[News] ShadowDragon: Inside the Social Media Surveillance Software That Can Watch Your Every Move
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Sep 23 09:24:40 EDT 2021
theintercept.com
<https://theintercept.com/2021/09/21/surveillance-social-media-police-microsoft-shadowdragon-kaseware/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter>
ShadowDragon: Inside the Social Media Surveillance Software That Can
Watch Your Every Move
Michael Kwet - September 21, 2021
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_A Michigan State Police contract_, obtained by The Intercept, sheds new
light on the growing use of little-known surveillance software that
helps law enforcement agencies and corporations watch people’s social
media and other website activity.
The software, put out by a Wyoming company called ShadowDragon, allows
police to suck in data from social media and other internet sources,
including Amazon, dating apps, and the dark web, so they can identify
persons of interest and map out their networks during investigations. By
providing powerful searches of more than 120 different online platforms
and a decade’s worth of archives, the company claims to speed up
profiling work from months to minutes. ShadowDragon even claims its
software can automatically adjust its monitoring and help predict
violence and unrest. Michigan police acquired the software through a
contract with another obscure online policing company named Kaseware for
an “MSP Enterprise Criminal Intelligence System.”
The inner workings of the product are generally not known to the public.
The contract, and materials published by the companies online, allow a
deeper explanation of how this surveillance works, provided below.
ShadowDragon has kept a low profile but has law enforcement customers
well beyond Michigan. It was purchased twice by the U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agency in the last two years, documents show, and
was reportedly
<https://www.nbcboston.com/investigations/shadowdragon-mass-police-get-new-social-media-monitoring-tool/2424128/>
acquired by the Massachusetts State Police and other police departments
within the state.
Michigan officials appear to be keeping their contract and the
identities of ShadowDragon and Microsoft from the public. The
Michigan.gov website does not make the contract available; it instead
offers
<https://www.michigan.gov/documents/dtmb/200000000425_679848_7.pdf> an
email address at which to request the document “due to the sensitive
nature of this contract.” And the contract it eventually provides has
been heavily redacted: The copy given to David Goldberg, a professor at
Wayne State University in Detroit had all mentions of ShadowDragon
software and Microsoft Azure blacked out. What’s more, Goldberg had to
file a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the contract. When
the state website did offer the contract, it was unredacted, and I
downloaded it
<https://theintercept.com/document/2021/09/21/state-of-michigan-2020-kaseware-contract/> before
it was withdrawn.
Last year, The Intercept published
<https://theintercept.com/2020/06/24/fbi-surveillance-social-media-cellphone-dataminr-venntel>
several articles
<https://theintercept.com/2020/07/09/twitter-dataminr-police-spy-surveillance-black-lives-matter-protests/>
detailing how
<https://theintercept.com/2020/10/21/dataminr-twitter-surveillance-racial-profiling/>
a social media analytics firm called Dataminr relayed tweets about the
George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests to police. The same year, I
detailed at The Intercept how Kaseware’s partner Microsoft helps police
surveil and patrol communities
<https://theintercept.com/2020/07/14/microsoft-police-state-mass-surveillance-facial-recognition>
through its own offerings and a network of partnerships.
This new revelation about the Michigan contract raises questions about
what digital surveillance capabilities other police departments and law
enforcement agencies in the U.S. might be quietly acquiring. And it
comes at a time when previously known government social media
surveillance is under fire
<https://www.aclunc.org/news/aclu-demands-twitter-take-immediate-action-stop-developers-facilitating-government>
from civil rights and liberties advocates like MediaJustice and the
American Civil Liberties Union. It also raises the specter of further
abuses in Michigan, where the FBI has been profiling Muslim communities
<https://archive.thinkprogress.org/fbi-using-its-black-identity-extremists-report-c647091135ab/>
and so-called Black Identity Extremists
<https://theintercept.com/2018/03/19/black-lives-matter-fbi-surveillance>.
In 2015, it was revealed that for years, the state police
agency was using cell site simulators to spy on mobile phones without
disclosing it to the public.
“They endanger Black and marginalized communities.”
“Social media surveillance technologies, such as the software acquired
by Michigan State Police, are often introduced under the false premise
that they are public safety and accountability tools. In reality, they
endanger Black and marginalized communities,” Arisha Hatch, vice
president and chief of campaigns at civil rights nonprofit Color of
Change, wrote in an email.
Michigan State Police spokesperson Shanon Banner said in an email that
“the investigative tools available to us as part of this contract are
only used in conjunction with criminal investigations, following all
state and federal laws.” The founder of ShadowDragon, Daniel Clemens,
wrote that the company provides only information that is publicly
available and does not “build products with predictive capabilities.”
A Shadowy Industry
Kaseware and ShadowDragon are part of a shadowy industry of software
firms that exploit what they call “open source intelligence,” or OSINT
<https://www.recordedfuture.com/open-source-intelligence-definition>: the
trails of information that people leave on the internet. Clients include
intelligence agencies, government, police, corporations, and even schools.
Kaseware, which is partnered to ShadowDragon and Microsoft, provides a
platform for activities that support OSINT and other elements of digital
policing, like data storage, management, and analysis. Its capabilities
range from storing evidence to predictive policing. By contrast, the two
ShadowDragon products acquired by the Michigan State Police are more
narrowly tailored for the surveillance of people using social media,
apps, and websites on the internet. They run on the Kaseware platform.
To understand how Kaseware and ShadowDragon work together, let us
consider each in turn, starting with ShadowDragon.
social-net
Screenshot: The Intercept
ShadowDragon: Social Media Surveillance
The Michigan State Police purchased two of ShadowDragon’s OSINT
intelligence tools to run on the Kaseware platform: SocialNet and OIMonitor.
SocialNet was invented by cybersecurity consulting firm Packet Ninjas in
2009. Clemens, Packet Ninja’s founder and CEO, went on to start
<https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/packet-ninjas-announces-the-formation-of-shadowdragon-to-license-cyber-intelligence-investigative-tools-300221551.html>
ShadowDragon as a sister company in 2016, licensing the cyber
intelligence and investigative tools developed by Packet Ninjas over the
prior decade.
At the time of SocialNet’s creation, investigators were left to search
social media networks for clues manually. If a person made a public post
on Twitter or Facebook, for example, an investigator was free to look
online, but they had to personally log onto and search one social
network at a time, post by post, for people who might be suspects and
for their friends and other associates.
“What used to take us two months in a background check or an
investigation is now taking between five to 15 minutes.”
Alerted to thisproblem
<https://blog.shadowdragon.io/understanding-link-analysis-and-using-it-in-investigations>
by a friend from Pretoria, South Africa-based Paterva, makers of the
Maltego OSINT platform, Clemens decided to build SocialNet. As he put it
in an interview <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmq6GcMnSDA>, “the idea
[behind SocialNet] was, let’s throw a net out into all of the social
media platforms, the social media universe, and see what we get back.”
Clemens has claimed <https://shadowdragon.io/socialnet> in a company
video that “when the FBI started using [SocialNet], they did an
evaluation” and concluded “what used to take us two months in a
background check or an investigation is now taking between five to 15
minutes.”
Today, SocialNet says it pulls data from more than 120
<https://www.maltego.com/transform-hub/socialnet> social media networks,
websites, and platforms, as well as from the dark web
<https://blog.shadowdragon.io/demystifying-the-dark-web-part-1>, data
dumps, and RSS feeds. A full list of sources isn’t available, but a
company promotional video and listing at the Maltego website gives an
indication of which websites fall into their surveillance net:
AOL Lifestream | Amazon | Ameba | Aodle | BabyCenter | BitChute |
BlackPlanet | Blogger | Busted! Mugshots | Buzznet | Cocolog |
Companies House | Crunchbase | Dailymotion | DeviantArt | Ebay |
Etsy | Facebook | Flickr | Foursquare | Gab | GitHub | Goo | Google
| Google+ | Gravatar | Hatena | Huffington Post | ICQ | IMVU |
ImageShack | Imgur | Instagram | Instructables | Jugem | Kik
|LinkedIn | LiveJournal | Livedoor | Mail.ru | Menuism | MeWe |
MySpace | Naijapals | Netlog | OK Cupid | Okru | Olipro Company |
Pandora | Pastebin | PayPal | PGP | Photobucket | Pinterest | Plurk
| POF | PornHub | QQ | Reddit | ReverbNation | Seesaa | Skype |
SoundCloud | SourceForge | Spotify | Sprashivai | Steam | Sudani |
Telegram | Tinder | TripAdvisor | Tumblr | Uplike | Vimeo | Vine |
Virus Total | VK | Voat | Weibo | Xing | Yahoo | Yelp | YouTube | Zillow
The video also shows “public and local” IP addresses as a source of data
for SocialNet.
SocialNet searches for information that is publicly available across
these websites and pulls it in when there is a match. But it is
difficult to know with precision which data it pulls. In the promotional
video, some categories of information appear, such as BlackPlanet
users; Busted! mugshots; Bing search results; Amazon comments, products,
users, and wishlists; and so on. Clemens said the company has “crawlers
that scrape information from the public websites. Nothing proprietary or
private is provided to us by the platform companies.”
On its website, ShadowDragon also claims
<https://shadowdragon.io/oimonitor> to conduct “chat protocol monitoring
(WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.)” as well as “dialog protocol monitoring (IRC,
etc.).” For these services, it’s also unclear exactly what kinds of
information can be pulled or how it’s done. Clemens said they don’t
intercept any private chats, and they can confirm whether a specific
phone number has a WhatsApp account if the user’s privacy settings allow it.
In a March 2019 blog post
<https://blog.shadowdragon.io/continued-osint-collection-innovation-for-expansive-24-7-monitoring-on-chat-platforms-forums-and-social-media>,
Clemens referenced an “integration into monitoring Telegram,” which,
along with WhatsApp, had become “a go-to when there are disruptions.” He
also claimed to have added “some interesting OSINT capabilities in our
SocialNet platform for more hardened and encrypted/secure communication
protocols. (Please ping us on this).” Although Telegram has said its
instant messages are “heavily encrypted,” it also offers widely
available groups and channels.
Clemens said the company is able to monitor chat platforms like Telegram
through public sources of information, which reveal, for example, “if
you respond to a public thread of Twitter or public Telegram group.” He
added, “We don’t evade any encryption implementations because we’re not
interested in weakening the technical security for other platforms.”
Clemens declined to elaborate on what “capabilities” SocialNet has “for
more hardened and encrypted/secure communication protocols.”
In fact, ShadowDragon seems to strive toward total information
awareness. In an interview about investigations, Clemens has stated
<https://vimeo.com/345808418>, “I want to know everything about the
suspect: Where do they get their coffee, where do they get their gas,
where’s their electric bill, who’s their mom, who’s their dad?”
The precise inner workings of SocialNet are off limits to the public, as
it is expensive software that is sold at the discretion of the company.
Nevertheless, some online resources give an indication of how it works.
“I want to know everything about the suspect: Where do they get
their coffee, where do they get their gas, where’s their electric
bill, who’s their mom, who’s their dad?”
With its surveillance net cast across the internet, SocialNet
<https://shadowdragon.io/socialnet> can be used to perform
investigations on persons and networks of interest, according to
publicly available marketing materials. Investigators can run search
queries for names, email addresses, phone numbers, aliases, or other
information to begin to identify persons of interest, determine their
physical location, ascertain their “lifestyles,” and analyze their
broader networks (such as friends and friends of friends).
The materials also show how SocialNet organizes information for the
analyst, visually mapping social network graphs and suggesting links
between persons of interest and their networks. Timelines can be created
to help sort out evidence and piece together clues into a broader
picture of what the investigator is trying to uncover. Physical
locations can be uncovered or inferred.
An online tutorial <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FceN0T_a_uM&t=1s>
from 2011 depicts an investigator using SocialNet to hunt down possible
targets by cross-referencing their company domain names with their email
addresses, then finding a friend who two targets might have in common.
The demonstration suggests that the investigator might want to “social
engineer” — or trick — the mutual friend into speaking to the targets.
The other ShadowDragon tool purchased by the Michigan State Police,
OIMonitor, sends alerts in response to the sort of data captured by
SocialNet, a company engineer says <https://shadowdragon.io/videos> in
an online video.
Other company materials say OIMonitor can go further, helping to detect
potential crime before it happens and performing other advanced feats.
One video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgjHjFvXVak> explains
OIMonitor can “automate and customize monitoring parameters.” In another
video, a ShadowDragon representative provides an example
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCQBdkGq8xM> of a corporation looking
to protect its physical venue or executives. The corporation would
“build out an entire dossier of attack patterns, of things people say
that’s bad or something threatening,” and OIMonitor “just alerts them
when it sees the criteria that they’ve set and that they have experience
recognizing as a problem.”
Clemens told me that “customers come to us for the ability to identify
and analyze previous patterns of behavior and relationships using only
public information. We disagree with predictive policing and so we don’t
build products with predictive capabilities or even suggestions.” Yet
their own website says, in the description for the “Predicting Violence
<https://shadowdragon.io/oimonitor>” video, “Clever security teams use
OIMonitor to find indicators of unrest and violence before they start.
Because riots don’t start in a vacuum; there are always indicators.”
It’s also unclear if information pulled from ShadowDragon may be pooled
with other data and used by clients for predictive policing on other
systems (Clemens declined to comment on that).
Hatch raised an alarm about the civil rights implications of
ShadowDragon’s software, stating, “It could be used to incorrectly
identify Black people as criminal suspects and out social justice
activists who wish to remain anonymous for fear of being harassed by
police and white nationalists.”
“It could be used to incorrectly identify Black people as criminal
suspects and out social justice activists.”
ShadowDragon also appears to be hoarding information that users and
platforms wanted to delete. OIMonitor provides clients with access
<https://shadowdragon.io/oimonitor> to ShadowDragon’s private
“historical archive from 2011 to today,” and it saves monitoring results
in case the data disappears from the web, according to one company video.
In a case example given by the company, running the phone number of a
suspect through the ShadowDragon software “popped up with an old
Foursquare account” he had logged into at his mother’s house 10 years
ago. After looking for the suspect for a month, the investigators were
able to find him the following day.
In addition to police, ShadowDragon services corporate clients, and it
can be potentially used for worker surveillance. In a blog post
<https://blog.shadowdragon.io/background-checks>, the company advertised
the ability to use OIMonitor for employee background checks by
employers. Clemens declined to respond to questions about using
ShadowDragon for worker surveillance.
Kaseware: An End-to-End Investigative Platform
Compared with ShadowDragon, Kaseware, the other software company
contracting with Michigan State Police, is more sweeping in scope,
handling more aspects of police work and venturing into the
controversial realm of algorithmic crime fighting.
In 2009, Kaseware’s founders were working at the FBI, where, the company
says, they transformed <https://www.kaseware.com/about> its 1980s
mainframe system into an award winning, modern, web-enabled platform
called Sentinel. Soon thereafter, some of the designers of Sentinel left
the FBI to build Kaseware, based out of Denver and launched in 2016 as a
cloud “software as a service” product for government
<https://www.kaseware.com/government> and corporations
<https://www.kaseware.com/corporate-security>.
Kaseware is a centralized online platform where law enforcement
authorities, intelligence agencies, and corporations can dump their
surveillance data. Once on the platform, the surveillance can be
monitored, mapped, and otherwise analyzed using tools
<https://www.kaseware.com/product-overview/intelligence-analysis> built
specifically for Kaseware. The company touts the system’s speed and
ability to integrate diverse sources of information for
command-and-control centers, saying it handles investigations and
security monitoring in an “end-to-end” way: from the ingestion of raw
surveillance at one end to the conclusion of an investigation at the
other. Its diverse set of capabilities are similar to Microsoft’s Domain
Awareness System
<https://theintercept.com/2020/07/14/microsoft-police-state-mass-surveillance-facial-recognition>.
Kaseware claims <https://www.kaseware.com/government/law-enforcement/>
to streamline a wide range of law enforcement drudgery: generating
reports, managing workloads, facilitating video conferences, and
querying information from the controversial federal records
clearinghouse National Crime Information Center. A redacted portion of
the MSP contract says it can “integrate with FBI eGuardian system
<https://www.fbi.gov/resources/law-enforcement/eguardian> via file
exchange.” The eGuardian system allows the FBI to collect and share
Suspicious Activity Reports, or SAR, from different agencies across the
United States. As the ACLU notes
<https://www.aclu.org/cases/aclu-v-fbi-eguardian-foia-lawsuit>, the
system gives law enforcement officials broad discretion to collect
information about commonplace activities and to store it in criminal
intelligence files without evidence of wrongdoing.
A cornerstone Kaseware feature is its ability to ingest and analyze
massive amounts of data. Files, records, logs, disc images, and evidence
are pulled <https://www.kaseware.com/product-overview> into the
platform, which can also handle evidence
<https://www.kaseware.com/product-overview/evidence-management> from
“recordings, body cameras, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and
other sources.” The company claims
<https://www.kaseware.com/product-overview/forensics-cybersecurity> it
can help hunt down a perpetrator’s physical location.
kaseware
Screenshot: The Intercept
Kaseware marketing materials say its platform ingests zip codes,
addresses, GPS coordinates, geotags, satellite imagery, and data from
internet-connected devices, correlating it with “socioeconomic trends
and environmental events to create layered maps” to reveal “illegal
activity” and — crucially, for civil rights advocates — conduct
“predictive policing.”
Predictive policing, or the use of statistics that quantifies past
crimes to predict future ones, has been heavily criticized by legal
scholars
<https://www.nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/NYULawReview-94-3-ODonnell.pdf>
and activists
<https://stoplapdspying.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Before-the-Bullet-Hits-the-Body-May-8-2018.pdf> on
grounds that the systems generate discrimination
<https://twitter.com/rajiinio/status/1375957284061376516>and harm
<https://twitter.com/rajiinio/status/1375957284061376516>. Two scholars
tested the PredPol predictive policing software for Oakland, California,
and found
<https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2016.00960.x>
its software would target Black people at twice the rate as white
people. This is because Black people are overrepresented in Oakland’s
drug crime databases, leading to disproportionate policing of low-income
communities and communities of color.
The Michigan State Police told me, “We do not use the predictive
policing function of the Kaseware platform.” However, it is worth noting
the capability is there, and the software has been sold to other clients
who may be making use of it.
Kaseware also touts its access to open source intelligence across its
marketing literature. Its platform utilizes OSINT tools like
ShadowDragon “to instantly search hundreds of open web, dark web, deep
web and social media sources to access crucial data on cybercriminals’
names, keywords, emails, aliases, phones numbers and more.” Clients “can
also import social media information for forensic analysis alongside
other case details, including photos, followers, likes, friends and post
connections.”
It’s unclear if Kaseware has special access to information or services
with the companies listed in the way that Dataminr, for example, is
provided
<https://theintercept.com/2020/10/21/dataminr-twitter-surveillance-racial-profiling>access
<https://theintercept.com/2020/10/21/dataminr-twitter-surveillance-racial-profiling>
to Twitter’s “firehose,” a database of every public tweet from the
moment it was posted. Twitter’s senior director of global public policy
strategy, Nick Pickles, told me in an email that “we’re not able to
disclose details of our commercial agreements,” but it is “safe to say
that” Kaseware is “on our radar.” Another Twitter spokesperson, Katie
Rosborough, did not answer questions about Kaseware or ShadowDragon,
saying only that Twitter’s public programming interface is not available
for law enforcement purposes. Partners like Dataminr historically have
not used that interface.
Contracts and Deployments
The Michigan State Police contract redacts every mention of
ShadowDragon, SocialNet, OIMonitor, and Microsoft Azure in the contract
shared with the public. David Goldberg’s FOIA request was “partially
denied” citing exemptions to the act to protect “trade secrets, or
financial or proprietary information”; to “protect the security or
safety of persons or property, or the confidentiality, integrity, or
availability of information systems”; and to protect “the identity of a
person who may become a victim of a cybersecurity incident as a result
of the disclosure of identifying that person” or that person’s
“cybersecurity-related practices.”
As I reported
<https://theintercept.com/2020/07/14/microsoft-police-state-mass-surveillance-facial-recognition>
at The Intercept, through its Public Safety and Justice division,
Microsoft provides an extensive array of services to police forces
across the world via its own products and that of partners (like
Kaseware), who typically operate on the Azure Cloud. Microsoft services
the U.
<https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/microsoft-wins-contract-to-make-modified-hololens-for-us-army.html>S.
<https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/microsoft-wins-contract-to-make-modified-hololens-for-us-army.html>
and Israeli
<https://mondoweiss.net/2021/03/how-microsoft-is-invested-in-israeli-settler-colonialism>
militaries with its HoloLens augmented reality goggles. Its carceral
solutions
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/12/21/microsofts-iron-cage-prison-surveillance-and-e-carceral-state>
include its own Digital Prison Management Solution based on its Domain
Awareness System surveillance platform built with the New York Police
Department years ago. Together with its partners, Microsoft’s products
and services extend across the carceral pipeline, from juvenile
detention and pretrial through prison and parole.
Kaseware’s Mark Dodge, a former Naval intelligence and CIA officer,
helped develop Microsoft’s Domain Awareness System for the NYPD.
Kaseware’s Chief Business Officer Mark Dodge, a former Naval
intelligence and CIA officer, told me in interviews prior to this year
that before working at Kaseware, he had worked at Accenture, where he
helped develop Microsoft’s Domain Awareness System for the NYPD. He said
he also did work for Singapore, which runs the Microsoft DAS, and “a
couple others,” including in London. Dodge then had a brief stint with
Microsoft partner Axon, the industry leader in Taser stun guns and body
cameras — illustrating how circles in the intelligence, police, and
corporate surveillance industry intersect.
The length of the MSP contract is five years, from January 31, 2020, to
January 31, 2025. The Kaseware license costs $340,000 annually, while
SocialNet and OIMonitor cost $39,000 each, bringing the package to
$418,000 per year, or $2,090,000 over five years. The state of Michigan
redacted the contract values of ShadowDragon features. The MSP opted for
a two-day training session at $3,000, which ShadowDragon says
constitutes a “big deep dive on threat assessment and sentiment analysis.”
The total cost of the MSP contract is $3,293,000.
The sum paid to Microsoft for its Azure Government Cloud services is
bundled into the “Licensing & Support Services” portion of the contract,
and there is no indication how much of that money Microsoft receives.
Because most of their contracts are not made public or difficult to
access, it’s hard to discern how pervasive Kaseware and ShadowDragon are
in the world.
The first ShadowDragon contract
<https://govtribe.com/award/federal-contract-award/delivery-order-hshqdc12d00011-70cmsd20fr0000090>
with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was awarded to
IT firm C & C International Computers & Consultants, Inc. on July 16,
2020, at a cost of $289,500. The second was for a contract awarded
<https://govtribe.com/award/federal-contract-award/delivery-order-hshqdc12d00013-70cmsd21fr0000107>
to cybersecurity firm Panamerica Computers on August 31, 2021 at a cost
of $602,056. Both were for the use of SocialNet.
ShadowDragon’s SocialNet, OIMonitor, and malware investigation product
MalNet is also being deployed
<https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/alten-calsoft-labs-joins-shadowdragon-and-cloudly-to-build-cybersecurity-practices-1027344202>
by IT firm ALTEN Calsoft Labs and Cloudly in Asia — “especially India” —
as “solutions for industries such as Government, Banking, Financial
Services, Healthcare and many other verticals.” ALTEN is headquartered
in Bangalore, India, and has offices in the U.S., Europe, and Singapore.
Cloudly is a cybersecurity, intelligence, and surveillance firm based in
Silicon Valley.
With offices in the U.S. and Denmark, ShadowDragon claims a market
presence in “North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin
America.”
When asked about potential human rights abuses by clients, Clemens said
the company vets “all in-bound requests for our products to ensure
they’re not used to conduct human rights violations.”
Dodge, in the interviews predating this story, told me Kaseware had
about 30 customers as of June 2020 but does not disclose most of them.
The Winslow, Arizona, Police Department rolled
<https://www.winslowaz.gov/2018%20Annual%20Report%20Final.pdf>out
<https://www.winslowaz.gov/2018%20Annual%20Report%20Final.pdf> a
Kaseware Computer Aided Dispatch and Records Management System in 2018,
and the Wickenburg, Arizona, Police Department was at least considering
it
<http://destinyhosted.com/wickedocs/2018/CCRM/20180904_283/AGENDApacket__09-04-18_1650_283.pdf>.
Kaseware states <https://www.kaseware.com/about> its platform “is now
used by police departments around the world, Fortune 100 Companies, and
many international non-profit organizations.”
Kaseware did not respond to a request for comments for this article.
Human Rights: A World of All-Seeing Public Surveillance
With Kaseware and ShadowDragon, we live in a world where the public’s
online behavior can be monitored across the internet and accessed at the
click of a button to determine who we are, who we know, what our
“lifestyle” is like, where we are located, and more.
These capabilities fundamentally change police powers, said Eric
Williams, managing attorney at the Detroit Justice Center’s Economic
Equity Practice: “It is qualitatively different when you go from the
police being able to check information” a little at a time “to
artificial intelligence being able to analyze everything that you’ve
done online.”
The potential for discriminatory applications is enormous. Williams
noted that searches made by big data tools are “inevitably biased
against people of color, poor people” and the like. He said that
activists from Black Lives Matter, unions, and the #MeToo movement may
be targeted by these technologies, “depending on who is in charge of them.”
“This presents the scary possibility of law enforcement of our daily
lives that would be unimaginable until recently.”
Phil Mayor, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan, said of
ShadowDragon, “mapping of the relationships between people risks
suspicion by association” and “is likely to entrench systemic racism and
is a threat to everyone’s privacy. … This presents the scary possibility
of law enforcement of our daily lives that would be unimaginable until
recently.”
There is virtually no transparency behind what Kaseware and ShadowDragon
do, or how the Michigan State Police and other clients might be using
their products, where they are deployed, for what purpose, and who gets
access. Likewise for how these tools impact activists, the poor, and
marginalized communities, who are disproportionately the targets of
police surveillance.
“It’s deeply concerning that this kind of technology is being purchased
and used by law enforcement without public discussion,” Mayor told me.
“Before engaging in new forms of surveillance of citizens, law
enforcement should be coming to the polity and asking what we expect in
terms of our privacy rather than making those decisions for us.”
Williams echoed this, stating, “It is problematic that public money is
being spent on surveillance, of a particularly intrusive type, and the
public is unaware of it.” Even if the police want to keep their
surveillance methods hidden, “the public has a right to know, and should
know, given the lack of laws we have governing a lot of electronic
surveillance.”
In the U.S., as many as 70 percent of police forces use social media to
gather intelligence and monitor the public. Yet the law does little
<https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-reform-police-monitoring-social-media>
to constrain these kinds of tools and practices.
“There’s not a lot of regulations on this,” Williams said, “and we can’t
begin to have a discussion on how it should be regulated if we’re not
aware that it’s happening.” He added that he favors a ban on the
technology, given its opaque deployment and intrusive nature.
Dragnet social media surveillance needs to be urgently addressed by
lawmakers, who should step in and ban this attack on civil rights and
liberties immediately.
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