific case number, and to select a purpose for each search via a pulldown menu. “The broad language for categorizing searches suggests that no indication of criminality is required to make a query,” says the ACLU’s Bibring. “If that’s the case, it’s basically the Wild West for when officers can query millions of data points.” Neither Palantir nor the LAPD responded to multiple requests for comment on this story.

(...)Palantir used automobile image classification software from a Los Angeles-based startup called Intrinsics.

The ACLU’s Bibring says AI technology can be unreliable, and that agencies that use such systems should be “very clear to the public and to their oversight bodies what kind of surveillance they’re using, and what policies they have in place to protect against abuse.”

Critics of ALPR say that the technology expands the net of Big Data surveillance. “Even though ALPRs are dragnet surveillance tools that collect information on everyone, rather than merely those under suspicion, the likelihood of being inputted into the system is not randomly distributed,” writes Brayne of the University of Texas. “Minority individuals and individuals in poor neighborhoods have a higher probability of being in the … surveillance net than do people in neighborhoods where the police are not conducting data-intensive forms of policing.”

LAPD remains committed to ALPR and to Palantir. In 2016, it signed a $2.9 million contract to upgrade TBird to ALPR 2.1, with unspecified new features. Palantir is reported to be considering a public offering next year, at a valuation above $35 billion.

#palantir #los angeles #usa #policing #your every move #privacy #data protection #license-plate #license-plate readers #peter thiel #lapd #alpr #automatic license plate reader system #ALPR 2.0 #TBird #Intrinsics #ALPR 2.1 #new features

Your Every Move

Your every move. Born into a world of lenses, scrutinized. Your every move. Differing from others around you, invalidated. Your every move. Terror grasps your throat in the bathroom, Immobilized. You cannot move. To eat today means to purge it all later, Weakening. You can barely move. You've made yourself a unique prison, Incarcerated. You can not move. You've harmed yourself in others interests. Humiliated. Your every move. You slick your fingers with your own vomit, Emaciated. You can barely move. Your throat is sore and your teeth are rotten, All for what? You haven't moved. Your writhing body is frail and broken. All for nothing. You should have moved. Don't let this world define your beauty. Resurrected. You have to move.

#writing #original #your every move #poetry #body #image #self love #depresion #eating #disorder #words

Nameless; you know who you are.

You're a terrible friend. I had forgotten. I do this a lot, where I expect that if I treat another with courtesy and kindness, I should anticipate the same. I did this with our love as well. I had forgotten I was watering the same dead plant. I need to stop pretending like you will, or ever have given a damn about anyone aside from your personal 'gains' which really only set you further back than you realize.

#Psychoanalyzing #your every move #well now I'm finished