Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: dkmonk on August 12, 2012, 08:05 am
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Microsoft announced that its partnership with the New York Police Department (NYPD) has resulted in a real-time crime fighting and counterterrorism system known as the Domain Awareness System.
Microsoft is “all in” with crime prevention and counterterrorism as part of a new partnership between the software giant and the New York Police Department (NYPD) aimed at keeping the Big Apple safe with an innovative new system based on Microsoft technology.
At an Aug. 8 press conference at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative headquarters, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced a partnership with Microsoft designed to bring the latest crime prevention and counterterrorism technology capabilities to worldwide law enforcement, public safety and intelligence agencies, among others.
The NYPD teamed with Microsoft to develop the Domain Awareness System (DAS), a sophisticated law enforcement technology solution that aggregates and analyzes public safety data in real time, providing NYPD investigators and analysts with a comprehensive view of potential threats and criminal activity.
“I want everyone to be assured that Microsoft is deeply committed to taking this initiative to another level and, as we say in our company, we’re ‘all in,’” said Mike McDuffie, Microsoft’s vice president of Americas Services, who represented Microsoft at the event.
Commissioner Kelly said a major factor the NYPD is excited about is the usefulness of DAS, in that it “is a system created by police officers for police officers.”
“The system was created as a result of police officers, detectives and software developers working side by side,” Bloomberg said. “Microsoft provided the technical and engineering muscle, but NYPD personnel were the architects of this system.”
Microsoft handled the coding and system architecture, and the NYPD set out the system requirements, which were developed through an exhaustive series of focus groups in which members of the NYPD thought critically and creatively about how they perform their jobs and how technology could facilitate and streamline efficient operations of the department’s mission.
The NYPD and Microsoft jointly developed the DAS by bringing together Microsoft’s technical expertise and technologies with the day-to-day experience and knowledge of NYPD officers. The result is a solution that is uniquely tailored to meet the specific needs of its users. As part of the agreement, the NYPD will receive 30 percent of revenue from the sales of the DAS system to other customers worldwide, Bloomberg said.
“Without the expertise and leadership of those protecting this city, you can’t bring the technology to bear,” McDuffie said. “It’s a privilege to be trusted by this great institution in bringing our technologies in and, most importantly, to take this unique capability to other law enforcement agencies and justice and public safety institutions, not only in the U.S, but to our allies.” McDuffie retired as a lieutenant general in the U.S. Army after spending 31 years in the military.
The DAS system processes real-time data to prevent crime and terrorist activity. For example, analysts are notified of suspicious packages and vehicles, and NYPD personnel can actively search for suspects using advanced technologies such as smart cameras and license plate readers.
“Part of the reason we have been able to continue driving down crime to record lows while devoting considerable resources to counterterrorism is our heavy investment in technology and our willingness to develop new, cutting-edge solutions to keep New Yorkers safe,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “This new system capitalizes on new, powerful policing software that allows police officers and other personnel to more quickly access relevant information gathered from existing cameras, 911 calls, previous crime reports, and other existing tools and technology. It will help the NYPD do more to prevent crimes from occurring and help them respond to crimes even more effectively. And because the NYPD built the system in partnership with Microsoft, the sale of the product will generate revenue for the city that will fund more new crime-prevention and counterterrorism programs.”
“The system’s development is a testament to the talent and experience of our officers,” Kelly said. “And this agreement with Microsoft will allow the NYPD to continue to fund innovative counterterrorism and crime prevention programs.”
DAS combines NYPD operational knowledge with Microsoft technology expertise, and Microsoft is now bringing the solution to market in an effort to extend these capabilities to other jurisdictions. Public safety organizations interested in deploying DAS will go through a process of customization based on unique organizational and regional requirements.
“Microsoft is honored to partner with the NYPD to provide these important public safety capabilities to other jurisdictions,” said Kathleen Hogan, corporate vice president of Microsoft Services, in a statement. “The NYPD is a respected leader and is continually innovating to help ensure the safety of New York’s citizens. It is a privilege to support its work with our technology and professional services.”
“By providing real-time analytics and improved situational awareness for the men and women on the front lines of counterterrorism and crime prevention, this new system can help further enhance public safety outcomes for New Yorkers,” said Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Rahul Merchant, in a statement. “And by using the New York City Wireless Network -- our high-speed, mission-critical wireless broadband infrastructure -- to support the Domain Awareness System, we’re leveraging an existing, innovative technology solution to provide ever more capabilities to police officers in the field.”
Essentially, the Domain Awareness System is a counterterrorism and policing tool for retrieving and displaying information from cameras, license plate readers, environmental sensors and law enforcement databases. Using an intelligent and intuitive graphical interface, it provides real-time alerts and the means to quickly call up relevant information to guide and inform police action. Its mapping features, which are tied to rich data sources, support investigations, crime analysis and effective management of police resources. The system is an innovative tool that has the potential to revolutionize law enforcement, intelligence and public safety operations, Commissioner Kelly said, who noted that when he came back to work at the NYPD, the department was “a big user of white-out and carbon paper.”
Examples of scenarios where the new system will help the NYPD prevent or solve crimes:
· Investigators will have immediate access to information through live video feeds, and instantly see suspect arrest records, 911 calls associated with the suspect, related crimes occurring in the area and more;
· Investigators can map criminal history to geospatially and chronologically reveal crime patterns;
· Investigators can track where a car associated with a suspect is located, and where it has been in past days, weeks or months;
· Police commanders can query databases to map, review and correlate crime information with the deployment of resources;
· If a suspicious package is left at a location, the NYPD can immediately tap into video feeds and quickly look back in time and see who left it there; or
· If radiation detectors in the field set off alarms and alert the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative command center, the new system will help quickly identify whether the radioactive material is naturally occurring, a weapon, or a harmless isotope used in medical treatments.
“The system allows us to connect the dots by instantly tapping into the details of crime records, 911 calls, license plate readers, video tape footage and more,” Kelly said.
Meanwhile, Jessica Tisch, director of policy and planning for the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau, gave a demonstration of the DAS system, calling it “a remarkable step forward, leveraging the power of technology to support law enforcement and public safety operations.”
New York City has approximately 3,000 closed-circuit TV cameras connected to the Domain Awareness System. The majority of these cameras are in Lower Manhattan – south of Canal Street, from river to river – and in Midtown Manhattan – between 30th street and 60th street, from river to river, Bloomberg said. NYPD has begun to expand camera coverage to the boroughs outside of Manhattan.
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It's Microsoft so it most likely will crash more often than it . When it works it will most likely be attacked by malware and rootkitted. Organized crime has better hacker than microsoft has coders....Microsoft + Fail.
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The suspicious packages they were referring to are the ones left outside buildings or on the NYC subway and whatnot. This part is a bit worrying:
"The result is a solution that is uniquely tailored to meet the specific needs of its users. As part of the agreement, the NYPD will receive 30 percent of revenue from the sales of the DAS system to other customers worldwide, Bloomberg said."
The NYPD will likely use that funding to actually expand surveillance, rather than just organizing existing capabilities into a single platform as this DAS program does. That means more cameras for NYC residents and extra-jurisdictional spying programs for the rest of the US (and even abroad).
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Microsoft announced that its partnership with the New York Police Department (NYPD) has resulted in a real-time crime fighting and counterterrorism system known as the Domain Awareness System.
Microsoft is “all in” with crime prevention and counterterrorism as part of a new partnership between the software giant and the New York Police Department (NYPD) aimed at keeping the Big Apple safe with an innovative new system based on Microsoft technology.
At an Aug. 8 press conference at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative headquarters, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced a partnership with Microsoft designed to bring the latest crime prevention and counterterrorism technology capabilities to worldwide law enforcement, public safety and intelligence agencies, among others.
The NYPD teamed with Microsoft to develop the Domain Awareness System (DAS), a sophisticated law enforcement technology solution that aggregates and analyzes public safety data in real time, providing NYPD investigators and analysts with a comprehensive view of potential threats and criminal activity.
“I want everyone to be assured that Microsoft is deeply committed to taking this initiative to another level and, as we say in our company, we’re ‘all in,’” said Mike McDuffie, Microsoft’s vice president of Americas Services, who represented Microsoft at the event.
Commissioner Kelly said a major factor the NYPD is excited about is the usefulness of DAS, in that it “is a system created by police officers for police officers.”
“The system was created as a result of police officers, detectives and software developers working side by side,” Bloomberg said. “Microsoft provided the technical and engineering muscle, but NYPD personnel were the architects of this system.”
Microsoft handled the coding and system architecture, and the NYPD set out the system requirements, which were developed through an exhaustive series of focus groups in which members of the NYPD thought critically and creatively about how they perform their jobs and how technology could facilitate and streamline efficient operations of the department’s mission.
The NYPD and Microsoft jointly developed the DAS by bringing together Microsoft’s technical expertise and technologies with the day-to-day experience and knowledge of NYPD officers. The result is a solution that is uniquely tailored to meet the specific needs of its users. As part of the agreement, the NYPD will receive 30 percent of revenue from the sales of the DAS system to other customers worldwide, Bloomberg said.
“Without the expertise and leadership of those protecting this city, you can’t bring the technology to bear,” McDuffie said. “It’s a privilege to be trusted by this great institution in bringing our technologies in and, most importantly, to take this unique capability to other law enforcement agencies and justice and public safety institutions, not only in the U.S, but to our allies.” McDuffie retired as a lieutenant general in the U.S. Army after spending 31 years in the military.
The DAS system processes real-time data to prevent crime and terrorist activity. For example, analysts are notified of suspicious packages and vehicles, and NYPD personnel can actively search for suspects using advanced technologies such as smart cameras and license plate readers.
“Part of the reason we have been able to continue driving down crime to record lows while devoting considerable resources to counterterrorism is our heavy investment in technology and our willingness to develop new, cutting-edge solutions to keep New Yorkers safe,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “This new system capitalizes on new, powerful policing software that allows police officers and other personnel to more quickly access relevant information gathered from existing cameras, 911 calls, previous crime reports, and other existing tools and technology. It will help the NYPD do more to prevent crimes from occurring and help them respond to crimes even more effectively. And because the NYPD built the system in partnership with Microsoft, the sale of the product will generate revenue for the city that will fund more new crime-prevention and counterterrorism programs.”
“The system’s development is a testament to the talent and experience of our officers,” Kelly said. “And this agreement with Microsoft will allow the NYPD to continue to fund innovative counterterrorism and crime prevention programs.”
DAS combines NYPD operational knowledge with Microsoft technology expertise, and Microsoft is now bringing the solution to market in an effort to extend these capabilities to other jurisdictions. Public safety organizations interested in deploying DAS will go through a process of customization based on unique organizational and regional requirements.
“Microsoft is honored to partner with the NYPD to provide these important public safety capabilities to other jurisdictions,” said Kathleen Hogan, corporate vice president of Microsoft Services, in a statement. “The NYPD is a respected leader and is continually innovating to help ensure the safety of New York’s citizens. It is a privilege to support its work with our technology and professional services.”
“By providing real-time analytics and improved situational awareness for the men and women on the front lines of counterterrorism and crime prevention, this new system can help further enhance public safety outcomes for New Yorkers,” said Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Rahul Merchant, in a statement. “And by using the New York City Wireless Network -- our high-speed, mission-critical wireless broadband infrastructure -- to support the Domain Awareness System, we’re leveraging an existing, innovative technology solution to provide ever more capabilities to police officers in the field.”
Essentially, the Domain Awareness System is a counterterrorism and policing tool for retrieving and displaying information from cameras, license plate readers, environmental sensors and law enforcement databases. Using an intelligent and intuitive graphical interface, it provides real-time alerts and the means to quickly call up relevant information to guide and inform police action. Its mapping features, which are tied to rich data sources, support investigations, crime analysis and effective management of police resources. The system is an innovative tool that has the potential to revolutionize law enforcement, intelligence and public safety operations, Commissioner Kelly said, who noted that when he came back to work at the NYPD, the department was “a big user of white-out and carbon paper.”
Examples of scenarios where the new system will help the NYPD prevent or solve crimes:
· Investigators will have immediate access to information through live video feeds, and instantly see suspect arrest records, 911 calls associated with the suspect, related crimes occurring in the area and more;
· Investigators can map criminal history to geospatially and chronologically reveal crime patterns;
· Investigators can track where a car associated with a suspect is located, and where it has been in past days, weeks or months;
· Police commanders can query databases to map, review and correlate crime information with the deployment of resources;
· If a suspicious package is left at a location, the NYPD can immediately tap into video feeds and quickly look back in time and see who left it there; or
· If radiation detectors in the field set off alarms and alert the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative command center, the new system will help quickly identify whether the radioactive material is naturally occurring, a weapon, or a harmless isotope used in medical treatments.
“The system allows us to connect the dots by instantly tapping into the details of crime records, 911 calls, license plate readers, video tape footage and more,” Kelly said.
Meanwhile, Jessica Tisch, director of policy and planning for the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau, gave a demonstration of the DAS system, calling it “a remarkable step forward, leveraging the power of technology to support law enforcement and public safety operations.”
New York City has approximately 3,000 closed-circuit TV cameras connected to the Domain Awareness System. The majority of these cameras are in Lower Manhattan – south of Canal Street, from river to river – and in Midtown Manhattan – between 30th street and 60th street, from river to river, Bloomberg said. NYPD has begun to expand camera coverage to the boroughs outside of Manhattan.
Oh please make this active. NYPD will be pwned before they know what hit them. *Here's to disabling the police state during protests*
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In my mind they are acting like this is all for terrorist, so of course they will say it is suspicious packages outside buildings, but just like every other thing the government has enacted under the name of protecting us from terrorist it will be used 90% of the time for everything but terrorism. If they say we are protecting you from terrorist people won't bat an eye, but if they say we are trying to spy on you so we can catch drug dealers, users, and gang members that will not fly over as well.
That is what I saw behind this whole thing.
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this is very scary, the surveillance systems that are being deployed currently may be impossible to escape from. one way i can see this system being used is for the feds to order several packs some time apart from a single vendor, then pull all license plates that drove through a five mile radius around the post office that each pack originated from. by doing this several times and intersecting all the crowds, they'll be able to narrow in on the vendor's vehicle by reducing the crowd size of possible vehicles they drive, it'll likely be the dreaded crowd size of one
i'm a lazy fuck and don't want to have to start riding bikes to blue boxes :( oh wait the facial recognition software will pwn me anyway, well good thing i own one of these http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0070QMUFA
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Shannon I am glad you see the potential of this. It doesn't matter if they are using the word terrorist or packages that they think are bombs or anthrax outside a building, because these words are substitutable for "drug organizaions, users, dealers" and "suspicious packages from an online drug trafficker"
I sure hope nobody actually thinks that just because they are presenting this as a terrorist threat prevention tool that they won't primarily use it on crimes that aren't related to terrorism. Cough Patriot Act Cough
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None of this affects us. I think people have rather sophisticated notions of the powers of the postal system that aren't backed up by the facts. It is good at what it does, no disrespect there, but in terms of tracking packages it's completely pants. This is not what the postal system was designed for and any changes have to be painfully grafted on. This is for standard mail I'm talking now, not private expensive tracking services you *shouldn't* be using...
For example, if you read congressional reports (search for the [intel] tag and "drugs in the mail" on this forum) you'll know that until relatively late in the game they didn't even know if an international package had come from any particular region. They knew it down to the 'country', but not 'county' level so to speak. So much for the omniscient postal system. And they knew this because the mail from e.g. India, came in a giant bag with "India" stamped on it.
There is no all seeing all knowing database in other words.
Now, they've tightened up in order to make package profiling more effective, but they would physically require the package to be examined to ascertain where exactly it came from, and that won't even always work because they're not always stamped or marked by P.O employees.
Secondly, image recognition is totally pants.
If you just wear dark glasses, it's all over for image recog. I shit you not. This must be the reason why Neo & the Matrix crew were wearing sunglasses 24/7. Seems like the cypherpunks were bang up to date on a number of aspects of the future...
Anyway all image recognition algorithms work off certain basic principals. There are lots of things that won't work, like wearing glasses, wearing a hat, putting on face paint etc. But wearing sunglasses completely fucks it.
Prove this to yourself by downloading some image recognition software for windows/mac/linux login screens. There's plenty of them out there. They all work great, you can play around as much as you like and they work, albeit slowly sometimes. The algorithm for finding a face in particular is startlingly efficient, a bang up comp sci job. Then put on your sunglasses. Now it thinks the window or your lamp has a fairly good chance of being you. Which is sort of reasonable, people don't generally look like giant over sized bugs.
Wear sunglasses. "Look cool, be cool." -- This is a message from Pine Criminal R&D Services Ltd.
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I was thinking that they would be collecting any suspicious internet data(if you read Microsoft policies they collect anything you do pretty much and will give it to the law if they deem necessary) and had something to raise suspicion. Lets face it it doesn't take much, so maybe they see you are using tor often, checking the usps site often, and have a prior offense. Now they may track you personally. Granted this is a glorified example and unrealistic, but I think it gets my point across of what I think could easily happen.
So, avoid Microsoft products like the plague lol You should see what all they are doing and their policies. I spent about 8 hours reading all their projects and "privacy policies". They are collecting everything they possible can and analyzing it for marketing trends, social trends, and whatever else they want to research and cross reference, but when you start reading all disclaimers and legal disclaimers you see that they can easily use this to cross reference anyone they deem suspicious or group. They don't even require a warrant, it states that if they think something is going on they will present it to the law which they are publicly working with just makes you really think about being secure.
They have agreements with the UN too, I forget what for, but there is some U.N. partnership for who knows what the hell they called it. To make the internet a safer place probably.
Now, will they track you down for getting a few orders off here, I seriously doubt it. I do think though that if they put a good amount of effort in there will be a lot more vendors and packages disappearing.
Even if you don't use any Microsoft products on your computer, but you connect to a server and they are using it all their data is subject to be looked at by them. It is pretty hard to completely avoid them.
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Why would anyone live in a shithole like newyork in the firstplace. You might as well just go to jail, at least its safer in there.
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Hmmmm... New York is not even in the top 20 most dangerous cities, and millions of people live there.
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MSFT has been a govt whore for decades. Go look at the framework they built NT off of. Banyan Vines was a big part of it and the Ft. Meade boys had their hands in that cookie pot from the beginning.
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MSFT has been a govt whore for decades. Go look at the framework they built NT off of. Banyan Vines was a big part of it and the Ft. Meade boys had their hands in that cookie pot from the beginning.
And the US has the gall to accuse China's Huawai of installing spyware onto their telecomms hardware. Sure is a pretty likely possibility.
But they're amateurs compared to the USA. In fact all the state surveillance equipment used by the Arab Spring leaders ousted or in 'preoustment' is either off the shelf or custom built software/hardware from the likes of Cisco Systems, Websense etc.
I'm not actually implying most western countries are fascist states. It's not gotten to such a stage yet. Albeit with "declinism" on the way in we are certain to see rising tides of nationalism and peculiar nonsensical economic efforts that only yield negative sum games as their fruit e.g. trade war, protectionism etc . However I *am* saying many of their tech companies and a not inconsiderable number of their politicians show a definite predilection in that direction. So, we, as in any western citizen, should tread very warily in the future. Whereas the onset of the nuclear age/cold war heralded a whole lot of paranoia in the civilian population, nowadays I believe we could do with a damn good pinch of paranoia, people are far too lax about certain rights, they may not miss them until they're gone for good.
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windows has an nsa-controlled signing key in it, and the nsa likely gave money to microsoft to buy skype with and change the network architecture into something that can be wiretapped
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/
Actually, unless this is some kind of pokerfaced long play, it's sort of comforting that Skype was using technology good enough to irk somebody. Cryptography for the win again. I'm not sure that somebody was actually the NSA though. I've said it before and I'll say it again, your regular police people are far too stupid to use surveillance software without severely compromising basic human rights of just about everybody. It's a product of their organizational structure rather than the individuals (although that may be too generous, maybe 'and' = 'rather than'), if they are given a tool then they will use it irrespective of the consequences. Any intelligence agency giving LE such services/tools would be making a major strategic miscalculation. This is because you've just given a bunch of people who are used to being entitled to using coercive force the ability to "do the right thing for the country" i.e. start a coup. Traditionally the police and the military are the most likely groups to initiate a coup, and the very first thing to be done is to whip the intelligence agencies into being cooperative (or dead). For another thing, it turns that intelligence organization into a target for every criminal organization. They are not so smart that the Mafia and Cartels cannot reach out and touch them if they so choose.
This is one of the great irony's of the "check & balance" system of government so applauded by political scientists. The black market serves a critical role as part of that system, albeit unintentionally. You seriously do not want to live in society without any black market, it implies the State exercises such a degree of invasive control life for regular civilians is completely intolerable.