FC: Cops spy on Denver citizens, now plan to create a database

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Also submitted by Fred Heutte and others. --Declan]

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From: "Danny Yavuzkurt" <ayavuzk () fas harvard edu>
To: <declan () well com>
Subject: Yet another...
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 06:24:14 -0500

Here's another article in a seemingly endless series of disclosures of
government snooping, this one about the (well-deserved) embarrassment the
Denver Police Department has suffered after it began sharing secretly
collected data it's been keeping since the 50s.. seems some 3,400 files were
being kept (on index cards, in a file cabinet) on people the PD defined as
being 'suspicious', including the Nobel-prizewinning American Friends
Service Committee (classified as 'criminal extremists'), supposedly
'troubled' students in local public schools (minors who had committed no
crimes - I wonder if in future questioning the war on terror will qualify
one as 'troubled'?), humanitarian nun groups, and, shamefully enough, a
Japanese-American citizen who was detained in WWII - I guess the government
just couldn't let the poor woman alone, given her *suspicious ancestry* and
*habit of going to protests* (as if she didn't have more than enough reason
to already!)

And though the PD had specific guidelines prohibiting such spying on
'ordinary citizens not suspected of criminal wrongdoing,' they were never
put into effect.. and presumably, the surveillance would have continued
unabated had the Denver PD not made the mistake of beginning to share the
data with other nearby PDs with less questionable morals - some anonymous
whistleblower (no pun intended) dropped a printout of some of these secret
records off at a coffee shop (before an Amnesty International meeting,
coincidentally enough), for a local man who, along with his wife, was
wrongfully surveilled - and, sure enough, he took the docs to the ACLU and
sued.. which started turning up skeletons in the closet dating waaay back..

Also, as the article points out, it was only recently that the Denver PD
decided to start filing their data electronically (since, literally, their
cabinet of illegally obtained data was overflowing..) - and here's another
connection to the federal government - they bought a system from Orion
Scientific Systems (http://www.orionsci.com - their motto should be 'reach
for the sky,' not 'reach for the stars') *which got its start developing
software for DARPA 20 years ago*.. the article says the software they
peddled to PDs was a 'revamped version' of what they'd developed for the
Pentagon, with DARPA's help.. and I wouldn't be surprised if some of this
software, with 'criminal extremists' as one of the default classifications
for records, was being used by other departments around the country
already.. in fact, the article says NYC just paid almost $750K for a new
version of OSS's software.. according to Orion's website, the software is "a
database application which provides the investigator with a comprehensive
analytic tool for tracking and analyzing crimes based on information
collected about Events, Groups, Individuals, and Vehicles that are related
to a crime scene".. but apparently it's just as useful for filing data about
people whether or not they're related to crimes.. just like many tools, I'm
sure this is useful and beneficial in the right hands, but I'm not sure the
police of Denver - or New York, and certainly not LA - are those 'right
hands', given their track records..

Finally, I think we should note that this kind of surveillance may become
more widespread in future, as more and more police departments are looking
to change the laws and guidelines that prohibit them from collecting data on
people not suspected of existing crimes.. as noted in the New York Times
almost two weeks ago
(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/national/10PRIV.html, I think I submitted
this before..)


-Danny

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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/21/technology/21PRIV.html

"December 21, 2002
Going Electronic, Denver Reveals Long-Term Surveillance
By FORD FESSENDEN with MICHAEL MOSS

DENVER, Dec. 14 - The Denver police have gathered information on unsuspecting
local activists since the 1950's, secretly storing what they learned on
simple index cards in a huge cabinet at police headquarters.
When the cabinet filled up recently, the police thought they had an easy
solution. For $45,000, they bought a powerful computer program from a
company called Orion Scientific Systems. Information on 3,400 people and
groups was transferred to software that stores, searches and categorizes the
data.
Then the trouble began.
After the police decided to share the fruits of their surveillance with
another local department, someone leaked a printout to an activist for
social justice, who made the documents public. The mayor started an
investigation. People lined up to obtain their files. Among those the police
spied on were nuns, advocates for American Indians and church organizations.
To make matters worse, the software called many of the groups "criminal
extremists."
"I wasn't threatened in any way by them watching," said Dr. Byron Plumley,
who teaches religion and social values at Regis University in Denver, and
discovered that the police had been keeping information about his activities
against war. "But there's something different about having a file. If the
police say, `Aha, he belongs to a criminal extremist organization,' who's
going to know that it's the American Friends Service Committee, and we won
the Nobel Peace Prize?"
The incident has highlighted some pitfalls of police intelligence software,
which has been hailed widely as a major tool in the war against terrorism.
One of Orion's newest clients, in fact, is the New York City Police
Department, where 200 people in the intelligence division are being trained
to use the program, according to city records and Orion officials.
[...]




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