We’ve all heard of that app for cops called Beware, right? Press release: http://www.intrado.com/…/intrado-arms-agencies-new-weapon-h…
It’s disturbing in general but I was rifling through all the hype and found this, in a Word doc on their corporate site re: legalities:
Legality
Beware complies with all the key PII laws of the US, to include the following:
1965 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
1970 Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)
1970 Bank Secrecy Act
1994 Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA)
2000 Graham Leach Bliley Act (GLB)
2001 Patriot Act
2003 FACT Act
PII means Personally Identifiable Information, and this is their statement of compliance. Notice anything missing? Not even one of those laws is about protecting citizens; data, in fact, several are quite the opposite, they are cornerstones of the surveillance state. More, I keep seeing ‘purchase records’ mentioned as part of the base upon which this tool draws its conclusions. Through exactly what legal channel does a private company gain access to financial transaction data?
The closer I look, the uglier this company gets. One thing I would very much like to know: out of all the queries they process, what percentage are assigned a ‘red’ threat level?
Whoever designed it is a douche bag, the programmers who worked on it have compromised their ethics, big time!
So I just spent a [nauseating] hour+ digging through the steaming mound of carefully crafted and filtered marketing hype, like a stable boy after a rain storm. The shovel handle is never long enough, the boots are never tall enough, and the soap never completely washes away the stink, it can haunt you for days.
Strange thing is, nobody ever goes to any lengths to make rain soaked horse shit look pretty… well, maybe not that strange but that’s where this metaphor, comparing Intrado’s website to a horse corral after it rains, falls apart.
In case you’ve never had to deal with wet horse shit, it stinks really bad, it’s like a plugged toilet that people continued to use. it’s slimy and sticks to everything, if you get the shovel blade much higher than the handle this filthy skanky greenish liquid runs along the handle towards your hands — it is some messed-up shit!
And so is this company, they are actively furthering the surveillance state, aggregating shit that in the grander scheme is none of their god damned business, plus they are artificially escalating the cop’s level of violence. Cop knocks on your door with gun drawn you’re a sneeze away from tragedy. When the reasons have NOTHING TO DO WITH VIOLENCE… at least not until the cops arrive… it’s the stupidest,most reckless thing ever.
And the way they spin it all on their polished corporate web site is just precious.
I’m sure anyone that bad-mouths their invasion-of-privacy-ware comes up a special kind of flashing red. I bet if you contact them and demand to know what your level is, they got some special secret sauce for that as well.