[Also submitted by Fred Heutte and others. --Declan] --- From: "Danny Yavuzkurt" <ayavuzkat_private> To: <declanat_private> 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 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/21/technology/21PRIV.html "December 21, 2002 Going Electronic, Denver Reveals Long-Term Surveillance By FORD FESSENDEN with MICHAEL MOSS DENVER, Dec. 14 - The Denver police have gathered information on unsuspecting local activists since the 1950's, secretly storing what they learned on simple index cards in a huge cabinet at police headquarters. When the cabinet filled up recently, the police thought they had an easy solution. For $45,000, they bought a powerful computer program from a company called Orion Scientific Systems. Information on 3,400 people and groups was transferred to software that stores, searches and categorizes the data. Then the trouble began. After the police decided to share the fruits of their surveillance with another local department, someone leaked a printout to an activist for social justice, who made the documents public. The mayor started an investigation. People lined up to obtain their files. Among those the police spied on were nuns, advocates for American Indians and church organizations. To make matters worse, the software called many of the groups "criminal extremists." "I wasn't threatened in any way by them watching," said Dr. Byron Plumley, who teaches religion and social values at Regis University in Denver, and discovered that the police had been keeping information about his activities against war. "But there's something different about having a file. If the police say, `Aha, he belongs to a criminal extremist organization,' who's going to know that it's the American Friends Service Committee, and we won the Nobel Peace Prize?" The incident has highlighted some pitfalls of police intelligence software, which has been hailed widely as a major tool in the war against terrorism. One of Orion's newest clients, in fact, is the New York City Police Department, where 200 people in the intelligence division are being trained to use the program, according to city records and Orion officials. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. 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