Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
mitchelldeacon9 · 2023-11-06
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This is a great article. For more background on this growing industry, I recommend a recent academic study on the use of surveillance technology at the Los Angeles Police Department. The book documents the LAPD's use of data brokerage firms that collect and aggregate info from public records and private sources (e.g., Palantir), as well as automatic license plate readers (ALPR’s) which record vehicles are they move around the city, and Suspicious Activity Reports from police and civilians, which include reports of mundane activities such as using binoculars, drawing diagrams, or taking pictures or "video footage with no apparent aesthetic value." All this data ultimately gets parked in Fusion Center facilities built after 9/11 where federal, state and local law enforcement agencies collaborate to collect, aggregate, analyze and share information. As the author observes, "The use of data in law enforcement is not new. For almost a century, police have been gathering data, e.g., records of citations, collisions, warrants, incarcerations, sex offender and gang registries, etc. What is new and important about the current age of big data is the role in public policing of private capitalist firms who provide database systems with huge volumes of information about people, not just those in the criminal justice system."
Sarah Brayne (2020) "Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing," Oxford University Press
https://www.amazon.com/Predict-Surveil-Discretion-Future-Pol...
Sarah Brayne (2020) Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing, Oxford University Press
https://www.amazon.com/Predict-Surveil-Discretion-Future-Pol...
Based on field work conducted with officers and IT personnel in the Los Angeles Police Department, the author convincingly shows that law enforcement generally follow an "institutional data imperative," i.e., a mandate to collect as much information as possible, in part by securing routine access to a wide range of data on everyday activities from non-police databases. Data originally collected for one purpose is used for another (p. 53).