Transparency Activists Dump 1.8 Terabytes of Police Helicopter Surveillance Footage (techdirt.com) 64
On Friday, a transparency activist group known as Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) posted a 1.8-terabyte trove of police helicopter footage to its website. "DDoSecrets cofounder Emma Best says that her group doesn't know the identity of the source who shared the data and that no affiliation or motivation for leaking the files was given," reports Wired. "The source simply said that the two police departments were storing the data in unsecured cloud infrastructure." Techdirt reports: The DDoS release shows law enforcement agencies aren't just deploying choppers to keep an eye on suspects in motion. They're also using them to engage in extended surveillance of people suspected of nothing, hovering over large gatherings and deploying infrared cameras to peer inside of buildings just for the fuck of it. Putting your stuff in the cloud means opening up additional attack vectors for those seeking your secrets. That appears to be the root source of this new leak. What a time to be alive!
Transparency activists? (Score:4, Funny)
Then what the hell are they doing including footage that's not looking through windows?
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Complete lack of oversight? (Score:2, Insightful)
They're also using them to engage in extended surveillance of people suspected of nothing, hovering over large gatherings and deploying infrared cameras to peer inside of buildings just for the fuck of it.
So there is no oversight on police actions at all? A group of cops taking a helicopter out, burning tax funded fuel, can just do whatever they like?
How is that different from a police state?
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Re: Complete lack of oversight? (Score:3, Insightful)
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The cops are more like a gang (a gang of gangs, actually) than that this is an actual police state. It's not well-coordinated from above, although one could easily imagine that at least some congresscreeps are deliberately sowing chaos for profit.
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"gang of gangs" - We used to call it "The Mafia".
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Except the police have dental coverage and a better retirement plan.
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There really isn’t much oversight. The DA has to stay in their good graces or they turn on him. The cops really are the biggest criminal gang in the country. Supported by unions, lobbying, and boot lickers.
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Maybe in your country. Have you ever lived in, or next to, housing projects? Or next to a gang? Or attended an urban (i.e. black) high school with gangs? There's a reason a culture with 75% of the children raised by single mothers has so many of its young men in jail or engaged in gang violence until they reach 18 and can be tried as adults.
And yes, I'm half-black and see what happens to my girl cousins who breed before they're 18 just to get a housing check and move out of their momma's house, and what hap
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Yes. The answer is yes.
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What really amazes me is when so-called Conservatives blame the entire mess on welfare. As if blacks have the same opportunities as everyone else, with no bias in hiring. As if good-paying jobs are just growing on trees, and the economy is booming along, like it's 1960 all over again. IMHO the Conservatives have a *huge* blind spot somewhere in their ideology.
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At the moment it appears that conservatives don't really have an ideology to speak of. Pissing people off, owning the libs, and stopping progress at all costs, even if it hurts themselves, seems to be their entire motivation for existing. I gotta think that's a really hollow existence, but hey, it seems to be appealing to almost fifty percent of the country on some level.
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At the moment it appears that conservatives don't really have an ideology to speak of. Pissing people off, owning the libs, and stopping progress at all costs, even if it hurts themselves, seems to be their entire motivation for existing. I gotta think that's a really hollow existence, but hey, it seems to be appealing to almost fifty percent of the country on some level.
Actually their leadership does. It's "get reelected no matter what." Those actions are manifestations of that ideology; it's principles many, but not all, lack.
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I think they succeed because the American people are almost illiterate when it comes to things like politics, world history, and macro economics.
For example, what is called a "conservative" in the US is flaming liberal everywhere else. Our media has gladly assisted the power-hungry in twisting the language into uselessness.
Re: Complete lack of oversight? (Score:3)
raised by single mothers has so many of its young men in jail or engaged in gang violence until they reach 18 and can be tried as adults.
Sorry to break it to you, but this only seems to be such a massive problem where you live - I'm guessing USA? Other countries have single mothers, too; they occasionally also have gangs, violence, jail and crime, but mostly it's being handled just like everything else. Kinda works. Not better and not worse than the rest of the non-single-mother crime.
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Other countries do not have a 'minority' that makes up 15% of the nation's population (at least not many)
Other countries do not tailor social services to ensure that it's financially advantageous to *not* get married, *and* simultaneaously have children.
Other countries do not have massively influental media organizations glorifying Gangster behavior.
And more
You're absolutely correct, many other countries are handling this problem much more successfully by not allowing or encouraging any of the above.
It's ti
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Nonsense.
Gypsies ???
Are you serious ? There's about 1 million of them spread all over Europe. They are a tiny fraction of the population. When you do see then in a group, it's noteworthy. You're obviously delusional about something. No idea what.
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The level of willful ignorance demonstrated by this post is staggering! Every single one of the sentences is false.
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This has nothing to do with what I said.
Re: Complete lack of oversight? (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, helicopter pilots would require a certain number of training hours per month to maintain their license. They also would need to run drills. Some of this could be from said drills or training. These things have to be run regardless if something is actually happening or not.
Re: Complete lack of oversight? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point. The police department might also have certain hours that they want a helicopter in the air rather than on the ground where it might take 30 minutes to get the helicopter ready for flight, pre-flight check done, pilot geared up, and the helicopter in the air. After flying for two hours, perhaps they land and leave the helicopter in a "ready" state for the remainder of the shift. But this doesn't mean they have to record video on every flight and store it forever.
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Re: Complete lack of oversight? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's likely a LOT cheaper to have the helo ready to go on the ground than actively flying. They can have it ready to go without joyriding.
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To be fair, helicopter pilots would require a certain number of training hours per month to maintain their license. They also would need to run drills. Some of this could be from said drills or training. These things have to be run regardless if something is actually happening or not.
Exactly. Practicing in down time is a way to stay proficient. We used to run mock attacks on surface ships to keep our tactical skills sharp; although they never new we did that and "sank" them.
Hmmm .... (Score:1)
Re: Hmmm .... (Score:2)
In public, ok .. but through windows?
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The shooter wasn't even in the crowd dumbass. He was in his hotel room just like every other hotel guest. And infrared (aka the I in FLIR) doesn't really help until AFTER the guns start generating heat from firing.
Benjamin Spanklin mocked losers "who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety" but in your case you would give up liberty... for nothing.
Re: Hmmm .... (Score:2)
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The shooter wasn't even in the crowd dumbass. He was in his hotel room just like every other hotel guest. And infrared (aka the I in FLIR) doesn't really help until AFTER the guns start generating heat from firing.
Benjamin Spanklin mocked losers "who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety" but in your case you would give up liberty... for nothing.
For one thing, you have clearly never heard of muzzle flashes, secondly, even if you can't spot those with IR or high res cameras (you can), when somebody starts laying down sustained automatic weapons fire the gun will heat up really quickly and the muzzle flashes will be way, way more visible. Spotting that shooter early using sophisticated surveillance gear to pin point where the hell he was would have been pretty critical to get Swat teams to the scene even faster. Finally, please spare me the flag waiv
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> muzzle flashes
So even you're admitting there was NOTHING proactive this would accomplish. No indication until he is actually firing as per my original post.
He opened fire into a crowd for 10 minutes and then killed himself.
I'm not sure what your crack squad would have accomplished but you seem to be living out some theoretical fantasy scenario.
"At 10:05 pm, Paddock began firing hundreds of rounds in rapid succession at the crowd below. He initially started off with a few single gunshots before firing
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Do the cameras record all the time whenever they are active or are they like typical camera where you have to start recording, although you can view from the camera as long as you want?
And if they have a start / stop record function, why are they recording stuff going on in a building or other random stuff?
Messed up (Score:2)
What were they looking for? Hot chicks? I don not get why they wasted time on all that surveillance. Are they waiting around hoping they do something that can be taken on of context? Actions and words can be interpreted 10 different ways. I mean, I know nonracist people who might for example say things that can be interpreted as racist. I bet if we recorded any person for long enough there will eventually be enough there to cherrypick twist and show that it meant they would commit any given crime. A lot of
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At first they were only spying on me, then they had to spy on a bunch of other people to cover it up.
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They have all these fancy taxpayer funded toys and who can resist an expensive toy?
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Anybody remember Blue Thunder? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds a lot like what happens in that movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yeah, I remember it JAFO.
just like 1984, Wag the Dog, and The Formula (Score:3, Interesting)
Another baseless assertion (Score:4, Informative)
They got hold of a lot of video. But there's no evidence they got hold of other documentation that backs up their assertion that "people suspected of nothing" are specifically targeted for surveillance.
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It's going to take a while for people to look through all that video, but you can tell the difference based on what they focus on. A bunch of footage of one person, probably surveillance. Pan around, hold on the hot girl, pan some more, oh look, another hot girl, etc tells another story.
Blue Thunder baby (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"This mother hears through walls, fires 4,000 rounds a minute, peaks down dresses at 1,000 feet."
It's 2021. And this is still an issue? (Score:2)
Can't anyone figure out AWS settings? I ran cloud object store infrastructure - not one account, but the systems every customer used in data centers around the world. Security by default isn't difficult at all. Or at least not hanging-your-face-out-there secure. (OpenStack SWIFT)
Jail (Score:3)
and deploying infrared cameras to peer inside of buildings
The SC ruled you need a warrant to do this. Into jail with them.
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and deploying infrared cameras to peer inside of buildings
The SC ruled you need a warrant to do this. Into jail with them.
As I understand it, SCOTUS ruled it was a search (Kyllo v. U.S.), but that doesn't make the actions in this case illegal, just it can't be used as evidence or to obtain a search warrant or for other actions since the underlying search in that case would be a violation of the 4th. Interestingly, if thermal imaging has become in general public use, in the ensuing 20 years, it would appear to no longer require a warrant.
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Have you ever used thermal imaging? It will view windows like mirrors, it'll show a reflected view of thermal outside, not be able to see inside.
At least they weren't.. (Score:3)
Well at least they weren't using those evil baby-killing spy drones that the public needs to be protected against at all costs.
Yes, we must villify Joe Citizen's use of a drone for getting wonderful pictures of the landscape, sunsets and other non-invading images -- whilst allowing "authorities" to continue their nefarious activities using helicopters -- the crash of which has already cost many lives over the years.
Does it include (Score:3, Interesting)
The FBI's HD and color video of the Rittenhouse altercation that those loveable scamps at the FBI somehow managed to lose?
It is no surprise the government misuses (Score:4, Interesting)
With the goal of keeping power and destroying those who could threaten that power, so they can continue to enrich themselves from tax funds and inside knowledge.
Rules for thee, but but not for me is their guiding principle. And they do not care about anyone except themselves. Any supposed good emanating from government is just an illusion.
Just keep track of the bill because that is all the middle class will get from those in government.
Blue Thunder? (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/95-DLzK3wFQ [youtu.be]
FLIR will not give an interior image of windows (Score:1)
FLIR will view windows like mirrors and not reveal thermal images from the interior of those windows. Go get a FLIR camera and try for yourself.