NOW WE ARE HUMAN COMMODITIE

NOW WE ARE HUMAN COMMODITIES
by
Chris Maser

The corporation, it turns out, is an invention of the British Crown through the creation of the East India Company by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, which, being the original, transnational corporation, set today's precedence for big businesses. The East India Company, "found India rich and left it poor," says author Nick Robin. The corporate structure of the East India Company was deemed necessary to allow the British to exploit their colonies in such a way that the owner of the enterprise was, for the first time, separated from responsibility for how the enterprise behaved.
This conscious separation of personal responsibility from the act of looting is not surprising because "looting" is, theoretically as least, considered immoral in Christian circles. The corporation is thus a "legal fiction," that lets the investors who own the business avoid personal responsibility whenever the business dealings are unethical or even blatantly illegal, despite the fact that such unscrupulous behavior profits them enormously.

A corporation, after all, has but one purpose-to make money for the owners. Economist Milton Friedman gave voice to this pinhole vision when he answered his own rhetorical question:  "So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not." In fact, the "corporate system," say analysts, "has no room for beneficence toward employees, communities, or the environment," a notion endlessly demonstrated on a daily global scale.

Founders of the United States, such as Thomas Jefferson, recognized the dangers of corporate greed, which accounts for why the founding fathers believed corporate charters should be granted only to those entities willing to serve the greater public interest. Throughout most of the 19th century, therefore, states typically restricted a corporation they chartered to the ownership of one kind of business and strictly limited the amount of capital it could amass. In addition, states required the stockholders to be local residents, detailed specific benefits that were due the community, and placed a 20- to 50-year limit on the life of a corporation's charter. Legislatures would withdraw a corporation's charter if it strayed from its stated mission or acted in an irresponsible manner.

Although the power of modern corporations dates back to this era, it has been greatly augmented by two major legal dodges aimed at giving them unencumbered authority to serve only the self-interest of a few people. This was accomplished first by the piecemeal removal of those restrictions imposed to protect the welfare of the public from the self-serving interests of the few.

The second change came in 1886, when the U.S. Supreme Court made the corporation all but invulnerable by decreeing, in a case brought by the Southern Pacific Railroad against Santa Clara County, California, that a corporation has the right of "personhood" under the 14th Amendment (originally intended to protect the rights of freed slaves) and, as such, enjoys the same constitutional protections that you or I do as individuals. This second change was reaffirmed in 1906, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, "The Corporation is a creature of the state. It is presumed to be incorporated for the benefit of the public." Within a century, the corporation had been transfigured into a "superhuman creature of the law," that is legally superior to any American citizen because the corporation has civil rights without civil responsibilities.¹

WHEN PEOPLE BECOME COMMODITIES

We, as a society, are losing sight of one another as human beings—witness the Wall-Street money chase in which numerous, large corporations discount human value as they increasingly convert people into faceless commodities that are bought and sold on a whim to improve the corporate standing in the competitive marketplace. After all, market share translates into political power, which translates into higher profit margins, both of which exacerbate the corporate disregard for people, the rampant destruction of Nature, and the squandering of natural resources.

Science-based technology is the seed of human exploitation of the world's resources, including people. As such, it's appropriate to examine what the word "resource" means, because the term is sadly misused. Resource originally meant a reciprocal gift between humans and the Earth, but today it is defined as the collective wealth of a country or its means of producing wealth; any property that can be converted into money.

First we covet what Nature has produced. We then exert "ownership" over that which we covet, and finally we convert Nature into money. The technological efficiency with which we convert Nature into money has even become the measure of social success and stature. We thus transform spirited and lively mutual gifts, including the human resource, into lifeless commodities. Where does this kind of thinking lead us when we consider one another and ourselves only as "human resources"?

We can begin by looking at the education of our "resource managers." As soon as we demand, in this lifeless, linear sense, that education serves some immediate purpose and that it be worth a predetermined amount, we strip education of its intrinsic value, and it becomes mere "training." Such is the traditional training of foresters, range conservationists, fishery biologists, and game biologists, all of whom are trained in the traditional schools of "resource management" which abound in North America. Once we accept so specific a notion of utility, all life becomes subservient to its use; its value is drained of everything except its "specialized use," and imagination is relegated to the scrap heap. In turn, these patterns of thought determine the core of a society's culture.

Let's take another look at the term "resource." Resource = re and source. Re means to put back, to restore, and source means the original supply, the point of something's origin. Interpreting the word in this way can be the inspiration for the rebirth of its original meaning. How would this change in meaning affect our sense of the world and ourselves?

There was even a time when people were valued for what they were as individuals. Although American workers have long had an enforced workweek of 40 hours, there currently is an insidious infringement into personal life due to pagers and cell phones, which allow corporations to "own" employees 24 hours a day. Businesses seem to have no moral compunctions about calling employees whenever they choose—"for the good of the company." For those who would choose to live by the corporate proverb, "for the good of the company," the Families and Work Institute said that in 2001 employees are more likely to:

lose sleep
have physical and emotional health problems
make mistakes on the job
feel and express anger at employers
resent co-workers who they perceive are not pulling their weight
look for different jobs
In the workplace, these feelings translate into more injuries and thus more claims for workers' compensation, increased absenteeism, higher health insurance and health-care costs, impaired job performance, and greater employee turnover—all of which are counterproductive and costly not only for employees but also for employers.²

At home, these feelings are often converted into a sense of not enough time to care for once-loved pets. About four million pets were brought each year to 1,000 shelters surveyed during 1994, 1995, and 1996, the vast majority of which were dogs. Of those, about 64 percent were killed. Only 24 percent were adopted; others were primarily lost pets that were ultimately reunited with their families. Most of the owners who gave up pets were under 30 years of age. When asked why they were giving up their pet, many said that the hours they were being required to work disallow time to adequately care for their animal.³

Moreover, if American workers want more time with and for their families, the corporate response is:  "If you aren't willing to do the job the way we want, we'll find someone who will." This attitude raises the question of what comes first today in our land of opportunity, where supposedly one is free to seek liberty and the pursuit of happiness—love or money? This question seems all the more relevant in light of the Enron debacle.

The collapse of Enron highlights how some corporations are using people simply as commodities to boost company earnings. While Enron's employees were both forced to purchase and simultaneously prohibited from selling company stock in their Enron-heavy 401(k) retirement accounts, Enron executives cashed out more than $1 billion in stocks when it was near its peak in value. Regular employees, however, had to watch helplessly as their Enron stock plummeted in value and their life savings disappeared.⁴

Clearly, the punishing free-for-all of globalization and open markets has not invited love into its house and thus is as much about the fear of lost opportunity as it is about maximizing profit. And now, as fear enters into the monetary counting houses, one must realize that any rosy face painted on the economy is done so with far too many temporary and dead-end jobs in the service sector.

The growing use of long-term, temporary workers by American businesses has created a new kind of employment discrimination, but not across the board because some people actively choose such an arrangement. Employers typically hire contingent workers, such as independent contractors and temporary workers, to fill gaps in personnel, especially to meet high seasonal demands in business. Because, technically, they are not "company employees," long-term, temporary employees or "permatemps" can work at a job for years without being entitled to paid vacations, health insurance, pensions, and other benefits (such as rights and protections under federal labor statutes) enjoyed by permanent employees who do the same work.⁵ Although not all corporations operate this way, the arrangement is, nevertheless, desirable from the employer's point of view because it holds down the cost of labor, which means higher profits.

The result is millions of employed people in the United States who cannot afford the basic necessities of food, housing, clothing, and medical care. This problem is well depicted in the movie "Hidden in America," which shows that below the image of shining prosperity is a hidden layer of poverty with its desperate but proud parents and hungry children.

There is also a kind of sweatshop alive and well in the United States—faster and faster with no time to slow down. A Gallup Poll in the summer or 1999 found that 44 percent of working Americans referred to themselves as "workaholics." Yet, 77 percent said they enjoyed their time away from work more than they did their time while working. In fact, our American quest for material wealth—the money chase—leads to profound unhappiness, emotional isolation, and higher divorce rates because we are so busy striving for income there is no time for normal, human relationships.⁶

Our American ration of irony, however, is that the more connected we become electronically, the more detached and isolated we become emotionally because we are losing the human elements of life:  the sight of a human face, the sound of a human voice, a smile, a handshake, a touch on the shoulder, a kind word. In essence, we're losing the human dimension of scale in terms of time, space, touch, sound, and size; we are physically and emotionally losing one another and ourselves. Nothing makes this clearer than such things as home fax machines, laptop computers, cell phones, beepers, Palms, BlackBerrys, and iPods.

People are now "on-line" at home; in transit to work; at work; in transit to home via cars, planes, trains, and on foot. In other words, people are virtually tethered to work. Such workaholism is not only expected by employers, it's often demanded if one wants to keep their job, which has added "24/7" to our lexicon.

This kind of workaholism is especially hard on women because they are increasingly expected to work outside the home, juggle childcare, school activities for their children, and also maintain the home as though they had to nothing else to do. In addition, the 24/7 phenomenon hit the American work scene shortly after woman became a major part of the workforce.

As things pile endlessly upon one another, the whole of life seems to melt down into a gigantic obligation that becomes increasingly difficult to meet because there simply is not enough time to get everything done, let alone done well. A standard greeting today is:  "I'm so busy."

This greeting is worn like the "red badge of courage" was in the past, as though our exhaustion is proof of our worth and our ability to withstand stress, which, in turn, is a mark of our maturity. In fact, we seem to measure our importance by how busy we are. The busier we are, the more important we feel to ourselves and, we imagine, to others, which is reminiscent of the underlying theme of the British television program "Keeping up Appearances."

If we do not rest, however, we will lose our way because action without time for reflection is seldom wise. Rest nourishes our minds, bodies, and souls, which are poisoned by the hypnotic trance of perpetual motion as accomplishment and social "success." Therefore, we never truly rest, especially many who are self-employed.

In the quarter century following World War II, giant corporations like Ma Bell, General Motors, General Electric, and Westinghouse were the place to be, representing, as they did, the pinnacle of what capitalism had to offer workers:  extraordinary job security and a cornucopia of benefits. In fact, college graduates tripped over one another seeking life-time careers with these bedrock corporations because they could expect a comfortable house, a generously financed retirement package, lifelong health insurance, and, more often than not, a 9-to-5 job that allowed an organized man to form a healthy balance between work and family.

That was the era when job security formed the underpinnings of the corporate operating principle. In 1962, Earl S. Willis, manager of employee benefits at General Electric, wrote, "Maximizing employee security is a prime company goal." Later, he wrote, "The employee who can plan his economic future with reasonable certainty is an employer's most productive asset." In recent times, however, General Electric's John F. Welch, Jr., was known as "Neutron Jack" for shedding 100,000 jobs at the company.

Job security has vanished at numerous companies. Today, chief executives dump thousands of workers in the blink of an eye, hoping such moves will please securities analysts and thus investors, so their stocks will inch up 5 percent on the stock exchange. In addition, corporate managers slash away at employee benefits as though employees have suddenly ceased to be humans and have become commodities that can be forced into a more efficient mode of production with less cost to the corporation. They also phase out "defined benefit" retirement plans in favor of the far-less expensive 401(K) "do it yourself plans."

Many employees of the post World War II era, until the latter part of the 1960s, were true believers in their companies. They were also exemplary employees who worked 12 and 14 hours days, six and even seven days a week, whatever it took to ensure their company's success. They did this enthusiastically because their company's success was the foundation of their job security, and hence their success as family providers.

Then things changed. The corporate mind-set closed and corporate attitudes hardened. Now, despite their dedication, despite all the birthdays, bedtimes, and school events they have missed as their children grew up, many have been chopped from their company's payroll in a "merger," "re-engineering," "rightsizing," "downsizing," and "re-deployment." Bitter at the callous way they have been treated, many workers regret having been so dedicated, only to be treated like commodities that are discarded at will.⁷

"In a personal sense, it hurts, but in a macro sense, it is the action we've got to take to remain competitive," says Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. "Ultimately the adjustments that the economy is making is going to set us up for the next strong period of growth." What Naroff seems to be saying between the lines is:  While it hurts to be fired, it's not personal; it's business.

Others contend, however, that companies may well harm themselves by firing the people who purchase their products, potentially damaging the economy in ways that cannot be rectified with quick fixes, such as tax cuts or lowering the interest rate. In other words, layoffs (especially large, continuous ones) can only hurt the economy.

An economist, on the other hand, would counter with the notion that what really matters is how consumers view the situation. Some would even suggest that workers have become relatively used to being fired for the market convenience of their employer, as though that makes it "acceptable," even "okay." One could also rationalize that many of the job cuts will be less painful than they sound, in part because companies in a tight labor market have scores of unfilled jobs that are easy to eliminate. And then there is the argument that many other cuts would be spread over years, and some might not even occur.⁸

While this all sounds very "rational," workers and consumers act on emotions, not what passes for economic "logic," and announced layoffs can lead them to panic, because uncertainty and fear of the unknown are powerful allies when it comes to irrational thinking and the often-unwise actions it spawns. Thus, even if nothing in a person's own job changes, the fact that their company has fired people to increase the economic bottom line can, and often does, drastically change an employee's attitude about the wisdom of loyalty to the company and thus cripples the company's real wealth—the allegiance and imagination of its employees.

No wonder it 's called "downsizing." The end result is that a worker's dignity levels out near zero! And what does the corporation lose when employees are fired—especially older, long-term employees? The corporation loses its collective memory and its history, both accrued through years of loyal service.

All of this revolves around consumption and consumerism. Consumption to the economist is the "end-all and be-all" of production. It means economic growth. Consumption is the heart and soul of capitalism itself. The rate of consumption by a populace is also the standard economic measure of human welfare.

Consumption as an end it itself arose with the conceptualization of "the economy" as a macro-social entity and "economics" as a macro-social science—rather than as household management, which is the true meaning of the word economy. To this end, Adam Smith wrote:  "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production."

Because consumption and consumerism dominate social discourse and political agendas of all parties, consumerism hogs the limelight at center stage as the prime objective of Western industrialized societies, which, in the collective, are known as "consumer societies." Within these consumer societies, the purpose of consumption is:  variety, distraction from daily stresses, pleasure, power, and the status that one hopes will bring with them a measure of happiness and social security. None of this comes to pass, however, because people themselves are increasingly seen as economic commodities. How can a commodity find security from another commodity? In this sense, the marketplace satisfies only temporarily our collective neuroses, while hiding the values that give true meaning to human life.⁹

Author James B. Twitchell puts it nicely:  "Once we are fed and sheltered, our needs are and have always been cultural, not natural. Until there is some other system to codify and satisfy those needs and yearnings, commercialism [consumerism] —and the culture it carries with it—will continue not just to thrive but to triumph."

In the final analysis, it is doubtful many people really subscribe to the economist's notion that human happiness and contentment derives solely from, or even primarily from, the consumption of goods and services. It's therefore surprising that such a notion has come to hold nearly dictatorial power over public policy and the way industrialized societies are governed.

We are today so ensnared in the process of selling and buying things in the market place, that we cannot imagine human life being otherwise. Even our notion of well-being and of despair are wedded to the flow and ebb of the markets. Why is this so much a part of our lives? It is largely because people have yet to understand the notion of conscious simplicity, which is based on the realization that there are two ways to wealth:  want less or work more. Put differently, true wealth lies in the scarcity of one's wants—as opposed to the abundance of one's possessions.

ENDNOTES

The discussion of corporate beginnings is based on: (1) Jim Hightower. 1998. Chomp! Utne Reader. March-April:57-61, 104, (2) Nick Robins. 2001. Loot. Resurgence 210:12-16, and (3) David C. Korten. 2001. What to Do When Corporations Rule the World. Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures. Summer:48-51.
Diane Stafford. 2001. Workers feeling overwhelmed. Knight Ridder Newspapers. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, OR. May 21.
Dru Sefton. 1998. Busy owners are abandoning pets. Knight-Ridder Tribune News Service. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, OR. June 7.
The Associated Press. 2001. Enron retirees: Collapse wiped out life savings. Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, OR. December 19.
Tony Pugh. 1999. Sad Ballad of the Long-Term Temp. Knight Ridder Newspapers. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, OR. December 7.
The Editors. 2000. No time to slow down. U.S. News & World Report. June 26:14.
The preceding four paragraphs are based on: Steven Greenhouse. 2001. After the Downsizing, a Downward Spiral. The New York Times. April 8.
The preceding three paragraphs are based on: Adam Geller. 2001. Economists fear cuts will affect consumer spending. The Associated Press. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, OR. February 1.
The preceding three paragraphs are based on: Paul Ekins. 1998. From Consumption to Satisfaction. Resurgence 191:16-19.
This essay is condensed primarily from my 2004 book, "The Perpetual Consequences of Fear and Violence:  Rethinking the Future." Maisonneuve Press, Washington, D.C.

©chris maser 2007. All rights reserved.

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PRIVATE company tracks license plates

Tech by VICE
The Private Surveillance System That Tracks Cars Nationwide

It’s not just the NSA with all of the surveillance power in America, there's a booming corporate-owned surveillance industry used by private investigators.
By Motherboard Staff
Sep 19 2019, 10:58am

IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES

In just a few taps and clicks, a secret surveillance infrastructure created by a private company can show any user on its interface where a car has been seen throughout the U.S.

With an private investigator industry source, Joseph Cox showed how a powerful system called the ‘Digital Recognition Network’ (DRN) and made by an American company of the same name, is used by repossession agents, private investigators, and insurance companies to track cars in the U.S.

Armed with just a car's license plate number, the tool—fed by a network of private cameras spread across the country, snapping photos of vehicles and plate numbers—provides users a list of all the times that car has been spotted all on an easily usable Google-Maps style interface.

On this week’s CYBER we sit down with Joseph to discuss how it’s not just the NSA with all of the surveillance power in America, companies like DRN are yet another example of the booming private-spy infrastructure spreading across the country.

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Tech by VICE
This Company Built a Private Surveillance Network. We Tracked Someone With It
Repo men are passively scanning and uploading the locations of every car they drive by into DRN, a surveillance database of 9 billion license plate scans accessible by private investigators.
By Joseph Cox
Sep 17 2019, 7:45am
ILLUSTRATION: CATHRYN VIRGINIA

In just a few taps and clicks, the tool showed where a car had been seen throughout the U.S. A private investigator source had access to a powerful system used by their industry, repossession agents, and insurance companies. Armed with just a car's plate number, the tool—fed by a network of private cameras spread across the country—provides users a list of all the times that car has been spotted. I gave the private investigator, who offered to demonstrate the capability, a plate of someone who consented to be tracked.

It was a match.

The results popped up: dozens of sightings, spanning years. The system could see photos of the car parked outside the owner's house; the car in another state as its driver went to visit family; and the car parked in other spots in the owner's city. Each was tagged with the time and GPS coordinates of the car. Some showed the car's location as recently as a few weeks before. In addition to photos of the vehicle itself, the tool displayed the car's accurate location on an easy to understand, Google Maps-style interface.

This tool, called Digital Recognition Network (DRN), is not run by a government, although law enforcement can also access it. Instead, DRN is a private surveillance system crowdsourced by hundreds of repo men who have installed cameras that passively scan, capture, and upload the license plates of every car they drive by to DRN's database. DRN stretches coast to coast and is available to private individuals and companies focused on tracking and locating people or vehicles. The tool is made by a company that is also called Digital Recognition Network.

What DRN has built is a nationwide, persistent surveillance database that can potentially track the movements of car owners over long periods of time. In doing so, highly sensitive information about car owners can be made available to anyone who has access to the tool.

training_map
A SCREENSHOT OF THE TRAINING VIDEO OBTAINED BY MOTHERBOARD. MOTHERBOARD HAS REDACTED THE INFORMATION INCLUDED IN THE VIDEO. IMAGE: SCREENSHOT.
Even if you're not suspected of a crime or behind on your car payments, your location information may be included in this database—in fact, the vast majority of vehicles captured are connected to innocent people. DRN claims to have more than 9 billion license plate scans, according to a DRN contract obtained by Motherboard. And DRN has admitted that people who are not supposed to be allowed to use the tool have gained access.

"DRN provides a very powerful tool to private industries such as insurance, investigations and asset recovery. A powerful tool can be abused and such abuses would infringe on the privacy of Americans," Igor Ostrovskiy, a New York based private investigator with a firm called Ostro Intelligence, told Motherboard.

In Motherboard's test, we found a person who consented to have their license plate entered into the DRN system. They then verified that the photos were of their car, and provided context of where the photos had been taken.

"Looks like that's in front of my house!" the person said. The photo also included part of the building the car was parked in front of. Motherboard granted the person anonymity to protect their privacy. "Creepy," they added.

Motherboard also obtained the results of a DRN search of a vehicle that was located primarily in a large U.S. city. These results were even more granular, showing their movements across the city on the highway, on smaller streets, and spotted in specific neighborhoods, too.

The data is easy to query, according to a DRN training video obtained by Motherboard. The system adds a "tag" to each result, categorising what sort of location the vehicle was likely spotted at, such as "workplace" or "home."

Do you work at DRN or Vigilant? Did you used to? Or do you have more information about license plate readers? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

"If the scans are happening during the day, it's assumed that the vehicle is at a work location," a narrator says in the training video while demonstrating the tool. "If they were, say, in the evening, 6 p.m. to, say, 6 a.m., then this would show up as a residential location. It's assumed that the person's home."

The table of results shows the most recent or popular sighting at the top, and clicking an option called "Map It" at the top of the tool's control panel plots the location data onto a map for easier viewing. Users can create a PDF of their search results, which includes the map with all of the selected results, as well as the addresses of where the vehicle was spotted each time.

DRN charges $20 to look up a license plate, or $70 for a "live alert", according to the contract. With a live alert, a user can enter a license plate they wish to receive updates on; when the DRN system spots the vehicle, it'll send an email to the user with the newly discovered location.

"DRN takes data security seriously," DRN told Motherboard in a statement. "It is a violation of the terms of our contract for a user to access or use the data for non-business purposes, or to provide access to a third-party—including media and reporters—in any form for any reason without DRN’s approval. Customers are also responsible for adhering to the terms of the contract to manage and monitor their users for appropriate system use and access privileges. Additionally, customers have specific obligations to comply with all laws, regulations and rules that govern the use of the data within DRN’s solutions."

***

Over the last decade, DRN has created its license plate and photo database by outsourcing the collection process to its own customers. As repo men drive around the country in unmarked cars, they have a set of DRN cameras installed on their vehicle, scanning the plate of every car it sees. A four camera kit costs $15,000, according to DRN's website. This tech not only alerts the driver if they pass a vehicle that has been marked for repossession by querying DRN's database, but also constantly photographs any cars it passes and adds those photos to the database itself. DRN has more than 600 of these "affiliates" collecting data, according to the contract. These affiliates are paid a monthly bonus for gathering the data.

"DRN Affiliates equipped with LPR cameras scan license plates every day, building up a historical scan database that serves the Affiliate and the entire network in generating more hits and recoveries. DRN maintains the largest database of scans and the numbers continue to grow daily," DRN's website reads.

In marketing materials, DRN says it is "a game changer for insurance carriers" who can use the technology to catch people insuring their vehicle in one state for a cheaper price while actually living elsewhere. Meanwhile, DRN's contract says the company has helped recover over one million vehicles since 2009 and saved billions of dollars for commercial clients. While DRN is focused on providing license plate reader technology to private industries, its sister company Vigilant Solutions sells the same technology to government agencies such as law enforcement. Vigilant also sells facial recognition products.

drn-camera
A SCREENSHOT FROM A COURT FILING BETWEEN A REPOSSESSION COMPANY AND DRN WHICH SHOWS HOW THE CAMERAS WORK. IMAGE: SCREENSHOT.
As well as providing its customers with access to its data banks of car location data and photos, DRN also resells that access to other companies who cater to even more clients. Those include a company called Delvepoint which more explicitly markets to private investigators.

"Theoretically with law enforcement, police go through training," on how to properly use this technology in line with the law, Dave Maass, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told Motherboard in a phone call. "None of that affects private use." Taking photos in public is generally protected by the First Amendment, and so many of the photos in the database are likely to have been taken legally.

There is wide room for abuse though. Maass pointed out that could include stalking, obtaining information for litigation through undisclosed means, gathering information on celebrities to sell, or more.

"Looks like that's in front of my house!"

Over 1,000 accounts have access to the DRN system, the contract adds. These accounts can be shared among multiple people at an organization, though. In a closed Facebook group for private investigators that Motherboard gained access to, multiple posts include people asking for others to run plates for them through their own access to a license plate reader system, though they did not specifically mention DRN.

Company executives have previously admitted unauthorized users have gained access to the system. In a hearing in the City of Kyle, Texas, Vigilant Solutions Vice President of Sales Joseph Harzewski told councilmembers "we’ve had people hand out access where they shouldn’t have." Harzewski added that this data exposure is "something we can’t do anything about, in the sense that we give bulletproof technology to our clients. They’re free to do with it as they see fit. We give them the complete control to ensure that what they decide to do with it is what happens with it."

Notably, DRN does not immediately ban someone for abusing the service, according to the contract. It reads that if DRN determines or suspects that the user has used the data for personal or non-business purposes, "Licensor [DRN] shall notify Licensee in writing of the alleged breach and give Licensee an opportunity to cure any curable breaches within 30 days of Licensee's receipt of such notice; thereafter Licensor may take immediate action, including, without limitation, terminating the delivery of, and the license to use, the Licensed Data."

drn-stats
A SCREENSHOT OF A SECTION OF THE CONTRACT MOTHERBOARD OBTAINED. IMAGE: SCREENSHOT.
And members of the public have no realistic way of knowing whether their data has been collected by DRN, or examined by a DRN user. There are very few ways to pry information from private companies; details about government surveillance networks are at least theoretically subject to Freedom of Information Act requests and government oversight.

"Abuses can be deterred if the public has a way to audit access to the data stored specifically on them," Ostrovskiy, the private investigator, said. "Responsible data providers will create responsible end users. Private industry needs big data to help solve problems such as fraud and private industry is much more responsible when they know the public is watching."

DRN's statement added, "DRN’s data includes a photograph of a license plate and the date, time and location the photograph was taken. It does not contain any personally identifiable information. DRN products are built with robust reporting and auditing capabilities to ensure transparency at the organization level into usage and compliance with state and federal laws, contractual obligations and internal policies."

But armed with the license plate, an investigator or other third party could also use a different service to search for the name and address of who the vehicle is registered to. As Motherboard recently reported, Departments of Motor Vehicles (DMVs) are making tens of millions of dollars selling drivers' names, addresses, and other personal information to an array of industries.

"A powerful tool can be abused and such abuses would infringe on the privacy of Americans."

DRN's legal argument for its collection is that the company is automating a task that has been done manually for years—capturing publicly available information.

"Because the camera is photographing license plates in public locations visible for all to see, there is no expectation of privacy in the data we collect," the contract and various pieces of DRN marketing material read.

Critics say that taking photos and automatically uploading and parsing them at this scale qualitatively creates something to be concerned about.

"I think that argument is a serious understatement of the magnitude of the privacy invasion that this kind of technological advance enables," Nate Wessler, a staff attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a phone call.

Although public photography is generally legal under the First Amendment and there has been some pushback against private collection in a few states, lawmakers haven't fully grappled with the ramifications of turning plate photos into a persistent, searchable database that provides a map of millions of peoples' lives.

"It's one thing to have had private investigators be able to happen upon somebody's car parked in their driveway or parked on the street," Wessler said. "But what ths technology enables is creating a highly accurate digital dossier of the sum total of a person's movements over time."

drn-item-types
A SCREENSHOT OF SOME OF THE INFORMATION RETURNED BY THE DRN SYSTEM. MOTHERBOARD HAS REDACTED SOME OF THE RESULTS TO PROTECT PRIVACY. IMAGE: SCREENSHOT.
In 2014, Arkansas banned the collection of license plate data by private entities while allowing law enforcement to continue using the technology. DRN pushed back, saying the law violates their First Amendment rights. DRN also contested a Utah law that banned private collection; the company dropped the suit after the state amended that law.

Beyond the collection, there is also the issue of accessing the data. In a recent filing in the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the ACLU and the EFF weighed in on a case involving the technology. In that case, police used license plate data to track an alleged drug trafficker driving back and forth across bridges.

"The District Attorney suggests that these actions do not require a warrant because 'it is simply unreasonable for any person to believe that their public conduct should remain private from observation in today's society, where there is a significant amount of video surveillance,'" ACLU and EFF lawyers wrote. "Yet this Orwellian outcome is exactly what [article] 14 and the Fourth Amendment are meant to protect against." That is, not subject to unreasonable searches and seizures. (The ACLU, EFF, and other lawyers argue in the filing that looking up historical location data collected by license plate readers should require a warrant.)

But one legal issue with industry use of license plate data is that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to non-government entities—a private investigator, or a repo man, or an insurance company does not need a warrant to search for someone's movements over years; they just need to pay to access the DRN system, or find someone willing to share or leverage their access, like Motherboard did.

Jeramie D. Scott, senior counsel at privacy activist group EPIC, wrote in an email, "License plate readers have been used to create a mass surveillance system that has collected and aggregated billions of license plate records connected to millions of people. This kind of indiscriminate surveillance deserves more scrutiny as it undermines privacy and civil liberties and sets a bad precedent by implying that everything exposed to the public can be collected, aggregated, and analyzed for profit."

He added, "Although there is a lesser expectation of privacy in the public that doesn't mean there is no expectation of privacy."

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DMVs are selling your info to private investigators

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DMVs Are Selling Your Data to Private Investigators

You gave them your data in exchange for a driver’s license. DMVs are making tens of millions of dollars selling it, documents obtained by Motherboard show.
By Joseph Cox
Sep 6 2019, 6:09am
IMAGE: CATHRYN VIRGINIA

Departments of Motor Vehicles in states around the country are taking drivers' personal information and selling it to thousands of businesses, including private investigators who spy on people for a profit, Motherboard has learned. DMVs sell the data for an array of approved purposes, such as to insurance or tow companies, but some of them have sold to more nefarious businesses as well. Multiple states have made tens of millions of dollars a year selling data.

Motherboard has obtained hundreds of pages of documents from DMVs through public records requests that lay out the practice. Members of the public may not be aware that when they provide their name, address, and in some cases other personal information to the DMV for the purposes of getting a driver's license or registering a vehicle, the DMV often then turns around and offers that information for sale.

Many of the private investigators that DMVs have sold data to explicitly advertise that they will surveil spouses to see if they're cheating.

"You need to learn what they’ve been doing, when they’ve been doing it, who they’ve been doing it with and how long it has been going on. You need to see proof with your own eyes," reads the website of Integrity Investigations, one private investigator firm that buys data from DMVs.

"Under this MOU [memorandum of understanding], the Requesting Party will be provided, via remote electronic means, information pertaining to driver licenses and vehicles, including personal information authorized to be released," one agreement between a DMV and its clients reads.

private-investigators-dmv-data
A SMALL SECTION OF A DOCUMENT FROM THE VIRGINIA DMV SHOWING WHICH PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS THE DMV HAS DATA SELLING AGREEMENTS WITH. IMAGE: SCREENSHOT.
Multiple DMVs stressed to Motherboard that they do not sell the photographs from citizens' driver licenses or social security numbers.

Some of the data access is done in bulk, while other arrangements allow a company to lookup specific individuals, according to the documents. Contracts can roll for months at a time, and records can cost as little as $0.01 each, the documents add.

“The selling of personally identifying information to third parties is broadly a privacy issue for all and specifically a safety issue for survivors of abuse, including domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and trafficking," Erica Olsen, director of Safety Net at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, told Motherboard in an email. "For survivors, their safety may depend on their ability to keep this type of information private."

The sale of this data to licensed private investigators is perfectly legal, due to the Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), a law written in the '90s before privacy became the cultural focus that it is today, but which critics believe should be changed. The process of becoming a licensed private investigator varies from state to state, and can be strict, according to multiple sources close to the industry. Some states, however, allow licensing to be granted on a local level or investigators to operate without a license.

The DPPA was created in 1994 after a private investigator, hired by a stalker, obtained the address of actress Rebecca Schaeffer from a DMV. The stalker went on to murder Schaeffer. The purpose of the law was to restrict access to DMV data, but it included a wide range of exemptions, including for the sale to private investigators.

"The DPPA is one of several federal laws that should now be updated," Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of privacy activism group EPIC, wrote in an email. "I would certainly reduce the number of loopholes," he added, referring to how the law might be changed.

Do you work at a company selling data? Do you know of an abuse of DMV data? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

The data sold varies from state to state, but it typically includes a citizen's name and address. In others, it can also include their nine-digit ZIP code, date of birth, phone number, and email address.

Rob Namowicz, a private investigator from Wisconsin, told Motherboard in an email he buys DMV records "to get driver license [sic] information on subjects I may be investigating."

The Virginia DMV has sold data to 109 private investigator firms, according to a spreadsheet obtained by Motherboard. The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission has sold data to at least 16 private investigation firms, another spreadsheet shows. The Delaware DMV has data sharing agreements with at least a dozen investigation firms, and Wisconsin has around two dozen current agreements with such firms, other documents show.

Motherboard did not obtain records from DMVs in all states, so the number of private investigators that have been granted access to citizens' data across the country is likely higher.

The data selling is not limited to private investigators, however. The DPPA also allows the DMV to sell data of drivers to various other entities. Consumer credit reporting company Experian features heavily in the documents obtained by Motherboard, which stretch from 2014 to this year, as does research company LexisNexis. The Delaware DMV has direct access agreements with around 300 different entities, according to one spreadsheet. The Wisconsin DMV has current agreements with over 3100 entities, another shows. Local media outlets in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere have also reported on DMVs selling data to third parties.

Valerie McGilvrey, a skiptracer who uses various tools and techniques to track down vehicles that need to be repossessed, told Motherboard "with Texas having no repo license and minimum standards, convicted felons can and do access professional databases."

Motherboard also found a bail bonds company included in one of the datasets. Motherboard has reported extensively on the abuse by bail bonds firms and bounty hunters around tracking techniques such as location data.

"The selling of personally identifying information to third parties is broadly a privacy issue for all and specifically a safety issue for survivors of abuse, including domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and trafficking."

DMVs are making a lot of money from the sale of this data. The Rhode Island DMV made at least $384,000 selling personal data between 2015 and this year, according to a spreadsheet obtained by Motherboard. When asked how much the Wisconsin DMV made from selling driver records, a spokesperson wrote in an email "Per these 2018 DMV Facts and Figures, $17,140,914 was collected in FY18 for driver abstract fees." Examining that document shows that Wisconsin's revenue for selling driver records has shot up dramatically since 2015, when the sale drew in $1.1 million. The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles made $77 million in 2017 by selling data, a local outlet found.

Documents explicitly note that the purpose of selling this data is to bring in revenue.

"This is a revenue generating contract," one document from the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles obtained by Motherboard reads.

A spokesperson from the Wisconsin DMV wrote in an email that "Wisconsin DMV directly informs customers that their information may be sold."

Some uses of the data include being able to contact owners of certain cars in case they need to be recalled. But multiple DMVs confirmed that access to such data has been abused in the past—likely by customers using the data in a way that they were not authorized to do so.

"Yes, it has been done before," Binta Cissé, communications manager at the North Carolina DMV, wrote in an email after Motherboard asked if the DMV has cut off access to data buyers after abuse.

bmv-data-selling
A SECTION OF A DOCUMENT FROM THE INDIANA BUREAU OF MOTOR VEHICLES DESCRIBING HOW THE SALE OF DATA IS TO GENERATE REVENUE. IMAGE: SCREENSHOT.
Alexis Bakofsky, deputy communications director from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, also said the agency had revoked access after abuse.

"Since implementing the new controls in 2017, the department has cancelled three MOUs with requesting parties for misuse," she wrote. "Additionally, while there was no indication of misuse, the department proactively cancelled two MOUs with requesting parties for failing to provide adequate internal controls."

Spokespeople from the Virginia DMV and the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission also confirmed those agencies have cut-off access after abuse of data. The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles said it has not had to terminate contracts because of abuse.

Senator Ron Wyden, who works especially on privacy and surveillance issues, told Motherboard in a statement “News reports over the past year have repeatedly exposed the troubling abuse of Americans’ location data, by private investigators, bounty hunters, and shady individuals.”

He added that if the DMV data has been abused by private investigators, "Congress should take a close look at the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, and, if necessary, close loopholes that are being abused to spy on Americans."

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Experts Say Law Should Change to Stop DMVs From Selling Your Personal Data
Motherboard found that DMVs across the country are selling personal data likely without drivers’ knowledge, including to private investigators.
By Joseph Cox
Sep 9 2019, 11:25am

IMAGE: CATHRYN VIRGINIA

On Friday, Motherboard reported that Departments of Motor Vehicles across the country are making tens of millions of dollars selling drivers' personal information, including to private investigators who spy on people for a profit. The investigation, based on hundreds of pages of documents from DMVs obtained through public records requests, also showed that access to DMV data, which includes names, addresses, and other personal information, has been abused.

Now, Senators and digital privacy experts have criticized the practice.

“This is just another example of how unwitting consumers are to the ways in which their data is collected, sold or shared, and commercialized," Senator Mark Warner told Motherboard in a statement.

"The standard talking point that consumers ‘don’t care about privacy’ has been increasingly disproven, as we learn that consumers and policymakers have been kept in the dark for years about data collection and commercialization practices," he added.

Do you work at a company selling data? Do you know of an abuse of DMV data? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Motherboard's story found that the Virginia DMV has sold data to 109 private investigator firms, and other DMVs have sold to a dozen or more. Wisconsin has data agreements with some 3100 different entities overall, and made $17,140,914 from selling driver data in 2018.

The sale of this data is legal under the Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), a law passed in the '90s. The DPPA was created after a private investigator, hired by a stalker, obtained the address of actress Rebecca Schaeffer from a DMV. The DPPA was supposed to tighten-up the sale of DMV data, but came bundled a list of exemptions, including private investigators.

"I certainly think that DPPA is riddled with loopholes that need to be closed," Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at activist group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), wrote in an email. "In this day and age, unfortunately, government entities don't resist the lure of selling Americans' personal information for private exploitation. This problem will only get worse as cities, trying to be 'smart,' collect more information about what we do and where we go," he added.

Senator Ron Wyden previously told Motherboard "News reports over the past year have repeatedly exposed the troubling abuse of Americans’ location data, by private investigators, bounty hunters, and shady individuals." If the DMV data has been abused by private investigators, he said, "Congress should take a close look at the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, and, if necessary, close loopholes that are being abused to spy on Americans."

When asked whether it informs drivers that their data may be sold, a spokesperson from the Wisconsin DMV wrote in an email "Wisconsin DMV directly informs customers that their information may be sold." It appears unlikely that the general public understands that data they are legally obligated to provide to the DMV to obtain a license or register a vehicle is being offered for sale.

"While what the DMV are doing is technically legal due to their exemptions, it belies a deeper problem that motorists are under ever increasing levels of surveillance and having their data exploited," Christopher Weatherhead, technologist at activist group Privacy International, wrote in an email. "The car is a critical tool in the ability of individuals to have personal autonomy and individuals should be able to go about their livelihoods without the registration authority distributing their private information to third party without consent. It's problematic that vast amounts of data on individuals are being shared in this way, which could be misused in malicious ways against vehicle owners."

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Bernie Sanders Says DMVs Should Stop Profiting From Drivers’ Personal Data
The comments follow Motherboard’s investigation into how DMVs are selling drivers’ data.
By Joseph Cox
Sep 9 2019, 2:23pm

IMAGE: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said that Departments of Motor Vehicles should not profit from drivers' personal information after a Motherboard investigation found DMVs across the country selling data to a wide array of companies, including private investigators.

“The DMV should not use its trove of personal information as a tool to make money. While the internet has been an enormous source for good, all that convenience and connection has come with a price: our privacy has been invaded in an unprecedented way, in a manner that would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago," Sanders told Motherboard in a statement.

Motherboard's investigation, based on hundreds of pages of DMV documents, found that the Wisconsin DMV had data selling agreements with over 3100 different entities, including around two dozen private investigation firms. The Virginia DMV has similar arrangements with 109 private investigators, the documents showed. Some DMVs make tens of millions of dollars from the sale of data, and multiple DMVs confirmed to Motherboard that they have cut-off access to certain companies after the data was abused.

"Nobody—from agencies like the DMV to large corporations like Facebook and Google—should be profiting from sharing or selling personal information without meaningful consent. Congress must get serious about ending practices that violate the privacy of ordinary Americans," Sanders added.

Multiple privacy experts have called for the law that permits the sale of DMV data to private investigators—the Drivers' Privacy Protection Act (DPPA)—to be changed. Senator Richard Blumenthal told Motherboard in a statement that Congress should take action on the law.

"Americans rightly expect that government agencies entrusted with their personal information are taking necessary measures to protect their privacy. DMVs should not be in the business of recklessly selling drivers’ personal information to third parties. Federal privacy laws should never license the sale of private information to stalkers and disreputable private investigators. This deeply disturbing report underscores the urgent need for Congress and states to take action to vigorously enforce the letter of the law, and close any loopholes exploited by malicious actors," he said.

On Monday Senator Mark Warner told Motherboard in a statement “This is just another example of how unwitting consumers are to the ways in which their data is collected, sold or shared, and commercialized. The standard talking point that consumers ‘don’t care about privacy’ has been increasingly disproven, as we learn that consumers and policymakers have been kept in the dark for years about data collection and commercialization practices."

Senator Ron Wyden previously told Motherboard that if the DMV data has been abused by private investigators "Congress should take a close look at the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, and, if necessary, close loopholes that are being abused to spy on Americans."

Do you work at a company selling data? Do you know of an abuse of DMV data? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Update: This piece has been updated to include comment from Senator Blumenthal.

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Senators Call on FCC To Investigate T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint Selling Location Data to Bounty Hunters
After Motherboard’s article, Senators Kamala Harris, Mark Warner, and Ron Wyden are coming out against telcos who are selling their customers' location data.
By Joseph Cox
Jan 9 2019, 1:27pm

IMAGE: ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES

On Tuesday, Motherboard revealed that major American telcos T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint are selling customer location data of users in an unregulated market that trickles down to bounty hunters and people not authorized to handle such information. In our investigation, we purchased the real-time location of a cell phone from a bail industry source for $300, pinpointing it to a specific part of Queens, New York.

The issue potentially impacts hundreds of millions of cell phone users in the United States, with customers likely unaware that their location data is being sold and resold through multiple companies, with even the telcos sometimes having little idea where it ends up and how it is used.

Now, senators and a commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have urged government bodies to investigate, with some calling for regulation that would ensure customers are properly made aware of how their data is being sold.

“The American people have an absolute right to the privacy of their data, which is why I’m extraordinarily troubled by reports of this system of repackaging and reselling location data to unregulated third party services for potentially nefarious purposes. If true, this practice represents a legitimate threat to our personal and national security,” Senator Kamala Harris told Motherboard in a statement.

The phone Motherboard paid to locate was on the T-Mobile network. That data access traveled through a complex series of companies and resellers, starting with T-Mobile, before moving to a another company called Zumigo, a so-called ‘location aggregator’. Zumigo then provided the access to Microbilt, which offers phone location services to the bail bondsman industry. In turn, a bounty hunter sold it to a source, and that source sent the phone’s location to Motherboard.

There are more legitimate uses for this data, such as financial companies detecting fraud, or roadside assistance firms finding stranded customers. But there is space for abuse: T-Mobile, Zumigo, and Microbilt only became aware of the unauthorized resale of the data access on the black market once Motherboard informed them.

The location itself was presented in a Google Maps interface, with the accuracy being around 500m. The phone received no warning, such as a text message, it was being tracked.

“This is just another example that of how unwitting consumers are to the ways in which their data is collected, sold or shared, and commercialized. It’s not that people ‘don’t care about privacy,’ as some have argued—it’s that customers, along with policymakers, have been kept in the dark for years about data collection and commercialization practices,” Senator Mark Warner told Motherboard in a statement.

Got a tip? You can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Harris explicitly called on the FCC to investigate the issue.

“The FCC needs to immediately investigate these serious security concerns and take the necessary steps to protect the privacy of American consumers,” she said.

The FCC may already have that in mind. On Tuesday, commissioner of the FCC Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted “The FCC needs to investigate. Stat.”

“It shouldn’t be that you pay a few hundred dollars to a bounty hunter and then they can tell you in real time where a phone is within a few hundred metres. That’s not right. This entire ecosystem needs some oversight,” she added on MSNBC’s Velshi & Ruhle show on Wednesday.

“I think we’ve got to get to this fast,” she added. Because of the ongoing government shutdown, it is unclear when an investigation, if it went ahead, would start.

Multiple senators are calling on regulation that could curb this unauthorized use and sale of phone location data.

“Responsible federal agencies and the U.S. Congress should continue to hold hearings to shine a light on these practices, and look at regulations to ensure companies are actually upfront with consumers about whether and how their sensitive data is being used and sold,” Warner’s statement added.

Senator Ron Wyden recently proposed a bill designed to safeguard personal data.

“The industry has failed again and again to protect Americans’ information. It’s time for Congress to step in and pass strong privacy legislation, like my bill, to safeguard our data and hold companies accountable when they fail,” Wyden told Motherboard in a statement.

Beyond the tracking itself, and any potential legislation or investigations, is ultimately an issue of consent.

“I haven’t consented to this, and I bet you haven’t either,” Rosenworcel added in her MSNBC interview.

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Palantir -user manual for cops

Revealed: This Is Palantir’s Top-Secret User Manual for Cops
Image: Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Palantir is one of the most significant and secretive companies in big data analysis. The company acts as an information management service for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, corporations like JP Morgan and Airbus, and dozens of other local, state, and federal agencies. It’s been described by scholars as a “secondary surveillance network,” since it extensively catalogs and maps interpersonal relationships between individuals, even those who aren't suspected of a crime.

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Palantir software is instrumental to the operations of ICE, which is planning one of the largest-ever targeted immigration enforcement raids this weekend on thousands of undocumented families. Activists argue raids of this scale would be impossible without software like Palantir. But few people outside the company and its customers know how its software works or what its specific capabilities and user interfaces are.

Through a public record request, Motherboard has obtained a user manual that gives unprecedented insight into Palantir Gotham (Palantir’s other services, Palantir Foundry, is an enterprise data platform), which is used by law enforcement agencies like the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. The NCRIC serves around 300 communities in northern California and is what is known as a "fusion center," a Department of Homeland Security intelligence center that aggregates and investigates information from state, local, and federal agencies, as well as some private entities, into large databases that can be searched using software like Palantir.

Fusion centers have become a target of civil liberties groups in part because they collect and aggregate data from so many different public and private entities. The US Department of Justice’s Fusion Center Guidelines list the following as collection targets:

1562941666896-Screen-Shot-2019-07-12-at-102230-AM
Data via US Department of Justice. Chart via Electronic Information Privacy Center.
1562940862696-Screen-Shot-2019-07-12-at-101110-AM
A flow chart that explains how cops can begin to search for records relating to a single person.
The guide doesn’t just show how Gotham works. It also shows how police are instructed to use the software. This guide seems to be specifically made by Palantir for the California law enforcement because it includes examples specific to California. We don’t know exactly what information is excluded, or what changes have been made since the document was first created. The first eight pages that we received in response to our request is undated, but the remaining twenty-one pages were copyrighted in 2016. (Palantir did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

The Palantir user guide shows that police can start with almost no information about a person of interest and instantly know extremely intimate details about their lives. The capabilities are staggering, according to the guide:

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If police have a name that’s associated with a license plate, they can use automatic license plate reader data to find out where they’ve been, and when they’ve been there. This can give a complete account of where someone has driven over any time period.
With a name, police can also find a person's email address, phone numbers, current and previous addresses, bank accounts, social security number(s), business relationships, family relationships, and license information like height, weight, and eye color, as long as it's in the agency's database.
The software can map out a person's family members and business associates of a suspect, and theoretically, find the above information about them, too.
All of this information is aggregated and synthesized in a way that gives law enforcement nearly omniscient knowledge over any suspect they decide to surveil.

1562941061041-Screen-Shot-2019-07-12-at-101139-AM
An instructional flowchart showing how to search for people tied to a specific vehicle or license plate.
TERMS TO KNOW
Most of the Palantir guide is written in the company’s technical language, so it can be hard to parse if you haven't used the software or aren't familiar with it. Here are the important terms to know:

OBJECTS: Any piece of data. This data could be a name, address, phone number, bank account number, etc.

HISTOGRAM: A chart. Specifically, a chart that looks like a web and makes connections between things. This feature kind of looks like the "detective wall" trope from TV and movies, but since it’s digitized, it’s much more fast, powerful, and dense.

ALPR/AUTOMATIC LICENSE PLATE READER: A camera that takes pictures of cars and license plates. They’re usually located at toll booths, or intersections on heavily trafficked roads, though police also have mobile versions of them and massive databases of license plate information. Each city in California has different ALPR privacy policies about how the information can be used and shared.

HEATMAP: A map that shows how many things there are in a particular area. A higher concentration of things is usually shown in a darker or richer color. Palantir advertises Gotham as a tool that transforms huge amounts of data into actionable maps for police investigations.

1562940921088-Screen-Shot-2019-07-12-at-101333-AM
Search results showing that a single license plate can be tracked around the state using Automatic License Plate Reader data.
THE DATA
All data points in Palantir are referred to as “Objects,” and these objects can be practically anything. But they boil down to three main categories: Entities, Events, and Documents. The possibilities of these categories are shown below.

Chart of object types
Image: Chart of Object types based on document acquired by Motherboard.
The “Person” Entity Type doesn’t just include a person’s name. It also includes their emails, bank account numbers, phone numbers, current and previous addresses, social security number(s), and driver’s license data such as height, weight, eye color, and date of birth. (The email address example shown in the user guide is jbg01@DownWithTheUS.org.)

Zoomed-in screenshot from the Palantir user guide.
Image: Zoomed-in screenshot from the Palantir user guide.
There’s also “Property Types”—which basically list different traits that can be attributed to Objects, or data points. The different Property Types are:

Label
Data Source
Agency
Address
Data Range and Location
Date
Incident Type
Geographic Area
Incident Number
Incident Disposition
Incident Status
Cross Street
Phone Number
Location Name
Name
License Plate
Gender
The Palantir guide shows that this data is pulled from several different management systems at once. For instance, a Palantir screenshot included in the guide show that the NCRIC lets police pull from the record management systems of the San Mateo and Palo Alto Police Departments. This exemplifies Palantir's selling point: the system can synthesize enormous amounts of data from various sources. Palantir can also make connections across that data, making it accessible for users in a way that would be extremely time-intensive to do manually.

Zoomed-in screenshot of the Palantir Object Explorer section of the user guide.
Image: Zoomed-in screenshot of the Palantir Object Explorer section of the user guide.
In order for Palantir to work, it has to be fed data. This can mean public records like business registries, birth certificates, and marriage records, or police records like warrants and parole sheets. Palantir would need other data sources to give police access to information like emails and bank account numbers.

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“Palantir Law Enforcement supports existing case management systems, evidence management systems, arrest records, warrant data, subpoenaed data, RMS or other crime-reporting data, Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) data, federal repositories, gang intelligence, suspicious activity reports, Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) data, and unstructured data such as document repositories and emails,” Palantir’s website says.

Some data sources—like marriage, divorce, birth, and business records—also implicate other people that are associated with a person personally or through family. So when police are investigating a person, they’re not just collecting a dragnet of emails, phone numbers, business relationships, travel histories, etc. about one suspect. They’re also collecting information for people who are associated with this suspect.

Zoomed-in screenshot of the Palantir Object Explorer section of the user guide.
Image: Zoomed-in screenshot of the Palantir Object Explorer section of the user guide.
SEARCHES
The guide explains how to make two types of searches: people record searches, and vehicle record searches.

With the people record search, police can start out with a person’s name. Police can also input a phone number (with or without area code), a license plate number, or the dates of cases associated with that person. The name that the Palantir guide uses as an example is "John Badguy Smith."

“The results that appear are from LAPD and LASD data sources,” the Palantir guide says, “and include person records linked to crimes, citations, and arrests.”

Palantir person search section of the user guide.
With the vehicle record search, police start by entering a license plate number. The results spit back any and all relevant information about that vehicle, and Palantir gives police the option of mapping or visualizing this information.

“The results show if the vehicle appeared in any crimes, arrests, field interviews, incidents, or citations, across both LAPD and LASD sources simultaneously,” the Palantir guide says.

TOOLS

The Palantir user guide also explains how to use three types of tools: the Histogram tool, the Map tool, and the Object Explorer tool. These tools all let police graph, map, visualize, and connect dozens of different types of data points. So, police can chart the relationships between individuals. Police can click on an individual on this chart and see everything about them: their email addresses, their bank account information, their license information, etc. Police can also put current addresses, previous addresses, locations of a suspected crime, work locations, family addresses, and travel history (as captured by ALPR-cameras) on a map.

Histogram Tool

The Histogram tool, as stated by the Palantir guide, helps police find “correlations” and “trends” between different Objects, or data points. This can help police decipher a person’s behavior. Police can also create “Virtual Dossiers” at the end of their investigations, which centralizes their analysis into a single place.

Palantir Histogram Helper section of the user guide.
Image: Palantir Histogram Helper section of the user guide.
Map Tool

The Map tool lets police do three things: complete “Geosearches,” create “Heatmaps,” and search an Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) database.

Geosearches lets police see Objects, visually, within a certain radius on a map.

“The purple radius, polygon, route, or recent buttons allow you to draw a shape and search for objects/properties that are within the search area,” the Palantir guide says.

Heatmaps show the concentration of Objects on a map. Using a Legend tool, police can adjust the coloring and display of objects on the map.

Palantir Heatmap Helper section of the user guide.
Image: Palantir Heatmap Helper section of the user guide.
The ALPR search, meanwhile, lets police view license plate data captured within a certain search radius on the map. Police have to first enter a search purpose, which can be a “a DR or case number,” according to the guide. Then, police have to enter the center of their search radius, and a license plate number they want to search. Police can, optionally, select a date range they want to search.

The results show images of the license plates as captured, the car associated with the license plate, time stamps, and the location that the license plate information was captured (Image of this is near the top of the article.)

Object Explorer

The Object Explorer is a comprehensive analysis tool that lets police filter, sort, map, analyze, and export dozens of different data points. A huge part of the Object Explorer is visualizing data, which can be done in four main ways: numeric charts, histograms, timelines, and pie charts. The Palantir guide explains that depending on which Objects police are analyzing, the appropriate visualization tool may vary.

Palantir “Timeline” tool in the Object Explorer.
Image: Palantir “Timeline” tool in the Object Explorer.
The document obtained by Motherboard for this story is public and viewable on DocumentCloud.