Coming to a city and town near you "Domain Awareness Center" spying
California - Across the Bay Area -- from Pittsburg to San Francisco, from Tiburon to Gilroy -- you're being watched.
And it's not just the National Security Agency secretly vacuuming up your personal data. Local police agencies are increasingly adopting Big Data technologies such as automatic license-plate readers that gather information about everyone, whether they've broken the law or not.
A lot of the information ends up on the 14th floor of a federal office building in San Francisco, where a "fusion center" run by state and local law enforcement agencies combines the data with a plethora of personal information about you, from credit reports to car rentals to unlisted phone numbers to gun licenses.
"No one has any idea of the scale of information being gathered," said Mike Katz-Lacabe, of San Leandro, who discovered this in a very personal way.
A San Leandro school board member, Katz-Lacabe said a comment he heard about license-plate readers at a city council meeting prompted him to file public-records requests that revealed not only that his Toyota Tercel's license plate had been photographed all over town, but also that it and all kinds of other information were being collated at the fusion center. "I was a little shocked," he said.
Along with many of the nation's 77 other fusion centers, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as an anti-terrorism intelligence hub. And like many of the other centers, it has morphed into a huge data center whose purpose is to solve and prevent all kinds of crimes -- from terrorist bombings to car thefts.
The latest Bay Area trend allows patrol officers to view surveillance video 24/7 on their smartphones. Many Bay Area police agencies now have at least some cruisers fitted with automatic license-plate readers to scan every car they pass. This and reams of other data from 15 other counties are fed to the fusion center, where analysts search for patterns indicating suspicious activity.
Mike Sena, the Northern California fusion center's director, said his agency is simply centralizing law-enforcement information that was fragmented in the past.
Tiburon in 2010 installed cameras on the only two roads in and out of town so police now record the license plate of every car that enters and leaves, creating what some say is a virtual gated community.
Video cameras have become commonplace in many homes and almost every business, ATM or public building. Yet many people might not realize that police across the Bay Area use their own video surveillance systems to keep tabs on public areas, too.
A consultant's recent report to the Oakland Police Department urged it to "significantly increase the camera-monitoring capabilities of the OPD in commercial areas throughout the city to provide identifications and evidence in robbery, burglary and some shooting cases. Cameras would be monitored and recorded at the Domain Awareness Center that is currently under construction."
The Oakland Domain Awareness Center currently does not have privacy guidelines or limits for retaining the data it collects, raising concerns from civil libertarians and privacy advocates. Eighteen license-plate readers mounted on Oakland police vehicles and city infrastructure already collect and retain millions of license-plate records.
Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Pablo, Pinole, Martinez and other Bay Area cities have cameras, too, but most don't mention it on their websites. You wouldn't know about the cameras unless you specifically asked police or city officials.
Camera systems already in place can have software added later that will recognize people's faces or specific objects, making all that recorded footage much more searchable and potentially invasive. It's a booming business: Intelligent video surveillance and analytics software is a $13.5 billion industry projected to almost triple to $39 billion by 2020, according to a March report from Homeland Security Research, a market research firm.
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_23569173/look-around-bay-area-youre-being-watched
Oakland surveillance center progresses amid debate on privacy, data collection:
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Oakland-Surveillance-Center-Progresses-Amid-Debate-on-Privacy-Data-Collection-217185161.html
Oakland moves forward with citywide surveillance center despite data collection, privacy controversy:
http://endthelie.com/2013/07/27/oakland-moves-forward-with-citywide-surveillance-center-despite-data-collection-privacy-controversy/#axzz2aMEwxMW8