"Chief Devereaux says the vehicle is only for emergencies and public outreach events. "

 Yeah. public outreach when the psycho Iraq vets who don't get adequate counseling freak out on the citizens and feel the need to use weapons on the people they are sworn to protect.

Is it possible that we are the most fucked up country in the world?

Where is Andy Griffith when we need him?

One of the murkier and more forbidding aspects of the post-9/11 world has been the massive growth of what's become known as the "intelligence industrial complex." Simi­lar to its sibling, the "military industrial complex" (as it was called by President Dwight Eisenhower), the intelligence industrial complex is a national and international web of numerous partnerships between government and various private corporate entities of all shapes and sizes. In a major 2010 report by The Washington Post on "Top Secret America," investigators summarized, "Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States." That was four years ago; despite federal budget cuts, this quasi-"defense" economic sector has continued to grow.

Based on the broad figures provided in annual federal budgets, from 2001 to 2012, spending on "homeland security" has quadrupled. During that time, the federal government has persistently outsourced intelligence work, as government employees routinely carry their security clearances into the private sector. (The Post estimated that 854,000 people – or roughly the total population of Austin – held "top-secret" security clearances nationwide as of 2010.) Consider just Booz Allen Hamilton, former employer of National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden and the company where he accessed the documents he leaked. According to a U.S. General Services listing of government contractors, BAH maintains extensive connections with government agencies and provides a variety of services, including intelligence gathering and analysis, worth in 2012 more than $4 billion.

However, you needn't travel to Hawaii, where Snowden worked, to find examples of overlap between government, law enforcement, and private intelligence. You don't even need to leave Austin.

The Stratfor Hack

On Dec. 24, 2011, activist Jeremy Ham­mond completed several weeks of work hacking the computer files of Austin-based global intelligence company Strategic Forecasting, Inc., better known as "Strat­for." Soon afterwards, several of the company's emails and many of its subscriber credit card numbers were released on the Internet. By February 2012, the material made it to the website of Wikileaks, which gradually began to release more emails. An early release revealed a connection between Stratfor and the Texas Department of Pub­lic Safety, concerning the DPS surveillance of Occupy Austin. (See "Strange Bedfel­lows," Feb. 3, 2012). Those documents reflect that a Texas DPS agent was providing undercover intelligence information on Occupy protesters not only to his state agency superiors, but to private firm Stratfor – although neither the company nor the DPS would provide any additional information or comment on the relationship, and DPS claimed at the time that it couldn't verify the existence of any undercover agent.

On Nov. 15, 2013 – the day Hammond was sentenced to 10 years in prison for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (and after holding them back during Hammond's trial) – Wikileaks posted on its website the rest of the Stratfor emails. The Wikileaks website now includes posts of more than five million Stratfor emails, dating from July 2004 through December 2011. It's an imposing data file, and has steadily revealed more about the inner workings of the intelligence industrial complex.

Asked by the Chronicle for comment on the additional emails, a Stratfor spokesman referred to the company's standard response, originally attributed to founder and chairman George Friedman: "Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies. Some may be authentic. We will not validate either, nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them." (See "Stratfor's Web," March 9, 2012.) (...)

The occupant was said to be violent, so officer Carlos Ramirez approached the apartment warily. A dank smell wafted from inside. Ramirez bristled with body armour, radio, gun and Taser, but before knocking on the door he adjusted just one piece of equipment: a tiny camera on his collar.

A tubby, barefoot man with broken teeth and wild eyes opened the door. He appeared to be high. Ramirez questioned him about allegedly beating and evicting his stepson, a mentally disabled teenager. The man shifted from foot to foot and babbled about death threats.

The encounter, tense but polite, ended inconclusively, a routine police foray into family dysfunction – except for the fact it was all recorded. As he returned to his patrol car and next assignment, Ramirez tapped an app on his phone and uploaded the video. "Somewhere down the line something could happen and what that guy said, his demeanour, could be evidence."

Rialto, a small, working-class city that bakes in the San Bernardino foothills outside Los Angeles, appeared in the films Transformers and The Hangover. Among law enforcers, however, it is becoming better known for pioneering the use of body cameras on police officers.

Over the past year all 70 of its uniformed officers have been kitted out with the oblong devices, about the size of stubby cigars, and the results have emboldened police forces elsewhere in the US and in the UK to follow suit.

The College of Policing recently announced plans for large-scale trials of body-worn video in England and Wales, saying Rialto's experiment showed big drops in the use of force and in public complaints against officers. David Davis, a former shadow home secretary, has backed the idea. It follows "plebgate's denting of public trust.

Rialto has also become an example for US forces since a federal judge in New York praised its initiative.

"I think we've opened some eyes in the law enforcement world. We've shown the potential," said Tony Farrar, Rialto's police chief. "It's catching on."

Body-worn cameras are not new. Devon and Cornwall police launched a pilot scheme in 2006 and forces in Strathclyde, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, among others, have also experimented.

But Rialto's randomised controlled study has seized attention because it offers scientific – and encouraging – findings: after cameras were introduced in February 2012, public complaints against officers plunged 88% compared with the previous 12 months. Officers' use of force fell by 60%.

"When you know you're being watched you behave a little better. That's just human nature," said Farrar. "As an officer you act a bit more professional, follow the rules a bit better."

Video clips provided by the department showed dramatic chases on foot – you can hear the officer panting – and by car that ended with arrests, and without injury. Complaints often stemmed not from operational issues but "officers' mouths", said the chief. "With a camera they are more conscious of how they speak and how they treat people."

The same applied to the public; once informed they were being filmed, even drunk or agitated people tended to become more polite, Farrar said. Those who lodged frivolous or bogus complaints about officers tended to retract them when shown video of the incidents. "It's like, 'Oh, I hadn't seen it that way.'"

Cameras made officers more careful about using force. "It's still part of the business, they still do it. But now they make better use of what we call verbal judo."

Fewer complaints and calmer policing, said Farrar, would reduce lawsuits and expensive payouts.

Images of police brutality have shaken California since grainy footage of Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King ignited riots in 1992. (Rialto police fished King out of his pool after he accidentally drowned last year).

In May sheriff's deputies in Kern county confiscated videophone footage of them fatally beating a father-of-four, David Silva, prompting suspicion of a cover-up. In those and other cases the officers did not know they were being filmed.

Farrar is a wonkish contrast to the stereotypical abrasive commander of TV dramas. He has several degrees, including a recent master's from Cambridge's Institute of Criminology, which planted the idea of methodically assessing the impact of body cameras.

Upon returning to Rialto (city motto: "bridge to progress") he obtained $100,000 (£62,640) in state and federal funding for the Taser-made cameras – about $1,000 each – plus servers and fibre-optic cables. Each officer has his or her own camera, mounted on collars, spectacles or caps, and is expected to activate it during interactions with the public. Encounters are logged and uploaded to a secure digital cloud service, evidence.com.

The chief advised bigger departments who wish to do the same to scale up incrementally, to iron out technical bugs and let officers get used to the idea.

In Rialto some bristled at the intrusion, fearing loss of privacy and autonomy. "I heard guys complaining it would get them into trouble, but I've had no problems so I'm OK with it," said Ramirez.

Most now accepted cameras as another part of the job, said Sgt Josh Lindsay. A self-confessed technophile, he said they provided context to contentious incidents partially captured by bystanders' phones. "Now you can see thepunching the officer twice in the face before he hits him with his baton."

Even more valuable, cameras aided evidence gathering, such as statements from domestic abuse victims, he said. "By the time those cases get to court often things have cooled down and the victim retracts. But with the video you see her with the bloody lip. There's nothing lost in translation."

Under California law police are not obliged to inform people of the filming. Local media coverage has spread awareness of the cameras but many, like the barefoot man questioned by Ramirez, appear oblivious. If there is to be a backlash, it is too early.

Even Orwell did not anticipate body cameras in 1984, but the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, a frequent critic of police abuses, said with the right controls accountability gains would outweigh privacy concerns. It urged the department to regularly delete videos, and keep them private, unless needed for prosecutions.

Farrar said controls were in place. "No one wants to see these videos on YouTube."

Testifying against marijuana legalization before the Maryland legislature today, Annapolis Police Chief Michael Pristoop warned of the potentially lethal consequences. "The first day of legalization, that's when Colorado experienced 37 deaths that day from overdose on marijuana," Pristoop told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. "I remember the first day it was decriminalized there were 37 deaths."

As Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery) quickly pointed out, what Pristoop actually remembered was a joke story at The Daily Currant headlined "Marijuana Overdoses Kill 37 in Colorado on First Day of Legalization." The article included a quote from "Peter Swindon, president and CEO of local brewer MolsonCoors," who supposedly said: "We told everyone this would happen. Marijuana is a deadly hardcore drug that causes addiction and destroys lives. When was the last time you heard of someone overdosing on beer? All these pro-marijuana groups should be ashamed of themselves. The victims' blood is on their hands."

Pristoop seemed taken aback that something he had seen in print might not be the literal truth. "If it was a misquote," he told Raskin, "then I'll stand behind the mistake. But I'm holding on to information I was provided."

Addendum: Waldemar Ingdahl reminds me that Sweden's justice minister, Beatrice Ask, fell for the same satire, although later she claimed she hadn't. At least Pristoop stands behind his mistake.