Center for Investigative Reporting

July 19th, 2012

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Customs and Border Protection is testing a security kiosk with an avatar that appears onscreen and makes queries in a polite, automated voice. The experiment is occurring on the border in Nogales, Ariz. and is using a variation of technology the Department of Homeland Security has been pursuing for years.

It’s sort of like a lie-detector test – except the government dislikes calling it that.

For now, the kiosk is being tested with applicants seeking “trusted traveler” status; these are people who agree to a background check in exchange for avoiding long daily waits at the border.

Read our full story.

Photo: National Center for Border Security and Immigration/University of Arizona

March 30th, 2012

California Watch: Flashlights, exercise equipment, trumpets, gun parts, combat coats,...

californiawatch:

Flashlights, exercise equipment, trumpets, gun parts, combat coats, pistol holsters, water canteens, radios, laptops, M16 rifles, helicopters, microwaves, survival kits, workout equipment, bayonet knives, ammunition cans.

A list of some of the surplus military equipment that California law enforcement agencies received last year. More than 17,000 local agencies across the country have taken advantage of the Defense Department’s equipment giveaways. California police accumulated more equipment in 2011 than any other year in the program’s two-decade history. See what your community has received by searching our online database.

Reblogged from California Watch

March 20th, 2012

In California, bill would restrict data from license-plate scanners

A California lawmaker representing Silicon Valley wants to rein in a cutting-edge law enforcement technology that enables police to stockpile digital personal information on motorists and build a portrait of their whereabouts.

Agencies across the nation are swiftly adopting the use of license-plate recognition devices, which are affixed to the outside of their patrol cars and scan passing vehicles. The tags are automatically compared with databases of outstanding warrants, stolen cars and more.

Each scan captures and stores an array of data, regardless of whether the driver is a wanted criminal, including the geographic location of the car along with the date and time of the scan. Privacy advocates are alarmed that the technology could allow police to paint a picture of where innocent Americans have been and when.

Police counter that license-plate scanners allow them to track down wanted criminals and stop perpetrators on the street by way of an in-car alert without having to manually search each tag. Investigators also can search where a license plate has been scanned previously and go back to see if the person is at that location.

State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, has proposed a bill that would require local law enforcement agencies in California to retain data captured by license-plate scanners for only 60 days, except when the information is being used in felony investigations. Such rules already exist for the California Highway Patrol.

Image Joelk75/Flickr

January 24th, 2012

Counterterror, disaster response centers not sharing information

Dozens of high-tech command centers built or beefed up throughout the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to promote better information sharing and disaster preparation have struggled to do just that.

A decade later, federal auditors found that two networks – one heavily focused on law enforcement and the other on emergency management – are often unaware of what the other is doing and in the process might be missing critical opportunities to improve efficiency.

Investigations after the hijackings revealed that critical information about what the attackers were planning had not been pieced together, in part because local, state and federal agencies frequently failed to communicate with one another. Hurricane Katrina, meanwhile, exposed weaknesses in how those same bureaucracies responded to both manmade and natural catastrophes. Read more.

Photo via fpra/Flickr: An emergency operations center in Florida

December 22nd, 2011

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Local police in the United States are increasingly swapping out traditional shotguns for assault rifles. Smith & Wesson offers an array of assault rifles to the law enforcement community, like the M&P15 shown at the top. These rifles were shown at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago in October. See more images from the conference here and read more about how local police are stockpiling high-tech, combat-ready gear.

December 6th, 2011

From CIR’s homeland security reporter G.W. Schulz.

ageofperil:

The New York Times today looked at 40 years of the American riot-control officer. In 1968, it was a simple uniform shirt. In 2011, it was Kevlar tactical body armor.

Reblogged from Perilous

November 30th, 2011

New reality show offers two men $1M to sneak out of LA undetected

From our homeland security reporter G.W. Schulz …

ageofperil:

It’s almost 2013, so perhaps no one should be surprised that a reality show in the works would mimic the 1996 dystopian flick “Escape From L.A.” What’s chilling is that the show is not fiction and may in the end say more about the post-Sept. 11 surveillance state than anything else so far.

Two everyday Americans will be awarded $1 million if they can successfully sneak out of Los Angeles without being detected by digital video cameras, pilotless drones, GPS monitoring devices and facial recognition technology.

Blackberry phones can be geo-located even if the battery has been removed. That’s one of many realities about privacy in the 21st century, and it’s one of the many tools a team of professional human trackers will have at their disposal for catching the two men. The trackers will reportedly work from an operations center in downtown L.A. “constructed specifically for this project.”

From Government Security News:

The highly trained team of professional pursuers is led by host and master tracker, Kevin Reeve, whose company, onPoint Tactical LLC, offers a scouting, tracking and wilderness survival skills course, which has been taken by SEALs, Rangers, FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service and other law enforcement agents.

My only question: If the two men actually succeed, would it undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars L.A. has spent securing the city since 9/11?

Reblogged from Perilous

October 19th, 2011

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Customs and Border Protection agents and officers are increasingly becoming the target of corruption investigations. Here are some recent cases. Click through to see more information about each one. You can also read more about this issue in our story “Border agency’s rapid growth accompanied by rise in corruption” with the Los Angeles Times.

October 3rd, 2011

ageofperil:

Local police in Ogden, Utah, want to be first in the nation to deploy a surveillance blimp outfitted with cameras. Above is a video of the blimp in action. The Defense Department has already made frequent use of blimps for intelligence purposes, so perhaps this comes as no surprise. It’s often only a matter of time before the law enforcement community adopts high-tech military gadgets. Police Chief Jon Greiner tells the Standard-Examiner:

Nobody else in the nation is trying to do this, so the FAA has no regulations for it.

Reblogged from Perilous

September 7th, 2011

From our new homeland security investigation: Mall of America visitors unknowingly end up in counterterrorism reports

Brad Kleinerman lives on a quiet 2-acre lot in the Connecticut countryside with his family. An American flag hangs near the front door.

During a trip to the Twin Cities in January 2008, Kleinerman stopped at the Mall of America to return shoes and buy a SpongeBob SquarePants watch for one of his kids.

Two security officers reported that Kleinerman, a human resources director for the health services giant CIGNA, based in Bloomfield, Conn., “intently observed” them as they answered an unrelated call and then “observed both of us very closely” as the three traveled in opposite directions. The guards considered this “very odd.” Read documents from his report here.

Center for Investigative Reporting

In California, bill would restrict data from license-plate scanners

Counterterror, disaster response centers not sharing information

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