Technology turns our cities into spies for ICE, whether we like it or not

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Kimi Wei <kimi () thewei com>
> Date: May 10, 2018 at 10:23:56 AM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Technology turns our cities into spies for ICE, whether we like it or not
>
> http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-farivar-surveillance-tech-20180502-story.html
>
> Technology turns our cities into spies for ICE, whether we like it or not
>
> By CYRUS FARIVAR  MAY 02, 2018 | 4:15 AM 
>
> As I write these words, there are more than 30 Oakland Police Department patrol cars roaming the city with license 
> plate readers, specialized cameras that can scan and record up to 60 license plates per second. Meanwhile, the 
> Alameda County Sheriff's Office maintains a fleet of six drones to monitor crime scenes when it sees fit. The Alameda 
> County district attorney's office owns a StingRay, a device that acts as a fake cell tower and forces phones to give 
> up their location. And that's just in one little corner of California.
>
> Just as consumer electronics continually get faster, cheaper, smaller, and more sophisticated, so too do the tools 
> law enforcement uses to spy on us. What once demanded significant money and manpower can be accomplished easily by 
> machine. This advanced technology is hurtling toward us so fast that privacy laws can't keep up.
>
> Today, patrol officers in many U.S. cities, including where I live in Oakland, wear small video cameras that capture 
> endless hours of video. In the not-too-distant future, those same cameras will have facial recognition capabilities, 
> like the kind that recently enabled police in China to pinpoint a suspect in a crowd of 60,000 people at a pop 
> concert.
>
> Much of this gear is acquired by cities and counties through federal grants. Often, well-intentioned police chiefs 
> and other officials come before city councils or county supervisors with some anodyne request to approve a chunk of 
> free money in the name of fighting terrorism. Lawmakers may have little idea what exactly they're approving and 
> usually don't ask how that gear is going to be put to use.
>
> Case in point: In September 2012, the San Leandro City Council first discovered that its own Police Department had 
> license plate readers — five years after they'd been deployed. Who enlightened them? Not the police chief. Instead, a 
> local privacy activist, Mike Katz-Lacabe, looked into the matter. He filed a public records request to get police 
> images of his own car — more than 100 in all, taken over two years — then told a reporter from the Wall Street 
> Journal about it. It made the front page.
>
> Still, how broadly cities have deployed such surveillance technologies has gone largely unnoticed, even by informed 
> policymakers and citizens. But that is starting to change, thanks, in part, to President Trump.
>
> Six months ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 54, also known as the "sanctuary state" law. The law forbids 
> state or local law enforcement agencies from investigating a person's immigration status and limits how they 
> cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since then, a few conservative communities have joined a lawsuit 
> contesting the law. And a few cities that embrace sanctuary status have woken up to the fact that their 
> crime-fighting technology is at odds with their progressive values.
>
> Turns out, the same license plate readers, or LPRs, that locate stolen or wanted cars can also be used to find cars 
> belonging to immigrants here illegally.
>
> LPRs capture the plate number and automatically record the date, time, and precise GPS location where it was seen. 
> Police will say that this isn't true surveillance; it is merely a discrete snapshot in time. Given enough data, 
> however, patterns can easily be discerned. Does a person go to work at a certain hour? Come home at a particular 
> time? Head out of town on Fridays or go to church on Sundays? LPRs never sleep.
>
> Most cities don't just keep this data to themselves. Rather they share it with their regional "fusion centers" of 
> which there are 77 across the country. These are federally funded clearinghouses for information about crime and 
> public safety threats.
>
> In addition, there are private companies that are assembling huge databases based on surveillance technology like 
> LPRs and facial recognition. Vigilant Solutions, based in Livermore, Calif., is one of the largest with a nationwide 
> multibillion-record LPR database. Vigilant happily offers access to law enforcement agencies that share their own 
> data. "Joining the largest law enforcement LPR sharing networking is as easy as adding a friend on your favorite 
> social media platform," Vigilant boasts on its website. As of December, Vigilant has a new client: Immigration and 
> Customs Enforcement.
>
> So even though the San Francisco Police Department, for example, is forbidden to target immigrants who are 
> undocumented under city and state sanctuary laws, ICE agents can simply log in to Vigilant or a fusion center 
> database and effectively turn the SFPD's cameras into snitches for ICE.
>
> The American Civil Liberties Union and other like-minded groups have been pushing cities to adopt pro-privacy laws 
> that would rein in the deployment of surveillance technology since before the 2016 election. These efforts have taken 
> on a new urgency since Trump's hostility to immigrants became federal policy. In March, Davis and Berkeley passed 
> ordinances requiring more transparency, oversight and accountability from local law enforcement — including an annual 
> public report on how the technology is used, its cost, and its effect on crime solving. Palo Alto, Oakland and other 
> cities are also weighing such policies.
>
> In 1862, California became the first state in the union to formally outlaw the tapping of telegraph lines. Over a 
> century later in 1972, we added privacy to the list of inalienable rights in the opening lines of the state 
> Constitution. It is only fitting, then, that California should now spur a new movement in the name of protecting our 
> privacy rights.
>
> Cyrus Farivar is the author of "Habeas Data: Privacy vs. the Rise of Surveillance Tech," which comes out this month. 
> He is a senior technology policy reporter at Ars Technica.
>
> Kimi Wei
> kimi () thewei com  @kimiwei
> facebook.com/thekimiwei
> 862-203-8814



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