This high-tech police department trawls social media, license plates; watches city with audio, video
The type of data used in marketing is also being used by police departments to help solve crimes and analyze the threat level of suspects before arrests.
Police in Fresno, California, are among those using the technology, the Washington Post reports.
Police there are able to scan a database of vehicle license plates and locations, search social media to monitor threatening individuals, use microphones placed throughout the city to gauge the location of gunshots, and monitor video cameras posted across the city.
The Post visited the department’s Real Time Crime Center, where operators watched 57 monitors displaying video from 200 locations. Soon, video will be added from cameras worn by officers.
The threat-scoring software called Beware may be the most controversial technology used by the department, according to the article. The Fresno police are among the first in the nation to use it.
Beware automatically runs the address of locations where police are called. The software determines who lives there and scans their names to produce a threat level of each one. Its maker, Intrado, says in promotional materials that it could detect that a resident at a particular address is a war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, has criminal convictions for assault, and has posted troubling messages on social media.
The department’s surveillance worries some privacy advocates and some members of the Fresno City Council, which held a hearing on the Beware software in November. One city council member asked police for his own threat level. As an individual, the council member wasn’t seen as a threat, but his home was a “yellow” intermediate level, possibly because of someone who previously lived there.
“Even though it’s not me that’s the yellow guy, your officers are going to treat whoever comes out of that house in his boxer shorts as the yellow guy,” the council member said. “That may not be fair to me.”
Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer indicated after the city council meeting that he is working to turn off Beware’s color-coded rating system, and may also turn off its social media monitoring. “There’s a balancing act,” he told the Post.
