Meet the Private Companies Helping Cops Spy on Protesters

[G_j]

http://m.rollingstone.com/politics/news/meet-the-private-companies-helping-cops-spy-on-protesters-20131024

Meet the Private Companies Helping Cops Spy on Protesters

By JOHN KNEFEL | Oct 24, 2013 AT 03:16PM

The documents leaked to media outlets by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden this year have brought national intelligence gathering and surveillance operations under a level of scrutiny not seen in decades. Often left out of this conversation, though, is the massive private surveillance industry that provides services to law enforcement, defense agencies and corporations in the U.S. and abroad – a sprawling constellation of companies and municipalities. "It's a circle where everyone [in these industries] is benefitting," says Eric King, lead researcher of watchdog group Privacy International. "Everyone gets more powerful, and richer."

Promotional materials for numerous private spy companies boast of how law enforcement organizations can use their products to monitor people at protests or other large crowds – including by keeping tabs on individual people's social media presence. Kenneth Lipp, a journalist who attended the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia from October 19th to 23rd, tells Rolling Stone that monitoring Twitter and Facebook was a main theme of the week. "Social media was the buzzword," says Lipp. He says much of the discussion seemed to be aimed at designing policies that wouldn't trigger potentially limiting court cases: "They want to avoid a warrant standard."

While the specifics of which police departments utilize what surveillance technologies is often unclear, there is evidence to suggest that use of mass surveillance against individuals not under direct investigation is common. "The default is mass surveillance, the same as NSA's 'collect it all' mindset," says King. "There's not a single company that if you installed their product, [it] would comply with what anyone without a security clearance would think is appropriate, lawful use."

The YouTube page for a company called NICE, for instance, features a highly produced video showing how its products can be used in the event of a protest. "The NICE video analytic suite alerts on an unusually high occupancy level in a city center," a narrator says as the camera zooms in on people chanting and holding signs that read "clean air" and "stop it now." The video then shows authorities redirecting traffic to avoid a bottleneck, and promises that all audio and video from the event will be captured and processed almost immediately. "The entire event is then reconstructed on a chronological timeline, based on all multimedia sources," says the narrator. According to an interview with the head of NICE's security division published in Israel Gateway, NICE systems are used by New Jersey Transit and at the Statue of Liberty, though it isn't clear if they are the same products shown in the video.


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[msongs]

1. it all comes down to corporate profits + our politicians privatizing gov't services nt

[gopiscrap]

2. that fucking shit needs to be stoped

like I have said all business is evil. It is designed to take as much money from you as they can, with the least amount of cost to them.

[G_j]

3. Blackwater's Black Ops

http://www.thenation.com/article/154739/blackwaters-black-ops

Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater's work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater's owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not
Blackwater's Black Oops

One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the "intel arm" of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.

Governmental recipients of intelligence services and counterterrorism training from Prince's companies include the Kingdom of Jordan, the Canadian military and the Netherlands police, as well as several US military bases, including Fort Bragg, home of the elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and Fort Huachuca, where military interrogators are trained, according to the documents. In addition, Blackwater worked through the companies for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the US European Command.

..more..

[KoKo]

4. Recommend.

[pinboy3niner]

5. K&R

[libdem4life]

6. On the Law and Order TV shows, started noticing that to catch a criminal, they go into some video

bank and get back footage of the street. Just recently I saw one of them who "portrayed" real time footage of the cops in their office, watching and zooming in on a suspect on the street on a very big screen, watching her take out her cell phone, answer their call, fully unaware they were watching her. I was shocked. Usually these shows depict real life. There was some inference to suggest that the business owners were recording these tapes as private security.

It's great cops and robbers perhaps, but if it is what is being done on a regular basis, the implication is very Orwellian.

[truedelphi]

7. In my household, we send out a monthly business newsletter.

When you click on the newsletter, after it arrives in your "Inbox", we can then find out through a single click, the exact location where you did your "click" onto the newsletter.

My husband called me to his computer, to show me the luxury spa that one of his newsletter readers was visiting several weekends ago.

And we can see the Google map photo house you live in, etc.

We didn't ask for these features. These features didn't exist for us two years ago.

It is a very Orwellian world. I mean, our use of this feature is benign; it's nothing more than over-active curiosity. But I am sure there are applications of this feature that are not so benign.