Ron Wyden Quotes

We have experienced an utter explosion in investigative techniques. Walk the streets, look at the cameras! They are now recognising people automatically from photos; we have DNA fingerprinting, infrascan photos that can identify you from the veins in your face.

Police departments no longer have to pay overtime or divert resources from other projects to find out where an individual goes - all they have to do is place a tracking device on someone's car or ask a cell phone company for that individual's location history and the technology does the work for them.

The recent fascination, I think, reflects the shift in approach by law enforcement officials to embrace technology as wholeheartedly as the rest of the world.

Using MO to link crimes can be problematic.

The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier, and the ability of computers to track us doubles every eighteen months.

There are just a host of problems born by the electronic age. Things we couldn't even conceive of. I was amused by the analogy that Justice Scalia made in a case about a GPS tracker so you don't know that's being done to your car, is that a violation of your right to protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. So Justice Scalia imagines a constable clinging to the bottom of a carriage as it went on its way, so there was some notion that this similar: there is an official eye that's on you, but you don't know about it. Yes, there are all kinds of challenges.

Terrorists and criminals are increasingly adept at exploiting cutting-edge technologies to carry out or to mask their crimes. To counter current and emerging threats, the FBI actively deploys a wide range of technology-based tools, capabilities, and training that enable and enhance intelligence, national security, and law enforcement operations.

After Madrid, we intensified our investigative efforts once again, and we are in the process of bringing about expansions in security laws and creating an index file system.

Enterprising law-enforcement officers with a warrant can flick a distant switch and turn a standard mobile phone into a roving mic or eavesdrop on occupants of cars equipped with travel assistance systems.

When we can commit a crime, we can also trigger debate. Cases go to courts. Media start covering the cases. But once you build smart environments where, if you meet a certain probabilistic profile, you won't even be allowed to board a bus, let alone commit a crime, we're perpetuating existing laws so they face no challenges or revision.

Trade shows such as the wire tappers' ball are highly secretive and ban journalists from attending. None of the U.S. agencies that attended the wire tappers' ball - including the FBI, the Secret Service, and every branch of the military - were willing to comment when a reporter queried them about their attendance.

The ability to identify someone at a moment's notice by snapping a photo of him or her, to trigger an immediate influx of data about the person behind the face, will forever change the world.

If you use a cell phone - as I do - your wireless carrier likely has records about your physical movements going back months, if not years.

We face two overlapping challenges. The first concerns real-time court-ordered interception of what we call 'data in motion,' such as phone calls, e-mail, and live chat sessions. The second challenge concerns court-ordered access to data stored on our devices, such as e-mail, text messages, photos, and videos - or what we call 'data at rest.'

Governmental surveillance is not about the government collecting the information you're sharing publicly and willingly; it's about collecting the information you don't think you're sharing at all, such as the online searches you do on search engines... or private emails or text messages... or the location of your mobile phone at any time.

In China, Internet surveillance has already become a profitable industry. In fact, a growing number of private firms eagerly assist the local police by aggregating this data and presenting it in easy-to-browse formats, allowing humans to pursue more analytical tasks.

I think one of the biggest scams in law enforcement is the monitor.

Machine learning signicantly enhances the ability to predict where and when crimes are more likely to happen and who may commit them.

It would be highly useful to government espionage to have reports from all our bookstores, all our hardware and retail stores, all our drugstores…. What one buys at the hardware and retail stores may furnish clues to potential uses of wires, soap powders, and the like used by criminals.

… information that has come in has not commenced an investigation …. I never made a lead from rhetoric that came from a Demographics report, and I'm here since 2006

Surveillance is just getting too easy right now. And this is only because of technology..

Over the next decade, the market-driven explosion of surveillance sensors and data analytics will bring an unprecedented level of transparency to global affairs. Commercial satellites will capture daily images of the entire globe, offering inexpensive and automated reports on everything from crop yields to military activity. Journalists, NGOs, and bloggers will increasingly use crowdsourced data to uncover wartime atrocities and expose government hypocrisy. Private security companies will discover the sources of cyberattacks and data theft. Biometric systems will expose the identities of clandestine operatives, and government agencies will struggle to contain leakers and whistleblowers.

Mobiles mean people know where you are.

For people involved in pre-meditated crimes, whether it is terrorism or robbery or something else, their use of technology means that they leave a digital trail, and the room for error goes up dramatically. In the future, it will be easier for violent people to make mistakes and get caught before they commit their crimes.

We have some of the best intelligence and crime fighting agencies in the world.