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The FBI – Behind the Dark Suits, N-Dex

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Lina Maini
United States criminal justice system flowchart.

Image via Wikipedia

There are approximately 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States – local, state, tribal, and federal— generally working independently,  each gathering clues, conducting interviews, solving crimes, and generating reports and information. Within their jurisdictions.

So the 2011 question is: in an age supporting a very mobile and transient number of people, obviously crime will cross many jurisdictions, how can we get these 18,000+ agencies connected rapidly and in an automated environment to share their information…not only to catch criminals and terrorists but also to spot crime trends and patterns and help prevent attacks?

After all, beyond a few national criminal justice systems like the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) , most information-sharing between police agencies today is still done on a case-by-case basis or through local and regional information systems.

In a three-year project (from 2008 – 2010), the FBI has been working on just such a system that incorporates all of the information maintained by all of these American law enforcement agencies and compiled this data into a single registry – the Law Enforcement  National Data Index, N-DEx.  N-DEx includes all of the traditional “hard” data: criminal backgrounds, parolee statuses, wants/warrants and can deliver highly effective reports connecting people, places and events by various methods such as MO comparisons, crime trends and familial DNA comparisons, to name several techniques.

It is the literal equivalent of each law enforcement agency, regardless of size, having its own CSI lab, forensics psychiatrist, anti-terrorism expert and other crime solving capabilities generally affordable only by large cities and the national l.e. organizations. N-DEx brings this  broader scope, more tightly focused physical and psychological database to a one sheriff town and to the Homeland Security Administration. The final implementation of N-DEx occurred quietly at the end of 2010. It is this tireless work by our security and law enforcement expert that allows the FBI (and now many others in the field)  to track and more often than not, stop terrorists, cult members and violent criminals before they commit additional heinous crimes.

It is expected that the N-DEx will become available to state and local district attorneys, (all need to know requests are recorded) and may be accessed via FOIL, albeit, for attorneys and private investigators, probably with highly redacted/limited information and very specific rules monitoring the N-DEx’s use.

That this crime information and trend data has finally all come together in one registry is a good thing.  Too often, too many criminals have slipped through the cracks, knowing how to work the “systems” and normal time delays.  Now, we’ll have the ability to access relevant aggregated information to solve cases quickly and effectively and aggressively deter potential threats.

BNI Operatives: A step ahead.

As always, be safe.

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Gov’t Can Attach a GPS Device to Your Car – No Warrant Necessary

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Lina Maini

From TIME: (August 25, 2010)

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

Setting aside the absurd decision that one has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his/her own driveway, isn’t the vehicle still private property? Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that, as an investigator, or even Ms. Jane Q. Public, if I went around attaching objects to others cars without their permission, that I might be arrested? 

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.

… the government violated Pineda-Moreno’s privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the “curtilage,” a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government’s intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno’s driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.

Isn’t  wandering across private property uninvited trespass??  (That’s what I told my sister-in-law…)  Anyhow, we could recommend GPS blockers but savvy readers and the concerned public know how to Google for the info. (Oh and then that search will be traceable on your pc.  There are ways around that too but we’d rather see an outraged than paranoid populace.)
 
Where are we going with this government sanctioned privacy-invasion?  In another case of over zealous governmental intrusion, first term Riverhead, Long Island town supervisor,  Sean Walter,  used Google Earth to uncover 250 illegal pools (those built without the proper permits) in that town.   Mr. Walter (also an attorney) then has the gall to state he is a staunch defender of the Fourth Amendment.  There’s just something distasteful about someone in a position of power abusing their authority to build a career.  Steam-rolling ring a bell?  Well, perhaps someone might waltz into Mr. Walter’s driveway, GPS his vehicle, (as the TIME article stated, no search warrant is necessary and apparently, anyone can traipse across a private citizen’s property uninvited and at will) and then post his movements on a daily blog.  Let’s see  how Mr. Walter spends his day, every moment of it.
 
There are countless true stories of people being photographed in perhaps compromising or embarrassing situations within what they believe to be the privacy of their own backyards.    Individuals themselves also need to stop buying into marketers schemes and giving up their private information, sometimes for a literal dollar.  (Starbucks recently teamed up with social media giant Foursquare, offering a $1 off coupon on their products, inducing people to voluntarily reveal their current locations.)
 
These gross intrusions on the privacy of the citizenry is creating a perfect storm for wanton, blatant disregard for the Fourth Amendment – by the government, corporations and even other private, but interested, individuals.
 
BNI Operatives: Street smart; web savvy.
 
As always, stay safe.

Filed under: Dangerous Legal Decisions, gps | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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