Online monitoring service by Lowell police and School department

[Terminator03]

Anything sent or posted from a smartphone comes with GPS coordinates. I would expect the database to associate smart phone ownership with other social media accounts so anything posted from anywhere would be associated with the user's GPS coordinates. "The program uses the archived databases to identify "influential posters" and posting trends, according to the company's website. The program can also track the location of posters and map their movements."

Every user agreement for anything you use to communicate gives the provider permission to do this stuff. It's the back-door surveillance state and you've already agreed to it. The only way to escape this now is to go off-grid.

What really surprised me was how cheap the service is. $17,000 annually for the City of Lowell? Peanuts. Tells you how much business this company must be doing and how automated their product is.

You are absolutely correct. Most people assume that because they set their FB, or whatever account to private, that "no one" can see where they are, or what they post. That only holds true for regular users of a particular site. I wouldn't be at all surprised if NES, or other "gun" related sites aren't added into their filtering stream. It just comes down to either staying off the grid completely if you are concerned about any of this, or be sensible in what you post online - period. It sucks that the 1st amendment really doesn't extend into the interwebs anymore, but that ship seems to have sailed...

 

[Terminator03]

That is an irrelevant detail. Dracut residents need equally to be subjected to a police state as well.

"We need this overreaching power to keep you safe, and will never use it beyond that purpose" sounds exactly like something Hitler would say.

Newsflash, Jack Booted Thugs of Lowell: your job of figuring out who is going to commit a crime is hard BY DESIGN, because per the Constitution, people are innocent until proven guilty; to be guilty, the act must first be perpetrated, and no amount of technology can allow you to predict pre-crime. The Grand Jury in NYC got it right in the case they cited.

Excellent point. There is a long stretch between someone's angry rant on the web, and them actually doing it in real life. Now, if someone rants on a forum about how they are going to shoot their neighbor or something, and they actually do (or are caught in the attempt), then I'd say using the posts as evidence would be fair game. The "Minority Report" stuff is just bullshit though.

 

[Wicked1911]

I can see this being used when we go to renew our license.

"Oh you wanna renew? Hold on let me check something first.......Ok I see you haven't committed any crimes, BUT I also see here you posted once about not letting the government take your guns without a fight." Something about dead cold hands?......Sorry your renewal has been denied because you might be a threat and are hereby deemed unsuitable"

 

[Darksideblues42]

I can only imagine the horror they would have been subjected to if they were monitoring the old Stratus Shop Network when I was at Assabet in the mid 90's.

A bunch of us had a lengthy discussion about M*A*S*H (The Movie and TV show) including the theme song (Suicide is Painless) because we were discussing parody in English as well as Shifting attitudes towards war in the Vietnam era as part of History/Civics (and M*A*S*H was part of that)

Let's see, we covered guns, suicide, cross-dressing, promiscuous behavior, hostage taking, infanticide, mental breakdowns, you know...all the good stuff.

 

[robjax]

I can see this being used when we go to renew our license.

"Oh you wanna renew? Hold on let me check something first.......Ok I see you haven't committed any crimes, BUT I also see here you posted once about not letting the government take your guns without a fight." Something about dead cold hands?......Sorry your renewal has been denied because you might be a threat and are hereby deemed unsuitable"

The don't need to get that off the internet. I wrote that on the application as a reason for wanting my LTC...LMAO>....

 

[Sniper (+)]

Some fake accounts using some politcian's names and a couple of strategic facebook posts could cure this rapidly, if they survive the swat raids but.. psgwsp.

 

[ISOTOX]

If you all think this has not already taking place for some time then you need to lift up the rock and climb out of the hole.....its just becoming more prevalent because companies have refined it enough to make a buck off the private sector......just the tip of the iceberg folks!

- - - Updated - - -

Some fake accounts using some politcian's names and a couple of strategic facebook posts could cure this rapidly, if they survive the swat raids but.. psgwsp.

Need to cloak your IP address....my feeling is if you can say it and don't stand behind what you say, then don't say it!

 

[SpaceCritter]

Wanna bet that Lowell politicians' names will be included in the keyword set so they can see who's saying nasty things about them (or good things about their opponents)?

 

[Friday]

When have the police not abused any power or authority granted to them?

 

[Kevin_NH]

What's new about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)? Just the automation and sharing?

I doubt they are getting anything beyond all public posts with all public metadata. They probably have 'firehose' feeds from Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Also known as Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).

I would like to know how exactly they know a post came from Lowell. Ip Location is not that precise. This type of system is really scarey and ripe for abuse.

All the people who make public posts on Facebook, Twitter, foursquare, WhatsApp, or any other blog/picture/status posting service, and who have "Location" turned on, are basically self-surveilling. Location is precise enough to track posts to a town, neighborhood, block, etc, and some aggregators can use cues from other metadata or even from images to narrow down location further.

The scary part isn't the data that is being collected, collated, indexed, and shared with local government; most of that data is stuff people choose to share, unthinkingly. The scary part is how this information will be misused/misinterpreted and abused now, and in the future.

 

[ToddDubya]

Brings up a fun ethical question- is it spying if some guy goes into the town square and holds up a sign that says "I AM GONNA ROB XYZ BANK TOMORROW!!!!" and then the police conveniently show up there and arrest the guy 60 seconds after he robs the bank?

-Mike

I have a problem with the police going to town square and eavesdropping on everyone to make sure they aren't thinking about doing anything wrong.

 

[namedpipes]

What this world needs is a good, solid, worldwide EMP that fries everything electronic.

It would be hell for a while, but in the long run, I bet we'd be happier. (well, the survivors would, anyway)

 

[Kevin_NH]

I do agree that many people would be happier in the long run without wireless comms.

What this world needs is a good, solid, worldwide EMP that fries everything electronic. It would be hell for a while, but in the long run, I bet we'd be happier. (well, the survivors would, anyway)

You'd be happier without a fridge, dishwasher, snowblower, furnace, and air conditioning? I do agree that many people would be happier in the long run without wireless comms.

 

[ToddDubya]

You'd be happier without a fridge, dishwasher, snowblower, furnace, and air conditioning?

Probably. Mailing sarcastic responses to wherever the NES newsletter gets printed would get old, though.

 

[rwl1955]

Another reason to avoid FB and any other social site except Northeastshooters

*******
exactly. These kids who post every move they make on social media are asking for trouble.

 

[namedpipes]

You'd be happier without a fridge, dishwasher, snowblower, furnace, and air conditioning?

I don't have a dishwasher, my snowlower is broken, I heat with a wood stove and I don't really expect to worry about A/C or the fridge with all this global warming.

Not having to deal with the societal issues surrounding instant, convenient communications, electronic eavesdropping, plate scanning cameras, etc? Priceless.

Probably. Mailing sarcastic responses to wherever the NES newsletter gets printed would get old, though.

While I wasn't 100% serious, in all honesty, people made do for probably hundreds of years before the computer was invented.

After dinner, George would go to the den and quill a letter to his buddy Ben complaining about the ills of the day.

We go to the den and read up / bitch about things here and on other discussion forums.

Technology just changed the shape a little bit.

 

[drgrant]

I don't have a dishwasher, my snowlower is broken, I heat with a wood stove and I don't really expect to worry about A/C or the fridge with all this global warming.

Not having to deal with the societal issues surrounding instant, convenient communications, electronic eavesdropping, plate scanning cameras, etc? Priceless.

Friend of Tracer Tong, eh?

 

[Prepper]

Anything sent or posted from a smartphone comes with GPS coordinates. I would expect the database to associate smart phone ownership with other social media accounts so anything posted from anywhere would be associated with the user's GPS coordinates. "The program uses the archived databases to identify "influential posters" and posting trends, according to the company's website. The program can also track the location of posters and map their movements."

Every user agreement for anything you use to communicate gives the provider permission to do this stuff. It's the back-door surveillance state and you've already agreed to it. The only way to escape this now is to go off-grid.

What really surprised me was how cheap the service is. $17,000 annually for the City of Lowell? Peanuts. Tells you how much business this company must be doing and how automated their product is.

I wouldn't put it past Facebook to sell the "private" data, although it is something I haven't really heard stated out on the Internet that it is definitely done. It'd be good if some expert out there could confirm... someone must know because lots of people in multiple companies would have to be involved in acquiring a feed to the private data, if it is indeed done. And, of course, you have the customer of this service... it looks like you can be as small as a single town or company and be able to purchase it. So, at the very least, someone who's the end user of the service could tell if the posts he's looking at are indeed "public" or "private". Lots of such customers exist, so there's lots of places someone could spill the beans on it.

By the way, one thing about the posts set "private" on Facebook... that's all fine and dandy, but people also make comments on other people's posts. And, these other people's posts are often public. Anyone can look at the public posts and see the comments from the person who has everything otherwise set "private". You could figure out quite a bit about someone by finding such public comments. It is non-trivial because you can't just look at someone's Facebook page and see a list of everything they've ever posted outside of their timeline. Yes, there's the "activity log" feature in the UI, but that's only visible to the account holder (unless Facebook provides a feed service for this so-called private data). What I have heard is done is that there are services that pull public data from all across Facebook, and they can find your comments that way by stumbling across the comments as they see the public posts of others.