Equal Protection for Whom?: Policing in Gentrification

- by Alex Logan

When economic interests and the criminal justice system intersect it often creates problems for poor people in urban areas. To the poorer residents of California’s Bay Area this is becoming more evident with the increasing growth of the technology businesses in the city of San Francisco. San Francisco is a densely populated city and is a difficult place to find a home. The employees of the growing companies would have to move to surrounding cities and slowly move people of lower income out. This process, called gentrification, is the renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents. In Eric K. Arnold’s “Oakland Gang Injunctions: Gentrification or Public Safety?” he describes how growing trends in law enforcement are merely justified structural racism which target the disenfranchised populations in areas of most desired real estate. In times of gentrification, policing and controlling the populations of the poor becomes harder and more aggressive. The aggression leads to profiling and unfair treatment of the poorer populations.

One example which Arnold details in his article is the Oakland Police Department’s “hotspot enforcement strategy” which is intended to flood areas with the highest and most frequent violent crime rates. West Oakland’s District 3 and the 6th and 7th Districts of East Oakland had the highest violent crime rates according to the Oakland Police Departments records but instead targeted an area in Northern Oakland. This is due to a gang injunction placed upon the North Side Oakland Gang (NSO) which is predominantly Latino. Although the area where the NSO gang resides is not the most frequent for violent crimes it is the best suitable for creating more expensive living as it is directly situated next to the Temescal District, which has been dubbed by the Wall Street Journal as a ‘yupster magnet’. The gang injunctions would allow for the police to embrace more aggressive and proactive tactics while policing those who fit the gang member profile, which means Latino people in the Northern Oakland Area will experience more harassment from the police. It becomes the ‘hard version’ of community policing style for certain populations and ignores the soft version, or problem oriented policing style which would address the poverty and lack of employment in those areas.

In Franklin E. Zimring’s “The City That Became Safe” he explains that proactive policing, or a ‘predictive offense’ may be the moral equivalent of racial profiling due to a justification for selective enforcement. African Americans have been stopped at a higher percentage than non-African Americans for marijuana despite reports of equal use between the different communities. The obvious reason behind this disparity in stops is that the communities which the African Americans live in are poorer communities. Also African Americans, like the Latino people in North Oakland, would look exponentially more suspicious following the gang injunctions because gang members are described as Latino or African Americans.

Policing in areas of gentrification is not meant to keep the entire population of that area safe, but instead to accommodate to the requirements and economic standards of the people who wish to push the less powerful population out. Through more aggressive and proactive policing poorer populations are given very little option other than to accept the harassment or move to another area with low income. Gentrification policing may take on names like ‘tough on crime’ and ‘public safety’ which seem to help and promote peace for the entire population but in reality it creates systematic discrimination and justifies racial profiling.

Sources:

Arnold, Eric K. “Oakland Gang Injunctions: Gentrification or Public Safety?” Welcome to Urban Habitat. N.p., n.d. Web 21 Feb. 2014

Zimring, Franklin. 2012. The City that Became Safe. N.Y.: Oxford University Press. Pp. 100-152.

Cyber cops: Policing in Cyber Space

- by Richard Lin

"Ninety-percent of all data in the world has been created in the past two years." With the growth rate of data exponentially rising in the current era, many crimes have accelerated into cyberspace. Events like the security breach at consumer outlets like Target, or cyber space like Microsoft Outlook shows that in it's current situation, the world is not ready for cyber crimes. The everyday consumer is connected to the cyberworld at every transaction yet the correct securities have not been put into place to defend their privacy.

IBM has recorded for its clients, over 81 billion attempts at attacking the firewall and annually over 90 mid to large sized incidents occur. What does this mean to us at a consumer level? Of over 90 incidents that occurred, about 6.6% or 6 incidents existed in the retail and wholesale industry and 7.3% or approximately 7 incidents occurred in the health and social services. In 2011, cyber crime increased by 2500 percent costing us Americans over $140 billion in transactions. In reference to the welfare blog post from last week, data stored in the welfare programs were leaked at least seven times in the past year.

It may seem like a lot of the problems can be fixed by the larger companies, but we are also at fault. Over 73% of the security breaches can be accounted for by end-users and misconfigured systems. This points to things like phishing scams (fake emails asking for information), fake phone calls, and viruses on computers.

The solutions proposed by IBM are meant for businesses, but many of them can be applied to our lives as well, because we as consumers should also make ourselves more aware of cyber attacks and be our own police. First, we must educate ourselves on cyber attacks and suspicious content while surfing the internet and checking our emails. There are many phishing scams daily that one can fall into. When an email asks for personal information be sure to check the sender's email to make sure that it's not a fake email that's getting your information. A simple solution, yet many people haven't done is to put a password on all your networks. Despite being a simple solution, I can already see five networks that are unprotected that I can easily go into and cause havoc to it's users. Another quick tip is to keep your computer clean, do routine scans in order to ensure that there aren't malicious programs on your computer.

Source: 

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03518usen/GBE03518USEN.PDF

Community Policing Gone Wrong?

- by Rana Lau

On February 26, 2013, Trayvon Martin, a seventeen year old black teenager visiting his father in Florida was shot to death. George Zimmerman, who was a volunteer neighborhood watch leader of the gated community where Martin’s father lived, was on patrol because of recent home burglaries that had been occurring. Zimmerman saw Martin on his way home from purchasing some snacks and immediately called 911 to report Martin as a “suspicious” person. The dispatcher instructed Zimmerman to wait for officers to arrive and not to approach Martin. By the time the police arrived, Zimmerman and Martin had gotten into a fight that resulted in Zimmerman shooting Martin in the chest which led to his death. Initially, Zimmerman was not arrested as he claimed he had shot Martin in self-defense but was eventually charged with second-degree murder and later acquitted in court.

This case shows how community policing and community participation may not always work as we would hope it would. We’ve discussed the different roles of citizens and the idea of who is really in charge in terms of policing. In this case, Zimmerman performed his role as citizen and made the call to inform law enforcement, however, he took matters into his own hands and stepped out of his “role” when he continued to follow Martin, which led to an altercation and Martin’s death (it is still unclear how Martin and Zimmerman came into contact with each other). In audio recordings of Zimmerman’s call with the 911 dispatcher, he is heard saying, “they always get away”, as if questioning the law enforcement’s ability to capture suspects or arrive in a timely manner. Zimmerman showed a lack of trust in law enforcement, when in fact the neighborhood watch group should be working alongside the police. Zimmerman wanted to be the crime-fighting hero. Had Zimmerman kept his distance from Martin as instructed, a death may have been prevented. Zimmerman chose to defy the dispatcher’s instructions not to follow Martin, which essentially contradicts the purpose of calling for law enforcement. If you’re not going to follow their instructions, why bother calling them at all? I think it’s ironic, the neighborhood watch group is a result of community (soft) policing, yet Zimmerman has hard policing ideals. We discussed how many veteran officers are unwilling to become these “soft” officers and are more inclined to be the “hard” aggressive cops, yet here is a community member who has also chosen the aggressive path and has lack of faith in law enforcement. How can we expect law enforcement to turn to “softer” strategies when we ourselves are unwilling to cooperate?

Sources:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trayvon-martin-shooting-a-timeline-of-events/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/parents-demand-answers-after-neighborhood-watch-captain-allegedly-kills-teen-trayvon-martin/

Policing Styles: Clinging to Legitimacy

By Colleen Johnson

The two big policing styles used by public law enforcement are professional policing, which was in greatest use during the 1950s-1970s, and community policing which developed in the 1980s. During his last lecture, Professor Musheno made the claim that professional policing is slowly beginning to gather more attention and that the current policing style may be turning towards professional policing once again. There is a debate in the academic sphere about which method of policing will provide the most benefit to modern society. I believe that public law enforcement needs to maintain a sense of cooperative community policing in order to maintain their legitimacy and thus, their support. Since September 11th, 2011, public law enforcement has presented a stronger, more standardized image of policing, likely to make the public feel safer. Examples of this include heightened measures of security on airports (the TSA and their body scanners) as well as very aggressive responses to daily incidents. These measures, however, appear extreme to the general public. Good community members feel as if they are being harassed without seeing tangible results of crime reduction or safer communities. Criminals are still able to slip into airports. As noted by David Alan Sklansky, the professionalization of policing tactics encourages police officers to react in a standardized way, instead of solving problems by addressing concerns specific to an individual situation or community (Sklansky 8). This issue was brought up in an article written by Henry Lee for the SF Gate. A recent incident occurred where a mentally ill man, David Goins, from San Lorenzo was shot by the police after he refused police requests to get into an ambulance and attacked an officer. According to the family, the police had been called to the house for various disturbances many times and if the police had been using community policing techniques of assessing and addressing recurring problems in the community, they would have known to restrain the man and get him to medical treatment instead of writing him off as too dangerous and shooting him. The family of the man is extremely upset with the actions of the Alameda County Sheriff's Department (Lee 1). Because of incidents like these, people are becoming dissatisfied with public law enforcement and it has begun to lose its legitimacy. Sklansky mentions that community policing also has its faults, but I believe that a severe loss of legitimacy should be a more pressing concern to public law enforcement than immediate crime reduction in today's very politicized society. A significant loss of legitimacy could cause a disregard for public authority, or a slew of social protests, creating more problems than public law enforcement is equipped to handle. Perhaps an eventual blending of the two ideologies will create a policing system that both the government and public find satisfactory.

Sources:

Lee, Henry. http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Family-of-slain-San-Lorenzo-man-blasts-sheriff-s-5260639.php

Sklansky, David Alan. "The Persistent Pull of Police Professionalism."

Police Professionalism and Legitimacy

- by Sansui Iwamoto

In “The Persistent Pull of Police Professionalism,” Sklansky stressed the importance of community policing, especially its concept of legitimacy despite that professional policing is persistent on American law enforcement. He warned that the overreliance of technology drew attention away from building a trustful relationship with people (Sklansky 10). The effective policing requires building trust and legitimacy; trust and legitimacy heavily depend on street-level officers’ fairness and decency (Sklansky 10). One of the reason why professional policing didn’t survive on 1960 was because it was unconnected with communities; the legitimacy of police was in crisis and police was distrusted by the community, especially minorities (Musheno, Feb 18). Police requires voluntary cooperation from the general public to be effective in controlling crime and maintaining order; information and data can be effectively collected by people talk frankly with their trustful police officers. Policing is most effective when people view it as legitimate based on their experience with police acting fairy.

Interestingly, people are concerned more with whether they receive fair outcomes, arrived through a fair procedure, rather than favorable outcomes (Tyler 5). People want justice from police officers and evaluate them according to whether they get it; police is viewed as legitimate if their action is viewed as fair and appropriate; the legitimacy of the authority in turn shapes people’s compliance with the law and cooperation with police (Tyler 5). In order to be viewed as legitimate, it is important for police officers to listen to people willingly and treat them with respect; people feel denied if they are not allowed to express their view; in turn, this will decrease the legitimacy of police and the loyalty of obeying law (Tyler 176). This legitimacy of policing cannot be achieved by technology of professional policing but the daily encounter and dialogue between street-level officers and people.

Not only does the direct contact with police officers shape their legitimacy but also the indirect contact is important. As Professor Musheno mentioned that the primary surveillance is “watching” and “socializing”; police officers are always under this primary surveillance by communities. Even they are just giving a ticket for traffic offenders, their attitude, the way they talk and body language are always watched by bystanders; they in turn evaluate whether the police officers are legitimate. Further, they spread their view of police legitimacy by “socializing”; they talk, discuss the issue with friends and families.

Despite persistent revival of professional policing, it is legitimacy of police that make it possible to control crime and maintain order. The legitimacy of police is built by people’s direct and indirect contact with police officers. It is important for police to treat people with respect and listen to their opinions willingly. Compared with technology advancement which is a natural development in policing, building legitimacy is harder, more important, and needs focused attention.

Sources:

Sklansky, David Alan, The Persistent Pull of Police Professionalism. New Perspectives in Policing, March 2011; UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 1788463.

Tyler, T. R. . Why people obey the law. New Jersy: Princeton Univ Pr, 2006. 5.176. Print.

Grassroot of Policing

- by Michael Huang

In the last week’s lecture and readings, such as David Sklansky’s The Persistent Pull of Police Professionalism, the majority of the discussion focuses on the styles of policing in the society. Although Professor Musheno highlights the different aspects of patronage policing and community policing, Sklansky introduces the style of police professionalism in which the police force should focus on crime reduction rates and build upon centralized precincts that can be modeled nationwide. Rather than understanding the police professionalism at a macro level, it is more important to investigate the elements of community policing at a micro level. Often times, the study of the grassroot methods and approaches to community policing lay a foundation for patronage policing and police professionalism at a larger scale. Hence, the purpose of this blog is to examine the problem-solving aspect in community policing that is also reflected in police professionalism.

The common problem that seems to always corrupt many communities and neighborhoods is crime, whether it is in the form of theft, burglary, domestic assault, or even J-walking. These criminal activities prompt the police officers to utilize different crime-fighting methods, like the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) discussed in Police Magazine. Although GIS is an effective method to map out the crime data and analyze crime patterns in order to pinpoint future crimes in a community, the article emphasizes on community interaction as the grassroot approach for the police officers to gather knowledge about their communities and information on crime. In order to promote the betterment of the community and the quality of life, law enforcement officers, like Senior Cpl. Beaty, are involved in their communities by participating in local events, crime watch programs, and interacting with citizens (Musheno). These active engagements and police presence in the communities are effective in gathering first hand data on how crimes start and how to strategically combat these issues.

By following these problem-solving protocols in the style of community policing, the technical and rationalized methods for police professionalism would soon take place. For example, the GIS is a specific law enforcement strategy with cutting edging technologies for crime suppression, which is one element to police professionalism. Soon a more centralized police department with different units and taskforce that focus on specific duties, such as narcotics and crime-fighting that aim to protect and serve the larger community.

Source:

http://www.policemag.com/channel/careers-training/news/2014/02/24/dallas-gis-police-analyst-uses-geospatial-skills-to-fight-crime.aspx

To Surveil or Not Surveil

- by Shari Gray

For a city that is known for being the “crime capital” of the San Francisco Bay Area and consistently being the most dangerous large cities in the United States, why wouldn’t they want a surveillance system installed at the Port of Oakland to try to monitor and curtail crime? In an Oakland City Council meeting last week, the vote was delayed on a controversial video surveillance system for at least two weeks. Protesters are urging the council to vote against moving forward with plans to create a centralized surveillance center linking the Port of Oakland with the City. It is an issue that puts Oakland at the forefront of a battle over technology, privacy and citizens’ rights.

On one side, Michael O’Brien, the Port of Oakland’s Facilities Security Officer says, “This will be critical in the event of a full-scale emergency response in Oakland. Therefore having all relevant information is essential.” The 1.6 million contract with Schneider Electric, if approved, would be used to design, build and maintain a surveillance system that would integrate cameras at the Port of Oakland with Oakland traffic cameras for possible monitoring around the clock. To be able to integrate their cameras with Oakland Police and Fire systems since they would be first responders to any emergency, terrorist attack, or hazmat situation at the port.

On the other side, opponents call it a spy center, saying the system could be expanded without limits to include cameras at transit agencies, schools, or neighborhoods. They also have concerns about how the data will be used and whether it would be shared with federal authorities. “There are no privacy policies in place, the transparency is very little, people don’t know what they’re going to be doing with the data,” said Allan Brill, an Oakland resident.

Oakland crime rates* (2011)(*number reported crimes per 100,000 population) had a homicide rate of 26.3, robbery at a rate of 851.2 and aggravated assault at a rate of 754.1, it would make sense to install surveillance in areas around Oakland that has a high volume of crime. At a time where people are extra sensitive about how and when their information is shared without “consent” or a sense of control of whose hands the data falls into has made this issue a contentious one. Though the port assures the opponents that they have no agreement with the NSA, CIA or the FBI to be able to access their databases or the information in the center.

Dovetailing this whole issue with the piece by David Alan Slansky and his article on the Persistent Pull of Police Professionalism, it rings of the term Predictive policing which is the “new era in policing.” It calls upon putting intelligence collection and data analysis at the center of police decision making with an emphasis on directed, information based patrol, rapid response tactics, strategy and policy. It seems logical to install this surveillance system in Oakland that would hook right into the Oakland Police and fire systems since they are first responders to emergencies. If surveillance expanded to other parts of the city, it would make sense for citizens to want this surveillance present to try to lower the crime rates in Oakland that have been consistently high for many years. With all the protest, it makes one wonder if there is so much opposition, are they worried about what they are doing is going to get them caught doing something they are not supposed to be doing?

“We need other tools to monitor some of the activity that’s happening because the reality is Oakland is challenged when it comes to crime,” says Council member Noel Gallo. Staffing of the surveillance center could cost about $100,000 a year. We will see what happens in the following weeks if the opponents have a change of heart and want to make their city safer.

Sources:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/preliminary-annual-ucr-jan-dec-2011/data-tables/table-4/table-4-alabama-california

http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/oakland-city-officials-delay-vote-new-surveillance/ndTJ6/

https://ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/232676.pdf

The Border Patrol Needs More Contemporary Policing Methods

By: Alejandro Castellano

Last Wednesday on February 19th, 2014 a border patrol agent shot and killed a suspected undocumented individual who was said to have thrown a rock at the agent in question. This event has created some ripples through politics as the Mexican government has, “condemned” the actions by the Border Patrol officer and asked for the “results of the investigations.” Although it is too early to tell what the outcome of this situation will be, this altercation is something that is a part of new disturbing trend in border patrol enforcement. The new disturbing trend would be the use of lethal force. A Cnn article gave this statistic, “Since January 2010, at least 28 individuals have died as the result of an encounter with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, said the activist group Southern Border Communities Coalition…” The rising trend points towards Border Patrol’s lack of coercion methods outside of lethal force. This lack of methods is due to outdated practices and lack of training or equipment.

Other policing agencies utilize, “pepper-ball guns” in order to subdue potential suspects and the Border Patrol should do the same. This day and age there are way too many ways to disable a violent individual without using lethal force and the laziness the agency has displayed regarding those practices is appalling. Even on shows like, COPS, you see suspects taken down by bean bag shotguns and Tasers so it is unreasonable that another government policing agency doesn’t have those same resources and training. If the agency does not choose to shape up soon, then they will face degradation of their Legitimacy as enforcers of the law along the proximity of the U.S.

So while the past shootings the Border Patrol have committed have been deemed lawful for the time being, as we move forward from this recent situation a look should be taken into other coercion tactics. Non-lethal tactics are employed by many of the other law enforcement agencies and if the Border Patrol would like to keep their legitimacy in the public eye then they should do the same.

Sources:

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Shooting-San-Diego-Border-Patrol-Otay-Truck-Trail--245985161.html

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/us/california-border-rock-throwing-death/index.html?iref=allsearch

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/19/us/california-border-rock-throwing-death/index.html?iref=allsearch

Predictive Policing: The Erosion of Privacy

- by Sharlene Djuhari

Predictive policing uses technology and data analysis to take important measures to pre-empt crime. Sometimes called “intelligence-led policing,” the predictive policing model utilizes past data and complicated mathematical techniques to estimate and predict where future crime may take place. The data is drawn from historical crimes, social media, community input etc. Criminals cluster in certain areas and the predictive policing model detects patterns in the type and location of crimes. The new technology enables information to be rallied to officers in real time and therefore, enabling units to respond more efficiently and effectively to the threat of crime. Using the model, police departments are able to deploy extra officers to hot spot locations for crime. A simple example would be something like an officer getting information that at a particular time, in a certain location, there is a certain chance that a crime will take place. This data reliant approach to policing has become a subject of much debate, particularly with regards to our civil and private rights. If officers obtain data that estimates the chances of crime happening in a certain location to be high, does that then justify random practices like stop and frisk? And since the estimated data will likely single out certain ethnic groups, won’t the predictive policing model foster racial profiling? Is it constitutional for people to be suspected and treated like suspects for a crime that they might potentially commit? It sounds like predictive policing strategies may infringe on Fourth Amendments protections for individuals who happen to be in areas where crime is prevalent. States like New York have historically used the justification of an area having a high crime rate for stopping/frisking/questioning a non-threatening citizen. Since predictive policing will undoubtedly emphasize areas with higher crime rates, it is safe to say that people residing in those areas will “have a lesser expectation of privacy than those in other non high crime area neighborhoods.” Does the intention of fighting crime justify the intrusion onto our social media pages which are supposed to be only available to a select group of friends? What kind of policies should be set in place in order to prevent the abuse of information, or in other words, who is policing the police?

Sources:

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/predictive_policing_may_help_bag_burglars--but_it_may_also_be_a_constitutio/

http://www.americancriminallawreview.com/Drupal/blogs/blog-entry/%E2%80%9Cpredictive-policing%E2%80%9D-and-fourth-amendment-11-28-2011

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582042-it-getting-easier-foresee-wrongdoing-and-spot-likely-wrongdoers-dont-even-think-about-it

The Return of Community Policing

- by Cheryl Iwamoto

In his “The Persistent Pull of Police Professionalism,” David Sklansky maintains that the next big change in policing will be from community policing towards (or rather, back to) police professionalism. Pervaiz Shallwani and Sean Gardiner’s piece in the Wall Street Journal, titled “NYPD Officers “Pushed” on Stop-and-Frisk,” exemplifies Sklansky’s concern. The article recounts statements by current Police Commissioner Bill Bratton on how NYPD officers were pressured by their supervisors to stop-and-frisk more people during the administration of the former NYPD police commissioner Raymond Kelley. The practice of stop-and-frisk was such a highly publicized point of contention between public law enforcement and communities that activists came together to protest the ruling. The relative reemergence of the practice can be seen as indicative and supportive of Sklansky’s claims of a shift back to policing professionalism.

Yet, as Sklansky says, the move back to policing professionalism does not necessarily mean that our society will revert back to the ways of the 1960s. Rather, “there is increasing sympathy for the notion that police departments should focus on crime suppression, that they should do so in ways dictated by objective analysis rather than public whims” (Sklansky 2). Stop-and-frisk, although highly controversial, would technically fit into the description given by Sklansky. However, accepting this sort of paradigm would seem to only increase the already existent rift between public law enforcement and the communities it serves. Regarding the push on stop-and-frisk mentioned in the article, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio commented: “Not only was that an unjust policy, it caused a rift between police and community, it caused real damage to the self respect of a lot of our young people” (Shallwani & Gardiner). Likewise, Sklansky cites Ratcliffe, who maintains that modern police professionalism, particularly intelligence-led policing, is a “top-down managerially driven approach to crime control in which a community’s concerns are not permitted to perpetually trump an objective assessment of the criminal environment” (Sklansky 3). So the problem that is brought up by the article in conjunction with Sklansky’s work seems to be how to create a balance between carrying out crime suppression based upon objective analysis and respecting the rights and interests of the general public.

Achieving this balance, however, is sure to be difficult and will most likely be no time soon in the future. Despite the fact that Sklansky says that the return of police professionalism does not necessarily entail a reversion back to the policing tactics of the 1960s, how will the creators of this ideal system ensure that seemingly impersonal practices of police professionalism do not overtake the interests of the general public? Even in the current system, there are already such problems. Shallwani and Gardiner’s article mentions the use of quotas for the number of stops made by officers; however, quotas are technically illegal, so they are instead implemented under the guise of “productivity goals”. Like this, it seems that already the 1960s and its police tactics are back, just with a new name.

Sources: 

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2014/01/30/nypd-officers-pushed-on-stop-and-frisk-police-commissioner-bratton/?KEYWORDS=police

"The Persistent Pull of Police Professionalism" by David Alan Sklansky

Welfare Programs

- by Jordan Ho

The social welfare system is a system of strict surveillance towards a particular group of people who require public aid. The tactics used through the social welfare program have people living under strict rules and constant surveillance by both the government and large private corporations. As mentioned by the first interviewee in John Gilliom’s Overseers of the Poor, living on welfare is “as close to a prison that I can think of.” The current government works together with other large private corporations to collect as much data and personal information from people, specifically those who are low income and live in rural areas. An example in which the government exploits this power of surveillance is through the social welfare program for public aid. Although recipients of welfare know and understand that they are giving up personal information, they have no other choice because of their need of welfare. The government uses public aid as leverage in order to get more personal data from the lower class society. Large and private corporations benefit from these tactics because it gives them a good public image. It shows that corporations are working together with the government in order to help society and fight poverty. But is it worth receiving the welfare when you are constantly being surveilled by Big Brother? What is welfare worth if you are going to be living a life that is closely related to prison?

One specific program that I want to focus on is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). WIC is a program that provides federal assistance to low-income pregnant women. In order to be eligible for WIC, applicants need to release personal data which ranges to social security, bank accounts, home addresses, names of family members, number of family members in a home, and etc. As soon as applicants become eligible for WIC, they are required to take certain classes and cooperate with all the regulations and laws that go along with WIC’s policies. In addition, WIC constantly audits the applicant’s bank accounts in order to ensure that there is no financial fraud. Lastly, WIC requires that all mothers and infants make monthly trips to the doctor’s office for a physical.

One might ask, what is the big deal? The government is aiding low-income pregnant women. I do agree that WIC does offer good public aid to low-income women however, their lifestyle changes to constant surveillance from Big Brother. Unexpected visits from social workers, auditing bank accounts, and specific purchases at the grocery story make the lifestyle very similar to that of a prison. Continuous surveillance of both the woman and the child continue for five years. According to the Food and Nutrition Service website, WIC provides service to over half of the infants born here in the United States. This gives both the government and large private corporations a good amount of surveillance power for a good majority of the population in the United States.

Sources: http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/women-infants-and-children-wic

Deputy Barney Fife: A Model of Professional Policing

- by Yu Fu

The Andy Griffith Show was a popular American sitcom televised during the 1960s, portraying a sheriff of a fictional community of Mayberry, North Carolina. One of the main characters of the show, Deputy Barney Fife, was an ideal professional policing agent that illustrates some of the elements of the idea of police professionalism.

The primary purpose of professional policing was crime fighting. As demonstrated by the character, Deputy Barney was inspired by the county rules for sheriffs that “an officer of the law shall enforce the law and order without regard to personal welfare and safety” (Beck & Clark, 36). When criminals come to Mayberry, he stated, “It’s my job as a lawman to stalk him and run him out. That’s my number one job-stalking” (22). It shows the main focus of the police professionalism ideal is crime suppression. As Sklansky puts it, authority within the department should fight against crime objectively and free from political influence. Deputy Fife thought that the law applied to everyone equally regardless of class, rank, race, etc. When the Governor’s limousine was parked illegally, he gave it a ticket. “I don’t care if this car belongs to the Governor himself, he’s gone and bought himself a traffic ticket compliments of Barney Fife.” (45) He even put himself in jail after he found that he made an illegal U-turn. These are manifestations of professional policing that law enforcement should be strictly based on rules and codes. The county was autonomous command and control that even those with power can’t impact the consequence of its law enforcement.

Moreover, the professional policing workforce should be hired based on their expertise and skills, not political influence or connections. Deputy Fife himself was familiar with every code, case, ordinance and regulations on the books. He even kept a copy of the codes under his uniform hat. Although he was the cousin of the Sheriff, he wanted the folks in this town to realize that the sheriff picked him, because he looked over all the candidates for the job, and he judged their qualifications and their character and ability, and come to the fair, the just, and the honest conclusion that Fife was the best suited for the job (16).

Besides, the persona of Barney Fife also exhibits that professional policing relies on sophisticated technology to achieve its goal of crime control. He tried to purchase more guns, cameras for high-speed photographic surveillance and asked for more devices such as anti-riot gear, teargas, a fingerprint set, etc. in order to advance the police department’s ability to fight against crime. As a result, he did successfully root out crime from Mayberry by using these new technologies.

From these examples, Deputy Fife exemplified the ideal of professional policing in the sense that he tried to accomplish the ultimate goal of crime suppression by being highly professionalized, maintaining the police department’s autonomy, minimizing involvement of others, and relying on technologies.

Work cited:

Beck, K., & Clark, J. (1985). The Andy Griffith Show Book. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

SnapChat

- by Jarred Boone

SnapChat is a popular photo sharing application available on most smart phones. The application works by you snapping a photo and sharing it with someone, but the unique thing about this app is that once the receiver gets the photo he or she will only have seconds to view it before it is deleted forever. The whole concept behind this app is that your pictures or data is safe and secure, because once it’s sent and viewed it is deleted from the users device and SnapChats servers. Although this may sound good in theory, this app is actually detrimental to our privacy and is only another tool of surveillance. You may have heard in the news lately that a group of hackers hacked into SnapChats servers and released thousands of users information. This action by the group of hackers may have been seen as random act with malicious intent, but in fact, it was an act of counter surveillance to uphold standards of privacy that SnapChat was not up to par with.

SnapChat is essentially based upon a fib. Once you transmit anything online you give up the ability to control where it goes. Additionally, SnapChat tries to portray its app as something that can be used anonymously, which isn’t quite possible; there is effectively no such thing as anonymity online, only superficial anonymity, which can be risky. This perception of privacy makes it easier for a user to disassociate them from what he or she transmits through Snapchat. To elaborate on whether images transmitted through SnapChat are actually “deleted” or not, you can think about a basic principle of online privacy, there is none, or you can simply glance over SnapChats terms of use. The principle of Internet privacy being nonexistent is that once something is transmitted online it has to travel through several servers to reach its destination. In SnapChats case, once you send a picture through the app the picture travels through your phone carries server, to SnapChats server, to the recipients phone carries server, while being logged at all of those places along the way. Now to take a look at SnapChats terms of use, if you brief over them, it states they have the right to sell your information as an asset of the company and also that they cannot guarantee that a user photos will be removed or deleted from their servers in a timely manner. These statements made by SnapChat in their terms of use contradict their entire marketing camping.

What can be seen as an effort of counter surveillance, hackers exploited a hole in SnapChats security and exposed 4.6 million users accounts information to shed light on how unsecure SnapChat was and how vulnerable users privacy was. Hackers released username’s and partial phone numbers for the world to see. The hackers are gave an explanation of the attack as saying they did it to bring awareness to the issue of security and privacy, and that those to issues should not be a secondary goal.

In brief, perceived privacy on the Internet can be risky; it persuades online users that their data is private, when in fact its not. The hackers used counter surveillance; because their tactic’s intentionally disrupted a technological tool of surveillance, also know as SnapChat.

Works Cited

Gross, Doug. "Millions of Accounts Compromised in Snapchat Hack." CNN. Cable News Network, 02 Jan. 2014. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.

"Snapchat's Expired Snaps Are Not Deleted, Just Hidden." Theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 15 May 2013. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.

"The Wall Street Journal." MoneyBeat RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2014

The Piracy of Privacy: From Big Bro to Big Corp

- by Jose Estrada

Social networking sites, email accounts, and cell phones are a means to connect with friends, colleagues, family, partners etc. the constant interaction over the web and phone services offers quick communication between users of intimate and personal content. When we communicate with others we often think that it is private. When talking on our cells and standing in a crowed hall we tend to cover our phones in an effort to restrict others from hearing. When sitting in the library we often use privacy screens to keep out prying eyes. And when transferring sensitive information through social media sites and emails we tend to delete them hoping to rid any trace of it. The fact is that we make efforts to maintain our privacy from unwarranted gazes. However, in 2010 the NSA has been collecting and analyzing data from peoples internet profiles, emails, and phone records in an effort to screen any tie to foreign intelligence targets. A New York Times article discusses the action of data collecting by the NSA as a means to protect national security. While I understand that any and all efforts should be done to combat against national threats, I find it to be frightening that much of what we think is being privately communicated to others really isn’t. What’s more is that the data collected on some individuals is used to determine that party’s circle of contacts. This means even if you are not one of those internet and texting junkies, your information can still be collected because of your one time response to so and so’s post on Facebook.

While the warrantless acquisition of data by the government seems to spark much controversy, it is important to know that private businesses do so as well, yet this doesn’t cause much of an uproar as did the Snowden incident. Rather than combating foreign threats, private businesses use collected data to better market products and services to individuals. Facebook for example uses a series of algorithms to track your posts, likes, pages visited, and more and then formulates a series of ads that are tailored to your interests. While seemingly harmless, this demonstrates the willingness of the citizenry to offer information to big business to deepen the role of consumerism and increase the bottom line for a select few.

I find it interesting that when a situation like the NSA’s acquisition of information happens people tend to want to invoke their privacy rights against governmental intrusion, yet (generally speaking) seem to be more comfortable with the idea of business doing the exact same thing.

Article cited: N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens

Who exactly are the Censors?

- by Liliana Guerrero

A couple of weeks ago, a friend in Facebook who is interested in social injustices posted an article, “Book bannings on the rise in US schools”, which at first I read with disinterest. The article is about an increased number of banned books are about race or sex and/or written by minority authors and are taken down from school libraries. This got me thinking: Who is so interested in in banning such books if we live in moderately “liberal” society? Who exactly are the censors?

LA is segregated, due to historical and economical reasons, so I grew up in a community mostly made up of Mexicans. Most parents wouldn't really complain what books we read because they were immigrants and/or undocumented, didn't speak English, didn't care or didn't have the time. Most parents who were concerned would not bother to complain because they would not be heard. The most likely to complain - that would be religious or moral persons especially mothers or grandmothers- would gather and complain to the school. But the school would find a way to explain to parents or ignore parents. At the end nothing really happened.

Thus from this experience the people who challenged books had to be prudes, conservative, with power, religious, and had spare time. In my mind censors were white women, specifically fanatic Christian women. After reading the article I let my prejudices take over and thought that maybe it was white women, but being in Cal, I knew had to be more than that.

A anti-pornography feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote in “Against the Male Flood” that the first censors where Roman magistrates who took the census and prepared taxes. Because Censors could tax they could also make laws like, if a man was a bachelor he would be taxed more. So censorship was regulating an act. Historically books were censored because writing is an act, a social and/or political act which could endanger the state. The state was worried what people did, thus police could go after writers punish them and burn their books. In the US, the bourgeois police society and writing is not an act but more abstract and personal, writing is just ideas. And because in the US is spoiled and privileged the most educated think censorship is a way to control ideas, to control unpleasant things, or things that are socially unacceptable or that insult or bother them. In short censors are the educated and privileged who police books that offend them.

Then the people who are most likely to be censors are educated people with money and power. The fact that books about race and minority authors are banned might mean that conservative whites are the censors, so I was not so wrong to pin point white women as censor. The article says that mostly parents, library patrons and government officials were the people who complained. So censors don't necessarily have to be white, they could be of any race, gender and religion. Also, our society is so privileged and spoiled, democratic although unequal, and we have too many bitter people, thus a censor can be anyone just as long as an idea bother bothers they will complain about it and do anything to get rid of that nasty book which offended their irritable sensibilities.

Article Cited:

Dworkin, Andrea. “Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography and Equality”. Feminism and Pornography. (Reader).

To Facebook or Not to Facebook?

- by Chelsea Goddard

The current governing infrastructure is a cohort of privatized companies fused with public sects of government, which participate in the covert accumulation and assessment of data as a proxy for manipulative economic leverage. Capital and surveillance encompass and formidably illustrate the progressive expansion of America's consumer-based cultural constituents. These components are contingent to human social propensities involving hierarchical communal integration which is determined through monetary influences. This is coupled with the willful suspension of an awareness that extends beyond the confines of narcissism contributing to the sustenance of a lax yet illusory psychological framework which eliminates possible motives that may lead to its realization. This system is exploited with the employment of life-altering technological innovations, which have chartered new routes for big business and big brother to formulate a schema that swindles the masses into a kind of catatonic consent. An unadulterated exemplification of this paradigm resides in Facebook.

Facebook is a hyperreality that offers its 1.19 billion (next web) users synthetic connection. Social media sites like Twitter and Instagram have monopolized human interaction to such a significant degree that refusing to participate in the virtual reality is nearly perceived as antisocial behavior (or social suicide). This pervasive ideology is intrinsic to the website's economic power and social influence, which is acutely reflected in the submission to their terms and conditions by users whose data is then effectively synthesized and disseminated to corporate partners, advertisement agencies, and various government departments with the specific purpose of amassing capital and intellectual leverage. This type of coercion is demonstrative of an indisputable power whose origins lie in the cultivated tactic of anonymous influence. Thus, Facebook acts as a formidable "social architect" (Gilliom and Monahan), shaping the interaction between the public, private, and corporate sphere (oftentimes unbeknownst to the public).

The recent article in Time, entitled "US Tech Titans Reveal New Data About NSA Snooping", portrays the conjunction between private corporations like Facebook and national security. The link between government and the corporate sector is solidified through their joint use of surveillance; Facebook plays a vital role (along with other tech companies) in "secret U.S. surveillance program[s]" such as PRISM, an intelligence operation that "examines user content including e-mails, videos and online chats" (Business & Money, Time). Interestingly enough, the governments attempt to gain and archive data about the masses falls under the illusory notion that it will protect us, while private companies are completely transparent in their economic incentives. The common denominator between both entities is the propagation of fear (the fear of terrorism, isolation, exclusion etc.) in order to "alleviate" it, which transpires through a masquerade of self-appointed leadership roles to a seemingly unsuspecting public. However this can only be accomplished with unmitigated access to personal information. Francis Bacon's resonating phrase "knowledge is power" has echoed throughout our timeline with a sort of associative vagueness but it is clearly evident that in a society predicated on surveillance, information rather than knowledge is power.

Sources Cited:

1) next web - Facebook passes 1.19 billion monthly active users

2) Supervision, Gilliom and Monahan.

3) Time, Business & Money - US Tech Titans Reveal New Data About NSA Snooping


*The title is a play on a line taken from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Tech Induced Gentrification: Policing the Right to the City

- by Simon Chen



Gentrification is something we've associated happening to low-income neighborhoods when the markets attract a wave of affluent investors and workers and drive rents to levels unaffordable to the previous tenants. It is explored in the El Dorado reading when a new light rail drew a new group of young professionals from Emerald City to work in the financial district and the establishment of mega-corporations edging out Mom and Pop stores. In the context of Policing and Surveillance, gentrification is a process of policing who has the right to live in this area based on their characteristics extracted by public and private forms of surveillance. What I want to discuss with you all in this blog post is the ongoing debate and situation of gentrification happening right in our backyards in the city of San Francisco, in particular the South Market district. More closely, I will focus on how the rise of tech companies like Twitter are influencing the social heirarchies of San Francisco and the reactions against this tech induced gentrification.

David Talbot, the found of Salon.com, wrote extensively against the mayor Ed Lee's stance promoting policies that would grant tech companies like Twitter greater benefits in order to attract more tech companies to develop their headquarters in San Francisco and not relocate to the South Bay in Silicon Valley. He fears that this new generation of techies will dillute the progressive spirit and culture of San Francisco and compared their cultural awareness to the flatness of a computer screen. At companies like Twitter, employees rarely have to leave the building because of all the services provided like free dining halls, exercise rooms, etc. Talbot compares this company consumerism to a cocooning of the employees from the outside local culture on the streets. While he does acknowledge the economic stimulus these tech companies are providing for city, he still stands firmly on his position to preserve the norms of the community, ironically, as a hub for innovation. The risks of promoting such a tech friendly city, he argues, disconnects and disenfranchises the working class people who make San Francisco the way it is today and who run the city as nurses, teachers, and fire-fighters. Who will take care of the city if they are pushed out to the peripheries?

Ilan Greenburg, a contributor for various news outlets like the New York Times, recognizes that based on actual statistics, San Francisco is not becoming any less liberal and progressive of a city than it was before. The idea of fighting to protect some kind of San Francisco exceptionalism from this new generation with different tastes and values is hypocritical to the progressive nature Talbot is trying to protect. Rather, Greenburg realizes that this anti-gentrification protest is largely coming from middle class families who have already been living in gentrified neighborhoods are now are being bought out by more affluent individuals. One quote from his article that resonated with me was how "'[t]he people who get hurt the most by an ignorance of the way development happens are not the ones who write articles.'" The debate against preserving SF from these cultureless tech invaders is detracting from the real people who get hurt by gentrification and have to deal with being cut off from all the resources San Francisco has to offer such as public transportation, hospitals, schools and other valuable cultural goods. There is no solid answer to solving the gentrification problem, but he doesn't believe anti-gentrification advocates do either because they aren't raising the right questions. Another question to raise is if you can even call middle-class migrations a result of gentrification.

What I have learned from these two perspectives on tech-induced gentrification is that:

1) The public generally does not have a good idea or trust behind the people who are developing the technologies that change the way they live. Articles like Talbot's strive to evoke images of completely one dimensional robots rather than actual living breathing human beings who not surprisingly can have social awareness and civic responsibility. The poor surveillance done to capture a portrait of a techie has far undershot their actual capabilities and formed this unappealing stereotype that all tech engineers are blind to the world around them. But understandably, the surveillance is being used to try and control and marginalize the perceptions of other people to think that this is how reality is to justify their argument of cultural dilution.

2) The tech industry is the place to be right now and it alongside the partnership of mayors like Ed Lee, will ride the market pony for all its worth. And without proper policing and surveillance of market forces and corporate regulations, real people will get displaced and hurt by the gentrification. Corporations should at least be obligated to give back to the shared economy of San Francisco that allowed their corporation to grow at such speeds with security and amply opportunity. However, this blurs the line as we have discussed in lecture between public-private partnerships and how authorities handle such relations. Presently, there is such a lack of market regulation for tech companies because city authorities do not want to deincentivize them to relocate and continue doing business and draw more business in.

There are many further implications of gentrification in San Francisco that I am not entirely familiar with, but I highly encourage you all to do further reading and research on the matter if this is something that interests you! Thanks for reading.

Greenburg article: The rise of the white, middle-class anti-gentrifiers

Talbot article: How Much Tech Can One City Take?

Surveillance? What’s the Big Deal?

- by Jonathan Berry-Smith

Are we making surveillance a much bigger deal than it needs to be? To answer this question, I pulled from the LA Times article by Christi Parsons titled “Obama Plans Intelligence Surveillance Reforms, Aids Say,” in order to gain a better perspective on the President’s plan to reduce governmental control over telephone data. This intelligence data reform has recently become a buzzing topic, and the NSA has been criticized for its eavesdropping policies ever since the Snowden revelation became public. However, I plan to argue that this huge debate on surveillance and privacy is not all it is hyped up to be.

In the LA Times article, possible alternatives to the current NSA system of holding telephone metadata are discussed, ranging from having a secret court approve any and all governmental seizures of data to entrusting the existing data to a third, outside party to control. These reforms are intended to prevent the government from spying on innocent people. District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that the NSA collection of metadata is probably “unconstitutional and almost Orwellian”, but I would have to disagree with him.

Nothing that the NSA has done goes against the Constitution. If they are truly just monitoring telephone transactional data, such as what numbers are called and how long each conversation lasts, then they are just participating in the same method of surveillance that any telephone company does, and which people openly allow them to do. This information has no real expectation of privacy, and therefore should not bother people to such an extent. If the public is angry that someone might figure out their deep, personal information based on their telephone data, then they may as well get angry whenever the mail man drops off a package at their door since he or she may have seen what store the item was purchased from on the boxes’ labels.

Next I wonder if this question of privacy matters at all since we live in a world where we are always watched and surveillance is as ubiquitous as technological advancements are rapid and pervasive. As we discussed in lecture, policing does not occur until surveillance is coupled with a form of social control. In today’s society we are constantly under observation, whether it is by our friends on social media, the old lady next door, or the NSA. Whoever the ‘culprit’, we are constantly being monitored, but until social control is thrown into the equation, is surveillance on its own anything to be worried about?

In the end, the potential reforms discussed for preventing further government access to metadata are all being done in order to strike the right balance between the rights of citizens and their safety. This brings forth the debate of efficacy; whether or not this extra intrusion into our lives is worth the added protection from possible terrorist or criminal attacks. I believe that it is, and therefore what the NSA has done with our telephone data should not bring about such outrage, nor be much of a surprise.

Who should we trust? Who has legitimacy?

- by Brooke Arthur

Growing up as an American citizen, we are taught to obey and trust the government because they are protecting our nation and our freedom. So who do we trust when top-secret information is leaked and the general public is not pleased with their protection methods? The article I chose discusses how Edward Snowden used “web crawler” software to download highly secure information from the National Security Agency and reveal it to the public. The classified information shared the government’s use of surveillance, phone and internet monitoring, and other privacy matters, all of which led to the question: Does the government have a legitimate power that allows them to invade people’s personal lives? In class, Professor Musheno defined legitimacy as a conscious willing acceptance of authority often as part of a judgment of a source treating you fairly. Is the government treating us fairly by invading our privacy? This is a difficult question to answer, but my argument is that with the speedy technological advancements today, legitimacy is fleeting and soon no one will be able to be trusted.

Surveillance is a complicated technology because in one sense it can do a lot of good and help reduce and stop crime, yet it is also tremendously invasive. The definition Professor Musheno provided says surveillance is a systematic, intrusive watching and monitoring from a position of power and with the intent of channeling and governing human thought, movement, and behavior. Even though it can be a useful approach in reducing crime or protecting our nation, it also takes away our rights, such as the right to privacy. It also gives the government an excuse to snoop through our private lives without any warning. How is this a source of legitimacy because it does not seem like the government is treating us fairly by taking away certain rights. Snowden’s hacking released this information about the government’s use of mass surveillance to the public, which caused the public to rethink the government’s role. With the government’s continued use of intrusive technology, our nation will be in trouble and mistrust will ensue.

Snowden figured out a way to bypass the government in a way that is shocking. He accomplished his hacking through a simple technology that essentially anyone would have access to, yet the NSA did not catch it. The article summarizes the situation perfectly, “While the organization built enormously high electronic barriers to keep out foreign invaders, it had rudimentary protections against insiders” (Sanger and Schmitt). Snowden was an insider, someone the public trusted to keep information safe and secure, yet, Snowden’s actions prove otherwise. His scheme has left America in a downward spiral of distrust. Technology is advancing so quickly that people are able to breech government security and use the information in whatever way they choose. The current mistrust and illegitimacy in America has led to anxiety that cannot be calmed. People have lost control of their privacy and their sense of safety. Events like this have the potential to lead to anarchy like we saw in the film, Law and Disorder in Johannesburg. In that video, we saw vigilante justice because there was no sense of legitimacy, which is a key component in having an effective and efficiently run nation. Similarly, Snowden’s actions make us question what makes certain power positions legitimate and who the public should trust with their security.

Article Cited: Snowden Used Low-Cost Tool to Best N.S.A.

The Ugly Truth

- by Annie Choi

By now, the compilation and sale of customer information through data brokers is a well-established fact of our consumer-based society. But, recent technological developments have enabled data brokers in the data-collection industry, or Big Data, to consolidate consumer details through multiple sources in order to a more and more complete profile. Large corporations then rent these consumer profiles which include details such as hobbies, ethnicity, shopping habits, and even medical conditions in order to target specific consumers. This practice, known as data crunching or mining, allows companies to release promotions tailored toward individual interests. The deep extent of corporate data mining arose in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting the case of Mike Seay, when a piece of junk mail from OfficeMax Inc. accidentally included a private detail about the death of his daughter Ashley in a car accident approximately one year ago. In the mailing address below his name was written "Daughter Killed in Car Crash." But how did OfficeMax Inc. come into possession of such a personal tragedy? OfficeMax Inc. rented one thousand profiles for $120 from a gift retailer, Things Remembered. In a possible explanation for the link between Ashley's death and retailer Things Remembered, family and friends of the Seays had recently made a purchase of picture frames from Things Remembered to house pictures of Ashley. However, if this is how the company obtained that information, the question remains why they input it into their database and why it was included in the mailing to Mike Seay.



Courtesy of Wall Street Journal, Mike Seay.

Incidents like these reveal a major consequence of our current model of consumerism and reinforce the need to include corporate surveillance into current discussion about surveillance, its implications, and our response. Although government surveillance and public policing has long been scrutinized and criticized, corporate surveillance has been largely overlooked. The lack of the general public's knowledge and/or reaction is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of practices such as data mining. Misuse of consumer information is highly possible and consumers should be educated. As technology allows for an exponentially expanding data capacity, consumer information is being steadily and meticulously stored over time perhaps not for any immediate use, but rather in order to sell for future profit. Personal information has become a commodity, something that can be bought, sold or rented in order to channel consumer behavior. This type of behavior calls for more transparency in the methods that are used to obtain information. Maybe the biggest concern now isn't about the data mining itself, but whether or not consumer protection is even possible given the extent of corporate surveillance.

Article Cited: 

Wall Street Journal, How a Family Tragedy Landed on a Retailer’s Mailing

Who are the police? What is Policing?

- by Derek Chin

I believe the article I chose for my blog post “Community Policing and CompStat: Merged or Mutually Exclusive” provides a lot of insight into who the police are and what modern policing is in the public sphere. The article addresses the various types of policing through history and the consequences of each type. Then it addresses the (relatively) new acquisition of CompStat systems and how technology affects the development of policing.

The article begins with a broad historical summary of policing in America. I will provide a brief overview. The first period is called the political period. This featured politically appointed police by alderman and tax assessors. The idea was to find the best-qualified officials in each area to police the area. However, political patronage became a large component of the system and resulted in a less than effective force. Additionally, due to the close ties of police to their districts, it resulted in increased violence on ethnic lines and towards strangers.

The second period is that of the professional/reform era. An objective outlook defined policing during this time in the 50s and 60s. Police interactions were standardized and maximized for efficiency. Officers were expected to meet quotas of various quantitative measures (e.g miles driven, arrests given, tickets issued). Many policies were opposed to the political era, officers could not live in the same neighborhood the patrolled (to limit political influence), for instance. Many events in this time, however, suggested these techniques were not as effective. Riots, police behavior the Civil Rights movement, and Vietnamese war protests all eroded at the legitimacy of the police, and by extension the objective methods they employed.

The most recent is the community-policing era. This is defined by more familiar relationship between police and citizens. The same officer was likely to deal with problems in the same neighborhood. Officers can then tailor their role specifically for the target community. Police officers are also given more authority and autonomy to deal with situations; in recent times the news has shown us that this is a mixed bag. The article then addresses a new issue in the community-policing era, the use of CompStat. CompStat is a management tool used by police that includes collecting and compiling statistics. This would seem to indicate a return to the quantitative influence professional policing. The author notes that the CompStat system can also be effectively used in community policing, providing in depth statistics about a given beat.

I found this article to shed a lot of light on the public police. Not only does it have a brief and clear description of the history of American policing, but it addresses current issues as well. That being said, considering this is an article for police chiefs, it only talks about the effects from the police end. While the statistics would indicate safer communities when CompStat is initiated, it is not clear as to what cost to citizens.

I couldn’t really fit this in anywhere else in the post, but I found it very interesting that when addressing newer policing methods the author chose more terms associated with business. Law enforcement seemed to be treated more like a product with the people as consumers.

How Safe Are You?

- by Erica Au

When many consumers shop using their credit or debit cards, they do not realize that they could potentially become victims of security breaches and identity theft. Recently one of the nation’s largest retailers, Target, had a security breach, which put millions of consumers’ information at risk. The cybercriminals were able to access all the information seen on credit cards such as names, credit card account numbers, security codes as well as expiration dates. Consumers tend to think that their information is secure, mainly based on the presumption that large corporations have reliable security measures. When the breach was first discovered, Michael Sutton, a vice president for research at ZScaler expressed his knowledge regarding cybercriminals. Sutton states that that, “There’s not a great deal customers can do…if they’ve been informed of a breach”, and continues to insist, “No one is immune.”

During the early stages of investigation into the breach, JPMorgan Chase assisted customers who could have been potential victims by placing caps on daily purchases and withdrawals. Shortly after, it was discovered that the cybercriminals were able to access encrypted PIN numbers although they were initially assumed to be safe. Citibank, however, seemed to disagree that the PIN numbers were compromised. They stated that the PIN numbers were all still “safe and secure”. Despite the PINs being safe and secure, they also took the initiative to replace debit cards for customers who may have been impacted to reassure customers of their safety.

It seemed that the cybercriminals were merely looking to steal credit card account numbers and gain access to bank accounts. In the midst of the security breach, customers discovered that Target had access to information that they may have not recalled sharing with the corporation. Professor Musheno had mentioned during lecture that someone from Target had sent him an email notifying him of the breach. Professor Musheno was unaware that he had provided the company with his personal email address. It seems a mystery how these companies store information about their consumers. More often than not, it seems that people are quite willing to share their personal information since they assume it is safe to do so, and the store might even offer an incentive if they share a bit of information.

The fact that hackers were able to acquire such personal information raises concerns for the safety of consumers’ information. While the banks and corporations work together to attempt to protect customers by issuing new cards, consumers should still be quite careful when using credit cards. It seems impractical in this day and age to carry around large amounts of cash when it can be easily accessed directly from one’s bank account from a piece of plastic. Every time consumers swipe their credit cards or enter the numbers online, they should realize that they are at risk (no matter how minimal) of having their information viewed by people who are not authorized.

Collusion of the Public and Private Police: Why the public should be concerned

- by Ayesha Ali

When Edward Snowden leaked massive amounts of information detailing the domestic surveillance program conducted by the NSA, the general public was shocked at the ease with which the government was able to actively intrude upon their private actions. Citizens, growing increasingly wary of the scope of scrutiny the government possess, have questioned the legality of such an invasive program, but as of yet the actions of the NSA have not been held unconstitutional in any lower courts, as a recent New York Times article reported. However, it is possible that a recent case might make its way through the system soon, believed to have the potential to carry the matter all the way to the Supreme Court for a final decision making it the first time a defendant has legitimate standing to bring to court the issue of warrentless surveillance.

Though the article is interesting in itself and the issue is certainly important, what particularly interested me was that it acted as reminder that the issue of surveillance by the government has always, and likely will continue to, generate far more outrage and concern among people than surveillance by private industries. When Target systems were hacked and the personal information of millions of Black Friday shoppers was compromised, there was certainly shock and outrage, but it seemed to stem more so from concerns of identity theft than the realization of mass surveillance by a corporation that is storing that information in order that they better engage consumers. There has been little if anything said about the constitutional legitimacy of Target’s collections of personal information, and certainly nothing about seeking to bring it before the Supreme Court.

This presents the problem which is the common equation of government surveillance to Big Brother, while private surveillance is disregarded, comparatively. It seems that the public is far more affronted by surveillance that, though warrentless, is justifiable at minimum as an intended means of national security than they are by surveillance from private entities that seek to use such information against them, for various reasons and in numerous ways. This relentless policing allows for subtle yet active control of our behavior, in that it provides these entities with the information necessary to most effectively influence us through marketing campaigns, advertisements on web pages, suggested posts on social networking sites, etc. Further, it creates a culture of lateral policing (Andrejevic 13) as popular opinion normalizes certain ideals--consider Apple’s ability to convince it’s customers that it is necessary to purchase a slightly newer model of their popular phones every two years or less. While in part they provide shiny advertisements and great new deals, much of the public is equally motivated by their desire to keep up with the Jones’, as they see friends and family making the switch and are encouraged to do so as well, a subtle manner of securing conformity.

When policing is not overt, it is difficult to see and harder to fight against, but in an increasingly capitalist society, it is necessary to understand that the diminished boundaries between the public and the private police further the abilities of each, and if the public does not recognize it and take action against it, they will only continue to increase the collective scope of surveillance.


Sources Cited

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/<wbr />01/30/us/warrantless-<wbr />surveillance-challenged-by-<wbr />defendant.html?_r=0

http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/<wbr />index.php/surveillance-and-<wbr />society/article/viewFile/3359/<wbr />3322

Retail Data Breaches: a 'watershed moment'?

- by Michaela Acebedo

Most people often think of the police as those whose job it is to protect citizens from criminals and also to make sure our communities are safe. Coming into this class this was my idea of the police, and through our conversations of “what is policing; who are the police?,” I have seen how policing expands much more than the police force on the streets. One area of policing that I found very interesting from our lectures was the use of market surveillance. I use my debit and ATM cards on a daily basis and never even think that the machines at the stores I am using my cards, could have the potential to be leaked into by cyber criminals. Following the various security breaches at stores such as Target and Newman Marcus, has made me realize that I am running a risk as I use my cards at any department store and there is a need for greater policing against these data breaches.

In an article I came across this week titled “Cyber-security expert: Target case is 'watershed moment',” it discusses the need for the United States Congress to take action and create stronger security standards to avoid further security breaches. This past holiday season 110 million Americans were affected by the security breach at Target, the largest incident in over a decade. This incident allowed for the media to publicize and bring to light an area of policing that needs to be expanded, in order to protect American consumers. This Monday, the Secret Service, which has been leading the investigations of the breaches at Target and other retailers, testified before the Senate Banking Subcommittee. I think it is critical that Congress is taking the steps to ensure that these security breaches do not occur, but also finding better ways to protect the personal information of Americans. As consumers we often don’t realize the amount of trust we give to credit card companies through each swipe of our cards including access to our addresses, phone numbers, and emails, which can easily be used for identity theft. We believe that credit card companies will keep our information safe, but the recent security breaches have tested this belief.

I think it is important that federal laws should keep stronger regulations on credit card companies and payment security corporations, because as technology improves there becomes more ways for hackers to have access to our personal information. Personally as a consumer hearing that companies I frequently shop at and trusted have had security breaches, now makes me double think the usage of my ATM and credit cards at these stores. While now carrying cards is a convenience to customers instead of using cash, this convenience comes with a loss of security and a new avenue for criminal activity to occur. How do you feel about the recent security breaches? Will you be checking your bank accounts and credit-card accounts more often?

Airport Screening and Security Tradeoffs

- by Fernando Arroyos


Security at any cost appears to be the standard at airport security checkpoints. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) there are 3,000 Behavior Detection Officers (BDOs) trained to detect behavioral clues of wrongful purpose. TSA Administrator John Pistole notes that law enforcement and military have been using behavior-detection techniques for quite a while and that the behavioral clues come from FBI and DEA criteria. Indicators BDOs look out for are fidgeting, excessive sweating and wearing heavy clothes in warm climate. Pistole notes that BDOs are “looking for bad people” regardless of weapons; they observe travelers from different angles and use a point system to score suspicious behavior. If enough indicators are triggered the passenger is singled out for “enhanced” screening at checkpoints, including a pat-down and search of personal property. TSA says it prohibits racial profiling and has begun collecting data about BDO referrals and whether it can begin tracking race and national origin of passengers referred for enhanced screening.

Within the airport checkpoints BDOs have the power to profile whoever they feel is suspicious; BDOs are quasi cops within their boundaries. The work of BDOs at airports relies heavily on the idea of policing. BDOs exercise power through surveillance, the use of a point system, and aggressive social control, enhanced screening at checkpoints. The use of “enhanced” is a more polished way of saying intensive. The idea behind the intensive check points is to deter travelers from engaging in risky behavior. However when profiling occurs and preferential treatment is given to some the security network is weakened. Wrong doers can find ways to pass security check points while resources are being wasted on profiled travelers who are probably innocent or probably not, it’s a chance. Although a criterion exists there is too much subjectivity involved which undermines the purpose of having one to treat everyone equally.

People believe a tradeoff between security and liberty or security and privacy is necessary to keep us safe. However, as Gilliom and Monahan put it many travelers might not object in principle to random searches or even profiling, but they find it insulting that they would be chosen for systematic intensive screening. (Gilliom, Monahan 109). BDOs have the power to subject travelers, not all travelers are given intensive screenings. Although not mentioned in the article but follows along the same lines of surveillance and security are pre-clearance programs. Gilliom and Monahan mentioned the NEXUS program which fast tracks travelers who pay $50, undergo a back ground check, interview, and are given a RFID card which substitutes for a passport (Gilliom, Monahan 112). TSA also has a fast track program called TSA pre-check. It’s interesting, although you go through a process and pay to be “fast tracked” there is no guarantee. Taken from TSA’s website “TSA will always incorporate random and unpredictable security measures throughout the airport and no individual will be guaranteed TSA Pre✓™ screening.” Preferential services such as NEXUS and TSA Pre-Check which facilitate security detailing employed by BDOs should all be eliminated and standard inclusive procedures taken up. Inclusive procedures eliminate profiling treating every traveler equally regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or political stance and thus maximizing security.

Sources Cited

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304632204579336984217416844

http://www.tsa.gov/tsa-precheck/what-tsa-precheck

SuperVision, by John Gilliom and Torin Monahan