We Just Denied Boston’s Spy Center $1.45m In Extra Funding

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It’s common to assume nothing can be done to roll back mass surveillance. Truth is, every technology operates within a set of political assumptions about what can and cannot be done with it. Little by little, we can change those assumptions.

Three weeks ago, we caught the Boston Regional Intelligence Center trying to sneak $2.25m for “technology upgrades and integration” into the state budget. Our members started calling Ways and Means legislators, arguing that this would be throwing good money after bad. BRIC uses technology to repress peaceful journalists and protesters; why should they get a cent?

A little surprised at this pushback, legislators reduced the $2.25m to $792,669.

Here’s the exact language from H. 3829, the budget that just passed:

“8000-1001 For the Boston Regional Intelligence Center to upgrade, expand, and integrate technology and protocols related to anti-terrorism, anti-crime, anti-gang, and emergency response; provided that intelligence developed shall be shared with the BRIC communities and other State municipal and federal agencies as necessary; provided further, that BRIC shall provide technology required to access the intelligence with its municipal partners, the State police, the MBTA, the Mass Port Authority, and appropriate federal agencies to assure maximum interagency collaboration for public safety and homeland security…………………………………..…………………………..$792,669”

With this reduction, we just saved MA taxpayers $1.45m. And BRIC is, from now on, on notice that their funding requests will not be smooth sailing.

If you like that we did this, consider donating to Digital Fourth / Restore The Fourth Boston, joining our listserv, coming to our Wednesday 12pm meetings at Voltage Coffee & Art, or attending our monthly evening group (next meeting Sunday, November 1, at Summer Shack).

Don’t Worry: Area Counter-Terrorism Center Laser-Focused on Bicycling Cellphone Thief

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If you like your mass surveillance steak sauced in a Keystone Kops level of organizational dysfunction, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, or BRIC, could be your dream meal.

This story comes via a former Emmanuel College student, who received a BRIC “intelligence bulletin” to all students regarding a man stealing cell phones on his bicycle in the Fenway area (see below). Is it upsetting to have your cellphone stolen by an environmentally conscious thief? Yes. Is it at a level of criminality that warrants shoveling tens of millions of our dollars towards a gee-whiz high-tech surveillance center to gather information on all Massachusetts residents? Uh, probably not. Tell me again when we signed up for that?

Far from focusing on intelligence related to terrorism, in practice, the BRIC concentrates almost exclusively on criminal activity unrelated to any conceivable notion of what “terrorism” actually is. The truth is that the risk we face from terrorism is extremely low, but the continued existence of the BRIC, of 77 other “fusion centers” around the country, of the Department of Homeland Security itself, and of a whole ecosystem of security grifting companies, depends on taxpayers not working that out. So, to keep themselves going, BRIC has to use surveillance to disrupt a broad array of minimally criminal or even entirely non-criminal activity, and redefine that activity as much as possible as being terrorism. We have to be told, repeatedly, that the wolf is at the door, that things are getting worse, and that mass surveillance will actually help make things better. Here at Digital Fourth, we call this the “Bureaucratic Counterterrorism Imperative.”

With that in mind, here are the results of our latest Public Records Act request to the BRIC, which documents for the first time that BRIC does get data from intelligence agency sources.

Continue reading Don’t Worry: Area Counter-Terrorism Center Laser-Focused on Bicycling Cellphone Thief