From: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: FC: Cops spy on Denver citizens, now plan to create a database Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/ X-Author: Declan McCullagh is at http://www.mccullagh.org/ X-News-Site: Cluebot is at http://www.cluebot.com/
--- From: "Danny Yavuzkurt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Yet another... Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 06:24:14 -0500 Here's another article in a seemingly endless series of disclosures of government snooping, this one about the (well-deserved) embarrassment the Denver Police Department has suffered after it began sharing secretly collected data it's been keeping since the 50s.. seems some 3,400 files were being kept (on index cards, in a file cabinet) on people the PD defined as being 'suspicious', including the Nobel-prizewinning American Friends Service Committee (classified as 'criminal extremists'), supposedly 'troubled' students in local public schools (minors who had committed no crimes - I wonder if in future questioning the war on terror will qualify one as 'troubled'?), humanitarian nun groups, and, shamefully enough, a Japanese-American citizen who was detained in WWII - I guess the government just couldn't let the poor woman alone, given her *suspicious ancestry* and *habit of going to protests* (as if she didn't have more than enough reason to already!) And though the PD had specific guidelines prohibiting such spying on 'ordinary citizens not suspected of criminal wrongdoing,' they were never put into effect.. and presumably, the surveillance would have continued unabated had the Denver PD not made the mistake of beginning to share the data with other nearby PDs with less questionable morals - some anonymous whistleblower (no pun intended) dropped a printout of some of these secret records off at a coffee shop (before an Amnesty International meeting, coincidentally enough), for a local man who, along with his wife, was wrongfully surveilled - and, sure enough, he took the docs to the ACLU and sued.. which started turning up skeletons in the closet dating waaay back.. Also, as the article points out, it was only recently that the Denver PD decided to start filing their data electronically (since, literally, their cabinet of illegally obtained data was overflowing..) - and here's another connection to the federal government - they bought a system from Orion Scientific Systems (http://www.orionsci.com - their motto should be 'reach for the sky,' not 'reach for the stars') *which got its start developing software for DARPA 20 years ago*.. the article says the software they peddled to PDs was a 'revamped version' of what they'd developed for the Pentagon, with DARPA's help.. and I wouldn't be surprised if some of this software, with 'criminal extremists' as one of the default classifications for records, was being used by other departments around the country already.. in fact, the article says NYC just paid almost $750K for a new version of OSS's software.. according to Orion's website, the software is "a database application which provides the investigator with a comprehensive analytic tool for tracking and analyzing crimes based on information collected about Events, Groups, Individuals, and Vehicles that are related to a crime scene".. but apparently it's just as useful for filing data about people whether or not they're related to crimes.. just like many tools, I'm sure this is useful and beneficial in the right hands, but I'm not sure the police of Denver - or New York, and certainly not LA - are those 'right hands', given their track records.. Finally, I think we should note that this kind of surveillance may become more widespread in future, as more and more police departments are looking to change the laws and guidelines that prohibit them from collecting data on people not suspected of existing crimes.. as noted in the New York Times almost two weeks ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/national/10PRIV.html, I think I submitted this before..) -Danny -- "Intended only for lawful uses." -HP Computer Advert
