Re: Standing up an intel op with seized funds

[Nick Selby <nick.selby () gmail com>]

What a great thread. Roland, thank you so much for this. You raise important
points on an apparent conflict of interest that I had not considered. I'll
stand by my statements in my last note regarding public servants and
their responsibility to carry out their duty to their utmost within the law,
my belief that everything I describe in the article and in the podcast is
legal, and my faith (which is the right word) that due process and oversight
ultimately protects against the kind of corruption and oppression that has
been raised here. I think it is important that I note that I am aware of no
charges of this kind leveled against NCPD.

I will also stand by my statement last time that change comes with
involvement and articulation of concerns in a helpful way - if we don't
speak up when we see injustice there's no chance of remedy.

I think it's important that I state that my goal is to highlight, on a
non-commercial website, innovation and practice in law enforcement
intelligence. My praise is of the fact that at NCPD this was cops thinking
creatively, effectively and legally in a non-traditional way about meeting
their intelligence needs. Rather than try and buy the expensive
purpose-built gizmos that have been the rage since 9/11, NCPD leveraged
instead the information it had in house and thought of new ways to aggregate
and correlate it. Using open source, COTS and college interns, it built a
center that is highly effective. I do believe that criminals should pay for
the tools used to capture them (because I don't think *I* should pay for
this). I do believe that it is as important to assure that abuses of any
system of providing that are punished, and to ensure that the system is set
up to prevent abuse, and catch it when it occurs.

Today in Part II of the article and podcast (http://bit.ly/gHXuS6), Patrick
discusses how the intel center was used effectively to stop a shooting gang
war in a residential section of Long Island. He plays a one-minute clip of
gunshots recorded by ShotSpotter and describes how the center synthesized
data from multiple sources to gain intelligence that was used to stop the
violence.

Roland, Robert and those who have contacted me off the thread, thank you
very much for your input, your constructive criticism and your courteous and
passionate debate.

Nick

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 3:05 AM, Dobbins, Roland <rdobbins () arbor net> wrote:

> On Apr 10, 2011, at 8:59 PM, Nick Selby wrote:
>
> > Federal government spending priorities have been much in the news
> recently, and I think that moving the money to the general fund simply punts
> the political football into different arenas.
>
> Which is in fact the arena in which it's supposed to be; obviating the
> principle of subsidiarity by doing otherwise removes the ability of the
> legislative to oversee and control the actions of the executive.  This holds
> true at the local, state, and federal national levels of government within
> any type of political system.
>
> I live and work in a part of the world in which it is not unheard of for
> law enforcement agencies to be deliberately underfunded by the authorities
> and then left to their own devices in terms of enforcing the law, raising
> revenues, and compensating their members.  The results are, shall we say,
> mixed.
>
> > I appreciated your comment very much.
>
> Thank you for your kind words.  From the standpoint of the information
> security professional, your article is actually an exposition of a classic
> example of the manifold dangers that lack of appropriate controls and
> oversight lead to in any sphere of activity, human or electronic.
>
> The larger point is that, irrespective of the personal and professional
> integrity of individual actors, any system of any type in any context (not
> just governmental; but one could certainly argue *especially* governmental)
> must be designed in such as way so as to assume the worst about those
> actors; and to define the scope of, provide visibility into, and allow
> mitigation of their actions as required.
>
> This is a foundational principle of information security - i.e., hope for
> the best, but plan for the worst - and its abeyance in both the specific
> case under discussion and in the application of information security tools
> and techniques in law enforcement in general certainly gives one pause.
>
> In particular, combining the role of leader of the police intelligence unit
> described in the article with the power to seize assets in order to fund
> said police intelligent unit creates an overwhelming inducement to a)
> justify as much asset forfeiture as possible in order to b) develop enough
> intelligence to justify even more asset forfeiture.  Whether deliberate or
> accidental, this feedback loop is a stunning policy design flaw in the law
> enforcement agency in question, with strong negative implications for the
> real and perceived integrity of agencies and individuals in question.
>
> The infosec implications of/analogies relevant to the above are left as an
> exercise for the reader.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () arbor net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>
>
>                The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
>
>                          -- Oscar Wilde
>
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