Privacy Fears Grow as Cities Increase Surveillance

OAKLAND, Calif. — Federal grants of $7 million awarded to this city were meant largely to help thwart terror attacks at its bustling port. But instead, the money is going to a police initiative that will collect and analyze reams of surveillance data from around town — from gunshot-detection sensors in the barrios of East Oakland to license plate readers mounted on police cars patrolling the city’s upscale hills.

Federal grants of $7 million, initially intended to help thwart terror attacks at the port in Oakland, Calif., are instead going to a police initiative that will collect and analyze reams of surveillance data.

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The new system, scheduled to begin next summer, is the latest example of how cities are compiling and processing large amounts of information, known as big data, for routine law enforcement. And the system underscores how technology has enabled the tracking of people in many aspects of life.

The police can monitor a fire hose of social media posts to look for evidence of criminal activities; transportation agencies can track commuters’ toll payments when drivers use an electronic pass; and the National Security Agency, as news reports this summer revealed, scooped up telephone records of millions of cellphone customers in the United States.

Like the Oakland effort, other pushes to use new surveillance tools in law enforcement are supported with federal dollars. The New York Police Department, aided by federal financing, has a big data system that links 3,000 surveillance cameras with license plate readers, radiation sensors, criminal databases and terror suspect lists. Police in Massachusetts have used federal money to buy automated license plate scanners. And police in Texas have bought a drone with homeland security money, something that Alameda County, which Oakland is part of, also tried but shelved after public protest.

Proponents of the Oakland initiative, formally known as the Domain Awareness Center, say it will help the police reduce the city’s notoriously high crime rates. But critics say the program, which will create a central repository of surveillance information, will also gather data about the everyday movements and habits of law-abiding residents, raising legal and ethical questions about tracking people so closely.

Libby Schaaf, an Oakland City Council member, said that because of the city’s high crime rate, “it’s our responsibility to take advantage of new tools that become available.” She added, though, that the center would be able to “paint a pretty detailed picture of someone’s personal life, someone who may be innocent.”

For example, if two men were caught on camera at the port stealing goods and driving off in a black Honda sedan, Oakland authorities could look up where in the city the car had been in the last several weeks. That could include stoplights it drove past each morning and whether it regularly went to see Oakland A’s baseball games.

For law enforcement, data mining is a big step toward more complete intelligence gathering. The police have traditionally made arrests based on small bits of data — witness testimony, logs of license plate readers, footage from a surveillance camera perched above a bank machine. The new capacity to collect and sift through all that information gives the authorities a much broader view of the people they are investigating.

For the companies that make big data tools, projects like Oakland’s are a big business opportunity. Microsoft built the technology for the New York City program. I.B.M. has sold data-mining tools for Las Vegas and Memp

Oakland entered into a a contract with the Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, to build its system. (In late September, that company was renamed Leidos Holdings.)

The company’s contract to help modernize the New York City payroll system, using new technology like biometric readers, resulted in reports of kickbacks. Last year, the company paid the city $500 million to avoid a federal prosecution. The amount was believed to be the largest ever paid to settle accusations of government contract fraud. A representative of SAIC, now Leidos, declined to comment.

Even before the initiative, Oakland spent millions of dollars on traffic cameras, license plate readers and a network of sound sensors to pick up gunshots. Still, the city has one of the highest violent crime rates in the country. And an internal audit in August 2012 found that the police had spent $1.87 million on technology tools that did not work properly or remained unused because their vendors had gone out of business.

The new center will be far more ambitious. From a central location, it will electronically gather data around the clock from a variety of sensors and databases, analyze that data and display some of the information on a bank of giant monitors.

The city plans to staff the center around the clock. If there is an incident, workers can analyze the many sources of data to give leads to the police, fire department or Coast Guard. In the absence of an incident, how the data would be used and how long it would be kept remain largely unclear.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 15, 2013

An earlier version of this article included outdated information on Oakland’s contractor for its surveillance system. While the contract to build the system was with the Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, that company was renamed Leidos Holdings in late September. Oakland’s contract is now with Leidos, not SAIC.

Cisco Rides Technology Trends to 14.5% Increase in Profit

The world’s largest maker of networking gear has stumbled in recent years as companies bought less and new competitors arose. In response, Cisco moved into technologies like online video, cloud computing and delivery of high-speed Internet over wireless networks.

Those investments appear to be paying off. On Wednesday, Cisco said its sales of switches and routers were basically flat in its third fiscal quarter, which ended April 27. Sales of equipment for big cloud-computing data centers, video and wireless systems, however, were substantially higher.

“This is where the action is,” said John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, in an interview after the earnings announcement. “We bet on some of these seven years ago, now they’re paying off.”

Mr. Chambers wants Cisco to diversify into building sophisticated networked systems with many parts. That could prompt growth of its main switching and routing businesses, because it would mean even more Internet traffic from sensors, consumer devices, and industrial products to and from the Internet.

Cisco needs something to revive those businesses, which still make up nearly half of its revenue. Sales of switching gear, Cisco’s biggest sector, fell 2 percent compared with a year ago, while router sales were flat. Video equipment sales grew 30 percent, wireless equipment rose 27 percent and data center gear was up 77 percent, but their total revenue was about half that of switches and routers.

Over all, Cisco’s net income rose 14.5 percent compared with a year earlier, to $2.5 billion, or 46 cents a share. Revenue was up 5.4 percent, to $12.2 billion. By the nonstandard accounting measures popular with many tech companies, Cisco had net income of 51 cents a share, up 6.3 percent from a year earlier. Wall Street analysts, based on a survey by Thomson Reuters, had projected net income of 49 cents a share and revenue of $12.18 billion.

“The new products got them out of what looked like a tough quarter,” said Eric Suppinger, an analyst with JMP Securities in San Francisco.

Results for Cisco, which is based in San Jose, Calif., are often taken as a barometer of overall business spending. Sales in North America rose 10.4 percent, to $7.1 billion, and Mr. Chambers described the business environment as “slow but steady.” Sales in Europe were lower, he said, primarily because of weakness in countries like Spain. “You’re beginning to see Europe bottom out, with the exception of the south,” he said.

Cisco shares were up more than 8 percent in after-hours trading, after closing down 0.28 percent at $21.21.

Comcast Posts 17% Increase in Net Income

The solid earnings announced on Wednesday were partly the result of higher cable bills for 72 percent of Comcast’s subscribers. The company reported $3.07 billion in operating income and $15.3 billion in revenue, increases of 11.2 percent and 2.9 percent from the same quarter last year.

Still, signs that Comcast may have reached saturation in its core cable and Internet subscription business were apparent. The company lost 60,000 cable subscribers, 62 percent more than it lost in the first quarter of 2012. New broadband subscriptions fell 1 percent to 433,000, and Comcast gained 211,000 phone service customers, a 28 percent increase from last year.

Taken collectively, the country’s largest cable provider still had a 3.2 percent gain in new customers in the quarter, or 583,000 total subscribers, mostly because of the popularity of Comcast’s bundled offer, which includes Internet, phone and cable service at a reduced price.

In February, Comcast said it would pay $16.7 billion to acquire General Electric’s remaining 49 percent stake in NBCUniversal. The deal signaled Comcast’s confidence in the entertainment company. But at least in the first quarter of 2013, that investment did not show signs of paying off.

Revenue at NBCUniversal fell 2.4 percent to $5.34 billion, mostly because of a tough comparison to the same quarter in 2012. That quarter, NBC broadcast the Super Bowl, the most-watched live sports event, and took in the advertising revenue that came along with it.

NBC had a particularly rough quarter without its popular singing competition, “The Voice,” or the Super Bowl to prop up its prime-time earnings. Overall revenue at the network fell 18.5 percent and advertising revenue fell 25 percent. In May, NBC will hold its annual upfront presentation in New York to pitch its prime-time lineup to advertisers for the fall television season.

Universal Studios theme parks were a bright spot for its parent company with a 12.2 percent increase in revenue, largely tied to popular new attractions like “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.” The holiday season hit “Les Misérables” helped the Universal movie division, which had a 2 percent increase in revenue and 10.3 percent increase in operating cash flow.

Cable networks including USA, MSNBC and Bravo continued to stand out, with $2.2 billion in total revenue and $859 million in operating cash flow, increases of 4.6 percent and 6.2 percent.

Thefts a Concern as Holiday Deliveries Increase

As the peak of the holiday gift-buying season approaches and more people are ordering online, here is the downside: Grinch-like bandits are swiping the deliveries from doorsteps when families are not home. Some thieves follow U.P.S. and FedEx trucks along their routes and nab the gifts, while others simply drive through residential neighborhoods looking for packages.

In River Forest, Ill., where the police arrested two young men last week, accusing them of stealing deliveries from homes, plainclothes police officers trail U.P.S. trucks to ferret out thieves who may be following them, Cmdr. Jim O’Shea said.

“This is common at this time of year,” Commander O’Shea said. “We’re trying to take a proactive approach to curtail this.”

So far this holiday season, Americans have spent $21.4 billion online, up 14 percent from last year, according to comScore, a research company. U.P.S. alone expects to deliver more than 500 million packages, and with many of them being left on doorsteps, there could be ample opportunity for thieves to strike.

The Better Business Bureau now recommends that customers be proactive, asking their shipping companies for tracking numbers and requiring signatures upon delivery. If they are not at home, customers should ask for their packages to be held at a lobby desk or at a local shipping center, advised Claire Rosenzweig, the president of the group’s New York chapter.

There are no national statistics on doorstep thefts, but reports of local episodes abound. In Burbank, Calif., with five reported incidents this year, compared with one last year, two teenagers were arrested last month after they were found trailing a U.P.S. truck. One young man was released, while the other person, Ararat Gevondyan, 19, was charged with receiving stolen property, with his bail set at $10,000.

“It’s a crime of opportunity,” Sgt. Darin Ryburn of the Burbank Police Department said. The burglars are “going through these packages for items that could be resold,” he said.

On Long Island, two young men were arrested this week, suspected of stealing headphones, an iPad case and two pairs of Skechers shoes from homes in the Bay Shore area.

A few of the thefts have been caught by home surveillance cameras set up to catch or deter vandals. A television station in Pasadena, Calif., showed a video of a woman taking a package from a doorstep. The homeowner said she never got the Paula Deen electric salt-and-pepper shaker her sister had sent her.

While it may seem extreme to install cameras to keep an eye on packages, this type of home surveillance has become more common in recent years, said Marc Horowitz, a spokesman for Brickhouse Security. The company’s sales for home security cameras have more than doubled in the past year, he said, as the cameras have become less expensive. A simple motion-activated porch camera costs about $100.

Some camera customers fear the culprit is closer to home, breaking that commandment of the cul-de-sac, Do Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Flat-Screen TV.

Mr. Horowitz said he had heard reports from his sales representatives that some customers were buying cameras because they suspected neighbors of pilfering packages (or newspapers and plants).

U.P.S. started a program last year called U.P.S. My Choice, which allows a customer to receive an e-mail or text message before a package arrives and reroute it if no one is going to be home.

U.P.S. drivers are also trained to leave packages out of sight, said Natalie Godwin, a company spokeswoman. Ms. Godwin was with a driver in Atlanta on Tuesday when he decided not to leave a package on someone’s stoop because it was clearly an expensive computer monitor. He dropped it off nearby at the apartment complex’s office.

Drivers leave notes telling the tenants where to find packages, Ms. Godwin said. Often, she added, “They’ll use their own judgment.”

Russian Bills Would Increase Control Over Internet and Nonprofits

A series of initiatives have been introduced as President Vladimir V. Putin begins a six-year term, facing an increasingly assertive opposition. The government has imposed draconian fines for people who participate in unsanctioned protests, and legislators voted to reinstitute criminal charges for slander, rolling back a reform adopted seven months ago by Dmitri A. Medvedev, Mr. Putin’s predecessor.

The bills approved on Wednesday would allow the government to block Web sites deemed dangerous to children and require nonprofits to identify themselves as “foreign agents” if they receive financing from outside Russia and are considered by the government to be engaged in political activities.

“In just two months, we have seen a worrying shift in the legislative environment governing the enjoyment of the freedoms of assembly, association, speech and information in the Russian Federation,” said Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, in a statement released in Geneva.

The criminalization of slander, she said, could “stifle all criticism of government authorities and limit the ability of individuals to address issues of transparency, corruption and abuse of power.”

“I urge the government of the Russian Federation to avoid taking further steps backward to a more restrictive era,” she added, urging officials to soften the laws passed in recent weeks.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded angrily.

“We consider Ms. Pillay’s statement as unbefitting to her status as high commissioner and attempts to publicly accuse the leaders of the Russian state of failing to carry out some kinds of ‘promises’ — as outside the framework of diplomatic ethics,” the ministry said in a statement.

The law on nonprofits — which passed with a vote of 141 to 1, with one abstention — has alarmed a variety of business, charity and religious groups, uncertain whether they will have to carry the label “foreign agent,” a term that invokes cold war espionage. A lawmaker tried to calm those fears in a meeting for nonprofit leaders held by the American Chamber of Commerce, saying the law would be applied only to nonprofits attempting to “change the political system.”

“We understand that events have begun to take place at a faster rate, that the degree of tension in society is growing,” said a United Russia deputy, Aleksandr Petrov, an author of recent amendments to the bill.

“We have one goal: to try, with the help of a number of laws, to create a certain stability, to provide for the integrity of the Russian Federation,” he said. “Yes, there should be political activity, but it should not be allowed to rock the boat which is called Russia.”

Officials have repeatedly suggested that the antigovernment protests of the last six months were financed by foreign governments, and the new law requires nonprofits to deliver detailed accounting to the Ministry of Justice. Mr. Petrov said his suspicions were validated when police seized more than $1 million in cash from a safe in the home of Kseniya Sobchak, a television star and opposition leader. Ms. Sobchak has said the money was her savings.

“According to operative information, which is being discussed now, it was intended to be used for rallies,” he said. “Why must such amounts circulate on the basis of gray schemes? Why can’t this money be officially given to the opposition and show that the money has been given?”

The Internet legislation passed equally swiftly, with a vote of 147 lawmakers in favor, 3 abstaining and none opposed.

Russian Bills Would Increase Control Over Internet and Nonprofits

A series of initiatives have been introduced as President Vladimir V. Putin begins a six-year term, facing an increasingly assertive opposition. The government has imposed draconian fines for people who participate in unsanctioned protests, and legislators voted to reinstitute criminal charges for slander, rolling back a reform adopted seven months ago by Dmitri A. Medvedev, Mr. Putin’s predecessor.

The bills approved on Wednesday would allow the government to block Web sites deemed dangerous to children and require nonprofits to identify themselves as “foreign agents” if they receive financing from outside Russia and are considered by the government to be engaged in political activities.

“In just two months, we have seen a worrying shift in the legislative environment governing the enjoyment of the freedoms of assembly, association, speech and information in the Russian Federation,” said Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, in a statement released in Geneva.

The criminalization of slander, she said, could “stifle all criticism of government authorities and limit the ability of individuals to address issues of transparency, corruption and abuse of power.”

“I urge the government of the Russian Federation to avoid taking further steps backward to a more restrictive era,” she added, urging officials to soften the laws passed in recent weeks.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded angrily.

“We consider Ms. Pillay’s statement as unbefitting to her status as high commissioner and attempts to publicly accuse the leaders of the Russian state of failing to carry out some kinds of ‘promises’ — as outside the framework of diplomatic ethics,” the ministry said in a statement.

The law on nonprofits — which passed with a vote of 141 to 1, with one abstention — has alarmed a variety of business, charity and religious groups, uncertain whether they will have to carry the label “foreign agent,” a term that invokes cold war espionage. A lawmaker tried to calm those fears in a meeting for nonprofit leaders held by the American Chamber of Commerce, saying the law would be applied only to nonprofits attempting to “change the political system.”

“We understand that events have begun to take place at a faster rate, that the degree of tension in society is growing,” said a United Russia deputy, Aleksandr Petrov, an author of recent amendments to the bill.

“We have one goal: to try, with the help of a number of laws, to create a certain stability, to provide for the integrity of the Russian Federation,” he said. “Yes, there should be political activity, but it should not be allowed to rock the boat which is called Russia.”

Officials have repeatedly suggested that the antigovernment protests of the last six months were financed by foreign governments, and the new law requires nonprofits to deliver detailed accounting to the Ministry of Justice. Mr. Petrov said his suspicions were validated when police seized more than $1 million in cash from a safe in the home of Kseniya Sobchak, a television star and opposition leader. Ms. Sobchak has said the money was her savings.

“According to operative information, which is being discussed now, it was intended to be used for rallies,” he said. “Why must such amounts circulate on the basis of gray schemes? Why can’t this money be officially given to the opposition and show that the money has been given?”

The Internet legislation passed equally swiftly, with a vote of 147 lawmakers in favor, 3 abstaining and none opposed.