police

Teaching UC Davis about the Streisand Effect

Remember this?

Thats right. Its 2011, a campus police officer at UC Davis casually pepper spraying peaceful non-threatening protesters. This is an act of pure sadism. There is no threat to the helmeted, armed police. So why the exaggerated use of force? But don’t take my word for it.

Here is what’s on Wikipedia

Sometime around 4:00 pm, two officers, one of whom is named John Pike, began spraying Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band military-grade pepper spray at “point-blank range” in the faces of the unarmed seated students. The pepper spray used, according to various websites, has a recommended minimum distance of six feet.[48] Bystanders recorded the incident with cell phone cameras, while members of the crowd chanted “Shame on you” and “Let them go” at the police officers.[49] Eleven protesters received medical treatment; two were hospitalized.[50][51][52]

And here is an analysis of the situation and the report of the event.

Its totally embarrassing for UC Davis. Police brutality, harming the students you claim to educate, arming campus police as paramilitaries, overreacting to peaceful protest etc etc.

Thankfully the internet reacts. There were huge amounts of articles but also memes. Don’t forget the memes.

and graffiti

Turns out that the university was not too pleased. They paid of the bad cop instead of punishing him. Be that as it may. But now we find out that:

“The University of California at Davis shelled out some $175,000 to consultants to clean up the school’s online reputation following a 2011 incident in which campus police pepper-sprayed student protesters,according to documents cited by the Sacramento Bee.” (Washington Post)

Charming use of money. Lets make sure that UC Davis learns all about the Streisand Effect

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.
Lets make sure that the images that prove the callous nature of that police officer, that police department, and that university are not easily forgotten.
Posted on by Mathias Klang

Shooting Down Drones

A man in Kentucky man shot down drone that was hovering over his property. He has been arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first-degree wanton endangerment. News story here. The Kentucky man was quoted as saying:

“Our rights are being trampled daily,” he said, the station reported. “Not on a local level only — but on a state and federal level. We need to have some laws in place to handle these kind of things.”

So what is the position on drones? And in particular what is the position on preventing other people’s drones from entering private property?

The right to property does not include an unlimited right to the airspace above the property. Therefore flying objects are not violating your property when they fly above it. This makes a lot of sense in relation to airplanes and helicopters. It would be strange if they needed permission to fly above individuals property – also it would be very dangerous if individuals could take pot-shots at them for violating airspace.

Actually there are most probably several laws and ordinances that deal with shooting a firearm in an urban area. And also shooting at aircraft. But this isn’t the first time someone shot down a drone a New Jersey man was arrested and charged with “possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and criminal mischief” for  shooting down his neighbor’s drone.

The FAA has guidelines in place for unmanned aircraft systems and has partnered with industry associations to promote Know Before You Fly. The latter has provisions about respecting privacy.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Weapons of War don’t Protect & Serve

The police exist to ensure that society works – anyone who has been subjected to American films and television is aware that their motto is “to protect and serve”. In order to protect and serve in all kinds of situations the police require a great deal of equipment. Most of this equipment is, as you would expect, uniforms, cars, communications etc. But recently in the US some of this equipment has been growing increasingly militarized.

As American armies go to war they need to be supplied with equipment to meet their needs. This is the need of combat soldiers fighting an enemy in a hostile environment. This is really a no-brainer and should be easy to understand whether the wars are supported or not.

In order to supply the army their is an increase in weapons production and purchasing. The problems begin when the army has a surplus of equipment it needs to dispose of. In the US, one method of disposal seems to be supplying the police with this surplus or excess material. On paper this may seem like a good idea. However, there is a problem. The equipment is not designed for those who “protect and serve” and therefore there is a challenge when the technology of violence is brought home and supplied to those who protect and serve.

The ACLU published “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.” in June.  Its central point: “the United States today has become excessively militarized, mainly through federal programs that create incentives for state and local police to use unnecessarily aggressive weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield.”

This technology, and the training it requires, goes against the goal to protect and serve the public and is replaced by an ethos of aggressiveness. The report states:

Our analysis shows that the militarization of American policing is evident in the training that police officers receive, which encourages them to adopt a “warrior” mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies…

Once the police forces have invested in the equipment and the training it is almost inevitable that these will deployed. Even in situations where it is not merited. This is not a case of the police being violent individuals but rather the case of them being drilled in the use of the wrong technology. They have been focused on the use of technologies of violence and death and any attempt to curb civil unrest with these mechanisms is naturally seen as repression.

When dealing with football (soccer) hooligans the European police have learned through experience that excessive shows of militarized police treating the fans as thugs would have the inevitable effect of turning the crowd towards aggressive reactions. What the police have learned is to talk to the crowd (not at the crowd), to build up links and liaison, to break down the us/them barriers. This has drastically reduced the level of violence.

By showing up in military gear the police are inherently threatening. They are treating citizens as enemies and pointing weapons of war at them. This does not calm the crowd. In the best case scenario this will repress the crowd, but it will not reflect the way in which a democratic discourse should occur and it will also brand the police as symbol of violent repression.

Images Of Ferguson Police In Riot Gear Confronting An Unarmed Man Go Viral Scott Olson / Getty Images

 

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Police, Evidence and Facebook

One of the things I presented at IR13 was in a 10-minute panel presentation on the regulation of Internet by spaces such as Facebook. I wanted to use this all to brief time to enter into the discussion of a problem of police, policing, procedural rules and technological affordances – easy right?

This is going to be a paper soon but I need to get some of the ideas out so that I remember the order they are in and so that people who know better can tell me how horribly wrong, ignorant and uniformed I am about the rules of evidence in different jurisdictions.

So the central argument is that computers have been used for a long time in police work and we have created safeguards to ensure that these computers and databases are not abused. In order to prevent abuse most countries have rules dictating when the police can search databases for information about someone.

Additionally, many countries have more or less developed rules surrounding undercover work, surveillance work and the problem of what to do with excess information (i.e. information gained through surveillance but not relating to the investigation that warranted the surveillance). As you can tell I need to do more reading here. These will all be in the article but here I want to focus on a weakness in the rules of evidence, which may be presented to the courts. This weakness, I argue, may act as an encouragement to certain police officers to abuse their authority.

Facebook comes along and many government bodies (not limited to the police) are beginning to use it as an investigative tool. The anecdotal evidence I have gathered suggests no limitations within the police to using Facebook to get better photos of suspects, finding suspects by “trawling” Facebook and even going undercover to become friends with suspects.

Now here is an interesting difference between Anglo-American law and Swedish Law (I need to check if this applies to most/all civil code countries): The Anglo-American system is much better at regulating this are in favor of individual rights. Courts routinely decide whether or not information gathered is admissible. If a police officer in America gathers information illicitly it may not be part of the proceedings.

In Swedish law all information is admissible. The courts are deemed competent to handle the information and decide upon its value. If a police officer gathers information illicitly in Sweden it is still admissible in court but he may face disciplinary actions by his employer.

So here’s the thing: If an officer decides he doesn’t like the look of me. He has no right to check me up. But there is no limitation to going online.

He may then find out that some of my friends have criminal records (I have several activist friends with police records) or find politically incorrect, borderline illegal status updates I wrote while drunk (I have written drunk statements on Facebook).

This evidence may be enough to enable him to argue probable cause for a further investigation – or at least (and here is the crux of my argument) ensure that he will not be disciplined harshly in any future hearing (should such a hearing arise).

The way the rules are written Facebook provides a tool that can be used to legitimize abuse of police power. And the ways the rules are written in Swedish law are much more open to such abuse.

Here are the slides I used for the presentation

Posted on by mklang

Could Facebook be a members only social club?

What is public space? Ok, so it’s important but what is it and how is it defined? The reason I have begun thinking about this again is an attempt to address a question of what government authorities should be allowed to do with publicly available data on social networks such as Facebook.

One of the issues with public space is the way in which we have taken it’s legal status for granted and tend to believe that it will be there when we need it. This is despite the fact that very many of the spaces we see as public are actually private (e.g. shopping malls) and many spaces which were previously public have been privatized.

So why worry about a private public space? Who cares who is responsible for it? The privatization of public space allows for the creation of many local rules which can actually limit our general freedoms. There is, for example, no law against photographing in public. But if the public space is in reality a private space there is nothing stopping the owners from creating a rule against photography. There are unfortunately several examples of this – only last month the company that owns and operates the Glasgow underground prohibited photography.

Another limitation brought about by the privatization of public spaces is the limiting of places where citizens can protest. The occupy London movement did not chose to camp outside St Paul’s for symbolic reasons but because the area land around the church is part of the last remaining public land in the city.

Over the last 20 years, since the corporation quietly began privatising the City, hundreds of public highways, public pathways and rights of way in place for centuries have been closed. The reason why this is so important is that the removal of public rights of way also signals the removal of the right to political protest. (The Guardian)

This is all very interesting but what has it got to do with Facebook?

In Sweden a wide range of authorities from the Tax department to the police have used Facebook as an investigative tool. I don’t mean that they have requested data from Facebook but they have used it by browsing the open profiles and data available on the site. For example the police may go to Facebook to find a photograph, social services may check up if people are working when they are claiming unemployment etc.

What makes this process problematic is that the authorities dipping into the Facebook data stream is not controlled in any manner. If a police officer would like to check the police database for information about me, she must provide good reason to do so. But looking me up on Facebook – in the line of duty – has no such checks.

These actions are commonly legitimized by stating that Facebook is a public space. But is it? Actually it’s a highly regulated private public space. But how should it be viewed? How should authorities be allowed to use the social network data of others? In an article I am writing right now I criticize the view that Facebook is public, and therefore accessible to authorities without limitation. Sure, it’s not a private space, but what about a middle ground – could Facebook be a members only social club? Would this require authorities to respect our privacy online?

Posted on by mklang

Pointing a camera at the police

The United Kingdom is going totally bananas in it’s misguided battle against terror. For a long time they have been hounding photographers with very bad results for the countries image but hardly preventing any crime or terror. But this next step is absolutely misguided.

Basically it’s an amendment to the the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 that will have the result of criminalizing, amongst other things, the photographing of a police officer. Here is a quote from the British Journal of Photography:

Set to become law on 16 February, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 amends the Terrorism Act 2000 regarding offences relating to information about members of armed forces, a member of the intelligence services, or a police officer.

The new set of rules, under section 76 of the 2008 Act and section 58A of the 2000 Act, will target anyone who ‘elicits or attempts to elicit information about (members of armed forces) … which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’.

A person found guilty of this offence could be liable to imprisonment for up to 10 years, and to a fine.

Now we have all seen silly laws before but can you even begin to imagine who could sit down and think this is a good idea? I think almost any tourist to London could look through their snaps and find a picture of a bobby with the distinctive helmet. Also this law will be used to prevent civilians taking photographs of police abuse. Imagine the effect if the reporters who took the Rodney King video faced ten years in jail?

This is a serious blow against civil rights and individual freedom – not a step towards ending terrorism.

Posted on by mklang

Another photographer arrested in London

The UK has adopted and intepreted the silliest anti-terrorist laws – they have created a state of paranoia which is hard for any sensible person to explain or understand.

The Independent reports that artist and photographer Ruben Powell was arrested last week his photographing of the old HMSO print works close to the local police station posed an unacceptable security risk.

For Powell, this brush with the law resulted in five hours in a cell after police seized the lock-blade knife he uses to sharpen his pencils. His release only came after the intervention of the local MP, Simon Hughes, but not before he was handcuffed and his genetic material stored permanently on the DNA database.

The Independent gives even more examples of people who have run afoul of the strangest intepretation of misguided security. Not only are phographers being seen as suspicious in one way or another. Another sad thing is that the data is stored permanently in the DNA database even when no crime has been committed.

Security is a bad joke creating a social paranoia beyond belief. Common sense has been suspended and seems to be nowhere in sight.

Posted on by mklang

Indecent Exposure

Tired of seeing too much underwear? Well via Battleangel I came across this great news story, the residents of Flint can now be fined large amounts if their trousers hang too low! Or as the article states: “Flint residents now have to watch their butts because Police Chief David Dicks is on the lookout.”

Posted on by mklang