A California police department decides how dangerous you are using this software

In our Edward Snowden era, we think of “mass surveillance” in terms of national security more often than in terms of local law enforcement. But one sort of technology used at the Fresno Police Department in California is shifting that discussion.

Fresno’s Real Time Crime Center is a high-tech hub full of monitors, camera feeds and two billion scans of vehicle license plates and locations nationwide. Working alongside all of this is what might be the most interesting piece of tech there: the software Beware. Built by security company Intrado, a subsidiary of West Corporation, the software collects data like arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and social media posts to calculate a person’s so-called threat level. Read more...