From: Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>
Date: Sat, 25 Apr 1998 17:49:52 -0700 (PDT)
To: decius@ninja.techwood.org
Subject: Re: Surveillance of police raids...
In-Reply-To: <m0yTClH-000017C@r32h102.res.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <199804260049.RAA27679@slack.lne.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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