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HarryStottle
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 Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:02 pm Post subject: Examples of the Need for Trusted Surveillance |
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I've been collecting relevant stories in a half assed fashion and, inspired into action by the first story I'm going to feature, I decided that I ought to put some of that collection here. If you find any similar stories, please feel free to add to the collection.
The criteria will be simple. We're looking for examples of Behaviour, or "Incidents" which Trusted Surveillance would either have prevented or, at least, detected. We will include examples where it is already happening - even though the motives may not have been those of Trusted Surveillance. (like the story of the plane-spotters detecting CIA "Rendition" flights)
For example, in the first story - the Assault by LA Metro Airport police on an Iraq vet - it is clear that the hired thugs in police costumes believed they could could get away with the assault because there were no witnesses and their version of events would outweigh the victim's.
You'll have seen the head cams being increasingly worn by troops in Iraq. We need to see the same technology (or its less intrusive successors) being deployed - eventually - to every policeman or security agent (even bouncers) on the planet. These devices can stream constant video/audio back to base, so that any incident can be captured.
[Edit 08 Feb 2011]Ideally, it would NOT be illegal, under TS, to touch or interfere in any way with a citizen unless that device was recording (to allow for those legitimate situations in which genuine heroic intervention is justified) However, in the absence of such a digital record, the word of the victim would take precedence over the attacker. In other words, should anybody (particularly those whose job occasionally mandates such behaviour and who thus have no excuse NOT to be properly equipped and recorded) launch an attack on any other citizen, the normal judicial rules will be reversed. They will be considered GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT and THAT is what incentivises the use of digital recording technology for "self surveillance". The only way you'll be able to "prove the negative" is to release the footage which showed what really happened.
Subsequently, in addition to any CCTV footage, we would have the contemporaneous footage gathered by the relevant agents. This would given us better resolution and a sound recording of any exchanges.
At least some of the time the footage might even justify breaking someone's ribs, but I think we can be pretty sure, on this occasion, that "Officer Jennings" wouldn't have dared to be quite so aggressive if he'd been wearing one of those head cams.
This implies that the law should be changed to the effect that, in the event of any dispute between citizen and police (for which read any entity employed to be in a position of "authority", including guardians of physical security), the citizen's word will always take precedence unless the contemporary record, verified by an immutable audit trail, proves, to the satisfaction of a jury, that the authority's action was vindicated or justified.
The problem we have now, is that, with just a grainy video and no sound to go on, Jennings will be able to claim all sorts of potential provocations by the victim; none of which would really excuse his behaviour, but with the support of the establishment and a good PR spin - like they managed for the recent infamous World Cup headbutting incident - they might even try to make Jennings look like the injured party. Perhaps Sergeant England was insulting Jenning's Mother and Sister - or worse, his manhood!! As I said, it wouldn't excuse the assault, but it would make it look a little less evil. And presentation is a big part of the project.
In any case, Trusted Surveillance will close off this avenue of retreat.
Last edited by HarryStottle on Tue Feb 08, 2011 12:08 pm; edited 9 times in total |
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HarryStottle
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Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 372
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| Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:17 pm Post subject: 1st example Assault on Sgt Mark England by LA Metro Police |
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Example 01 | Quote: | “Sir, what did I do to deserve handcuffs?”
“It's law enforcement's view you used foul language, and because we want to. I told you to give me your boarding pass.”
“I tried to give you my boarding pass, sir.”
“You tried to be a jerk.”
A few seconds after that exchange, which took place on March 10 at Las Vegas's McCarran Airport, Mark T. England was severely beaten by his interlocutor, a Las Vegas Metro Policeman identified as Officer Jennings. |
Click here to read the rest and watch the video.
Last edited by HarryStottle on Tue Jun 12, 2007 10:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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HarryStottle
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Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 372
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| Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 9:56 pm Post subject: Even the USAPATRIOT Act wasn't enough for the FBI |
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Example 02 | Quote: | The FBI repeatedly broke the law by secretly accessing information about US citizens under a law passed to curb terrorism, according to the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General in a report that prompted a sharp rebuke from legislators and civil libertarians.
The violations included demands for personal information by agents who had no official authorization to do so and the improper obtainment of telephone records in non-emergency circumstances. FBI officials also underreported to Congress how often it used powers granted under the Patriot Act to force businesses to turn over customer data. |
Click Here for the rest of the story. |
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HarryStottle
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Posts: 372
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| Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 10:44 pm Post subject: Don't ask awkward questions. We might have to eject you. |
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Example 03 | Quote: | | Jason Bermas, reporting for America: Freedom to Fascism, confirmed Lepacek had official CNN press credentials for the Republican debate. However, his camera was seized by staff members who shut off the camera, according to Luke Rudkowski, also a freelance Infowars reporter on the scene. He said police physically assaulted both reporters after Rudkowski objected that they were official members of the press and that nothing illegal had taken place. Police reportedly damaged the Infowars-owned camera in the process. |
Click Here to read the rest of the story and watch the video. This time it's the kind of resolution we need. Now you can make your own mind up as to what really happened. |
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HarryStottle
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Posts: 372
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| Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:14 am Post subject: New South Wales In Car Video (in Police Cars) |
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Example 04 - Example of where a Trusted Surveillance technology is already being deployed (though, obviously, not under that title) | Quote: | The importance of this recording primarily lies in its evidentiary use in our judicial system. There has been many a time where written evidence has been allegedly falsified, mislaid or misrepresented. Countless cases exist where innocent people have been framed or have had adverse inferences drawn on their character because they have not been able to back up their written testimony by a visual reference. The availability of a video recording accompanied by an audio recording taken via a lapel microphone worn by the police officer will, in some way, mitigate these problems.
Sometimes facts leading to accidents are not altogether clear. For example, it is envisaged that the ICV system will assist in putting together the jigsaw puzzle of facts surrounding fatalities from police pursuits. If the ICV system is recording events, on a visual and audio basis, then the ICV will help to give a clear picture of what events occurred leading up to the accident. |
Click Here to read the rest of the story. |
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HarryStottle
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Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 372
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| Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:27 am Post subject: Airport Inspection Portland International Airport |
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Example 05 | Quote: | At the security checkpoint I was led aside for the "inspection" that’s all the rage at airports these days. My shoes were removed. I was told to take off my sweater, then to fold over the waistband of my pants. My baseball hat, hastily jammed on my head at 5 AM, was removed and assiduously examined ("Anything could be in here, sir," I was told, after I asked what I could hide in a baseball hat. Yeah. Anything.) Soon I was standing on one foot, my arms stretched out, the other leg sticking out in front of me àla a DUI test. I began to get pissed off, as most normal people would. My anger increased when I realized that the newly knighted federal employees weren’t just examining me, but my 7½ months pregnant wife as well. I’d originally thought that I’d simply been randomly selected for the more excessive than normal search. You know, Number 50 or whatever. Apparently not though – it was both of us. These are your new threats, America: pregnant accountants and their sleepy husbands flying to weddings.
After some more grumbling on my part they eventually finished with me and I went to retrieve our luggage from the x-ray machine. Upon returning I found my wife sitting in a chair, crying. Mary rarely cries, and certainly not in public. When I asked her what was the matter, she tried to quell her tears and sobbed, "I’m sorry...it’s...they touched my breasts...and..." That’s all I heard. I marched up to the woman who’d been examining her and shouted, "What did you do to her?" Later I found out that in addition to touching her swollen breasts – to protect the American citizenry – the employee had asked that she lift up her shirt. Not behind a screen, not off to the side – no, right there, directly in front of the hundred or so passengers standing in line. And for you women who’ve been pregnant and worn maternity pants, you know how ridiculous those things look. "I felt like a clown," my wife told me later. "On display for all these people, with the cotton panel on my pants and my stomach sticking out. When I sat down I just lost my composure and began to cry. That’s when you walked up."
Of course when I say she "told me later," it’s because she wasn’t able to tell me at the time, because as soon as I demanded to know what the federal employee had done to make her cry, I was swarmed by Portland police officers. Instantly. Three of them, cinching my arms, locking me in handcuffs, and telling me I was under arrest. Now my wife really began to cry. As they led me away and she ran alongside, I implored her to calm down, to think of the baby, promising her that everything would turn out all right. She faded into the distance and I was shoved into an elevator, a cop holding each arm. After making me face the corner, the head honcho told that I was under arrest and that I wouldn’t be flying that day – that I was in fact a "menace." |
Click Here to read the whole story. This one made my blood boil more than most. |
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HarryStottle
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Posts: 372
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| Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:27 am Post subject: My First Public Mention of Trusted Surveillance |
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Example 06 - This, as far as I can recall, was the first time I mentioned Trusted Surveillance in public (Dec 2002). It is in the context of a comment on this K5 story about the abuse the author had suffered whilst languishing in prison waiting for his bail to be paid. (i.e. he was not yet a convict). It also refers to two other examples including the Portland Airport example which is "Example 05" above.
Primarily, though, it deals with how we could use TS in prisons to control the abuse and violence that goes on between inmates and inmates as well as between inmates and prison staff. | Quote: | | So, if a couple of inmates are beating the shit out of a third, all 3 IDs will be captured and the victim can use the fact that his ID is on the relevant time-slice to demand the evidence and appropriate action. The same, of course, applies if an inmate is being abused by staff, or, of course, if staff are being abused by inmates (or other staff come to that). |
Click Here for the rest of the story. |
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HarryStottle
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Posts: 372
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| Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 6:58 pm Post subject: Judge cleared of rush-hour flashing |
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Example 07 - conveniently topical. Only hit the headlines today | Quote: | | The woman told police that she originally thought the man had mistakenly exposed himself but changed her mind when he came after her a second time a week later. On this occasion, she followed the man when he got off, taking pictures on her mobile phone and trailing him to near the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand. |
Click Here for the full story.
Everybody in this case agrees that the woman was telling the truth as she saw it. She also did everything she reasonably could to track down the perpetrator. The obvious failing was the quality of image on her mobile phone. It clearly wasn't good enough to identify the flasher.
Some mobiles can now record still images with a respectable resolution of 5mb. That might have been good enough, but more than likely she was stuck with a standard 1.2 mb image which, from across the street, wouldn't have been much better than CCTV footage. As for mobile video, the resolution with that is so bad that unless your target is within about 10 feet of the camera, they will be unrecognisable. As we need the mobile phone to carry a large part of the burden of Trusted Surveillance, we can only hope they make improvements to video resolution an urgent priority. |
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HarryStottle
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 9:36 am Post subject: CCTV shows officer punching woman |
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Example 08: This hit the news in March. | Quote: | Police said they would investigate a complaint by Ms Comer but they were "happy" with the officer's conduct. He said he had been trying to subdue her.
The footage, obtained by the Guardian newspaper and shown on BBC Two's Newsnight, shows Ms Comer and a police officer falling down a flight of stairs outside Sheffield's Niche nightclub.
At the bottom, she is restrained by a group of officers, with the officer she fell with punching her five times - although it is not clear on what part of her body. |
Click Here to read the full story and watch the video.
The point which emerges from footage like this is that simple CCTV isn't enough. To justify or condemn the police behaviour we need more detail - particularly the audio. We can only get that close to the action if the police are wearing the kind of "headcams" I mentioned in the first posting to this thread. |
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HarryStottle
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:41 am Post subject: Abu Ghraib |
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Example 09: | Quote: | the following events had taken place at Abu Ghraib:
* Urinating on detainees
* Jumping on detainee's leg (a limb already wounded by gunfire) with such force that it could not thereafter heal properly
* Continuing by pounding detainee's wounded leg with collapsible metal baton
* Pouring phosphoric acid on detainees
* Sodomization of detainees with a baton
* Tying ropes to the detainees' legs or penises and dragging them across the floor. |
 
Click Here for the wiki entry.
Classic example of the need for TS: But Abu Ghraib stands for all prisons, whether in war zones or back home. Where TS would really have helped in the case of these particular War Crimes is in pinning down how high up the chain of command responsibility actually lay. There is certainly good evidence to suggest that ultimate culpability goes right to the top:
| Quote: | | Rumsfeld, not content to leave the details to the grunts, has been an enthusiastic micro-manager of torture. Newsweek reported that when he read a report in November 2002 about new interrogation techniques at Guantánamo that called for standing for four hours straight, Rumsfeld scribbled in the margin, "Why is standing limited to 4 hours?.. . I stand for 8 hours a day." |
That extract reveals that Rumsfeld knew and approved of what was going on. But TS wouldn't just have made it easier to prosecute the real criminals who gave the orders, it might actually have prevented the illegal behaviour in the first place - which is what we really want.
The extract comes from "Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back" by Amy and David Goodman. You can read more extracts at http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Amy_Goodman/Torturer's_Apprentice_SAG.html
(Don't click on that. Can't embed the link - PHP insists its a bad url because of the apostrophe. It works, though, if you cut and paste the whole thing to the address bar) |
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HarryStottle
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:55 am Post subject: Capturing Every Moment |
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Example 10: Self Defence | Quote: | | Elahi, an art professor at Rutgers University, started his self-tracking project out of fear for his safety. In 2002, he was accosted at a Detroit airport and interrogated by the FBI about his whereabouts on September 11, 2001. The calendar on his PDA provided him with an alibi, but the FBI continued to question him for six months. He started to worry, Weinberg writes, about "a midnight abduction to Guantanamo," and so he began "Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project" in the winter of 2002. The website features a GPS map giving his exact location at all times, photos of every meal he eats, every urinal he uses, every place he visits, and bank statements to corroborate his claims |
Click Here for the rest of the story.
This arab-American has felt obliged to protect himself by effectively giving up his privacy and publishing his whereabouts in real time on the web. Trusted Surveillance will protect people like this without having to sacrifice their privacy to do so. |
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HarryStottle
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Posts: 372
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| Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 6:21 pm Post subject: Fox News Gets the Message |
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Example 11: (Thanks to Brian Bennett) | Quote: | Consider Eugene Siler. In 2005, the Campbell County, Tenn., man was confronted by five sheriff's deputies who (they say) suspected him of drug activity. Siler's wife surreptitiously switched on a tape recorder when the police officers came inside. Over the next hour, Siler was mercilessly beaten and tortured by the officers, who were demanding he confess to drug activity. Siler was poor, illiterate and had a nonviolent criminal record. Without that recording, it's unlikely anyone would have believed his account of the torture over the word of five sheriff's deputies.
Earlier this year, Iraq war veteran Elio Carrion was shot three times at near-point-blank range by San Bernardino, Calif., deputy Ivory Webb. Carrion was lying on the ground and was unarmed. Video of the arrest and shooting, however, was captured by bystander Jose Louis Valdez. Webb since has been fired from the police department and is on trial on charges of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm. The video is the key piece of evidence in his trial. |
Click Here to read the rest of the story.
Stunningly appropriate article from the Fox News channel. It actually begins by describing the hostility of the authorities towards those who dare to record Police abuse. | Quote: | Last month, Brian Kelly of Carlisle, Pa., was riding with a friend when the car he was in was pulled over by a local police officer. Kelly, an amateur videographer, had his video camera with him and decided to record the traffic stop.
The officer who pulled over the vehicle saw the camera and demanded Kelly hand it over. Kelly obliged. Soon after, six more police officers pulled up. They arrested Kelly on charges of violating an outdated Pennsylvania wiretapping law that forbids audio recordings of any second party without their permission. In this case, that party was the police officer.
Kelly was charged with a felony, spent 26 hours in jail, and faces up to 10 years in prison. All for merely recording a police officer, a public servant, while he was on the job. |
and even more in line with the Trusted Surveillance paradigm: | Quote: | Legislators need to repeal laws explicitly forbidding the recording, photographing or videotaping of police officers. And to the extent that more generalized wiretapping laws meant for the general public also apply to the police, they should be amended to allow private citizens to record officers while they're on duty.
This isn't to say police don't have the same privacy rights as everyone else. They do — when they aren't on duty, in possession of a sidearm and carrying with them the authority that comes with enforcing the law of the state.
But while they're on duty, they serve the public. And the public, their employer, should have every right to keep them accountable. |
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HarryStottle
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Posts: 372
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| Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 6:38 pm Post subject: Handcuffed, Not Resisting, but still assaulted by Police |
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Example 12: (Thanks to previous example from Fox News) | Quote: | The tape tells the story: A man already in handcuffs was struck and maced by a New York City Police Department officer...
In the video, one can see 26-year-old Anthony Carty, already in handcuffs, being subdued by at least six police officers. |
Click Here to read the story and watch the video news report.
This story, in turn, led me to the horrendous tale of Abner Louima which is my 13th example. |
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HarryStottle
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Posts: 372
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| Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 6:44 pm Post subject: Abner Louima |
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Example 13: Not for the squeamish | Quote: | The arresting officers beat Louima with their fists, nightsticks, and hand-held police radios on the ride to the station. On arriving at the station house, he was strip-searched and put in a holding cell. The beating continued later, culminating with Louima being raped in a bathroom at the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. Officer Justin Volpe kicked Louima in the groin, then, while Louima's hands were cuffed behind his back, sodomized him with a plunger, causing severe internal damage to his colon and bladder that required several operations to repair. Volpe then walked through the precinct holding the bloody, excrement-stained instrument in his hand, indicating that he had "broke a man down."
Louima's teeth were also badly damaged in the attack by having the plunger jammed into his mouth. |
Click Here to read the rest of the wiki.
So tell me: how else do we prevent this kind of sadistic abuse without Trusted Surveillance? |
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HarryStottle
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| Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 9:44 pm Post subject: Police Violent Video Collection |
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I'll stop numbering now... here's another representative bunch:
Michigan 2006 | Quote: | | Footage has been released from an elevator surveillance camera that captured two Pontiac, Michigan police officers punching a suspect. |
New Orleans - a couple of months after Katrina. You'd have thought there might have been a residue of community spirit in the air. But, come to think of it, the Police didn't exactly improve their community credibility during that disaster...
Just to show that American Police don't have a monopoly on violence, here is some footage of the Spanish Police in their remaining conclave on what we would otherwise think of as Morocco. An African has, presumably, jumped the fence. It is a favourite spot for the more ambitious Africans who are trying to get into Europe. The Police are trying to discourage him.
And the Greeks...
| Quote: | | On the 24th of June 2006, at least four policemen tortured two migrants in the police station of Omonia in central Athens. They forced them to beat each other, beat them both and captured the torturing on a mobile phone camera. For nearly a year, that footage was circulated amongst policemen via mobile phones. On the early hours of the 16th of June 2007 the video was uploaded to a commercial video sharing service and from there, to Athens Indymedia. |
And Australians
And, of course, the Brits.
if anyone can find me a link to the story about the (I think) North Wales Police beating up a motorist (and caught on camera), I'd be grateful. I know I didn't imagine it but damned if I can find any evidence to support my memory. Think it happened some time between 2001 and 2005.
Last edited by HarryStottle on Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:42 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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