![]() ![]() Gaccione turned to a second console, this one loaded with a program called Valcri. More than enough information, in other words, for an officer to respond to that original 911 call with a nearly telepathic sense of what has just unfolded. Seconds later, a long list of possible leads appeared onscreen, including a lineup of individuals previously arrested in the neighborhood for violent crimes, the home addresses of parolees living nearby, a catalog of similar recent 911 calls, photographs and license plate numbers of vehicles that had been detected speeding away from the scene, and video feeds from any cameras that might have picked up evidence of the crime itself, including those mounted on passing buses and trains. The software runs on what Genetec calls a “correlation engine,” a suite of algorithms that trawl through a city’s historical police records and live sensor feeds, looking for patterns and connections. He clicked “INVESTIGATE,” and Citigraf got to work on the reported assault. ![]() Gaccione now demonstrated the concept in practice. As one Chicago official put it, echoing a well-worn aphorism in surveillance circles, the city was “data-rich but information-poor.” What investigators needed was a tool that could cut a clean line through the labyrinth. ![]() This process of braiding together strands of information-“multi-intelligence fusion” is the technical term-was becoming too difficult. To get a clear picture of an emergency in progress, officers often had to bushwhack through dozens of byzantine databases and feeds from far-flung sensors, including gunshot detectors, license plate readers, and public and private security cameras. Like other large law enforcement organizations around the country, the department had built up such an impressive arsenal of technologies for keeping tabs on citizens that it had reached the point of surveillance overload. Sign up for our Longreads newsletter for the best features, ideas, and investigations from WIRED.Ĭitigraf was conceived in 2016, when the Chicago Police Department hired Genetec to solve a surveillance conundrum. At the bottom was a button marked “INVESTIGATE,” just begging to be clicked. He selected the stick figures, which denoted an assault, and a readout appeared onscreen with a few scant details drawn from the 911 dispatch center. An alert popped up above her head: “ILLEGAL PARKING.” The map itself was scattered with color-coded icons-a house on fire, a gun, a pair of wrestling stick figures-each of which, Gaccione explained, corresponded to an unfolding emergency. In one feed, a woman appeared to be unloading luggage from a car to the sidewalk. Around the edges were thumbnail-size video streams from neighborhood CCTV cameras. The screen displayed a map of the East Side of Chicago. He led me first to a large monitor running a demo version of Citigraf, his division’s flagship product. Genetec’s main sell here was software, and Gaccione had agreed to show me how it worked. Headquartered in Montreal, the firm operates four of these “Experience Centers” around the world, where it peddles intelligence products to government officials. I was here to meet Giovanni Gaccione, who runs the public safety division of a security technology company called Genetec. Along one wall, a grid of electronic devices glinted in the moody downlighting-automated license plate readers, Wi-Fi-enabled locks, boxy data processing units. The space on the other side was dark and sleek, with a look somewhere between an Apple Store and a doomsday bunker. Not much information on why exactly the word was chosen, but it probably was an easy jump from "ghost that haunts people" to "mysterious secret agent who spies on people".One afternoon in the fall of 2019, in a grand old office building near the Arc de Triomphe, I was buzzed through an unmarked door into a showroom for the future of surveillance. This suggests the word would be mainly used in reference to American spies, but I think the 1954 reference is Australians talking about constables, so at least occasionally it has referred to any undercover person. 9 ‘My training was also in espionage at the CIA farm.’. 50 I'd like him to get out of the spook business. 434/1 The idea of making a living as a spy ‘spook’ in current Washington slang is repugnant to most of us. 24/1 The spooks were senior constables who wore no uniform, worked in pairs and followed constables about the city and suburbs to see if they did their work properly. §765/7 Rat, rubber heel, spook, spotter, a person employed to detect irregularities. Slang §458/16 ‘Spotter.’ (One who spys upon employees.). An undercover agent a spy.ġ942 BERREY & VAN DEN BARK Amer. ![]()
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