Surveillance of police raids...

> But the knock on the door and the presentation of a warrant is
> increasingly being replaced by these "dynamic entries." Given that this
> is exactly how teams of home invaders hit houses, and given the element
> of surprise, is it any wonder that many of us keep loaded and ready
> semiautomatic rifles and shotguns to repel such invasions? (And many of
> us use SS-109 green tips, which essentially punch right through
> ballistic vests up to Class III. How many SWAT members need to die in
> such raids before the courts restore the Fourth Amendment?)

These sort of "dynamic entries" and other cases of clearly burtal behavior
by the police are fearsome indeed. They also appear to be a problem the
public is very unhappy about... Rodney King riots to the public reaction
to Waco and similar incidents. It is obvious that if you hire a bunch of
people for an adrenaline intensive job where they will be taking down "bag
guys" with machine guns they are going to be difficult to keep in line. 
These aren't lawyers or philosophers. Its not the right/wrong for these
people but the thrill of the hunt.

However, I don't beleive I've seen any evidence that "keeping loaded and
ready semiautomatic rifles" is an effective response. Most people who
"fight back" seem to be killed quickley or (rarely) they get involved in
long standoffs which often end in death. Eitherway, if you do make it out
alive you will likely have racked enough charges against you in the
process of defending yourself that the original legal issue pales by
comparison. Do you know of anyone who has stood up to police raiders and
WON?   

The majority of cases that I have seen where abusive police "got theirs"
occured in a court room and not a "compound." The Steve Jackson Games
decision put a pre-emptive stop to a lot of unreasonable searches... It
doesn't really matter if the Secret Service understands *WHY* it was in
the wrong. What matters is that police agencies are aware that they can't
walk into a house and take everything with a plug on the premise that they
are investigating computer crime. Like it or not...

Now the issue of police lieing about a raid in court is at hand, and this
brings an interesting twist here for privacy advocates. Video surveillance
is an effective weapon against police brutality. Thats a fact. Many police
agencies have taken to installing "tamper proof" cameras in patrol cars.
These are effective in court when the cops are in "the right."
(Philisophical arguments about anarchy vs. democracy notwithstanding...)
They are also quite effective when the cops are in the wrong. One officer
in Atlanta was stupid enough to engage in an unprovocted beating of a
suspect right in from of his own camera. He's out of a job now.

One could imagine a CCTV system in a home with an easily accessable switch
which engages it. And X-10 remote is handy and could be programmed to do
this. The cameras could be designed to be unobtrusive. For real security
the video data would need to be streamed (over the net?) to a remote site
for storage and the system must be difficult to shut down under duress
without evidence of such coersion being saved. Audio data could also be 
saved. The nice thing about this is that the surveillance is in the
control of the home owner.  

Problem with surveillance is that its a weapon. I don't want to be
surveilled. However, I might wish to surveil others for my protection as
in the above example.          

	I absolutely hate the idea of cameras in the workplace or in
general public places. Especially in the hands of the government rather
than store owners. Crytography can protect you from phone taps, but what
can protect you from a network of digital cameras connected to face
recognition software? Thats the direction I see this overall issue
heading. One can envision a future in which all your online dealings can
be extremely secure and anonymized by virtue of crypto, but your
movements in the physical world are tightly monitored by automated video
processing systems...  

-- 
        */^\*  Tom Cross AKA Decius 615 AKA The White Ninja  */^\* 
                       Decius@ninja.techwood.org

"If the economic, social and political conditions... do not offer a basis 
for the realization of individuality, while at the same time people have 
lost those ties which gave them security... powerful tendencies arise to 
escape from freedom into submission." -- Erich Fromm

Decius 6i5 writes:
> 
Tim May wrote:
> > But the knock on the door and the presentation of a warrant is
> > increasingly being replaced by these "dynamic entries." Given that this
> > is exactly how teams of home invaders hit houses, and given the element
> > of surprise, is it any wonder that many of us keep loaded and ready
> > semiautomatic rifles and shotguns to repel such invasions? (And many of
> > us use SS-109 green tips, which essentially punch right through
> > ballistic vests up to Class III. How many SWAT members need to die in
> > such raids before the courts restore the Fourth Amendment?)
> 
> These sort of "dynamic entries" and other cases of clearly burtal behavior
> by the police are fearsome indeed. They also appear to be a problem the
> public is very unhappy about... 

Not unhappy enough to make it stop.  I beleive that shows like "Cops"
teach people to accept police violence- it's always "in the right"
and the "perp" is always guilty.  Just another way that the System
tries to make a lie of "guilty until proven innocent".

[..]

> However, I don't beleive I've seen any evidence that "keeping loaded and
> ready semiautomatic rifles" is an effective response. Most people who
> "fight back" seem to be killed quickley or (rarely) they get involved in
> long standoffs which often end in death. Eitherway, if you do make it out
> alive you will likely have racked enough charges against you in the
> process of defending yourself that the original legal issue pales by
> comparison. Do you know of anyone who has stood up to police raiders and
> WON?   
> 
> The majority of cases that I have seen where abusive police "got theirs"
> occured in a court room and not a "compound." 

[..]

> Now the issue of police lieing about a raid in court is at hand, and this
> brings an interesting twist here for privacy advocates. Video surveillance
> is an effective weapon against police brutality.

[..]
 
> One could imagine a CCTV system in a home with an easily accessable switch
> which engages it. And X-10 remote is handy and could be programmed to do
> this. The cameras could be designed to be unobtrusive. For real security
> the video data would need to be streamed (over the net?) to a remote site
> for storage and the system must be difficult to shut down under duress
> without evidence of such coersion being saved. Audio data could also be 
> saved. The nice thing about this is that the surveillance is in the
> control of the home owner.  


Cool idea.  You could send streaming video (encrypted of course) to
a 'safe haven' which would store it until you need it to back
up your court case and send the vicious pigs to jail where they
belong.  Until you need it, it'll be safely stored and only you
can get to it.

However, there's two weak links in that- the net connection and
the safe haven server.  Once one set of cops gets nailed by
such a system, you can bet that word _will_ get around:  foil
any home surveilance system before the raid.  Of course that'll
be part of the 'evidence gathering' which is why you don't want the
cameras to simply record on tape in the first place- the cops will
seize the tapes as "evidence" and they'll become "lost" before trial.

The cops could cut your phone/ISDN/DSL line before the raid, but of course
that might tip you off.  Although with the rate that net connections go
down these days due to router failures, maybe it wouldn't.  

The other way for the cops to foil the system is to attack the
safe haven server.  Possibly just by tracking your traffic to the
server, then seizing all the server' operators computer equipment
(shutting down his business) as more 'evidence'.  A few cases of that
would convince most server operators that they should take up a different
business.

The third weak link is that the cops would simply kill you and your
family- if there's no survivors to sue, then whataver evidence you
have is worthless.


-- 
Eric Murray  Chief Security Scientist  N*Able Technologies  www.nabletech.com
(email:  ericm  at  lne.com   or   nabletech.com)          PGP keyid:E03F65E5

At 05:49 PM 4/25/98 -0700, Eric Murray wrote:
>Not unhappy enough to make it stop.  I beleive that shows like "Cops"
>teach people to accept police violence- it's always "in the right"
>and the "perp" is always guilty.  Just another way that the System
>tries to make a lie of "guilty until proven innocent".

Fox TV is currently running a week of Really Exciting High-Speed
Police Car Chases and Really Scary Police Shootout Videos.
I doubt that the raid on Don Scott's farm is included....

On the good side, they're also running a few shows on privacy
and identity theft, though tonight's edition mainly talked about
getting of junk mail lists.  And they run The Simpsons.
On the somewhat hypocritical side, they've got a series of 
commercials about <some issue side 1> <some issue side 2> 
"Is this for the media to decide?"
"our news is really objective, just the facts, you decide",
while also running America's Most Wanted Thought Criminals
and "Cops Are Cool - Heh Heh - Heh Heh".

				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639