by Virgil Vaduva

You may not know it yet, but there is a reason why the NSA was in favor of the USA Freedom Act, which was successfully passed in the U.S. Senate with a final vote of 67-32.  This was preceded by a tumultuous weekend of Rand Paul throwing sticks into the wheels of other senators willing to renew an un-ammended version of the original Patriot Act which allegedly was the only document allowing for the NSA and other federal agencies to perform mass-surveillance on millions of unsuspecting Americans.

Consequently, the newly shaped and misnamed “Freedom Act” (which has nothing to do with freedom) is turning out to be just another joke pulled on the Americans who are now too busy debating the sexual exploits of Bruce Jenner to pay too much attention to how their freedom is slowly being strangled by the sadists in Washington DC.  The scene is nothing short of a comedy put on full display in front of a public unaware of the fact they are in fact watching a snuff film where Liberty will pay the final price.

Mainstream media outlets are excitedly describing the passage of this bill as a win for the American people, outlining how the NSA is now facing an uphill battle in collecting bulk digital data about all of us. Even Reason Magazine, who should be a beacon for common sense and “reason” is describing the bill as a “win” that does not end mass surveillance (a bit of a bipolar conclusion if you ask me):

No, it does not end mass metadata collection entirely, but it does require more selective search terms for records, collecting them from the telecom and Internet companies using these terms, not just trying to collect all records and then searching through them for the ones they want.

I’m quite confused as to how a few additional search attributes makes it more difficult to spy on us, but I am sorry to be the one to inform you that this bill will not increase your freedom as an American, nor will it end mass surveillance by the federal government.  Not only does the Freedom Act not increase freedom, but it is actually making it easier for the NSA and other federal agencies to monitor Americans without oversight.

It is a well-known fact among Information Security Professionals that the NSA has been in bed with telecommunication companies for decades, even well before 9/11.  For example the existence of Room 641A at 611 Folsom St. in San Francisco was exposed well before Edward Snowden’s revelations, but nothing could be done about the existence of this surveillance facility as it was the result of a voluntary relationship between AT&T and the National Security Agency.

Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency that commenced operations in 2003 and was exposed in 2006

Worse, the information about the blatant partnership between the NSA and AT&T was made public in graphic details by Mark Klein, an AT&T employee who blew the whistle on the existence of the surveillance facility.  Klein even swore under oath the following:

While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal. I saw this in a design document available to me, entitled “Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco” dated Dec. 10, 2002. I also saw design documents dated Jan. 13, 2004 and Jan. 24, 2003, which instructed technicians on connecting some of the already in-service circuits to the “splitter” cabinet, which diverts some of the light signal to the secret room. The circuits listed were the Peering Links, which connect Worldnet with other networks and hence the whole country, as well as the rest of the world.

In 2006 the story fizzled out into a lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, with the Supreme Court refusing to hear the case in 2011 after it was dismissed by the Ninth Circuit Court based on the retroactive grant of immunity the Congress used to protect telecommunication companies who were willing to partner up with the NSA voluntarily.

The revelation of Room 641A is just the tip of the iceberg. The NSA has hundreds, if not thousands of commercial agreements with corporations who are voluntarily assisting them with surveillance activities. The “beauty” of these agreements is that they do not require warrants and they are not subject to congressional oversight. The money is what speaks loudest here, and when 70% of the U.S. intelligence budget goes to private corporate NSA partners, the picture becomes very clear: everyone is in bed with the NSA, and the passage of the U.S.A. Freedom Act is just masturbation to please the masses.

The FISA court which was handling surveillance requests under the Patriot Act has no authority to dictate the extent of the private and voluntary agreement between telcos like AT&T and Verizon and the NSA.  The metadata or bulk data that these telcos are collecting and turned over to the NSA voluntarily is also not subject to any warrants or permissions given by the FISA court.

In essence, the passage of the Freedom Act is actually making things worse for Americans from a state surveillance perspective as it is now forcing the NSA to use unscrutinized side-channels to collect data.

The NSA has the money and the motivation to bribe and pay their way into your phone, home or bedroom, regardless of the laws passed by Congress. The $10 million paid to RSA to insert a backdoor into their encryption products is a drop in the bucket.  Billions of dollars flow to companies like Microsoft, Booze Allen, Orange, Stratfor and Vodafone that allow for the backdooring of products or outright tapping into the lives of unsuspecting Americans.  The CIA has even retained In-Q-Tel in order to place investments into high-tech startups in order to retain their technologies or place backdoors into their products in exchange for money.

And when the NSA cannot legally spy on Americans, they retain the services of companies like Palantir Technologies, which will spy on us on their behalf.  Wikileaks provided documents showing that Palantir employees, together with consultants from the defunct HB Gary Federal will provide software able to collect, analyze and correlate information from the general public while also being able to create public streams of misinformation aimed at discrediting critics of the federal government, such as Glenn Greenwald.

It is not necessary for me to continue explaining why America has yet again been suckered into supporting the illusion of freedom while in fact losing freedom on every single front. This is my desperate attempt to throw a little bit of light and cold water on the spectacle that continues to unfold before our eyes, the both sadistic and masochistic relationship between the American people and their government. It’s a bizarre, pseudo-religious display of flag worship and patriotism which is repaid by the State with more pain, tyranny, taxation and war.

The scandalous display will continue unabated until principled whistle blowers and technology, not Congress, will save us from the ever-present eyes of the NSA.

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak. He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.

In this photo taken May 26, 2015, a small plane flies near Manassas Regional Airport in Manassas, Va. The plane is among a fleet of surveillance aircraft by the FBI, which are primarily used to target suspects under federal investigation. Such planes are capable of taking video of the ground, and some _ in rare occasions _ can sweep up certain identifying cellphone data. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes’ surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge’s approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found.

Aerial surveillance represents a changing frontier for law enforcement, providing what the government maintains is an important tool in criminal, terrorism or intelligence probes. But the program raises questions about whether there should be updated policies protecting civil liberties as new technologies pose intrusive opportunities for government spying.

Graphic shows three distinct flight paths over major U.S. cities conducted by the FBI; 0 1/2c x 6 inches; 20 mm x 152 mm;

U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Even basic aspects of the program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general.

“The FBI’s aviation program is not secret,” spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement. “Specific aircraft and their capabilities are protected for operational security purposes.” Allen added that the FBI’s planes “are not equipped, designed or used for bulk collection activities or mass surveillance.”

But the planes can capture video of unrelated criminal activity on the ground that could be handed over for prosecutions.

Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they’re not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is rare.

Details confirmed by the FBI track closely with published reports since at least 2003 that a government surveillance program might be behind suspicious-looking planes slowly circling neighborhoods. The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights since late April orbiting both major cities and rural areas.

One of the planes, photographed in flight last week by the AP in northern Virginia, bristled with unusual antennas under its fuselage and a camera on its left side. A federal budget document from 2010 mentioned at least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, in the FBI’s surveillance fleet.

The FBI also occasionally helps local police with aerial support, such as during the recent disturbance in Baltimore that followed the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who sustained grievous injuries while in police custody. Those types of requests are reviewed by senior FBI officials.

The surveillance flights comply with agency rules, an FBI spokesman said. Those rules, which are heavily redacted in publicly available documents, limit the types of equipment the agency can use, as well as the justifications and duration of the surveillance.

Details about the flights come as the Justice Department seeks to navigate privacy concerns arising from aerial surveillance by unmanned aircrafts, or drones. President Barack Obama has said he welcomes a debate on government surveillance, and has called for more transparency about spying in the wake of disclosures about classified programs.

“These are not your grandparents’ surveillance aircraft,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, calling the flights significant “if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft.”

During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI’s fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane aircraft. These included parts of Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Southern California.

Evolving technology can record higher-quality video from long distances, even at night, and can capture certain identifying information from cellphones using a device known as a “cell-site simulator” — or Stingray, to use one of the product’s brand names. These can trick pinpointed cellphones into revealing identification numbers of subscribers, including those not suspected of a crime.

In this photo taken May 26, 2015, a small plane flies near Manassas Regional Airport in Manassas, Va. The plane is among a fleet of surveillance aircraft by the FBI, which are primarily used to target suspects under federal investigation. Such planes are capable of taking video of the ground, and some _ in rare occasions _ can sweep up certain identifying cellphone data. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Officials say cellphone surveillance is rare, although the AP found in recent weeks FBI flights orbiting large, enclosed buildings for extended periods where aerial photography would be less effective than electronic signals collection. Those included above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.

After The Washington Post revealed flights by two planes circling over Baltimore in early May, the AP began analyzing detailed flight data and aircraft-ownership registrations that shared similar addresses and flight patterns. That review found some FBI missions circled above at least 40,000 residents during a single flight over Anaheim, California, in late May, according to Census data and records provided by the website FlightRadar24.com.

Most flight patterns occurred in counter-clockwise orbits up to several miles wide and roughly one mile above the ground at slow speeds. A 2003 newsletter from the company FLIR Systems Inc., which makes camera technology such as seen on the planes, described flying slowly in left-handed patterns.

“Aircraft surveillance has become an indispensable intelligence collection and investigative technique which serves as a force multiplier to the ground teams,” the FBI said in 2009 when it asked Congress for $5.1 million for the program.

Recently, independent journalists and websites have cited companies traced to post office boxes in Virginia, including one shared with the Justice Department. The AP analyzed similar data since early May, while also drawing upon aircraft registration documents, business records and interviews with U.S. officials to understand the scope of the operations.

The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating new cover companies to shield the government’s involvement, and could endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP declined the FBI’s request because the companies’ names — as well as common addresses linked to the Justice Department — are listed on public documents and in government databases.

At least 13 front companies that AP identified being actively used by the FBI are registered to post office boxes in Bristow, Virginia, which is near a regional airport used for private and charter flights. Only one of them appears in state business records.

Included on most aircraft registrations is a mysterious name, Robert Lindley. He is listed as chief executive and has at least three distinct signatures among the companies. Two documents include a signature for Robert Taylor, which is strikingly similar to one of Lindley’s three handwriting patterns.

The FBI would not say whether Lindley is a U.S. government employee. The AP unsuccessfully tried to reach Lindley at phone numbers registered to people of the same name in the Washington area since Monday.

Law enforcement officials said Justice Department lawyers approved the decision to create fictitious companies to protect the flights’ operational security and that the Federal Aviation Administration was aware of the practice. One of the Lindley-headed companies shares a post office box openly used by the Justice Department.

Such elusive practices have endured for decades. A 1990 report by the then-General Accounting Office noted that, in July 1988, the FBI had moved its “headquarters-operated” aircraft into a company that wasn’t publicly linked to the bureau.

The FBI does not generally obtain warrants to record video from its planes of people moving outside in the open, but it also said that under a new policy it has recently begun obtaining court orders to use cell-site simulators. The Obama administration had until recently been directing local authorities through secret agreements not to reveal their own use of the devices, even encouraging prosecutors to drop cases rather than disclose the technology’s use in open court.

A Justice Department memo last month also expressly barred its component law enforcement agencies from using unmanned drones “solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment” and said they are to be used only in connection with authorized investigations and activities. A department spokeswoman said the policy applied only to unmanned aircraft systems rather than piloted airplanes.

View documents: http://apne.ws/1HEyP0t

The National Security Agency says it plans to keep all of the recordings it’s collected, even if it is no longer allowed to continue collecting phone recordings after today’s Senate vote.

President Obama has urged Senators to pass the USA Freedom Act, a “compromise” bill which would extend the length and powers of the Patriot Act, while ending the NSA’s ability to use mass surveillance to collect phone recordings. The bill passed the House by 338 to 88 on May 13.

The NSA started collecting phone records in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The NSA’s program of mass surveillance has been widely unpopular since it was revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, which many say is in direct violation of the US Constitution, and infringes upon their civil rights.

RT offers video commentary on the story:

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has promised to derail the bill

“There has to be another way,” Paul said in a comment posted on Twitter. “We must find it together. So tomorrow, I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program.”

Last week, Republicans were unable to find 60 votes to break a filibuster on either an extension of the existing law or a House-passed bill, the USA Freedom Act, that would have telecommunications companies hold the data and require the government to get a warrant to access it.

This story originally reported by Cyrus Farivar for Ars Technica

The sheriff in San Bernardino County — east of Los Angeles County — has deployed a stingray hundreds of times without a warrant, and under questionable judicial authority.

In response to a public records request, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department (SBSD) sent Ars, among other outlets, a rare example of a template for a “pen register and trap and trace order” application. (In the letter, county lawyers claimed this was a warrant application template, when it clearly is not.) The SBSD is the law enforcement agency for the entire county, the 12th-most populous county in the United States, and the fifth-most populous in California.

Stingrays, or cell-site simulators, can be used to determine location by spoofing a cell tower, but they can also be used to intercept calls and text messages. Once deployed, the devices intercept data from a target phone as well as information from other phones within the vicinity. For years, federal and local law enforcement have tried to keep their existence a secret while simultaneously upgrading their capabilities. Over the last year, as the devices have become scrutinized, new information about the secretive devices has been revealed.

This template application, surprisingly, cites no legal authority on which to base its activities. The SBSD did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.

“This is astonishing because it suggests the absence of legal authorization (because if there were clear legal authorization you can bet the government would be citing it),” Fred Cate, a law professor at Indiana University, told Ars Technica by e-mail.

“Alternatively, it might suggest that the government just doesn’t care about legal authorization. Either interpretation is profoundly troubling,” he said.

The documents sent to Ars by the SBSD’s county attorneys also show that since acquiring a stingray in late 2012, the agency has used it 303 times between January 1, 2014 and May 7, 2015.

Further, the SBSD, like other departments nationwide, maintains a questionable non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with the FBI that indicates that the agency will work with local prosecuting authority to dismiss cases rather than reveal information in court about stingrays. (This has happened in at least some known jurisdictions elsewhere in the country.)

Just last week, the FBI released a statement regarding the use of stingrays, which claims the opposite of what its NDA with local law enforcement actually says. The SBSD also declined to produce policies, guidelines, training materials, nor the specific cases where stingrays were used.

The FBI and the Harris Corporation, the manufacturer of the device, have repeatedly declined to respond to Ars’ specific questions.

The rest of this story is available on Ars Technica

UPDATE

TruthVoice reader Tony Policicchio recommended the open source Snoopsnitch app, which purports to warn phone users of potential Stingray tracking. The app requires a rooted android device with a Qualcomm chipset in order to function correctly.

Thanks Tony!

The US government’s prosecution of a South Korean businessman accused of illegally selling technology used in aircraft and missiles to Iran was dealt a devastating blow by a federal judge. The judge ruled Friday that the authorities illegally seized the businessman’s computer at Los Angeles International Airport as he was to board a flight home.

The authorities who were investigating Jae Shik Kim exercised the border exception rule that allows the authorities to seize and search goods and people—without court warrants—along the border and at airport international terminals. US District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia noted that the Supreme Court has never directly addressed the issue of warrantless computer searches at an international border crossing, but she ruled (PDF) the government used Kim’s flight home as an illegal pretext to seize his computer. Authorities then shipped it 150 miles south to San Diego where the hard drive was copied and examined for weeks, but the judge said the initial seizure “surely cannot be justified.”

After considering all of the facts and authorities set forth above, then, the Court finds, under the totality of the unique circumstances of this case, that the imaging and search of the entire contents of Kim’s laptop, aided by specialized forensic software, for a period of unlimited duration and an examination of unlimited scope, for the purpose of gathering evidence in a pre-existing investigation, was supported by so little suspicion of ongoing or imminent criminal activity, and was so invasive of Kim’s privacy and so disconnected from not only the considerations underlying the breadth of the government’s authority to search at the border, but also the border itself, that it was unreasonable.

The defendant was accused of unlawfully selling Q-Flex Accelerometers—models QA-2000-10, QA-2000-20, and QA-3000—manufactured by Honeywell Aerospace. They require an export license before they can be sold from within the US. Kim was accused of selling the technology to intermediaries in China and Korea before their ultimate destination of Iran.

“The government points to its plenary authority to conduct warrantless searches at the border. It posits that a laptop computer is simply a ‘container’ that was examined pursuant to this authority, and it submits that the government’s unfettered right to search cargo at the border to protect the homeland is the beginning and end of the matter,” the judge wrote.

Evidence discovered on his computer of his alleged involvement in the conspiracy that won an indictment is now suppressed, and it cannot be used against him according to the ruling. The authorities took the man’s computer in 2012 for national security reasons but allowed him to board his flight home. The government did not comment on the decision.

Judge Berman Jackson questioned whether the border search exception should apply to laptops because they carry much more private information than, say, a briefcase. Judge Jackson cited last year’s Supreme Court case, known as Riley, in which the justices ruled unanimously that the authorities generally may not search the mobile phones of those they arrest unless they have a court warrant.

The Supreme Court said that “Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse. A conclusion that inspecting the contents of an arrestee’s pockets works no substantial additional intrusion on privacy beyond the arrest itself may make sense as applied to physical items, but any extension of that reasoning to digital data has to rest on its own bottom.”

Seizing on that high court opinion, Judge Berman Jackson wrote:

Applying the Riley framework, the national security concerns that underlie the enforcement of export control regulations at the border must be balanced against the degree to which Kim’s privacy was invaded in this instance. And as was set forth above, while the immediate national security concerns were somewhat attenuated, the invasion of privacy was substantial: the agents created an identical image of Kim’s entire computer hard drive and gave themselves unlimited time to search the tens of thousands of documents, images, and emails it contained, using an extensive list of search terms, and with the assistance of two forensic software programs that organized, expedited, and facilitated the task. Based upon the testimony of both Special Agent Hamako and Special Agent Marshall, the Court concludes that wherever the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals eventually draws the precise boundary of a routine border search, or however either Court ultimately defines a forensic – as opposed to a conventional – computer search, this search was qualitatively and quantitatively different from a routine border examination, and therefore, it was unreasonable given the paucity of grounds to suspect that criminal activity was in progress.

The American Civil Liberties Union has long maintained that the authorities invoke the border exception rule to the warrant requirement to build cases when they don’t have probable cause to get a warrant.

One such high-profile incident occurred in 2010, when the authorities detained and seized a laptop, thumb drive, and digital camera from David House at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport when he returned from a vacation in Mexico. House was an outspoken supporter of WikiLeaks leaker Chelsea Manning, who at the time was facing a court-martial for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. Manning is now serving 35 years for the leaks.

The Department of Homeland Security confiscated House’s gear for 49 days before it was returned after the ACLU complained. The government had waited for House’s return so it could search his digital properties. As part of a legal settlement, the government agreed to destroy copies of House’s seized data.

Investigators do not need a search warrant to obtain cellphone tower location records in criminal prosecutions, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a closely-watched case involving the rules for changing technology.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning a three-judge panel of the same court, concluded that authorities properly got 67 days’ worth of records from MetroPCS for Miami robbery suspect Quartavious Davis using a court order with a lower burden of proof.

In its 9-2 decision, the 11th Circuit decided Davis had no expectation of privacy regarding historical records establishing his location near certain cellphone towers. The records were key evidence used to convict Davis of a string of armed robberies, leading to a 162-year prison sentence.

In fact, Circuit Judge Frank M. Hull wrote for the majority, it’s clear that cellphone users in today’s society understand how companies collect data about calls and that cell towers are a key part of that.

“We find no reason to conclude that cellphone users lack facts about the functions of cell towers or about telephone providers’ recording cell tower usage,” Hull wrote. “This cell tower method of call connecting does not require a different constitutional result just because the telephone company has decided to automate wirelessly.”

Two judges dissented, contending the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause and a search warrant for such records and some judges in the majority agreed in separate opinions that the U.S. Supreme Court should make the ultimate decision. Davis attorney David O. Markus said the dissent could provide a “roadmap” for a likely appeal to the high court.

“Unfortunately, the majority is stuck in the early `80s when cell-phones were the size of bricks and cost $3,000. The cases from that long-ago era aren’t helpful in today’s world,” Markus said.

Markus called the decision “breathtaking,” contending it could mean government investigators could have access without a search warrant to all kinds of personal data stored by a third party such as Facebook posts, purchases on Amazon and even pictures in “cloud” storage.

The Miami case has drawn wide interest from civil liberties groups and others, with briefs in support of the search warrant requirement filed by the ACLU, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and many others.

“The majority opinion fails to appreciate the necessity of protecting our privacy in the digital age,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, staff attorney at the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The 11th Circuit, however, said existing law regarding information possessed by third parties clearly governs the Davis cellphone tracking data. Those who want the law changed should look to Congress and the state legislatures, not the judicial system, the judges said.

The decision Tuesday is similar to an earlier ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, while the 3rd Circuit has ruled a search warrant may be required for cell tower records if privacy rights might be affected. Federal appeals courts are also considering cases from Maryland and Michigan.

Journalists and transparency activists across the country have done a phenomenal job of shining light on how local law enforcement agencies use emerging technologies to surveil everyday people on a massive scale.  It’s often like playing Whac-A-Mole and Go Fish at the same time. One day, the question may be whether police are using drones. The next, automatic license plate readers.  After that, facial recognition or IMSI catchers (i.e. Stingrays) or Rapid DNA analyzers.

So many technical terms, so many acronyms. Unfortunately, we need to put yet another one your radar: Automated Vehicle Occupancy Detection, also known as Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection or Automated Vehicle Occupancy Verification.

For years, government agencies have chased technologies that would make it easier to ensure that vehicles in carpool lanes are actually carrying multiple passengers. Perhaps the only reason these systems haven’t garnered much attention is that they haven’t been particularly effective or accurate, as UC Berkeley researchers noted in a 2011 report.

Now, an agency in San Diego, Calif. believes it may have found the answer: the Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection system developed by Xerox.

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), a government umbrella group that develops transportation and public safety initiatives across the San Diego County region, estimates that 15% of drivers in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes aren’t supposed to be there. After coming up short with earlier experimental projects, the agency is now testing a brand new technology to crack down on carpool-lane scofflaws on the I-15 freeway.

Documents obtained by CBS 8 reporter David Gotfredson show that Xerox’s system uses two cameras to capture the front and side views of a car’s interior. Then “video analytics” and “geometric algorithms” are used to detect whether the seats are occupied.

When the detection system’s computer determines a driver is improperly traveling in the carpool lane, the cameras instantly send photos of the car’s interior and its license plate to the California Highway Patrol.

In short: the technology is looking at your image, the image of the people you’re with, your location, and your license plate. (SANDAG told CBS the systems will not be storing license plate data during the trial phase and the system will, at least for now, automatically redact images of drivers and passengers. Xerox’s software, however, allows police the option of using a weaker form of redaction that can be reversed on request.)

Xerox’s Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection systems can be mounted in permanent locations, such as freeway gantries, or attached to mobile trailers that “can be moved around, in order to keep potential violators honest.“

Xerox claims that the systems have a 95-99% accuracy rate, even with vehicles traveling as quickly as 100 mph. That represents a significant leap in capabilities compared to the 14-20% accuracy recorded by similar technology tested by SANDAG four years earlier.

So far, Xerox’s technology has only had one other trial run: a 2013 test on the Mackay Bridge in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the detection system captured 250,000 images of drivers in just under two weeks. Xerox claims the technology successfully determined front seat passengers 98.9% of the time and rear seat passengers 96.2% of the time.

That success rate may seem impressive, but it still means that, in aggregate, thousands of people could have been affected by machine error. Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection systems also raises the usual questions and concerns about privacy and mass surveillance, particularly without rules yet in place defining the limits of how this technology collects data and how that data will be stored, accessed, and destroyed.

If this trial is successful, it may only be a matter of time before Xerox begins marketing this new technology to other jurisdictions. As Xerox told its investors in November, its Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection system is “aimed at revolutionizing the movement of people and goods worldwide.”

Whether you’re a local journalist or citizen watchdog, add Automated Vehicle Occupancy/Passenger Detection to your vocabulary. In the coming months and years, look for it in procurement documents and committee agendas. Ask for related documents in your routine public records requests. As with all street-level surveillance technology, citizens have more power to influence policy when they discover the tech in its infancy, rather than fighting to dial back its use after it has been integrated into everyday police operations.

Twitter has added a tool to help users report abusive content to law enforcement, which could aid in removing the most threatening posts as Twitter ramps up its efforts to combat harassment.

The tool has been incorporated into the existing process for flagging abusive content or tweets. After reporting abusive or threatening content to Twitter, users have an option to receive an emailed summary of the report. The report would include the flagged tweet and its URL, the time at which it was sent, and the user name and account URL of the person who posted it.

The report, aimed at law enforcement, would also include a link to Twitter’s guidelines on how authorities can request non-public user account information from Twitter. The idea is that after seeing a report, law enforcement might feel compelled to take further action.

Twitter would not send this emailed report to law enforcement directly; it would be up to user to forward it. It comes as Twitter has more broadly beefed up its tools for reporting abusive content.

Twitter seems to envision the tool as a possible route to respond to the most threatening tweets. “While we take threats of violence seriously and will suspend responsible accounts when appropriate, we strongly recommend contacting your local law enforcement if you’re concerned about your physical safety,” Twitter said in a blog post on Tuesday.

In developing the tool, Twitter received feedback from a number of outside groups including the National Network to End Domestic Violence, which works to end violence against women. The new tool is not designed exclusively for women, but it could help in this area. Women have been ruthlessly targeted on Twitter and on other sites like Reddit and 4chan, due to sexism in the video game industry, sometimes referred to as “Gamergate.”

Twitter has been working to improve its abuse-reporting tools, which all rely on users to flag content. The company recently streamlined its tools for reporting issues like impersonation and self-harm. Just last week Twitter banned the posting of revenge porn and nude images that have been stolen or are being used without permission, after a similar move by Reddit.

Twitter’s new tool is rolling out worldwide starting Tuesday for the desktop as well as the company’s mobile apps.