Divided Court Rules Baltimore’s Continuous Aerial Surveillance is Constitutional

17 11 2020
EPIC
Nov. 10, 2020
A divided federal appeals court has ruled that Baltimore’s use of spy planes to continuously surveil the city does not violate the Fourth Amendment. The technology, known as wide-area aerial surveillance, allows police to capture high-definition video and track the movements of pedestrians and vehicles over a 32-square mile area. Although the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals acknowledged “that there are aerial surveillance programs that would transgress basic Fourth Amendment protections,” the court concluded that Baltimore’s program “does not violate the Constitution” and “burdens privacy substantially less than a well-established staple of existing surveillance: security cameras.” Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory dissented, concluding that the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States requiring a warrant for cell phone location data also requires police to obtain a warrant for persistent aerial surveillance. Gregory explained that “Long-term, recorded surveillance of public movements uncovers more than temporary trailing by a suspecting officer; it reveals a person’s most intimate associations and activities.” EPIC filed an amicus brief in Carpenter v. United States and has long fought to limit drone surveillance and other forms of aerial spying.

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Categories : Constitutional law, drones, local law enforcement, Privacy, Surveillance

Tech Companies Pull Back on Face Surveillance

19 08 2020
Epic
June 11, 2020
Amid nationwide protests against police brutality and racist policing, three major technology firms said this week that they would abandon or prohibit law enforcement agencies from using their facial surveillance technologies. On Monday, IBM announced that it would no longer offer “general purpose IBM facial recognition or analysis software” and that it opposes the use of such technology for “mass surveillance, racial profiling, [and] violations of basic human rights and freedoms.” On Wednesday, Amazon said it would prohibit law enforcement agencies from using its facial surveillance software for one year and urged Congress to “place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology.” And on Thursday, Microsoft reiterated that it will “not sell facial-recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology.” EPIC has launched a campaign to Ban Face Surveillance and through the Public Voice coalition gathered the support of over 100 organizations and many leading experts across 30-plus countries. An EPIC-led coalition has also called on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to recommend the suspension of face surveillance systems across the federal government.

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Categories : Crossed Streams: Gov + Commercial, facial recognition, local law enforcement, Privacy, Surveillance

Indiana Supreme Court Says No to Compelled Decryption of Cell Phones

19 08 2020
Epic
June 23, 2020
The Indiana Supreme Court ruled today that the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination prevents law enforcement from compelling an individual to unlock their smartphone. The court declared that an exception to the Fifth Amendment did not apply because the type and amount of information cell phones contain make compelled production of their contents different than compelled production of physical documents, citing the Supreme Court’s decisions in Riley v. California and Carpenter v. United States. The court wrote that “the Supreme Court has hesitated to apply even entrenched doctrines to novel dilemmas, wholly unforeseen when those doctrines were created.” EPIC urged the New Jersey Supreme Court to adopt the same reasoning in State v. Andrews, arguing that, under Riley and Carpenter, individuals cannot be compelled to decrypt their cell phones. The New Jersey court has not yet issued a ruling in the case.

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Categories : Constitutional law, local law enforcement, State law

Boston City Council Votes to Ban Facial Recognition

18 08 2020
Epic
June 24, 2020
 
Yesterday, the Boston City Council voted unanimously to ban the use of facial recognition technology by the city of Boston. The ordinance noted the “racial bias in face surveillance” and makes it illegal for the city of Boston to “obtain, retain, possess, access, or use any face surveillance system.” Several municipalities in Massachusetts have already banned the use of facial recognition. EPIC previously testified before the Massachusetts Legislature in support of a bill to establish a moratorium on the use of facial recognition by state agencies. EPIC has launched a campaign to Ban Face Surveillance and through the Public Voice coalition gathered the support of over 100 organizations and many leading experts across 30 plus countries. An EPIC-led coalition has also called on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to recommend the suspension of face surveillance systems across the federal government.

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Categories : Biometrics, facial recognition, local law enforcement, Privacy, Surveillance, Uncategorized

We are implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition

18 08 2020

Amazon
June 10, 2020

“We’re implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Amazon’s facial recognition technology.”

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Categories : Crossed Streams: Gov + Commercial, local law enforcement, Surveillance

We now have evidence of facial recognition’s harm. Time for lawmakers to act.

18 08 2020

Washington Post
Editorial Board
July 5, 2020

“Defenders of unregulated facial recognition technology have always asked for concrete evidence of harm. Now they have it — and lawmakers in both chambers of Congress have signaled a willingness to act.

The New York Times reported last month that a man in Michigan named Robert Williams was wrongfully arrested early this year after an algorithm misidentified him, indicating to officers that he was a match for surveillance video of someone shoplifting $3,800 worth of watches. Police showed up at his home, handcuffed him in front of his wife and daughters and held him for 30 hours, during which time he demonstrated to detectives that he wasn’t the black man depicted in their grainy image. Weeks later in court, the prosecutor moved to dismiss his case.

“How does one explain to two little girls that a computer got it wrong, but the police listened to it anyway?” Mr. Williams wrote in an op-ed for The Post.

How does the government explain the same to its citizens? Last week, Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) introduced legislation that would impose a moratorium on biometric surveillance technologies until rules to govern them are in place.”

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Categories : facial recognition, local law enforcement, Privacy, Surveillance

Expressway shootings surge in Chicago area. Illinois State Police say they need license plate scanners, despite privacy concerns

16 08 2020

Chicago Tribune
Kelli Smith
Jul 21, 2020

“Expressway shootings have surged in the Chicago area this year, already surpassing what is normally seen in an entire year and increasing pressure for the installation of better cameras as well as scanners that read license plates.”

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Categories : license plate scanners, local law enforcement, Surveillance

Supreme Court to Consider Open Government and Fourth Amendment in 2019

13 01 2019

The Supreme Court agreed today to hear two cases of interest to privacy and open government advocates. One case concerns the withholding of “confidential” information requested under the Freedom of Information Act. . . The second case, Mitchell v. Wisconsin, concerns a state law that permits law enforcement officers to draw blood from unconscious motorists without a warrant. . . . Both cases are expected to be decided by the end of the Court’s term in June.

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Categories : FIP 1: No secret collections, FIP 5: Protect the data you have, local law enforcement, Privacy, Surveillance

Why cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off your autonomous car

14 02 2018

 Ars Technica

– 2/3/2018

Lt. Saul Jaeger, who commands the traffic unit at the Mountain View Police Department, remembers the first time a few years ago when he was given a demo of Waymo’s self-driving cars.

Jaeger was not only interested from a professional point of view, but also as a citizen. After all, he lives in Mountain View near one of the Waymo facilities. He watched in awe as the engineers showed him the autonomous vehicle’s (AV) own view. This screen reduces everything to line drawings and other simplified sensory inputs.

“It’s incredible,” he told Ars. “It felt like The Matrix, when they flip the switch—it’s seeing everything, it’s seeing way more than you or I can—and it’s making decisions.”

Jaeger, a veteran of the department, said that as someone whose job requires that he “reconstruct” serious traffic accidents, he could only dream of a machine that captured as much as an AV does.

“I felt like I was in heaven,” he said. “It’s like instant replay in the NFL, I can tell what happened. The engineers looked at each other like, ‘Aw, crap.'”

Instantly, Jaeger realized that the promise of AVs to not only be safer for those inside the car, but it may also, potentially, be a way for law enforcement to collect data and information about everything else around it.

For now, law enforcement in one major hub of AV development and testing seems to have few clear ideas as to how they will integrate these vehicles into their traffic enforcement practices, much less their investigative process.

But AVs could soon become—absent a notable change in the law—a TiVo-on-the-ground. In other words, as auto manufacturers and tech companies race to take AVs mainstream, they may become a gold mine for law enforcement.

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Categories : FIP 1: No secret collections, FIP 2: Discover, FIP 3: One use, FIP 4: Repair, FIP 5: Protect the data you have, IoT, local law enforcement, Privacy, Surveillance, Terms of Service