Tag: surveillance

New Judiciary Senate Chair Will Brownsberger

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The Joint Committee on the Judiciary handles most of the bills relating to privacy and surveillance in Massachusetts. Its most senior member is the Senate Chair. In a press release today, Senate President Therese Murray announced that Sen. Will Brownsberger (D-Belmont) would become the new Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, replacing Sen. Katherine Clark, who was elected to Congress in Massachusetts’ Fifth District. She writes:

Senator Brownsberger is a deliberative and thoughtful leader in the Senate and has a strong work ethic. I am confident that he will continue to do great work in this new position.

Having seen Sen. Brownsberger’s work as my own senator, he is indeed thoughtful, deliberative and hard-working. He is genuinely concerned about transparency, and is very willing to communicate and discuss with constituents on a wide array of topics. Sen. Brownsberger ran for Congress as well in the Fifth District, and during the race his openness and willingness to see and consider both sides of many sensitive questions made it harder for him to appeal to a highly partisan Democratic primary electorate. In the Senate Chair position, his reflective disposition may be a significant advantage. The Senate Chair is often called upon to weigh carefully the competing claims of law enforcement and civil liberties advocates, and every indication is that he will weigh them with care.

We have documented already on this blog Sen. Brownsberger’s views on national surveillance issues like the Amash Amendment, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the Surveillance State Repeal Act. At the state level, he has been supportive of warrant protections for email and digital data. On the wiretapping bill, he believes that the organized crime requirement is outdated and should be dropped, but also believes that the list of designated offenses suggested by the Attorney-General is too broad. On fusion centers, his skepticism of law enforcement claims is very welcome.

We don’t expect that Sen. Brownsberger will always and unambiguously vote the way we would like on the bills before the Judiciary Committee. However, we appreciate the Senator’s intellect and sense of professionalism. We hope that as Senate Chair, very often he will side with the Constitution, and opt to protect the residents of the Commonwealth from the growing pressure to subject them at every turn to unnecessary and intrusive surveillance.

MA-05: In their only debate, Clark and Addivinola spar over surveillance

Democratic nominee Katherine Clark and Republican nominee Frank Addivinola spent a substantial portion of their only televised debate sparring over privacy and surveillance. It has been great to see these issues playing such an important role in a Congressional campaign. However, there have been two less good outcomes, independent of who wins. First, it’s still not clear that either the Republican or the Democratic candidate will be skeptical enough about the claims of law enforcement and the intelligence agencies. Second, given that that’s so, it is unfortunate that the debate excluded the voices of the two independent candidates, Jim Aulenti and Jim Hall.

Here’s a transcript of the relevant section of the NECN debate, which is no longer available online. Our comments and fact-checking are in italics, and any significant commitments made by the candidates are in bold.

Continue reading MA-05: In their only debate, Clark and Addivinola spar over surveillance

Who Watches The Watchmen? The US Government Clearly Does

Behold, the logo on the latest US spy satellite:

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I don’t even. What words are there for a surveillance state that thinks of itself as a gigantic octopus tentacling its way across the Earth, with the very creepy slogan “Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach”?

This is no longer state oppression. This is state oppression as performance art. Or, at the very least, state oppression as literary reference:

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(h/t Techdirt)

MA-05: Independent candidates Valenti, Hall excluded from NECN debate

Jim Aulenti (Independent)
Jim Aulenti (Independent)
Jim Hall (Justice, Peace, Security)
Jim Hall (Justice, Peace, Security)

It’s hard out there for third-party and independent candidates. In a more open political system, they would be able to compete on a level playing field with the Democratic and Republican nominees. In practice, there are high campaign finance and procedural hurdles before such candidates even get on the ballot, and even if they clear those high hurdles, they still find themselves treated as somehow less legitimate than the Democrats or Republicans. Now, Jim Braude‘s NECN show “Broadside” is hosting a candidates’ debate tomorrow night, and Braude has declared that only two candidates are welcome, saying:

The party candidates went through the primary process and were chosen by the electorate, and having more people would not do justice to the cause or those party candidates.

What, they couldn’t find an extra podium? I seem to recall that the 2012 Republican primary had almost as many candidates as Jesus had disciples, and they still figured it out. Would having four candidates break the cameras over at NECN?

Continue reading MA-05: Independent candidates Valenti, Hall excluded from NECN debate

Bring Us Back Food, Or Be Food Yourself: The FBI and Ayyub Abdul-Alim

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The Deep State requires terrorists as its food. Only by claiming, falsely, to thwart terrorist attacks before they happen, can the three-letter agencies justify their vast increases in budget, manpower and technology over the last ten years. The problem is that there’s just not enough terrorism to go around. On the amount of actual terrorism we have – which, excluding school shootings, has killed about thirty Americans in the last twelve years – you simply can’t justify NSA mass surveillance, 78 state-funded fusion centers, the massive and unnecessary DHS, or the ruinously expensive foreign adventures that have resulted in over 100,000 deaths and trillions of wasted dollars. If you can’t find enough terrorists, the obvious recourse – obvious, that is, if you have no decency and no actual love for justice – is to make your own terrorists. In Oregon and California and Ohio and New York and Massachusetts, the FBI has offered Muslims the same, terrible deal: Be our spy with your fellow Muslims, or we will ruin your life.

I have not come to this analysis lightly. It is a terrible observation to make about people who are supposed to protect us. But the bureaucratic imperative at work here is too powerful. Bring back a terrorist, and your career is made. Fail to find any, and people will start asking questions about why you need all those tax dollars to do your work.

Which brings us to the sad story of Amherst-born Springfield resident Ayyub Abdul-Alim – building manager, owner of the “Nature’s Garden” store, and the creator of “Connections Transportation”, which provided families with free commuter services to and from local prisons to visit their loved ones.

Continue reading Bring Us Back Food, Or Be Food Yourself: The FBI and Ayyub Abdul-Alim

Democratic process challenges use of DHS surveillance cameras

This is a guest post by Adam Weiss of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

camera-500x333From 2008 to 2010, Boston and eight surrounding cities and towns installed surveillance cameras provided by a grant through the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Urban Areas Security Initiative. DHS’ website describes the cameras as part of a system that has “nine, independent and interoperable nodes tied together through a central hub and is made up of over 100 cameras.” The cameras were justified for the protection of “critical infrastructure” from terrorist attack, but their use has faced scrutiny from citizens concerned about threats to civil liberties. In Brookline and Cambridge, two municipalities covered by the grant, residents are using local governments to attempt to ban surveillance cameras.

Four members of Brookline’s Town Meeting, the two hundred and forty-five member legislature of the town government, are co-sponsoring a resolution calling on Brookline’s Board of Selectmen to remove all DHS-provided cameras. The resolution is expected to be voted on by Thursday, November 21. While the Town Meeting cannot set binding policy on the use of surveillance cameras, which is left to the Board of Selectmen, its role as the voice for public opinion can have major impact. In 2009, the Town Meeting passed a similar resolution, which led to a compromise with the Brookline Police Department that the cameras would only operate from 10 pm to 6 am. However, the Brookline police are seeking to implement a policy of 24-hour surveillance following the Boston Marathon bombing, which now has prompted four Town Meeting members to co-sponsor another resolution.

The proposed resolution states that mass surveillance is not appropriate for a free society, and further declares:

“Permanent surveillance cameras are another step in the wrong direction toward radically changing our sense of being a free society…While public places may not, in a technical legal sense, be places where we have an ‘expectation of privacy,’ the right to be let alone and not identified or tracked by the police is a fundamental aspect of a free society.”

One of those co-sponsors, Clint Richmond, expressed concern about the chilling effect surveillance cameras can have on the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly, specifically citing that one camera is located at a popular site in Brookline for political activity. Richmond stated his belief that when people know they are under surveillance, their “behavior becomes inhibitive, impairing the right to free speech.”

Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLUM), has worked with Brookline PAX, a progressive organization of Brookline residents, providing community organizing support against the DHS cameras. Crockford conveyed her belief that the mass use of surveillance cameras foregoes more effective alternatives to reducing crime, since they do not deter crime and when perpetrators are caught after the fact, the vast majority of cases are for minor crimes, such as petty theft. She said it is thus “misleading” to claim that cameras can be effective at stopping terrorism. Another fear Crockford discussed was the “centralization of surveillance” provided by the cameras, since they are part of a larger network throughout Greater Boston, meaning they could potentially allow a person to be followed over a large geographical area.

Residents of Cambridge have thus far achieved the most success in limiting camera use of the nine Greater Boston municipalities that have them. As with Brookline, the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) also supports turning the cameras on twenty-four hours a day. However, in response to pressure from the Cambridge City Council, they have not been turned on at any point, despite being installed in 2009. The CPD recently published a draft policy for the use of the cameras, which was discussed at a public hearing on September 26, 2013. The ACLUM provided a statement at this meeting, which addressed the larger context of surveillance camera use, stating

“After 9/11, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security catalyzed a transfer of funds, technologies, strategies, and tactics from the military and intelligence worlds down to the state and local levels. These transfers are part of a larger, dangerous trend of powerful and largely unaccountable federal agencies conscripting local police to act as eyes and ears for the national surveillance state.”

The City Council is waiting for the CPD to release its final draft of a policy before voting again on the issue, which is likely to happen in early 2015. Melissa Gonzalez, a member of Cambridge’s Human Rights Commission, the town government agency responsible for investigating unlawful discrimination, said there was great concern that cameras were placed in neighborhoods that could be profiling people of specific ethnicities and religion. She also expressed concern that there was insufficient accountability for camera use if activated, because the CPD cites only its own internal review procedures to ensure appropriate usage.

The fate of the cameras in both municipalities remains uncertain, as the impact of the Boston Marathon bombing has affected many people’s attitudes towards surveillance cameras. Richmond says he expects the vote in Brookline this week to be very close. In Cambridge, it is unclear how the City Council will react to a final CPD policy on camera use. Nonetheless, both municipalities exemplify how the democratic process can be used to limit the growing surveillance state.

Thou Shalt Not Connect The Dots: FBI Flat-Out Refusing All FOIA Requests From MIT PhD Candidate, Because He Might Learn Too Much

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Item #2 on the NSA’s Official Talking Points to Justify Mass Surveillance (see p. 3) is “The NSA And Its Partners Must Make Sure We Connect The Dots So That The Nation Is Never Attacked Again Like On 9/11.” The government is fighting furiously against any attempt to restrict, say, its collection of metadata on all US telephone calls, because they argue that only collecting everything enables them to detect patterns and conduct analyses that would otherwise be impossible.

But what happens if instead of the government, the public starts using the same tools on the government? What happens when the burning eye of the surveillance state is turned back on itself?

Mother Jones reports that that’s what MIT PhD candidate Ryan Shapiro is doing. He has long been active in the field of animal rights, and became interested in the FBI’s characterization of “the eco-terrorism animal rights movement” as “the number one domestic terrorism threat” that we face. He has figured out a way of getting responses to FOIA that is so effective that the FBI is going to court to stop him.

Continue reading Thou Shalt Not Connect The Dots: FBI Flat-Out Refusing All FOIA Requests From MIT PhD Candidate, Because He Might Learn Too Much

Sauce for the Gander: Boston Police Officers Apparently Don’t Like Being “Followed All Over The Place”

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From the ACLU of Massachusetts:

Boston Police Department bosses want to install GPS monitoring devices in every patrol car, to enable dispatch to more efficiently process 911 calls. But police officers and their union are outraged, saying that the ubiquitous tracking is too invasive of their personal privacy. Tracking the location of officers as they go about their days would reveal incredibly detailed information about their lives, the officers say.

It must be just awful to go about your daily life looking over your shoulder, conscious that your every movement and activity is being recorded and could be used against you. Oh, wait. That’s what the entire American public is already dealing with, in this age of mass electronic surveillance. But the way the police union is hissing’n’flapping about it, it’s almost as if there was something wrong with that. Don’t they know that you have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide?

The ACLU’s tack is that if the police don’t like the feeling of being followed, they shouldn’t be pushing for technologies like mass tracking of license plates or cellphone locations. That’s fair enough, but there’s a larger point here also.

Police officers are public employees, and they would be monitored during, and only during, the performance of their duties as public officials employees. We require elected officials to disclose their votes publicly, and require secrecy for private individuals at the ballot box, even though that’s inconsistent, because public disclosure of how public business is conducted is vital to maintain democratic accountability. In the same way, close monitoring of law enforcement is vital, to ensure that police don’t abuse the vast and special powers society gives them. When you put cameras on cops, complaints about police misbehavior and brutality drop like a stone. We have the right – affirmed by the federal courts in the First Circuit and across America – to record the police in the commission of their duties. The Fourth Amendment constrains the actions of the government, not the actions of members of the general public.

The Boston police may not like it – last week’s PINAC case shows that they’re willing even to threaten people with felonies to avoid public embarrassment over misconduct – but they are not entitled to a high level of privacy protection in their capacity as police officers. That distinction matters. Doxxing police officers’ personal names and phone numbers and addresses is not cool. But recording them, having them record themselves, and encouraging people to call their office numbers and hold them accountable to the public, is vitally important in order to preserve freedom for the rest of us.

What Does The “USA Freedom Act” Really Say?

Photo credit: The Daily Dot
Photo credit: The Daily Dot

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), one of the original authors of the USA PATRIOT Act, jointly introduced an NSA reform bill on October 29. Rep. Sensenbrenner has clearly not lost any of his love of elaborate nationalistic acronyms in the intervening years, and named his bill the ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection, and On-line Monitoring Act”, or “USA FREEDOM ACT”. For once, the content of a bill proposed in Congress may actually bear some relation to its title, in that it appears to be a sincere effort to rein in several of the worst abuses at the NSA.

However, what has not been clear in the reporting on the Act is the specifics of what the Act actually does. A quick look at the original text shows why. As one activist lamented, “Unfortunately, the text is exceptionally hard to read … It would be much easier to read if the full text was collated with the current statutes.” Indeed it would. Luckily, Digital Fourth is on hand to provide a more detailed guide to its (very densely written) contents than is presently available.

For those who want a high-level summary of the bill, the ACLU has provided one here. What follows is a low-level, section-by-section summary of how the bill changes current law. We welcome updates and corrections as we go forward.

Continue reading What Does The “USA Freedom Act” Really Say?

StopWatchingUs DC rally rocks out: 3,000+ people call for NSA reforms

This Saturday, DC saw something it had never seen before.

A city that treats the superficial hatreds of party politics as its lifeblood, saw thousands of people from across the political spectrum gather to denounce NSA mass spying. We heard, and roared approval for, the words of feminist Naomi Wolf, Dennis Kucinich (Democrat), Justin Amash (Republican), and Gary Johnson (Libertarian). Kymone Freeman spoke movingly about the impact of surveillance on minority communities and the civil rights movement. Whistleblowers Thomas Drake and Russell Tice were there, and Edward Snowden sent a message to be read by leading whistleblower-protecting attorney Jesselynn Radack. Tea Party people up from Richmond, VA, proudly put on Code Pink stickers labeled “Make Out Not War”. The press reported wonderingly that it was not put together “by any of the “usual” well-connected DC organizers.” I should know: I’m proud to say that, in a small way, I was one of them, and this was the first time most of us had done anything like this.

That wasn’t all. Here in Boston, activist Joan Livingston put together a solidarity rally at Park Street Station:

and ACLU organizer Raquel Ronzone arranged for the rally to livestream at the Digital Media Conference in Cambridge.

If you want updates on the StopWatchingUs campaign going forward, text “PRIVACY” to 877877. Stay tuned for the next stage of the campaign, which will be to pass the “USA FREEDOM Act.” Personally, just to hammer home the point, I’d have preferred the “USA FREEDOM Fourth Amendment Restoration – Objective: Undermining Tyranny Act of 2013”, because I too can do acronyms, but such frivolity is apparently frowned upon in the legislature that gave us the Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 in the first place.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. I’m the tall guy to the left of Rep. Amash!

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