About two weeks ago, a friend was sitting at the bar at the Park Slope Tea Lounge on Union Street around 10 a.m. and a police officer came in and wanted to talk to the management.
One of the Israeli’s who works there came over and the policeman began to talk to her about being aware of terrorism, looking for bags, suspicious people, etc.
"Like many Israelis she thought it was funny that he was telling her about how to spot a terrorist. She was well acquainted with the techniques, coming from Israel," my friend writes in an email.
Then he asked if there was free wireless at the Tea Lounge and he said that she should look out for terrorists coming in and using the Internet. He told her that if she sees someone reading pages that "looked suspicious" that she should notify the authorities.
It was here that my friend had to interupt.
"Are you really asking her to monitor what people are reading and then call the police on them?" my friend asked.
"If someone came in here with a gun wouldn’t you want her to call the police?" the police officer said.
"It’s hardly the same thing." my friend said.
The cop was finished talking to my friend. But he gave the Tea Lounge employee his card and he left.
My friend found this to be pretty spooky and wondered if there was a program that the police were now doing that was trying to monitor what we read.
My friend wondered what would happen if someone was, say, reading a Hamas website. This friend has read a Hamas website from time to time. Would he have been called in for questioning?
Think of all the weird websites we all read from time to time. I hate to think that someone might report me.
My friend asks: "This doesn’t seem like something that should be going on in our neighborhood, don’t you think?"
Here’s the bigger question: Is there a police program to contact places where there is free wireless to get people to report each other. I wonder if it is Park Slope specific, or New York wide?
I for one don’t mind that the cops are asking citizens to keep an eye out for suspicious activity. Its something we should ne doing anyway.
dumb as hell. DUMB!
If this is the kind of protection that the state has to offer then we are at the mercy of our enemies, whomever they are.
Aside from the fact that our notions of “terrorists” run very shallow and superficial, any person attempting to do something illegal will take care not to be detected.
Thus, I’d expect that a person with criminal intent, be they a terrorist or a mobster or a shoplifter, would confine their illicit communication and the like to small text on screen. Their use of computer networks would look identical to anyone elses from the point of view of a shoulder surfer. It would be very unlikely that you’d catch anyone doing anything wrong by examining their web browsing behavior in a public place… even a pedophile.
This is how it begins. Cops asking for this or that with pat replies that the terrorists/pedophiles/etc are out to get us and we have to keep tabs. Folks, people in our country have made tremendous sacrifices to preserve the “American way of life” and we’re going to lose it all, for good in a single decade because we’re afraid of the goblin under the bed.
typically if someone was a person of interest the police wouldn’t have to approach any employees, they would just conduct a sting operation.
seems fishy.
Shana,
I doubt you are a “network security professional”, especially since you just gave our your email address. Also a free network access point that is publishing a SSID can hardly be “compromised”, as it is already open.
Sorry…I need an editor maybe I can find a beat cop to do it.
I am a network security professional and I once did a “scan” of activity at the Park Slope Tea Lounge — there was an abundance of network activity coming from and going to pedophile sites. Apparently the network there has been compromised (not unusual at all in wireless places) and pedophiles are using the location to disseminate kiddy porn.
Interesting story…What I don’t understand is that if your “israeli” friend is not naive to spotting a terrorist, why is she naive to the government gathering information by snooping around. It is common global practice since the beginning of government, especially in Israeli. My israeli ex often said the politicians were under the same security boarding an El Al flight as the citizens. Does anyone know if that is true?
http://nyccheckitout.blogspot.com/