Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s13e19 Episode Script
Police Surveillance Technology
1
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you so much
for joining us. It has been a busy week.
Zelensky and Netanyahu
met with Trump,
we saw the incredible headline
"Kash Patel Loses Lawsuit Against Man
Who Called Him 'Googly Eyed' Chud",
which I think means that's his legal
name now, and this happened.
The chase for the squirrel is on.
And the squirrel is in the corner,
and the squirrel is still eluding an
entire horde of grounds crew members.
And the squirrel is free once again.
Hemmed in? No! I won't be hemmed in!
I have freedom on my mind.
Trying to go in between the legs,
and eventually he gets away again!
And hops through the towel!
And hops
through another towel!
Okay, I think from now on,
every baseball game
should probably be a bunch of adults
trying to trap a squirrel with a towel.
And credit to that announcer
for narrating that
like it was "The Odyssey".
It takes vision to see a squirrel
evading a grounds crew
and to shout,
"I have freedom on my mind!"
Sadly, that squirrel
was eventually caught,
but by the top of the eighth inning,
the Tigers mascot was holding up
a sign saying "free the squirrel!"
Which is excellent, and it's a sign
we might actually have to borrow soon
if Buc-ee's comes
for our Mr. Nutterbutter merch.
Still available, by the way,
until it legally isn't!
Meanwhile, America's cyclospora
outbreak continued to spread.
The CDC says four more states,
Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma
and Pennsylvania,
are linked to that spike
in cyclosporiasis cases
across a total of nine states
caused by shredded iceberg lettuce
sourced by Taylor Farms.
Nearly 2,000 people
in those states got sick
after eating
the lettuce at Taco Bell,
which has removed
all affected products.
But that is just a fraction
of the record-breaking
nearly 12,000 potential cases
of this parasite nationwide,
and that number
is expected to go up.
So, if you're eating at a restaurant,
it is recommended that you ask
the source of their lettuce,
or you eat cooked vegetables
instead for now.
Yeah, the best advice they have
for you right now
is to basically play lettuce detective
at every restaurant.
And what are you really
expecting them to say?
"Aw, shit, we actually
get it from Sam's Parasite Barn.
We were hoping
no one would ask."
'Cause let's be honest:
your server doesn't know
where the restaurant
sources their lettuce.
Their main concern is that
the bartender they fucked last week
stopped working Mondays,
and their manager
won't release next month's schedule
unless everyone
goes to her poetry night.
So, why not give them all
a break and just order soup?
Now, if you haven't got
cyclosporiasis,
the symptoms are
unpleasant to say the least.
It gives you,
and I'm sorry to have to say this,
debilitating, explosive diarrhea
that can last for weeks.
I wasn't feeling well.
The pain in my stomach was unbearable.
I immediately had to sprint
to the bathroom. It was horrible.
For the people saying,
"Oh, I want to get the parasite,
I want to lose weight," no, you don't.
Yeah, of course you don't.
Nobody should be looking
at the people who pooped so weird
that they made it onto the news
and think, "Should've been me."
An epidemiologist
even described the symptoms
as, "It's uncontrollable
and it's very liquid.
If you've seen pictures
from cholera wards,
where the patients are on gurneys,
and the gurney
has a hole where your butt goes,
and there's a bucket underneath
the hole, it's very similar."
And no offense, but I don't think
that epidemiologist
should be allowed
to give statements anymore.
We were looking for something like,
"It'll cause digestive issues,"
not "Taco Bell made Americans
shit so hard and wet
they need assless beds
like a 19th century poop ward."
It is no wonder Taco Bell visits
briefly dropped by nearly a third,
and the company's gone out of its way
to try and reassure people.
We actually have a statement from
Taco Bell they put out not long ago,
saying,
"We want you to hear it from us.
We take your health and safety
seriously and have removed
all affected Taylor Farms
lettuce from Taco Bell stores.
So, go ahead and enjoy your
Taco Bell today. You always got us.
We always got you.
See you in the drive-thru."
No you fucking won't!
And there is truly
no more efficient way to say
that there's a nationwide
diarrhea epidemic than the phrase,
"We have a statement
from Taco Bell."
Because it's never gonna be
good news.
It's never gonna be, "We have
a statement from Taco Bell:
they found Amelia Earhart!
She's 129 and she's housing
a Crunchwrap.
She just lost track of time!"
But it's not just a notes app
non-apology, to win customers back,
Taco Bell's even been offering
1 dollar deals for certain menu items
that don't contain any lettuce.
Like this enchirito,
which looks like a murdered burrito
dying in a pool of its own blood,
and this Mexican pizza,
which looks like a plate of nachos
that studied abroad in Rome for six
months and now calls itself pizza.
And look, I will give Taco Bell
credit for one thing.
They proactively addressed
this problem.
And to be fair:
cyclospora is hard to track.
And as we've talked about before,
the FDA's been underfunded
for decades now.
But this second Trump administration
has somehow managed
to make a bad situation
significantly worse.
In President Trump's second term,
FDA has lost about 20% of its staff.
The CDC is down 25%.
The CDC used to have 11 scientists
tracking food parasites.
Now it's three.
Wait, only three people now!?
That is clearly not enough!
It really feels like
we shouldn't be able to fit
the CDC's entire parasite tracking
team comfortably onto a porch glider.
Look, as we have said before,
a good public health system
is one you don't notice.
A bad one makes headlines.
And boy
are we seeing that right now.
And meanwhile, Secretary of Health
and Human Services,
Robert Kennedy, or,
as his friends call him…
…has tried to reassure people.
But just the day after he claimed the
cyclospora outbreak was under control,
the FDA announced it was
investigating a new outbreak,
with cases only growing since.
And look, clearly,
none of this is ideal.
And it does say something
pretty grim about America
that when it comes to acting swiftly
to prevent a public health threat,
the current government lost the moral
high ground to fucking Taco Bell.
But since they seem to be
in the mood
to make amends to their
customers right now,
we figured the very least that
we could do is help them out.
Hey America, we at Taco Bell
want you to know
we care
about your health and safety.
That's right. The inventors
of Fiery Doritos Locos Tacos
care about
your physical well-being.
So, we're here to say we're sorry.
We're going to live contrito,
which is how our chihuahua
would say "sorry"
if it hadn't died rushing
the cockpit on 9/11.
We know that, because of our food,
many of you have been shitting
your brains out
in a way that we never intended,
because Taco Bell's always
prided itself on two things:
having the wettest food in America
and only giving you the regular,
normal level of diarrhea.
That's why we've temporarily
removed lettuce from our food,
so while you're powering through
our Mexican food-adjacent menu,
including our, oh, Jesus Christ,
Sausage Crunchwrap Supreme,
you can feel confident
that you're avoiding
one narrow definition
of gastrointestinal disease.
Again, we're not promising you
won't get regular diarrhea from us.
I mean, you've seen our food, right?
There's something on the menu
called Diablo Dusted Chicken Nuggets!
We're just saying, we'll try not
to give you the kind of diarrhea
that'll put you on the news.
And if that's not enough,
then frankly, that's on you, big guy,
for eating something called
a Beefy Potato Loaded Griller.
And you expected not to shit
your pants? Taco Bell.
Where else are you gonna go when
you're drunk, fuckin' Wendy's?
Get the fuck outta here.
Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns surveillance.
You know, the thing that this
pervert does all year long.
He sees you when you're sleeping,
he knows when you're jackin' it
to "The Gilded Age".
Specifically, we're gonna look
at police surveillance technology.
It takes many forms, from cameras,
to facial recognition, to even this.
The robot itself was given the name
HP RoboCop for Huntington Park.
It's, you know,
rather a futuristic piece of equipment
that essentially is a sophisticated,
current time
high-definition camera system.
Please help keep the park clean.
So, initially, there was some negative
sort of reaction to the robot.
The robot was vandalized
and it was tipped over.
Yeah, of course it was!
'Cause look at it!
It's a glorified Roomba that narcs.
And did you hear its voice there?
I didn't think it was possible to create
a dweebier robot than this virgin,
but enter stage left:
the police egg.
It's got the body of a Weeble
and the voice of a hall monitor.
And it's okay for me to say that
because same.
The police love using surveillance
tech, and in recent years,
"the prevalence of local mass
surveillance systems has exploded",
thanks to "cheaper technology and
funding from the federal government."
And this all tends to get presented
as a boon to public safety.
Local news loves to cover cities'
real-time crime centers.
Here's a story about one in Las Vegas,
here is one in Detroit,
and here's one in Cooper City, Florida.
In that story, the town's then-mayor
offered this upbeat assessment.
Everyone is being watched.
And if you're doing nothing wrong,
doesn't matter what you're doing.
But when
you're doing something wrong,
we're going to find out, we're going
to have the wherewithal
to come and get you. We've got
essentially Big Brother on steroids.
Okay, I'm not sure that's quite
the sell he seems to think it is.
For one thing, Big Brother is pretty
famously not the hero of "1984".
But a lot of the technologies
that feed into those centers
have significant problems,
from civil liberties issues,
to the way that, more recently, they've
been weaponized to target immigrants.
And it feels like we're now at a point
where there needs to be
much more awareness
of what is actually out there.
So given that, tonight, we thought
we'd do something a bit different,
and try to give you a field guide
for some of the most
common surveillance tools,
specifically, cameras, microphones,
license plate readers,
cell site simulators,
and the practice of predictive policing
that combines all of them
to make that "Big Brother on steroids"
line true in all the worst ways.
And let's start with cameras.
You've undoubtedly seen police
surveillance cameras all over the place,
and the case for them is pretty simple.
Here's a police officer in New Orleans,
where cops have access to over 2,000
cameras, pitching the upside.
We had a shooting at this very
intersection at 4:30 in the morning.
The gentleman that got shot
claimed to be the victim.
We watched the video surveillance,
went back,
and it showed that he was actually
shooting at the young man first.
So, it kind of, you know,
helped us exonerate
the guy we were looking for.
And if you didn't have the camera,
do you think
you would have known the truth?
No, absolutely not.
Really? Because if that's true,
that sounds
less like an argument for cameras
than it is an argument against you.
Because you basically
just admitted there,
"We couldn't do dick-all until
we got them video doo-dads."
But the thing is,
police don't just use cameras to find
evidence of something that happened.
They can also use them to fish
for crimes that they think might,
essentially using them
as a digital form of stop-and-frisk.
Staying in New Orleans,
take the case of Michael Celestine,
who police there accosted
after they watched him
walking around in a puffy jacket.
You can see them zoom
the camera in on him
and track his movements
for 15 minutes.
And their justification for doing that
is that they claim he had
a suspicious bulge in his jacket,
which is already a weird thing
to be on the lookout for
in a state which allows
for concealed carry,
but an even weirder thing to do
when the whole idea behind
puffer jackets is that they bulge.
It is quite literally the puff part.
Puffer jackets
are essentially fashion bubble wrap.
Babes, read a Vogue.
The police ultimately chased and then
arrested and tased Celestine
before finding a weapon
in his pants leg,
only for the DA
to ultimately drop all charges.
But because he happened
to be out on parole,
he wasn't allowed to make bail,
and had to sit in jail for a year.
And it's worth noting
that police aren't just limited to
using their own surveillance cameras.
Increasingly, they're able to use
those owned by private
businesses or homeowners.
There are an estimated
85 million in this country,
and police now routinely
request access to them.
In fact, here is an ad from one
company that facilitates that, Fusus,
explaining
to businesses how it works.
Setting up Fusus is fast,
requires minimal hardware,
and has no activation fees.
In an investigation, police can
automatically request footage
from all nearby businesses
at the click of a button,
and camera owners
can securely share recorded
as well as live video feeds
to aid in the investigation.
Yeah, it's that easy.
With the click of a button,
police can get access
to hours of private security footage.
Technology has made a lot of things
easier to do with the click of a button,
like order medicine, pay bills,
or buy this inexplicable wall decal
of a senior woman with asthma,
or one of that same woman wielding
a frying pan as a weapon,
or a decal of Dr. Phil as an M&M.
Add all three to your cart,
and now you've got a home
worthy of Architectural Digest.
Technology is amazing!
But it does feel
like turning on the panopticon
should be a bit harder than that.
And it doesn't stop there.
Fusus has gone so far as developing
technology that allows
Amazon's Ring doorbells to livestream
straight to police crime centers.
Which is a pretty wild use of something
that I mainly associate
with bringing us videos of animals
who just wanna come inside.
Just for a minute. It's cold out here
and you've got treats in there.
And while some businesses or
homeowners might want to do that,
in other places,
they're not given much of a choice.
Rialto, California has made
starting a business contingent
on signing up with Fusus,
with permits containing language
like, "The security cameras
shall be accessible
to the Rialto Police Department
through Fusus."
And come on, opening a small
business is already hard enough.
There's cash flow issues,
hiring and firing,
and of course, dealing
with Yelp reviews that say,
"Woman at the front desk had a weird
eye. Scared my son! He is nine!"
But now you also have to decide
if opening your nail salon
is worth being a narc on passersby.
But it's not just cameras being
dotted all over the place.
It's also microphones,
like the ones operated by
a company called ShotSpotter.
It's used in over 200 jurisdictions.
The way ShotSpotter works
is it basically sets up microphones
all over a city,
which alert police if they sense a loud
noise that could be a gunshot.
And some places treat
ShotSpotter as highly reliable.
In Houston, their department
"doesn't dispatch officers
for all 911 calls about gunfire",
but they treat every ShotSpotter
alert as a top-priority report.
One officer even said, "No matter
what other call you're on,
if a ShotSpotter alert drops,
you go."
Unfortunately, the technology seems
nowhere near as good
as you'd want it to be
for that kind of response.
An AP investigation found
the systems can miss live gunfire
right under its microphones,
or misclassify the sounds
of fireworks as gunshots,
while other reporting has found
ShotSpotter being activated
by cars backfiring, or even
people using a nail gun.
Which is not good.
You don't want hyped-up cops
showing up, weapons drawn,
because Dad finally got around
to putting up the Christmas lights.
And there've been cases of people
searched and arrested
for things like drug possession
simply because ShotSpotter
sent police to their location.
So, its inaccuracy can cause
real problems,
and the evidence it actually
prevents crime is scant.
In fact, when a local news team
in Minneapolis
looked into nearly two years' worth of
results from its ShotSpotter system,
the results were dire.
The data reveals during that time,
MPD responded to ShotSpotter
activations roughly 8,500 times.
The data also shows
about 80% of the time,
officers documented no evidence
of a gun-related crime,
and only 32 activations
total led to an arrest.
That's less than 1% of the time.
That percentage there is…
That's insane, that's crazy.
He's right! It is crazy.
And while this isn't the point,
I do think that man should be asked for
comment on literally every news story.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson
and his son
monitor each other's porn intake?
That's crazy.
It is! Reba McEntire partnered
with 40 farms
to make corn mazes out of her face?
That's crazy.
I agree! Half a million
Italians seek exorcisms every year?
That percentage there is…
That's insane, that's crazy.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly.
The point is, it sure seems like
a technology this flawed
shouldn't be dispatching
police all over a city.
And there is a similar
issue with our next technology,
automated license plate readers,
or ALPRs.
You've probably seen them
by the side of the road,
and cops will claim that they're
a way to find stolen cars
or those engaged
in suspicious activity.
Most popular are made by a company
called Flock, and here is how they work.
Flock license plate readers don't just
scan tags looking for stolen cars
or vehicles on a hot list.
The cameras take a photo
of every car that passes,
stamped with
the precise time and location.
The more cameras you pass, the clearer
the picture of your movements.
All of that data is saved
in a database for 30 days,
shared with connected
police departments,
allowing the government
to go back in time to see
where your car was and when.
No warrant required, whether
you're suspected of a crime or not.
First, the Oscar for cinematography
goes to that news piece.
Drone shots, drive-and-talks,
and a license plate close-up
that'd make Tarantino
bust both nuts?
Call the Academy,
the race is officially over.
The point is, though,
ALPRs will send up a lot of alerts,
but unfortunately,
many are false alarms.
A randomized trial in Vallejo,
California,
found that 37% of all ALPR hits
from fixed readers,
like those attached to a street light,
and 35% from mobile ALPRs,
like those on cop cars,
were misreads,
which is an astonishingly
high error rate.
And that has had real consequences.
Drivers have been
repeatedly pulled over
because a reader read the numbers
on their plates wrong
and tagged the vehicles as stolen.
And some of those incidents
have been truly hideous,
like this one,
where the police wrongly assumed
that a car full of children was stolen
and I'll warn you, is hard to watch.
There's kids.
It's these cries and screams Brittney
Gilliam can't bring herself to relive.
That's terrifying.
As a parent, that's heartbreaking.
Gilliam says she was searching
for an open nail salon
while sitting in a parking lot
on Buckley and Iliff in Aurora.
And she's screaming, like,
"Hey, hey, Auntie, the police."
When officers pulled up from behind.
"They got their guns on us."
Gilliam was in the SUV
with her six-year-old daughter,
12-year-old sister, and two nieces,
one 14, the other 17 years old.
Police say a license plate reader
alerted them the SUV was stolen.
Yeah, that is obviously terrible.
And you already know
that the police fucked up there,
but I promise, you are not ready
for just how dumb that fuckup was.
It turns out the stolen vehicle was
a motorcycle, not Gilliam's SUV.
Both vehicles share the plate number,
but they were from different states.
Yeah, it was a motorcycle
from another state!
And the only thing that could be
further from an SUV in Colorado
would be if the license actually
belonged to a horse in Tennessee.
And look, so far,
I've been focusing
on when police technology
gets stuff actively wrong,
but it is worth remembering, even
when these systems work perfectly,
they can still be wildly invasive.
Cameras and license plate readers
can track your movements
wherever you go,
which means they could
find out if you, say,
attended a protest
or visited an abortion clinic.
What's more, some companies,
like Flock,
make a feature out of the fact
their databases can be accessed
by not just your local police,
but also by those from other towns.
And on top of all that,
the federal government,
meaning agencies
like ICE and Border Patrol,
has been known
to use this network.
Flock used to make arrangements
with them to do so directly
but has since discontinued that,
though the government is still able
to use the network
through local law enforcement.
And while all of that is already
comfortably bad enough,
other technologies
can be even more invasive.
Take cell site simulators. They're
devices with names like Stingray,
and they allow cops to basically
snoop on any phone that is near them.
Here's how it works.
Cell phones are always trying
to connect to nearby cell towers.
A Stingray acts
like a cell tower decoy.
In what's called
"a man in the middle" attack,
it tricks cell phones into thinking
it's the nearest cell tower,
phones connect to the Stingray,
and police can access
a range of personal information.
But they don't just get intel
on one phone.
Every phone nearby is forced
to divert to the Stingray.
Calls are passed on
to a real cell tower,
data scooped up stays with police.
Yeah, not great, right?
I don't want a decoy cell tower
getting any of my cell phone data.
Because what you do
on your cell phone
is your most personal of business.
Your laptop?
That is for buying plane tickets,
or making an Excel spreadsheet,
or browsing Civil War maps
at the Library of Congress,
you know, business shit.
But your cell phone?
That's for your most depraved
behaviors. That's for sexting,
or a photo of a rash you want
to show your doctor.
It's for a phone note that just
reads "young Gaddafi handsome?"
and some saved photos that
emphatically answer that question,
again and again.
Good Lord, those things
need to go to the grave!
Cell site simulators
are a mass surveillance tool.
And police can get a lot from them,
from who you are calling
to what you are texting.
We don't know how often they do that,
because generally,
law enforcement keeps a tight lid
on its usage of these devices.
In fact, for decades, the FBI's
imposed secrecy obligations
on state and local agencies,
making them sign NDAs
to prevent disclosure of any information
about the devices to the public.
And some police departments
have found some pretty creative ways
to hide
their usage of these simulators.
One in Florida advised officers,
when using data obtained with them,
to just describe it as
"information from a confidential source
regarding the location of the suspect."
And if you're
thinking right now,
"Well, maybe cops need devices
like these for dire situations.
What if there's a kidnapping
or a bomb threat?"
You should know, that is
in no way all they get used for.
Because once cops get a new toy,
they tend to find
lots of excuses to use it.
In at least one instance, Stingray tech
was used to track down someone
who stole 15 chicken wings
and three sub sandwiches.
And look, if you do that
and you get away so effectively
police have to use a high-tech
cell site simulator to find you,
I think you've technically
earned those fucking wings.
And look, I know I've already thrown
a lot of programs at you tonight,
but remember that they
don't necessarily work in isolation,
they can all feed into real-time crime
centers like the ones you saw earlier.
And some departments
can then use all the data fed into them
to engage in our final,
and maybe dumbest, use of this tech.
It's called "predictive policing".
Basically, using all that data
to figure out which areas or individuals
might be likely sources of crime.
Think "Minority Report",
but instead of three pale
orphans hanging out in goo,
it's a bunch
of bland-looking computers.
Santa Cruz was one of the first big
cities to launch predictive policing,
back in 2011, after developing it
with the help of a local university.
And it was promoted
at the time like this.
Assistant professor of mathematics
at the University of Santa Clara
compares this kind of repetitive
crime to earthquakes.
The initial crime
is the first tremor.
Subsequent crimes
follow like aftershocks.
What you might think of
as after-crimes,
crimes triggered
by an initial event.
And what we can do with
this model is create maps.
Maps of when and where police
should direct their efforts.
We put that
into the software program.
It produces results in a very simple,
easy-to-use Google Map format
that we can then provide
to the officers
to tell them when and where
to be on any given day.
Okay, so first, before
you say anything, I know.
We all see it.
No need to dwell on it. He is
pure sex. Everyone agrees.
End of story. Let it all out.
There was a lot of hype around
what Santa Cruz did at the time.
Time Magazine even called
its predictive policing
one of the 50 best new inventions
of 2011,
along with, and this is
true, the Boeing 787.
I guess it's true what they say:
when you're at the top,
there's simply no place to go
but up in flames.
And since then,
other cities have rolled it out,
including L.A., Atlanta,
Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis.
And some police departments
have applied predictive policing
with the exact opposite
of a light touch.
In Pasco County, Florida,
the sheriff's department used it
to compile a list of top five
offenders and other suspects,
many of them teenagers,
"based on arrest histories,
unspecified intelligence, and
arbitrary decisions by police analysts."
Cops would then constantly visit
and question those offenders
about their activities,
filing reports with details
like, of one kid on their list, "He has
cut his hair, which is now short,"
"He advised after the summer break
he will be going to 9th grade"
and, "He claimed not to be associating
with any of his old friends."
And that is some crackerjack
police work right there, buddy!
"This just in: local teen trying out
new vibe this school year."
And to see
just how ridiculous this got,
take the case of a kid called Rio,
a 15-year-old boy
who'd had one arrest for stealing
motorized bicycles with a friend.
He'd been placed on probation,
and had a probation officer
checking up on him.
But a year after he was sentenced,
the computer inexplicably
placed him on that top five list.
And suddenly, the police were
constantly turning up to his house.
The Tampa Bay Times actually
pulled body camera footage
of those interactions,
and it is just relentless.
Why am I on the top five?
I only have one charge.
It's not about your charge.
It goes deeper than that.
It's about your network, who you
associate with, you're on probation.
Okay.
I thought I only had one charge.
You've got a lot of involvements and
history with people that commit crime.
I'll give it the… and I'll let you knock
in the off chance
he's sleeping here or some shit.
- Sheriff's office.
- You need Rio?
- Yep.
- She's nice. I promise.
Hey, bro.
Just coming to say hi to Rio.
- Is he home?
- No. He's with his mom.
- You need Rio?
- Yeah.
An officer wanted
to talk to you, Rio.
We're just here to say hi to Rio.
Rio, what's going on, buddy?
Mind if we chit-chat
for a couple minutes?
- Happy New Year.
- 2020.
Yeah, happy 2020!
It's gonna be a great year!
But wait,
because it gets even dumber.
Another time, the cops showed up
and demanded to see Rio
and when his sisters said
he wasn't home
because
he was with his mom at her work,
just watch as one deputy tried to
bully his way into the house anyway.
So, you can let us walk through
right now and make sure he's not here
in compliance with his probation.
Or I can throw both you guys a citation
for not having numbers on the house.
- What do you want to do?
- What does that even mean?
You don't have an address on either
the mailbox or this house.
- Is that blackmail or something?
- Yes, we do! We have our address.
On our mailbox, right now!
On the other side!
That is pathetic!
Usually when you hear
the words "cops" and "blackmail",
you think of high-stakes situations
like infiltrating drug rings
or corrupt gambling schemes.
Not "let me see your teen
or I'll fine your mailbox to hell!"
And look, obviously, cops can
be assholes no matter what.
But it definitely doesn't help to
have a computer program telling them,
"You should absolutely go be an asshole
to this particular person,
because we think they're
a criminal just waiting to happen."
And it's worth pointing out
that a lot of the technologies
that you've seen tonight,
like ShotSpotter
and license plate readers,
are disproportionately used
in communities of color.
And cameras are often used in tandem
with facial recognition software,
which, as we've discussed before,
tends to misidentify suspects
far more often based on race.
So, there's already racial bias
built into many of these technologies,
and when you start feeding them
into predictive policing,
that only gets compounded.
It says something that the place
that started predictive policing,
Santa Cruz, actually backed away
from it a few years ago
for exactly those reasons,
as the police chief there explained.
The people who created it
weren't inherently racist,
but the effect of it can be racist.
That's what we were concerned about.
Because if you're putting
police officers in a location
where they're likely to engage people
in a negative way,
then that becomes the problem.
Right. And I know
he's being very careful there,
but luckily,
I can be a bit more blunt.
The people who created
predictive policing
that incorporated racist police
practices and data
were probably inherently racist.
A lot of people are,
either knowingly or not,
and the effect
is definitely racist.
It's just one
of many uncomfortable truths
we should probably
all be more upfront about,
along with "death comes
for all of us", "people lie"
and unfortunately, "the goal
of most dating reality shows
isn't to find love, it's to get
enough Instagram followers
so that you can get
a couple brand deals
and maybe one day start
a skincare company."
It's just a regrettable fact.
And those who push all these tools
will insist
that the technology isn't the problem
here, it's how it gets used.
Flock, which makes many
of those ALPRs I showed you earlier,
has been branching out
into selling cameras
and real-time crime centers
to local departments.
And here is how a segment on one
of them dealt with citizens' concerns.
Those eyes in the sky and on the
roads raise concerns over privacy.
The ACLU has raised concerns
with Flock's surveillance network,
but Flock says it's all about
how you use it.
As long as departments hire
ethical people, write sound policy,
and have oversight
on those policies,
then you can start to ensure
that this is all used ethically.
Okay, first, enough
with the beard. We get it.
But second,
oh, it's that easy, is it?
Just hire ethical people,
write sound policy,
and have oversight
and it will all be fine.
My brother in Christ,
have you, and this is a technical term,
looked around recently?
Because as nice as that sounds,
the fact is, departments don't
necessarily do any of those things.
There've now been many, many
stories from around the country
of police officers accused
of using ALPR databases
to stalk and harass women.
As for oversight, while Flock claims
that every search request
is logged
for accountability purposes,
when this man in Georgia
tried to find out who'd accessed
the cameras near his home,
city told him it would cost him
500.000 dollars to fulfill his request.
Which is clearly crazy!
Now, they did give him
a much more limited data set.
Interestingly, he still found enough
troubling new information in that
to then take it
to a city council meeting.
Hunyar went to city council
with the limited Flock audit records
Dunwoody gave him.
"Nobody from Flock Safety is accessing
or monitoring your footage."
Once again, I have evidence
of Flock employees looking
at parks, schools, playgrounds.
The audit logs also showed Flock
executives watching private cameras
inside the city's
Jewish Community Center,
which the mayor confirmed.
Members of the Flock sales team
were using it as a demonstration.
Okay, hold on. 'Cause there is just
a cascading set of "yikes" there.
First, you get the news that it's not
just cops and security guards,
Flock employees
are watching these cameras, too.
Then you get to
"parks, schools, playgrounds"
and a scrolling list of cameras
with labels like "gymnastics"
and "gymnastics side view".
Then you learn they're at
the Jewish Community Center.
And finally, that
"it was for a sales demonstration."
What was even the pitch there?
"Ever wonder what your Jewish
neighbors were up to,
but didn't feel like going over there
to ask?
Ever wonder what
they look like doing yoga?
Well, now you don't have to!
Why knock when you can Flock!"
And when a reporter asked a Flock
spokesperson about that,
it didn't go great.
Why didn't Flock
find those vulnerabilities?
Josh?
Why did it take a citizen…
Sorry, go ahead.
We actually can't talk
about the JCC by name.
So, we can talk about
something else now.
Well, why can't you
talk about the JCC?
Because we've worked
with their team,
and we're not going
to talk about that today.
A Flock PR person stopped
our interview twice
when we tried to ask about Flock
employees viewing cameras
inside the Jewish Community Center.
Did the people in those videos give
permission to be part of a demo?
We're not gonna answer
questions about the JCC.
Not gonna answer questions
about the JCC.
But any partnership
going through…
I have to ask the question,
however you guys want to answer it,
and if you want to say you can't
answer it, you can't answer it.
That's fine.
But I have to ask the question.
It's not a PR video. This isn't,
like, a promotional video.
I think it's pretty clear this is not
a PR video. We're good, though.
Yeah, I'm not sure you're quite
as good as you think you are there.
And I know it is hard for you to
deal with cameras you don't control,
but what did you think that news
crew were gonna do there?
Leave that exchange out?
News stations fucking love it
when someone tries
to stop an interview!
All you've really done there
is manage to look suspicious
and to get them to break out
The fact is, it currently takes
far too much pressure
to expose what systems cities are
using, and how they are using them.
In fact, remember how
I mentioned that Rialto, California,
requires new businesses to hook
their security cameras up to Fusus?
Well, three years ago,
we filed a narrow public-records
request with their police department
asking for emails
in which Fusus was discussed.
They told us they didn't have
any, which seemed implausible.
So, we filed a much broader request,
and over the next two years,
they sent us 28 pages,
which still didn't seem like
all the material they probably had.
So, last February, we said fuck it,
send us an export of your
whole log database for Fusus,
showing us every time your officers
peeked at a privately-owned camera.
And we asked for it
as a searchable digital file,
as the law requires.
But instead, what they did
was send us a 30,413-page PDF.
To give you a sense
of just how massive that is,
if you printed it out,
it is all of this shit right here.
Which was clearly pretty irritating,
it's a huge amount of information
that is impossible
to look through quickly.
Now, thankfully, we managed
to convert it into a searchable file,
and in doing so, we found
some things that it does feel
the people of Rialto
should probably know about.
For instance, this is just
all the times police there
accessed cameras at fast-food places.
And you should know, some of those
cameras are inside the restaurant,
in areas only employees
can access.
For instance, it seems
they can check in on the grill
at the local Wienerschnitzel
anytime they want.
And if you work
at the Chick-fil-A there,
just know that
on one Tuesday afternoon,
Rialto had five of your interior
cameras open for two hours straight,
the front counter,
the drive-thru register,
the multipurpose room,
the manager's station and the office.
Which feels a little weird to me.
As does the fact
that they accessed cameras at the
Rialto Days Inn for hundreds of hours,
including
the one facing the pool.
And come on, getting secretly
watched in your swimsuit
is not supposed to be one of
the perks of staying at a Days Inn.
You are supposed
to get a room that is fine,
a bed that will do,
and a front desk
that occasionally has
an employee behind it.
That is the Days Inn promise.
And I should say:
the Rialto PD insists
some of those hits are because
they were watching a whole area
and scooping up all the cameras,
or that they'd left a set of cameras on
in the background
at their office.
But that is just not as reassuring
as I think they want it to sound.
Look, it sure seems to me
like these surveillance tools
have much bigger flaws than
the people both selling and using them
are comfortable admitting.
Because time and again, the pattern
when they get rolled out
is, they get deployed in secret
and then publicly presented
in the most positive light,
and only much later do we start
to understand the damage they can do.
Basically, the public conversation
comes last, not first.
And the good news is,
due in part to the vast overreach
of the current administration,
we are now finally starting
to have those conversations.
Around the country,
people are showing up
to demand their cities and towns end
contracts with companies like Flock,
including a man in Seattle who did so
while dressed as an ALPR.
And while I admire
his commitment to the cause,
he does look more
like what would happen
if a Pixar dad
fucked the Pixar lamp.
Because I think we can all agree,
this is what would happen then.
But it is worth remembering:
Flock cameras are just
one part of a vast ecosystem here.
And even if your town
gets rid of them,
cops might still be looking at cameras
in private businesses,
or using Stingrays,
or employing any of the other
technologies you've seen tonight.
If you now want to know
what's being used in your town,
you can check out resources like
the EFF's Atlas of Surveillance,
which catalogs each of the technologies
used in your area.
And I'll warn you: the answer probably
isn't gonna make you happy.
Now,
as for what to do about all this,
experts say that, to the extent we
use any of these technologies at all,
we at the very least need
to make sure
that they are thoroughly vetted
and debated before installation,
and mandate audits focused
on civil rights, civil liberties,
privacy, and racial justice risks,
to be conducted
both before and after
a technology is adopted.
And that really doesn't seem
like too much to ask,
because the very fact that
we don't already currently have
all those requirements in place
is…
What is the best phrase
for me to use here?
That's insane, that's crazy.
Yeah, it really is. That's our show,
thank you so much for watching,
we'll see you next week,
good night!
Hello!
Hello?
Hello?
So alone…
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you so much
for joining us. It has been a busy week.
Zelensky and Netanyahu
met with Trump,
we saw the incredible headline
"Kash Patel Loses Lawsuit Against Man
Who Called Him 'Googly Eyed' Chud",
which I think means that's his legal
name now, and this happened.
The chase for the squirrel is on.
And the squirrel is in the corner,
and the squirrel is still eluding an
entire horde of grounds crew members.
And the squirrel is free once again.
Hemmed in? No! I won't be hemmed in!
I have freedom on my mind.
Trying to go in between the legs,
and eventually he gets away again!
And hops through the towel!
And hops
through another towel!
Okay, I think from now on,
every baseball game
should probably be a bunch of adults
trying to trap a squirrel with a towel.
And credit to that announcer
for narrating that
like it was "The Odyssey".
It takes vision to see a squirrel
evading a grounds crew
and to shout,
"I have freedom on my mind!"
Sadly, that squirrel
was eventually caught,
but by the top of the eighth inning,
the Tigers mascot was holding up
a sign saying "free the squirrel!"
Which is excellent, and it's a sign
we might actually have to borrow soon
if Buc-ee's comes
for our Mr. Nutterbutter merch.
Still available, by the way,
until it legally isn't!
Meanwhile, America's cyclospora
outbreak continued to spread.
The CDC says four more states,
Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma
and Pennsylvania,
are linked to that spike
in cyclosporiasis cases
across a total of nine states
caused by shredded iceberg lettuce
sourced by Taylor Farms.
Nearly 2,000 people
in those states got sick
after eating
the lettuce at Taco Bell,
which has removed
all affected products.
But that is just a fraction
of the record-breaking
nearly 12,000 potential cases
of this parasite nationwide,
and that number
is expected to go up.
So, if you're eating at a restaurant,
it is recommended that you ask
the source of their lettuce,
or you eat cooked vegetables
instead for now.
Yeah, the best advice they have
for you right now
is to basically play lettuce detective
at every restaurant.
And what are you really
expecting them to say?
"Aw, shit, we actually
get it from Sam's Parasite Barn.
We were hoping
no one would ask."
'Cause let's be honest:
your server doesn't know
where the restaurant
sources their lettuce.
Their main concern is that
the bartender they fucked last week
stopped working Mondays,
and their manager
won't release next month's schedule
unless everyone
goes to her poetry night.
So, why not give them all
a break and just order soup?
Now, if you haven't got
cyclosporiasis,
the symptoms are
unpleasant to say the least.
It gives you,
and I'm sorry to have to say this,
debilitating, explosive diarrhea
that can last for weeks.
I wasn't feeling well.
The pain in my stomach was unbearable.
I immediately had to sprint
to the bathroom. It was horrible.
For the people saying,
"Oh, I want to get the parasite,
I want to lose weight," no, you don't.
Yeah, of course you don't.
Nobody should be looking
at the people who pooped so weird
that they made it onto the news
and think, "Should've been me."
An epidemiologist
even described the symptoms
as, "It's uncontrollable
and it's very liquid.
If you've seen pictures
from cholera wards,
where the patients are on gurneys,
and the gurney
has a hole where your butt goes,
and there's a bucket underneath
the hole, it's very similar."
And no offense, but I don't think
that epidemiologist
should be allowed
to give statements anymore.
We were looking for something like,
"It'll cause digestive issues,"
not "Taco Bell made Americans
shit so hard and wet
they need assless beds
like a 19th century poop ward."
It is no wonder Taco Bell visits
briefly dropped by nearly a third,
and the company's gone out of its way
to try and reassure people.
We actually have a statement from
Taco Bell they put out not long ago,
saying,
"We want you to hear it from us.
We take your health and safety
seriously and have removed
all affected Taylor Farms
lettuce from Taco Bell stores.
So, go ahead and enjoy your
Taco Bell today. You always got us.
We always got you.
See you in the drive-thru."
No you fucking won't!
And there is truly
no more efficient way to say
that there's a nationwide
diarrhea epidemic than the phrase,
"We have a statement
from Taco Bell."
Because it's never gonna be
good news.
It's never gonna be, "We have
a statement from Taco Bell:
they found Amelia Earhart!
She's 129 and she's housing
a Crunchwrap.
She just lost track of time!"
But it's not just a notes app
non-apology, to win customers back,
Taco Bell's even been offering
1 dollar deals for certain menu items
that don't contain any lettuce.
Like this enchirito,
which looks like a murdered burrito
dying in a pool of its own blood,
and this Mexican pizza,
which looks like a plate of nachos
that studied abroad in Rome for six
months and now calls itself pizza.
And look, I will give Taco Bell
credit for one thing.
They proactively addressed
this problem.
And to be fair:
cyclospora is hard to track.
And as we've talked about before,
the FDA's been underfunded
for decades now.
But this second Trump administration
has somehow managed
to make a bad situation
significantly worse.
In President Trump's second term,
FDA has lost about 20% of its staff.
The CDC is down 25%.
The CDC used to have 11 scientists
tracking food parasites.
Now it's three.
Wait, only three people now!?
That is clearly not enough!
It really feels like
we shouldn't be able to fit
the CDC's entire parasite tracking
team comfortably onto a porch glider.
Look, as we have said before,
a good public health system
is one you don't notice.
A bad one makes headlines.
And boy
are we seeing that right now.
And meanwhile, Secretary of Health
and Human Services,
Robert Kennedy, or,
as his friends call him…
…has tried to reassure people.
But just the day after he claimed the
cyclospora outbreak was under control,
the FDA announced it was
investigating a new outbreak,
with cases only growing since.
And look, clearly,
none of this is ideal.
And it does say something
pretty grim about America
that when it comes to acting swiftly
to prevent a public health threat,
the current government lost the moral
high ground to fucking Taco Bell.
But since they seem to be
in the mood
to make amends to their
customers right now,
we figured the very least that
we could do is help them out.
Hey America, we at Taco Bell
want you to know
we care
about your health and safety.
That's right. The inventors
of Fiery Doritos Locos Tacos
care about
your physical well-being.
So, we're here to say we're sorry.
We're going to live contrito,
which is how our chihuahua
would say "sorry"
if it hadn't died rushing
the cockpit on 9/11.
We know that, because of our food,
many of you have been shitting
your brains out
in a way that we never intended,
because Taco Bell's always
prided itself on two things:
having the wettest food in America
and only giving you the regular,
normal level of diarrhea.
That's why we've temporarily
removed lettuce from our food,
so while you're powering through
our Mexican food-adjacent menu,
including our, oh, Jesus Christ,
Sausage Crunchwrap Supreme,
you can feel confident
that you're avoiding
one narrow definition
of gastrointestinal disease.
Again, we're not promising you
won't get regular diarrhea from us.
I mean, you've seen our food, right?
There's something on the menu
called Diablo Dusted Chicken Nuggets!
We're just saying, we'll try not
to give you the kind of diarrhea
that'll put you on the news.
And if that's not enough,
then frankly, that's on you, big guy,
for eating something called
a Beefy Potato Loaded Griller.
And you expected not to shit
your pants? Taco Bell.
Where else are you gonna go when
you're drunk, fuckin' Wendy's?
Get the fuck outta here.
Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns surveillance.
You know, the thing that this
pervert does all year long.
He sees you when you're sleeping,
he knows when you're jackin' it
to "The Gilded Age".
Specifically, we're gonna look
at police surveillance technology.
It takes many forms, from cameras,
to facial recognition, to even this.
The robot itself was given the name
HP RoboCop for Huntington Park.
It's, you know,
rather a futuristic piece of equipment
that essentially is a sophisticated,
current time
high-definition camera system.
Please help keep the park clean.
So, initially, there was some negative
sort of reaction to the robot.
The robot was vandalized
and it was tipped over.
Yeah, of course it was!
'Cause look at it!
It's a glorified Roomba that narcs.
And did you hear its voice there?
I didn't think it was possible to create
a dweebier robot than this virgin,
but enter stage left:
the police egg.
It's got the body of a Weeble
and the voice of a hall monitor.
And it's okay for me to say that
because same.
The police love using surveillance
tech, and in recent years,
"the prevalence of local mass
surveillance systems has exploded",
thanks to "cheaper technology and
funding from the federal government."
And this all tends to get presented
as a boon to public safety.
Local news loves to cover cities'
real-time crime centers.
Here's a story about one in Las Vegas,
here is one in Detroit,
and here's one in Cooper City, Florida.
In that story, the town's then-mayor
offered this upbeat assessment.
Everyone is being watched.
And if you're doing nothing wrong,
doesn't matter what you're doing.
But when
you're doing something wrong,
we're going to find out, we're going
to have the wherewithal
to come and get you. We've got
essentially Big Brother on steroids.
Okay, I'm not sure that's quite
the sell he seems to think it is.
For one thing, Big Brother is pretty
famously not the hero of "1984".
But a lot of the technologies
that feed into those centers
have significant problems,
from civil liberties issues,
to the way that, more recently, they've
been weaponized to target immigrants.
And it feels like we're now at a point
where there needs to be
much more awareness
of what is actually out there.
So given that, tonight, we thought
we'd do something a bit different,
and try to give you a field guide
for some of the most
common surveillance tools,
specifically, cameras, microphones,
license plate readers,
cell site simulators,
and the practice of predictive policing
that combines all of them
to make that "Big Brother on steroids"
line true in all the worst ways.
And let's start with cameras.
You've undoubtedly seen police
surveillance cameras all over the place,
and the case for them is pretty simple.
Here's a police officer in New Orleans,
where cops have access to over 2,000
cameras, pitching the upside.
We had a shooting at this very
intersection at 4:30 in the morning.
The gentleman that got shot
claimed to be the victim.
We watched the video surveillance,
went back,
and it showed that he was actually
shooting at the young man first.
So, it kind of, you know,
helped us exonerate
the guy we were looking for.
And if you didn't have the camera,
do you think
you would have known the truth?
No, absolutely not.
Really? Because if that's true,
that sounds
less like an argument for cameras
than it is an argument against you.
Because you basically
just admitted there,
"We couldn't do dick-all until
we got them video doo-dads."
But the thing is,
police don't just use cameras to find
evidence of something that happened.
They can also use them to fish
for crimes that they think might,
essentially using them
as a digital form of stop-and-frisk.
Staying in New Orleans,
take the case of Michael Celestine,
who police there accosted
after they watched him
walking around in a puffy jacket.
You can see them zoom
the camera in on him
and track his movements
for 15 minutes.
And their justification for doing that
is that they claim he had
a suspicious bulge in his jacket,
which is already a weird thing
to be on the lookout for
in a state which allows
for concealed carry,
but an even weirder thing to do
when the whole idea behind
puffer jackets is that they bulge.
It is quite literally the puff part.
Puffer jackets
are essentially fashion bubble wrap.
Babes, read a Vogue.
The police ultimately chased and then
arrested and tased Celestine
before finding a weapon
in his pants leg,
only for the DA
to ultimately drop all charges.
But because he happened
to be out on parole,
he wasn't allowed to make bail,
and had to sit in jail for a year.
And it's worth noting
that police aren't just limited to
using their own surveillance cameras.
Increasingly, they're able to use
those owned by private
businesses or homeowners.
There are an estimated
85 million in this country,
and police now routinely
request access to them.
In fact, here is an ad from one
company that facilitates that, Fusus,
explaining
to businesses how it works.
Setting up Fusus is fast,
requires minimal hardware,
and has no activation fees.
In an investigation, police can
automatically request footage
from all nearby businesses
at the click of a button,
and camera owners
can securely share recorded
as well as live video feeds
to aid in the investigation.
Yeah, it's that easy.
With the click of a button,
police can get access
to hours of private security footage.
Technology has made a lot of things
easier to do with the click of a button,
like order medicine, pay bills,
or buy this inexplicable wall decal
of a senior woman with asthma,
or one of that same woman wielding
a frying pan as a weapon,
or a decal of Dr. Phil as an M&M.
Add all three to your cart,
and now you've got a home
worthy of Architectural Digest.
Technology is amazing!
But it does feel
like turning on the panopticon
should be a bit harder than that.
And it doesn't stop there.
Fusus has gone so far as developing
technology that allows
Amazon's Ring doorbells to livestream
straight to police crime centers.
Which is a pretty wild use of something
that I mainly associate
with bringing us videos of animals
who just wanna come inside.
Just for a minute. It's cold out here
and you've got treats in there.
And while some businesses or
homeowners might want to do that,
in other places,
they're not given much of a choice.
Rialto, California has made
starting a business contingent
on signing up with Fusus,
with permits containing language
like, "The security cameras
shall be accessible
to the Rialto Police Department
through Fusus."
And come on, opening a small
business is already hard enough.
There's cash flow issues,
hiring and firing,
and of course, dealing
with Yelp reviews that say,
"Woman at the front desk had a weird
eye. Scared my son! He is nine!"
But now you also have to decide
if opening your nail salon
is worth being a narc on passersby.
But it's not just cameras being
dotted all over the place.
It's also microphones,
like the ones operated by
a company called ShotSpotter.
It's used in over 200 jurisdictions.
The way ShotSpotter works
is it basically sets up microphones
all over a city,
which alert police if they sense a loud
noise that could be a gunshot.
And some places treat
ShotSpotter as highly reliable.
In Houston, their department
"doesn't dispatch officers
for all 911 calls about gunfire",
but they treat every ShotSpotter
alert as a top-priority report.
One officer even said, "No matter
what other call you're on,
if a ShotSpotter alert drops,
you go."
Unfortunately, the technology seems
nowhere near as good
as you'd want it to be
for that kind of response.
An AP investigation found
the systems can miss live gunfire
right under its microphones,
or misclassify the sounds
of fireworks as gunshots,
while other reporting has found
ShotSpotter being activated
by cars backfiring, or even
people using a nail gun.
Which is not good.
You don't want hyped-up cops
showing up, weapons drawn,
because Dad finally got around
to putting up the Christmas lights.
And there've been cases of people
searched and arrested
for things like drug possession
simply because ShotSpotter
sent police to their location.
So, its inaccuracy can cause
real problems,
and the evidence it actually
prevents crime is scant.
In fact, when a local news team
in Minneapolis
looked into nearly two years' worth of
results from its ShotSpotter system,
the results were dire.
The data reveals during that time,
MPD responded to ShotSpotter
activations roughly 8,500 times.
The data also shows
about 80% of the time,
officers documented no evidence
of a gun-related crime,
and only 32 activations
total led to an arrest.
That's less than 1% of the time.
That percentage there is…
That's insane, that's crazy.
He's right! It is crazy.
And while this isn't the point,
I do think that man should be asked for
comment on literally every news story.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson
and his son
monitor each other's porn intake?
That's crazy.
It is! Reba McEntire partnered
with 40 farms
to make corn mazes out of her face?
That's crazy.
I agree! Half a million
Italians seek exorcisms every year?
That percentage there is…
That's insane, that's crazy.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly.
The point is, it sure seems like
a technology this flawed
shouldn't be dispatching
police all over a city.
And there is a similar
issue with our next technology,
automated license plate readers,
or ALPRs.
You've probably seen them
by the side of the road,
and cops will claim that they're
a way to find stolen cars
or those engaged
in suspicious activity.
Most popular are made by a company
called Flock, and here is how they work.
Flock license plate readers don't just
scan tags looking for stolen cars
or vehicles on a hot list.
The cameras take a photo
of every car that passes,
stamped with
the precise time and location.
The more cameras you pass, the clearer
the picture of your movements.
All of that data is saved
in a database for 30 days,
shared with connected
police departments,
allowing the government
to go back in time to see
where your car was and when.
No warrant required, whether
you're suspected of a crime or not.
First, the Oscar for cinematography
goes to that news piece.
Drone shots, drive-and-talks,
and a license plate close-up
that'd make Tarantino
bust both nuts?
Call the Academy,
the race is officially over.
The point is, though,
ALPRs will send up a lot of alerts,
but unfortunately,
many are false alarms.
A randomized trial in Vallejo,
California,
found that 37% of all ALPR hits
from fixed readers,
like those attached to a street light,
and 35% from mobile ALPRs,
like those on cop cars,
were misreads,
which is an astonishingly
high error rate.
And that has had real consequences.
Drivers have been
repeatedly pulled over
because a reader read the numbers
on their plates wrong
and tagged the vehicles as stolen.
And some of those incidents
have been truly hideous,
like this one,
where the police wrongly assumed
that a car full of children was stolen
and I'll warn you, is hard to watch.
There's kids.
It's these cries and screams Brittney
Gilliam can't bring herself to relive.
That's terrifying.
As a parent, that's heartbreaking.
Gilliam says she was searching
for an open nail salon
while sitting in a parking lot
on Buckley and Iliff in Aurora.
And she's screaming, like,
"Hey, hey, Auntie, the police."
When officers pulled up from behind.
"They got their guns on us."
Gilliam was in the SUV
with her six-year-old daughter,
12-year-old sister, and two nieces,
one 14, the other 17 years old.
Police say a license plate reader
alerted them the SUV was stolen.
Yeah, that is obviously terrible.
And you already know
that the police fucked up there,
but I promise, you are not ready
for just how dumb that fuckup was.
It turns out the stolen vehicle was
a motorcycle, not Gilliam's SUV.
Both vehicles share the plate number,
but they were from different states.
Yeah, it was a motorcycle
from another state!
And the only thing that could be
further from an SUV in Colorado
would be if the license actually
belonged to a horse in Tennessee.
And look, so far,
I've been focusing
on when police technology
gets stuff actively wrong,
but it is worth remembering, even
when these systems work perfectly,
they can still be wildly invasive.
Cameras and license plate readers
can track your movements
wherever you go,
which means they could
find out if you, say,
attended a protest
or visited an abortion clinic.
What's more, some companies,
like Flock,
make a feature out of the fact
their databases can be accessed
by not just your local police,
but also by those from other towns.
And on top of all that,
the federal government,
meaning agencies
like ICE and Border Patrol,
has been known
to use this network.
Flock used to make arrangements
with them to do so directly
but has since discontinued that,
though the government is still able
to use the network
through local law enforcement.
And while all of that is already
comfortably bad enough,
other technologies
can be even more invasive.
Take cell site simulators. They're
devices with names like Stingray,
and they allow cops to basically
snoop on any phone that is near them.
Here's how it works.
Cell phones are always trying
to connect to nearby cell towers.
A Stingray acts
like a cell tower decoy.
In what's called
"a man in the middle" attack,
it tricks cell phones into thinking
it's the nearest cell tower,
phones connect to the Stingray,
and police can access
a range of personal information.
But they don't just get intel
on one phone.
Every phone nearby is forced
to divert to the Stingray.
Calls are passed on
to a real cell tower,
data scooped up stays with police.
Yeah, not great, right?
I don't want a decoy cell tower
getting any of my cell phone data.
Because what you do
on your cell phone
is your most personal of business.
Your laptop?
That is for buying plane tickets,
or making an Excel spreadsheet,
or browsing Civil War maps
at the Library of Congress,
you know, business shit.
But your cell phone?
That's for your most depraved
behaviors. That's for sexting,
or a photo of a rash you want
to show your doctor.
It's for a phone note that just
reads "young Gaddafi handsome?"
and some saved photos that
emphatically answer that question,
again and again.
Good Lord, those things
need to go to the grave!
Cell site simulators
are a mass surveillance tool.
And police can get a lot from them,
from who you are calling
to what you are texting.
We don't know how often they do that,
because generally,
law enforcement keeps a tight lid
on its usage of these devices.
In fact, for decades, the FBI's
imposed secrecy obligations
on state and local agencies,
making them sign NDAs
to prevent disclosure of any information
about the devices to the public.
And some police departments
have found some pretty creative ways
to hide
their usage of these simulators.
One in Florida advised officers,
when using data obtained with them,
to just describe it as
"information from a confidential source
regarding the location of the suspect."
And if you're
thinking right now,
"Well, maybe cops need devices
like these for dire situations.
What if there's a kidnapping
or a bomb threat?"
You should know, that is
in no way all they get used for.
Because once cops get a new toy,
they tend to find
lots of excuses to use it.
In at least one instance, Stingray tech
was used to track down someone
who stole 15 chicken wings
and three sub sandwiches.
And look, if you do that
and you get away so effectively
police have to use a high-tech
cell site simulator to find you,
I think you've technically
earned those fucking wings.
And look, I know I've already thrown
a lot of programs at you tonight,
but remember that they
don't necessarily work in isolation,
they can all feed into real-time crime
centers like the ones you saw earlier.
And some departments
can then use all the data fed into them
to engage in our final,
and maybe dumbest, use of this tech.
It's called "predictive policing".
Basically, using all that data
to figure out which areas or individuals
might be likely sources of crime.
Think "Minority Report",
but instead of three pale
orphans hanging out in goo,
it's a bunch
of bland-looking computers.
Santa Cruz was one of the first big
cities to launch predictive policing,
back in 2011, after developing it
with the help of a local university.
And it was promoted
at the time like this.
Assistant professor of mathematics
at the University of Santa Clara
compares this kind of repetitive
crime to earthquakes.
The initial crime
is the first tremor.
Subsequent crimes
follow like aftershocks.
What you might think of
as after-crimes,
crimes triggered
by an initial event.
And what we can do with
this model is create maps.
Maps of when and where police
should direct their efforts.
We put that
into the software program.
It produces results in a very simple,
easy-to-use Google Map format
that we can then provide
to the officers
to tell them when and where
to be on any given day.
Okay, so first, before
you say anything, I know.
We all see it.
No need to dwell on it. He is
pure sex. Everyone agrees.
End of story. Let it all out.
There was a lot of hype around
what Santa Cruz did at the time.
Time Magazine even called
its predictive policing
one of the 50 best new inventions
of 2011,
along with, and this is
true, the Boeing 787.
I guess it's true what they say:
when you're at the top,
there's simply no place to go
but up in flames.
And since then,
other cities have rolled it out,
including L.A., Atlanta,
Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis.
And some police departments
have applied predictive policing
with the exact opposite
of a light touch.
In Pasco County, Florida,
the sheriff's department used it
to compile a list of top five
offenders and other suspects,
many of them teenagers,
"based on arrest histories,
unspecified intelligence, and
arbitrary decisions by police analysts."
Cops would then constantly visit
and question those offenders
about their activities,
filing reports with details
like, of one kid on their list, "He has
cut his hair, which is now short,"
"He advised after the summer break
he will be going to 9th grade"
and, "He claimed not to be associating
with any of his old friends."
And that is some crackerjack
police work right there, buddy!
"This just in: local teen trying out
new vibe this school year."
And to see
just how ridiculous this got,
take the case of a kid called Rio,
a 15-year-old boy
who'd had one arrest for stealing
motorized bicycles with a friend.
He'd been placed on probation,
and had a probation officer
checking up on him.
But a year after he was sentenced,
the computer inexplicably
placed him on that top five list.
And suddenly, the police were
constantly turning up to his house.
The Tampa Bay Times actually
pulled body camera footage
of those interactions,
and it is just relentless.
Why am I on the top five?
I only have one charge.
It's not about your charge.
It goes deeper than that.
It's about your network, who you
associate with, you're on probation.
Okay.
I thought I only had one charge.
You've got a lot of involvements and
history with people that commit crime.
I'll give it the… and I'll let you knock
in the off chance
he's sleeping here or some shit.
- Sheriff's office.
- You need Rio?
- Yep.
- She's nice. I promise.
Hey, bro.
Just coming to say hi to Rio.
- Is he home?
- No. He's with his mom.
- You need Rio?
- Yeah.
An officer wanted
to talk to you, Rio.
We're just here to say hi to Rio.
Rio, what's going on, buddy?
Mind if we chit-chat
for a couple minutes?
- Happy New Year.
- 2020.
Yeah, happy 2020!
It's gonna be a great year!
But wait,
because it gets even dumber.
Another time, the cops showed up
and demanded to see Rio
and when his sisters said
he wasn't home
because
he was with his mom at her work,
just watch as one deputy tried to
bully his way into the house anyway.
So, you can let us walk through
right now and make sure he's not here
in compliance with his probation.
Or I can throw both you guys a citation
for not having numbers on the house.
- What do you want to do?
- What does that even mean?
You don't have an address on either
the mailbox or this house.
- Is that blackmail or something?
- Yes, we do! We have our address.
On our mailbox, right now!
On the other side!
That is pathetic!
Usually when you hear
the words "cops" and "blackmail",
you think of high-stakes situations
like infiltrating drug rings
or corrupt gambling schemes.
Not "let me see your teen
or I'll fine your mailbox to hell!"
And look, obviously, cops can
be assholes no matter what.
But it definitely doesn't help to
have a computer program telling them,
"You should absolutely go be an asshole
to this particular person,
because we think they're
a criminal just waiting to happen."
And it's worth pointing out
that a lot of the technologies
that you've seen tonight,
like ShotSpotter
and license plate readers,
are disproportionately used
in communities of color.
And cameras are often used in tandem
with facial recognition software,
which, as we've discussed before,
tends to misidentify suspects
far more often based on race.
So, there's already racial bias
built into many of these technologies,
and when you start feeding them
into predictive policing,
that only gets compounded.
It says something that the place
that started predictive policing,
Santa Cruz, actually backed away
from it a few years ago
for exactly those reasons,
as the police chief there explained.
The people who created it
weren't inherently racist,
but the effect of it can be racist.
That's what we were concerned about.
Because if you're putting
police officers in a location
where they're likely to engage people
in a negative way,
then that becomes the problem.
Right. And I know
he's being very careful there,
but luckily,
I can be a bit more blunt.
The people who created
predictive policing
that incorporated racist police
practices and data
were probably inherently racist.
A lot of people are,
either knowingly or not,
and the effect
is definitely racist.
It's just one
of many uncomfortable truths
we should probably
all be more upfront about,
along with "death comes
for all of us", "people lie"
and unfortunately, "the goal
of most dating reality shows
isn't to find love, it's to get
enough Instagram followers
so that you can get
a couple brand deals
and maybe one day start
a skincare company."
It's just a regrettable fact.
And those who push all these tools
will insist
that the technology isn't the problem
here, it's how it gets used.
Flock, which makes many
of those ALPRs I showed you earlier,
has been branching out
into selling cameras
and real-time crime centers
to local departments.
And here is how a segment on one
of them dealt with citizens' concerns.
Those eyes in the sky and on the
roads raise concerns over privacy.
The ACLU has raised concerns
with Flock's surveillance network,
but Flock says it's all about
how you use it.
As long as departments hire
ethical people, write sound policy,
and have oversight
on those policies,
then you can start to ensure
that this is all used ethically.
Okay, first, enough
with the beard. We get it.
But second,
oh, it's that easy, is it?
Just hire ethical people,
write sound policy,
and have oversight
and it will all be fine.
My brother in Christ,
have you, and this is a technical term,
looked around recently?
Because as nice as that sounds,
the fact is, departments don't
necessarily do any of those things.
There've now been many, many
stories from around the country
of police officers accused
of using ALPR databases
to stalk and harass women.
As for oversight, while Flock claims
that every search request
is logged
for accountability purposes,
when this man in Georgia
tried to find out who'd accessed
the cameras near his home,
city told him it would cost him
500.000 dollars to fulfill his request.
Which is clearly crazy!
Now, they did give him
a much more limited data set.
Interestingly, he still found enough
troubling new information in that
to then take it
to a city council meeting.
Hunyar went to city council
with the limited Flock audit records
Dunwoody gave him.
"Nobody from Flock Safety is accessing
or monitoring your footage."
Once again, I have evidence
of Flock employees looking
at parks, schools, playgrounds.
The audit logs also showed Flock
executives watching private cameras
inside the city's
Jewish Community Center,
which the mayor confirmed.
Members of the Flock sales team
were using it as a demonstration.
Okay, hold on. 'Cause there is just
a cascading set of "yikes" there.
First, you get the news that it's not
just cops and security guards,
Flock employees
are watching these cameras, too.
Then you get to
"parks, schools, playgrounds"
and a scrolling list of cameras
with labels like "gymnastics"
and "gymnastics side view".
Then you learn they're at
the Jewish Community Center.
And finally, that
"it was for a sales demonstration."
What was even the pitch there?
"Ever wonder what your Jewish
neighbors were up to,
but didn't feel like going over there
to ask?
Ever wonder what
they look like doing yoga?
Well, now you don't have to!
Why knock when you can Flock!"
And when a reporter asked a Flock
spokesperson about that,
it didn't go great.
Why didn't Flock
find those vulnerabilities?
Josh?
Why did it take a citizen…
Sorry, go ahead.
We actually can't talk
about the JCC by name.
So, we can talk about
something else now.
Well, why can't you
talk about the JCC?
Because we've worked
with their team,
and we're not going
to talk about that today.
A Flock PR person stopped
our interview twice
when we tried to ask about Flock
employees viewing cameras
inside the Jewish Community Center.
Did the people in those videos give
permission to be part of a demo?
We're not gonna answer
questions about the JCC.
Not gonna answer questions
about the JCC.
But any partnership
going through…
I have to ask the question,
however you guys want to answer it,
and if you want to say you can't
answer it, you can't answer it.
That's fine.
But I have to ask the question.
It's not a PR video. This isn't,
like, a promotional video.
I think it's pretty clear this is not
a PR video. We're good, though.
Yeah, I'm not sure you're quite
as good as you think you are there.
And I know it is hard for you to
deal with cameras you don't control,
but what did you think that news
crew were gonna do there?
Leave that exchange out?
News stations fucking love it
when someone tries
to stop an interview!
All you've really done there
is manage to look suspicious
and to get them to break out
The fact is, it currently takes
far too much pressure
to expose what systems cities are
using, and how they are using them.
In fact, remember how
I mentioned that Rialto, California,
requires new businesses to hook
their security cameras up to Fusus?
Well, three years ago,
we filed a narrow public-records
request with their police department
asking for emails
in which Fusus was discussed.
They told us they didn't have
any, which seemed implausible.
So, we filed a much broader request,
and over the next two years,
they sent us 28 pages,
which still didn't seem like
all the material they probably had.
So, last February, we said fuck it,
send us an export of your
whole log database for Fusus,
showing us every time your officers
peeked at a privately-owned camera.
And we asked for it
as a searchable digital file,
as the law requires.
But instead, what they did
was send us a 30,413-page PDF.
To give you a sense
of just how massive that is,
if you printed it out,
it is all of this shit right here.
Which was clearly pretty irritating,
it's a huge amount of information
that is impossible
to look through quickly.
Now, thankfully, we managed
to convert it into a searchable file,
and in doing so, we found
some things that it does feel
the people of Rialto
should probably know about.
For instance, this is just
all the times police there
accessed cameras at fast-food places.
And you should know, some of those
cameras are inside the restaurant,
in areas only employees
can access.
For instance, it seems
they can check in on the grill
at the local Wienerschnitzel
anytime they want.
And if you work
at the Chick-fil-A there,
just know that
on one Tuesday afternoon,
Rialto had five of your interior
cameras open for two hours straight,
the front counter,
the drive-thru register,
the multipurpose room,
the manager's station and the office.
Which feels a little weird to me.
As does the fact
that they accessed cameras at the
Rialto Days Inn for hundreds of hours,
including
the one facing the pool.
And come on, getting secretly
watched in your swimsuit
is not supposed to be one of
the perks of staying at a Days Inn.
You are supposed
to get a room that is fine,
a bed that will do,
and a front desk
that occasionally has
an employee behind it.
That is the Days Inn promise.
And I should say:
the Rialto PD insists
some of those hits are because
they were watching a whole area
and scooping up all the cameras,
or that they'd left a set of cameras on
in the background
at their office.
But that is just not as reassuring
as I think they want it to sound.
Look, it sure seems to me
like these surveillance tools
have much bigger flaws than
the people both selling and using them
are comfortable admitting.
Because time and again, the pattern
when they get rolled out
is, they get deployed in secret
and then publicly presented
in the most positive light,
and only much later do we start
to understand the damage they can do.
Basically, the public conversation
comes last, not first.
And the good news is,
due in part to the vast overreach
of the current administration,
we are now finally starting
to have those conversations.
Around the country,
people are showing up
to demand their cities and towns end
contracts with companies like Flock,
including a man in Seattle who did so
while dressed as an ALPR.
And while I admire
his commitment to the cause,
he does look more
like what would happen
if a Pixar dad
fucked the Pixar lamp.
Because I think we can all agree,
this is what would happen then.
But it is worth remembering:
Flock cameras are just
one part of a vast ecosystem here.
And even if your town
gets rid of them,
cops might still be looking at cameras
in private businesses,
or using Stingrays,
or employing any of the other
technologies you've seen tonight.
If you now want to know
what's being used in your town,
you can check out resources like
the EFF's Atlas of Surveillance,
which catalogs each of the technologies
used in your area.
And I'll warn you: the answer probably
isn't gonna make you happy.
Now,
as for what to do about all this,
experts say that, to the extent we
use any of these technologies at all,
we at the very least need
to make sure
that they are thoroughly vetted
and debated before installation,
and mandate audits focused
on civil rights, civil liberties,
privacy, and racial justice risks,
to be conducted
both before and after
a technology is adopted.
And that really doesn't seem
like too much to ask,
because the very fact that
we don't already currently have
all those requirements in place
is…
What is the best phrase
for me to use here?
That's insane, that's crazy.
Yeah, it really is. That's our show,
thank you so much for watching,
we'll see you next week,
good night!
Hello!
Hello?
Hello?
So alone…