 Good afternoon. Thank you everyone for coming in despite the weather. I'm Robin Green. I'm a senior policy counsel at New America's Open Technology Institute, and I just wanted to briefly welcome you to OTI and the ACLU of DC's event Turning the tide on police surveillance How cities are finally starting to reign in cops and the proliferation of spy tech For almost two decades state and local law enforcement departments have stocked up on invasive surveillance technology For monitoring their communities and they've done so without the knowledge of their residents and without any meaningful oversight by their local governments From street cameras to stingrays law enforcement has amassed Unprecedented capabilities to track where we go what we do and with whom we communicate However, we have finally reached the beginning of the end State and local governments across the country from summer of all Massachusetts to Nashville, Tennessee and all over the West Coast Have been passing ordinances that would require transparency and Accountability when police acquire these surveillance technologies These ordinances have largely been modeled after the draft bill created by the community control over police surveillance Coalition otherwise known as C cops which the ACLU leads and of which OTI is a member indeed just last week Palo Alto, California and San Francisco's public transit authority Bart adopted C cops laws and our hope is the district of Columbia will be next So without further ado, I'd like to invite Chad Marlowe to the stage for a presentation on the surveillance technologies That are most commonly in use In these communities and how we can rein them in Chad is the ACLU senior advocacy and policy council Good afternoon everyone My name is Chad Marlowe, and I'm an advocacy and policy counsel with the ACLU and it is Extremely nice to be with all of you this afternoon as we prepare to kick off Our push to bring a community control over police surveillance or C cops effort to our nation's capital I'm gonna focus my comments This afternoon on two things first of all I'm gonna talk about some of the types of surveillance technologies that are being commonly used By police departments in 2018 and then I'm also gonna touch upon some of the key Foundations of the nationwide a C cops effort Now at the outset, let me just say that surveillance technologies may have positive benefits I am not here to argue otherwise But as our discussion of these technologies will highlight Their use also carries risks some of which can severely threaten the public's civil rights and civil liberties Including the right to privacy and their freedom of speech It is also very important to note that while surveillance technologies carry a risk of adverse impacts to all of us Not every person in group is threatened the same by surveillance technologies And this is the case because both historically and currently Surveillance has been disproportionately targeted at communities of color at low-income communities At other vulnerable groups like Muslims and immigrants and at persons who are politically active All of this is to say that when we as a society are contemplating the deployment of a surveillance technology We need to fully open our eyes to the technologies benefits and its drawbacks Most critically we need to weigh these pluses and minuses against each other to determine What limits should be placed on the surveillance technologies use or if its use should be prohibited all together Let me make two quick points before going into my discussion of these surveillance technologies The first is that I am not crazy Although it occurred to me when I wrote that that most crazy people would tell you they're not crazy So perhaps it's better to say that this is not a talk in science fiction I'm not going to put on a tinfoil hat and tell you that this is the best means to prevent the FBI from reading your thoughts Bear in mind that all the technologies I'm discussing right now are real and they're being used right now Second Decisions about acquiring and using these surveillance technologies including here in DC are almost always made Unilaterally and in secret by the police as you hear me talk about these technologies Please think about how comfortable you are with that being the status quo All right, let's get into some of these technologies the first technology I wanted to talk about today are stingrays now. They also go by some different names That's a brand name a more modern version of it's called the hailstorm But essentially what they are is fake cell phone towers and the way that they operate Really is kind of like the children's game of Marco Polo when a stingray shouts out Marco Your cell phone has no choice, but to shout out Polo and in shouting out Polo It does a couple of things to what it thinks is a legitimate cell phone tower It's trying to connect up to one it tells the cell phone tower in this case the stingray who you are and where you are Another thing it does is it enables the stingray device to intercept written Content being generated by your phone why it's connected so that could mean text messages or emails There is also the capability although we don't know in this case whether this is actually being used right now of Using this connection to implant spyware on your phone And so that would enable whoever is tracking using the stingray to continue to track you or potentially to continue to intercept Your messages once you have moved out of the location of the stingray device So obviously you can you can see how the use of a stingray has pretty strong privacy and free speech implications Another thing to bear in mind with stingrays is they are a consummate master valence device They cannot be targeted So if the police are using a stingray because they want to try to identify the location of a particular phone They cannot train the stingray on a particular phone What a stingray does is it sweeps up every cell phone within its radius that can be dozens hundreds or even thousands of cell phones Depending on where it's being used now the problem with this It's probably the easiest to illustrate using using an example of let's say a black lives matter leader And I choose black lives matter very consciously because I think they are probably the largest most Inappropriately surveilled group in the country certainly in the last five years So imagine you have a police force who is interested in identifying the location of a black lives matter leader They have that person's cell phone And so they activate a stingray and they Identify that that person is within the location But they also of course identify every other person that's within that location if they do that on that leader say a dozen times That gives them the ability to figure out not only where that leader has been But everyone else who's coming up Regularly in the same area as that person and now you have generated a list of contacts and Associates and perhaps other leaders of the movement So it's in that sort of way that the master of the ounce capabilities of the stingray can be also problematic for the right of association The next technology I want to talk about are called automatic license plate readers. We often abbreviate it just as ALPRs They essentially are fairly easy They're there are cameras that have the capability of photographing a license plate and then digitizing its number in state So it can be run against databases These can either be planted on the ground at select locations or they can actually be mobile You may have actually seen them They're kind of oblong looking black things like this on the back of a police car where they're they're commonly deployed now ALPRs can have good uses and again This is this is a case with some surveillance technologies I'm going to talk about for example for toll collection If you put out ALPRs people don't have to be reliant on on easy pass They're able to kind of whip through tolls and pay You don't have the environmental problems and the traffic problems and so they can potentially good for beef something like that They can also be good for say amber alerts You know you have a situation where you have a kidnapped child in a car and you're trying to see if you can locate that car So they could be potentially good for that. They can also be very very bad ALPRs can be used especially if they're deployed greatly throughout a community or a city to track Everywhere you drive in your car. That means they know what doctors offices you visit what religious institutions you go to what Political meetings you attend they also can figure out where you're sleeping at night and and you know imagine if you will That a police department say here in DC and again hypothetical not actual There's a member of the council who doesn't really vote the way they want on police matters But they've figured out that this person doesn't necessarily sleep And every night at their home You know pressure can be brought to bear when you're able to collect data like this Another problem that these are starting to pop up as a problem is that private companies are approaching police forces and offering To give them all the APRs they want for free What they get in return is access to the data and what they use it and Vigilant as a company that does this. I think they first try to roll it out in Austin I didn't get much of a reception there, but they say send us the data and we're gonna find people who have Outstanding fines and fees that they've not paid and let's be very clear These are almost always poor poor people who have not paid their fines and fees They then alert the police car who pulls them over and says you either pay your fine or fee right now with A debit card or I'm taking you to jail and by the way There's a $30 processing fee that gets tacked on that goes to this private company You provided the readers and that's how they make the money off of it So, you know we get in a situation where this technology is now used to target low-income people with threats of jail in order to make More money for for-profit companies There are other risks of using ALPRs to two examples from California in Oakland Recently about six to six to nine months ago. It was discovered Oakland is a sanctuary city Right so sanctuary city means that we are not going to use our city's apparatus to go after undocumented persons in our city But Oakland uses ALPRs and they share them with fusion centers and they share them with private companies and guess what happened In that sharing ice also had access to that shared data and then used it to identify Undocumented persons in Oakland so despite being a sanctuary city their their lack of thoughtfulness and oversight into their own data Put them at risk here by the way Oakland has since adopted a secops law Another situation is in Sacramento County, California where I literally just learned last week They're using their ALPRs to identify welfare recipients and to track them to see if they might come across any evidence of welfare fraud Again, not necessarily any proof that the person is engaged in fraud and then investigating it But just to generally track people they might be suspicious of The is there a solution though to being able to bounce good uses and bad uses? Yeah, there is you you put in strict use and data retention and sharing limitations But these don't happen automatically. These are the sort of things you need a secops law in order to ensure are in place The next one that you'll probably be Greatly familiar with our closed circuit television cameras or surveillance cameras now when you talk about this surveillance technology It's helpful to divide them into two categories, which is to say private cameras and public cameras Private cameras generally speaking do not present much of a privacy risk And the reason for that is because they are controlled by an individual entity who's using them be at your your corner bodega or your your bank with an ATM and so That information rests in the control of a private entity and although the police can get it if they're doing an investigation There's a process by which they would have to request it or get a warrant and so Access to it is individualized and slow and so that makes private cameras safer But giant linked networks of cameras can present a real risk to privacy and other rights And this is so whether or not that network is owned by a government or Whether it's simply accessible at will to the government and this latter category I want to highlight because governments are more and more seeking the permission of private surveillance camera owners to be able To access what they're doing and they're actually Doing a little bit of a weird carrot and a stick thing and I want to highlight what's happening in Detroit, Michigan Where they have something called project green light now what project green light? It's an attempt to get police permission to have full-time and real-time access to private surveillance cameras And they're starting with gas stations The weird thing is what they are offering the gas stations in return for access is more Frequent police patrols of their property and kind of tier one access to police officials to discuss their concerns about public safety Now you would think this would be something that would be extended to all residents of Detroit Not just to those people who are willing to share surveillance Technology with the police, but this is project green light in Detroit And it was most certainly not approved by any elected officials in advance of being rolled out The next technology and this often scares the bejesus out of people for good reason Our surveillance light bulbs Now what are surveillance light bulbs? They're essentially energy efficient LED light bulbs with built-in cameras and microphones They have a wonderful sales pitch right they get to go to the city and they get to say hey You're using those really inefficient bad environmental break all the time incandescent light bulbs in your street lamps Wouldn't it be great if you replace them with these energy efficient LEDs save money save the environment on by the way Did we mention that they have built-in cameras and microphones? You can either pay a little bit more for the ability to add them later when you want or a little bit more And that to have them in now wouldn't wouldn't that be great So Imagine if you will if this had to be part of a public conversation right and instead of a city saying you know Hey, we're gonna be installing energy efficient light bulbs that just so happen to have surveillance capabilities If they had to say to you instead guess what we're gonna do We're installing surveillance devices in every street light in the entire city because guess what they're also light bulbs You'd get a very different reaction and I want the people here from Washington DC And from any other city to imagine what your city would look like if every street light was transferred Into a surveillance device with the camera and a microphone. That's that really feels like big brother At its core and again not hypothetical. We don't know everywhere. These light bulbs have been purchased I know for a fact they've been purchased by Providence Rhode Island I know for a fact that they are active at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. So again, this is not hypothetical Next category and it's kind of a bucket is biometric technologies. So this is your facial recognition Gate recognition voice recognition iris recognition With this technology the police and the government no longer need your ID or your fingerprint to be able to identify Who you are they can use other characteristics that are very difficult to conceal If you will imagine adding facial recognition to surveillance cameras or surveillance light bulbs And now you have the government and the police with the Orwellian ability to track everyone as they move about in public In addition to massive privacy concerns They are also substantial civil rights concerns around facial recognition technology because the technology is not good at identifying The faces of persons of color What this means is you tend to get a lot of false positives Which then will produce an increase in the danger of police interactions And I think we are all acutely aware of the danger that comes from interactions between the police and persons of color in every city In this country and we certainly don't want to do anything that creates false and an increased number of interactions As a matter of fact a recent test on facial recognition software that was done By the ECLU actually found quite a number of members of the congressional black caucus They ran facial recognition against their faces and they came up on criminal databases So we have a sense of that now is this something that's going to be made available rapidly Your darn right it is guess who's selling at amazon and they're calling it recognition with a k because they're witty like that And it's very very cheap and they're rolling it out to police. They bought it in or in Orlando Florida, but that there's since been a massive push back against that The next one I want to talk about is social media monitoring software Now this software enables the police or other government entities to Scan public content on websites like twitter as well as facebook or instagram pages that have public security settings To be honest, although we're trying to learn it I'm not really certain the extent to which these software have the ability to penetrate private accounts There have been some indications that they are able to at times But again with surveillance, they're not exactly telling us how it works and putting it right in front of us So the question is what are they looking for right if they're scanning social media? Well, let me tell you one thing they're looking for again I kind of tipped it off before but in oakland new york city, Memphis, Tennessee They're looking for black lives matter They're searching for the hashtag black lives matter anyone talking about it talking about events and asking to be pinged When anyone mentions that on their social media and obviously that's not limited to black lives matter That can be done for any political perspective or any gathering across the entire field Students are also being increasingly targeted You know with the the claim of an effort to mostly I guess prevent mass shootings I guess in lieu of other more direct and obvious approaches that would be less Violative of first and fourth amendment rights, but there it is And so what happens here? What happens to political activists? What happens to students when the most important free speech platform of the 21st century is being threatened because people are monitoring it all the time The answer is They know there's no privacy guarantees on there And so they stop using it and when they stop using it we're really kind of clamping down on their free speech The last one that I just wanted to mention because I referred to it earlier are fusion centers fusion centers are essentially Places where state and local government police and law enforcement entities Flood in all their surveillance data so they can share it amongst themselves and amongst other agencies Obviously police data sharing is important But when it's done in secret and no one can comment upon what restrictions are or not in place And whether or not the sharing is consistent with the existing public policies you can run into a lot of trouble They did in oakland and and I'm sure that in any other place oakland is not kind of an exception in and of itself So, uh, you know these technologies again, I'm afraid are are just the tip of the iceberg There are other ones that I do not have time to go in today But I wanted to just ping them for you because you should be concerned about them and research them on your own If you will predictive policing software police body cameras drones Gunshot detection technologies like shot spotter x-ray vans through the wall sensor technology. Yes, that's a thing Um, you know, so Again, it's a it's a large field and right now decisions about you know, whether it's used or not Are really not necessarily known to you or even your your representatives and government All right, so let's kind of get down to brass tacks now Does the clu think the benefits of using these technologies outweigh their drawbacks? So respectfully, that's the wrong question We have an opinion and we'd like it to be heard but ours is not The only opinion on the subject and it's certainly not the most important opinion when it comes to local decision making Do the police think the benefits of using these technologies outweigh their drawbacks? Well, that's the current question being asked and often the only question being asked and while their opinion may be valuable It is also the wrong one to be principally focused on Does the public and especially members of the most impacted communities think the benefits of using these surveillance technologies outweigh their drawbacks? That's the question you need to be asking It is the question our elected officials Should be focused on and they should be fully empowered to act upon the opinions that they receive from their constituents And that is what secops is at its core Yes, secops is about surveillance technologies, but secops is fundamentally a good government and transparency effort That moves the question about decisions about the acquisition and use of surveillance technologies Out of the darkness and into the light by giving elected officials and not the police the final say over the use of these technologies Now contrary to what some Opponents that we face in law enforcement community might tell you, you know, the nypd ran to morning joe to scream about this Secops do not require the disclosure of state level secrets that could compromise public safety Rather it provides the public with enough foundational information to enable them to engage in a well informed debate About whether these technologies should be used and if so what limits should be placed on their use Secop laws also require the technology specific use policies be drafted and approved As part of the technology's approval process so that where technology approvals are granted They come with legally enforceable limitations on their use and their data sharing and also include provisions Like auditing and oversight requirements and protections against civil rights and civil liberties abuses Ultimately secops empowers elected officials to decide in an open public forum If the deployment of a proposed surveillance technology would produce a net benefit or harm to their constituents And with nine jurisdictions having already adopted secops laws including two in the last week We are at a point where locality should no longer be asking if they need to adopt a secops law But rather should be asking why they don't already have one right washington dc Now there's just two quick things. I want to touch on before I wrap up the first is Anyone in the audience anyone watching on live stream anywhere in the country? Uh, the aclu and our partners have put all of the information about secops model bills guiding principles descriptions of the technology of deeper discussions on a public website, which is community Control.com only control is spelled like on your keyboard ctrl. So community Ctrl.com. We've had quite a few movements around the country Pop up by people in their individual communities everywhere from, you know, st. Louis Places in michigan yellow springs, ohio pop up because people are interested And the final thing I wanted to do and I really have an opportunity to do this is I wanted to just Touch a moment on on a role that one of my fellow panelists Eugene per year has played in this effort and he does not know this So I'm happy to I always want to tell him in person and it's a little bit weird Eugene But you know, they'll just mind their own business why I say it But when the aclu was considering launching the secops effort two years ago our focus of this work was on community empowerment We knew that this effort was driven largely by racial and social justice considerations And you don't launch a program about community empowerment unless you know Communities want you to do it And so we had the good fortune of having an event Held by the center on privacy and technology at Georgetown law, which is represented by its executive director laura moir here today Called the color of surveillance and it gave us an opportunity to go down and really hear Diverse perspectives from the most impacted communities on whether this was a worthwhile effort One of the panelists was Eugene who gave an amazing talk About the proliferation of surveillance, particularly surveillance cameras in his neighborhood What he was concerned about the implications and impacts of that might be And so afterwards I kind of cornered him in the hallway and unbeknownst to him You know in nasa before they launch a rocket they go around and they say go or no go Flight go and they say go or they say no go if anyone says no go it doesn't launch Well, Eugene doesn't realize it until right now you are go or no go at the aclu And I explained to him the effort and what it would be and I said to him Is this something that you would want in your community? Would this be helpful? Would you want the aclu to do this? And he didn't say go, but he said yes And and and so I am so the truth of the matter is is that that this entire movement all the cities everything It's doing is because this man in his wisdom said Go and so I'm so excited to be a part about bringing this effort to your hometown of Washington D.C Thank you for coming and I really appreciate that for you talk to you today We passed the first test So good afternoon, my name is Brad Heath. I'm the deputy investigations editor at USA today I've written about some of these issues and I'm curious about them And I'm I have a lot of questions But before I ask them I mean if you we want to just sort of go down the line and start with Laura tell us who you are Where you're coming from on this? Sure. Yeah, so I'm Laura Moy. I'm the executive director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law It's a small think tank. We do research and writing on a And advocacy on a range of privacy and surveillance issues We focus on disproportionate impact on historically disadvantaged communities So we host a big conference called color of surveillance that you heard a little bit about I've done a bunch of work Researching and writing about use of cell site simulators by baltimore police department that I'll talk a little bit about today We do a lot of research on face recognition technology These are some of some of the issues and there's a couple people in the audience here from the center Anyway, very pleased to be here. Thank you for having me Hi, Chad Maroll, ACLU and I stand by my previous remarks Eugene per year, I'm a community organizer here in Washington, DC I work among other hats I wear as a core organizer with the stop police terror project DC And obviously this is a issue that is Very near and dear to our hearts because as Chad was mentioning I mean, certainly we feel targeted by a lot of These technologies, but I think also just as a citizen living in the District of Columbia where there is so much surveillance proliferating Sort of in a private capacity also very concerned about that as well Statehood now Hi, my name is Samina Usman. I'm the government relations coordinator for the council on American Islamic relations the San Francisco Bay Area office What we do is that we provide free legal services to people who are experiencing any discrimination hate crimes school bullying All based around Islamophobia We also provide legal services to those who are targeted by the FBI And we've been receiving a number of an increase in Cases of people who have been targeted by the FBI Or have been, you know Visited at their homes and offices for questioning And then also now we're providing immigration services and I've been actively involved with Passing the surveillance ordinances in the Bay Area So we're here to talk about Legislation ordinances that would limit in some ways the power of the police to conduct surveillance And I guess my first question is why I mean what it's easy to sort of be Creeped out by the idea of a facial recognition camera, right that's keeping track of everyone all the time But what what is the what is the real? harm from that So I can start a little bit with Speaking on this question of face recognition specifically, you know as chad mentioned in his very helpful opening remarks Many face recognition systems are not they're not designed to provide a No match results in in the event that they're applied out in the wild They're they are they're designed to provide to provide A likelihood that the person that you're looking at is someone that this that the system might have in its database. So In other words, if you submit a photo to a face recognition system for identification In many instances, you're not going to get a result that says this the the confidence score that this photo matches Any in our databases below a certain threshold You'll just get a result that says essentially this photo of all the photos in our databases looks most like this one So where there are Where there's bias built into the system, which is a prevalent problem as it relates to face recognition technology Many face recognition systems or many many studies of face recognition systems have have consistently shown difficulty Greater difficulty identifying faces of people of color than faces of white men in particular Um Then then you're looking at a higher rate of misidentification where um, where you might be Examining faces of color and what that means Is in in in the real world is that an armed officer might be looking at a person in front of them and be more likely to Misidentify them as a person who is dangerous if they have dark skin because of the the system that they're using One thing I think is an important though a point to make though is that the the c cops effort Is actually in its first instance not actually an effort to prevent the use of surveillance technologies What it is in its first instance is it opens up the conversation about whether it should happen or not So it's it's somewhat easy and strategic for persons who favored the broad use of surveillance to say You should not have c cops You should not have pushback because that's going to prevent us from keeping you safe But in fact all it says is involve the public involve the elected officials So, you know, that's the first point but in terms of why you push back in general, you know, the the the founders of the country I think in their wisdom, you know cared about protecting things like freedom of speech freedom of religion privacy and fear Be it of king george or of the current government is is stifling to those rights And and if you feel you are being watched, I mean I've often Heard it described for surveillance and I think this is helpful When you're driving down the highway in your car and you look up in your rear view mirror And there's a police car behind you How do you feel all of a sudden, right? You you make sure you hit your blinker, right? You're driving the speed limit. That's what surveillance feels like and so You you really shrink into yourself when you feel like you're being watched and and I think that that can can can really harm You know, whether you're talking about the ability to to philosophically espouse for particular views Or whether you just want to walk to your corner store without facing the police rolling up on you and asking Why are you walking so slow or so fast or and so I think the implications are broad and and I think that that when The only entity that has a play a role in that decision is only focused on Law enforcement slash crime limitation. You're not getting a really balanced decision-making process Yeah, I would echo a lot of you know, what's been said. I think the implications are very broad I mean, I think first and foremost, you know, we should be concerned about sort of a differential level of constitutional rights being established I mean you talk about things like persistent surveillance to use a quick dc example Some of you may have seen these dc has these 360 degree mobile cameras that they set up in certain communities I've seen it happen many times and they set them up at like a four-way intersection So that basically you can see every single thing that's going on all day every single day down all four streets So that means you can create a profile on every single person that lives there I think we should be asking ourselves the questions about why there is I mean first of all why they're doing it But you know over and above that why there is zero transparency Accountability or really democratic control over a power where if you live in a certain neighborhood Your entire life is surveilled if you live in another neighborhood your life is never surveilled I think that's highly problematic But I think it also just speaks to the broader issue too of the role of the citizen in society and democracy as a concept And it seems like there's like a weird inverse that the institutions that have the most power have the least accountability and the least transparency I think especially when it comes to the police who have the ability to kill people the ability to arrest you to imprison you to legally surveil you in all these different ways that having Even just the concept that you can have those sorts of things being not monitored not controlled and outside of I think the sphere of the average everyday person to say wait a second I don't like that our government should not be doing this and i'm speaking up I think really raises as a question whether or not you know, these are democratic institutions I think um, you know as a member of the muslim community. I think we're very concerned about surveillance. Um, especially because Surveillance has been overwhelmingly used against the muslim community and you know people of color overwhelmingly and it's uh You know, I think you had chan you had mentioned the case in new york Where the nypd was spying on the muslim community And I mean they had their cameras that were focused on mosques and muslim businesses And muslim leaders Tracking where people were going Even I think it was so detailed as to what's on the menu of restaurants. I mean, how is that going to be? Solving or helping with uh combating terrorism. I mean, I know that that hummus might be killer, but you know it's not It's not going to prevent terrorism. So um, so, you know, and then And that actually did not Having that overwhelming spy. I'm sighing of the muslim community did not prevent anything did not had there's been no cases that have come out Involving terrorism and what it actually did was cause fear in the community and caused mistrust with law enforcement and people you know see this around the country and Muslims have stopped Going to mosques or speaking freely. I mean, it's definitely a chill on one's free speech and so It's been very concerning for the american muslim community and So, you know, I was involved With santa claire county when we were trying to when we were passing the ordinance over there We had the santa claire county. They had quietly acquired um, a grant for stingray technology of five hundred thousand dollars This was done quietly and when it came out in the open that is where the community was was very concerned. Um, And so, uh, you know, and I guess we can probably go more into it later about that But um, we also found in san jose, uh, which part of santa claire county. They quietly acquired a drone as well um Without any um public notice at all and the community was outraged and we said no, we need to have a public process We need to have this out in the um So that the community can weigh in on whether or not we want this type of technology. Um, what type of uh, Rules and regulations are around there. We need transparency and this is uh, I think what really prompted Um getting these ordinances passed and I guess we'll talk more about it later So I have a question about the transparency side of it because I on the one hand It's very easy to understand the appeal of like we all should get a say in directly what the government's doing on the other hand There there's something to the argument right that the more detail we share about a police tool The more easily circumvented it is I mean, this had been the fbi's chapter and verse on things like stingrays for a long time, right? If criminals know we can track their phones, they'll turn off their phones and we won't be able to track the criminals um, is there Is there something to that balance? I mean, how do you How do you deal with that? I think it's funny That people suggest that the c cops moment Effort might tip off terrorists that we're trying to watch them because they have no idea That like and also like organized crime Like no, they've never seen actually like a crime movie and seen the government I mean come on So they know they're being watched almost all the technologies We're talking about if you want to really find out about them. There's kind of a secret database Um, and I will share it with this room. It's called google Put in stingray put an alpr and you can find out everything you want to know but even beyond that You know within the c cup I mean we do understand that I mean we don't want to give levels of detail where they can say Oh, if we do this with our phone then the stingray can't connect with it But that's not what these laws ever require. It's basic information We want to acquire a device that allows us to track people using their phone We are going to use it fairly throughout the city or we're only going to use it in in you know in southeast, right? So so it's that level and there's it's by design within the law We we provide enough information for people to have enough knowledge about Concepts behind it and risks, but we're not releasing blueprints. We're not releasing kind of fine details And so the balance is is baked in there already, but people who want to defeat it want to kind of Play that there's something to it because there's the level of granularity about things like stingrays where okay If you set your phone and I don't think you can set your phone to defeat it But um, there's also the and organized crime and terrorists might know that but then there's you know Your your stick up guy in south baltimore who does not know that and you know Still seems not to know that the police can track a cell phone and the more I mean there has been this Emphasis from the fbi and others that the more we say we can track a cell phone the more criminals on the margin will know to Turn them off. I mean I I guess the other thing they could do is not take cell phones at gunpoint, which would be good, but I mean, I think that that I think that that is I don't think that that's That that's something that is not already known to people, right? I mean the idea that a cell phone can be tracked is already pretty pretty widely public information Um, so, you know, I mean that's the trade-off that you're talking about here Providing additional information that might tip off some criminal that they need to leave their phone at home when they go commit a crime If they didn't already know that That the trade-off that you're talking about though is a trade-off where you find out information about how police may be using surveillance technology to abuse entire communities, right and this so the It's it's funny this question about transparency and about cell site simulators because it was actually brad's foyid surveillance log of the baltimore police department's use of cell site simulators that That yielded the data that served as the basis for the complaint that I filed on behalf of oti and color of change and center for media justice A couple years ago relating to that city's use of of cell site simulators But what we found out based on that surveillance log which provided I mean what we what we found out about it were a bunch of really alarming things about use of cell site simulators in that city That resulted in some in I think in some big policy changes So one is that cell site simulators had been used in that city over 4300 times between 2007 and april 2015 It had been used for all different kinds of crimes You know, it wasn't just like it was being used to to track down individuals in in the course of investigating serious crimes but had been used Just to to locate witnesses to To to investigate unarmed robberies There was one case or one use that had a status note that said pizza box recovered, right? You know, I mean like very very A wide range of things Not only that but when we mapped out the addresses where cell site simulators had been used in baltimore and we laid that map over a map of Of the racial and ethnic Breakdown of the city of the city demographics based on us census results We we saw very starkly what may be obvious to many folks in the room Which is that the devices are being used Very disproportionately in black neighborhoods in the city, you know and this and on time I mean we can talk about this more in a few minutes But and you know use of those devices also interferes with normal operation of the cell phone network So it was you know mass surveillance tool being used in ways that potentially are abusive for something with such such great surveillance power and insight And primarily in black neighborhoods, you know, so I mean that the trade-offs You're asking a question fundamentally about trade-offs And I'm not sure actually that the cost that you're describing of Revealing that information is actually there, right that that we're empowering criminals by releasing this information But I do think that the benefit to the public of knowing more about how those devices are being used to what extent in what what areas For what reasons is very clear I think any trade-off too is about the context right and I think that when we think about the context So quote-unquote crime is at absolute record lows Uh, maybe there's a slight uptick in property crime, but still record lows You're more likely to be killed by a falling piece of furniture than in a terrorist attack So I think when we're asking ourselves what the trade-offs are I think that honestly We're not correctly balancing the dangers to the trade-offs and we're constantly promoted as chat said fear fear fear fear fear But like, you know, there's no major fear of someone inappropriately stalling a flat screen tv on your wall Even though that's more likely to kill you Than a terrorist attack, but then everything is completely militarized. Everything is completely surveilled All on the basis of really a fear as opposed to actual Context and I think that's actually super important when we think about trade-offs I would say secondarily too. I mean, you know, we found people who robbed people before there were cell phones or cameras So there's also a question about that But I think third and really the direct corollary to that is I think that we we have to stop Operating in the concept that we can create 100 safety without addressing the root causes of issue like crime Like for instance If we don't want people to rob people for their expensive cell phones to sell them on the black market Or use them or whatever Perhaps everyone should have a living wage and a roof over their head and a you know ability to support themselves So that no one feels the need to rob other people But I think we get away from that with these silver bullet type of responses Which are we can be 100 safe if you just give up a little bit of your constitutional rights I think that's a dangerous slippery slope I mean, there's fiscal concerns as well, I mean if you have You know a lot of times companies will come to either city council or police department and show this shiny new technology And says it'll solve all your problems when in reality It may be like a slight tweak compared to whatever technology that they already currently have And also it would cause You know devolved more information Or collect more information and also it there's again like a Besides just the cost of the equipment. I mean there's maintenance. There's training There's other added costs that are you know put on top of that type of technology Now does a city want to spend millions of dollars on this new technology that isn't going to make any Jurassic change or did they want to invest that millions of dollars towards affordable housing or towards other things other services that would Benefit the community and that's where you need that community Wayne you need to have the community to be able to To to voice their opinion about whether or not they do feel like this technology is important To acquire and that's why having such ordinances in place is crucial To the extent that the stick up guy doesn't already know about you know the tracking of his cell phone I'm not certain a city council hearing is going to be the thing That's gonna because they love to watch that public access tv So I'm not sure that that's going to be the trigger that suddenly lets crime run wild because the city council's having a hearing We'll see maybe they're very well, you know tuned into government operations. So How then I mean Say hypothetically, you know DC police want to acquire some technology that can determine in real time If you've been in a fistfight based on the movements of your phone or something Um, I have no idea whether that's a real thing, but you could do it. I guess Um How would what would that process be under under a c cops regime? They What what would the police have to do before they could adopt that? Right, so so what the police would have to do is they would have to go to the city council And they would have they would say we're interested in acquiring this technology and again the description you gave would be enough They would not have to explain how it works how it taps into your phone necessary But just we want us to avail this they would then have to provide Reports a use policy and in a description of the technology that kind of explains, you know, is it a mass surveillance device? Here are the potential risks to civil rights and civil liberties. Here's how we intend to use it Here's how we wouldn't use it like we wouldn't use it to identify People who are jogging only fistfights And they would provide kind of this base level information so that and it would have to be released before the hearing So it gets out to the community and they have an opportunity to digest it And organize around it if they want and then they would say we would like the approval for this technology For this purpose subject to these rules And then the city council can either give a thumbs up a thumbs down or begin a negotiation like we're you know We're fine with the fist fighting use but not the jogging use And so there's an opportunity for kind of a more full and complete discussion And all of that would have to be done in advance the other thing I would want to say again The model bill can change by local communities and it should right because if the local community Thinks it should be done differently it should but one thing our model bill has is no grandfathering So we're not saying whatever the situation is now is the okay status quo and we're looking forward If a city is using surveillance technologies now like seattle was and they're in the current process of Reporting out on over 20 technologies. They're using you have to go in and go through this process and get approvals So that you know, we have an opportunity to kind of reset On the issue and let the communities have a more, you know, kind of vital role from the ground up So how does that I mean When you're talking about sort of political accountability for this, right? I mean notionally We have a mayor we have a city council the city council is appropriating money in a lot of cases for these things They have the opportunity to ask questions. There are elected representatives What's the what's the additional benefit I mean the benefit and cost are then on the The side of a wider public discussion first rather than trusting Your representatives, right? Right. So they're they're actually not approving the money for all these things Sometimes they approve it into a general fund where it gets spent without their knowledge But there's also other ways there's private donations. There's grants There's a civil asset forfeiture funds, which when they grab it from criminals They intentionally think well, we're going to spend it here so they can't track it So so I think that It's a little bit of a misconception that the city council is already involved in this process because they have the power of the purse That's really not the case and in a lot of times in the communities where this has been either passed or discussed You go to the city council members and they say I had no idea That we were doing these things and and they're rightly offended by that Yeah, I think it's a good very good point. And I think certainly that's an interesting reality I mean you certainly see it if you look at the budget here for the metropolitan police that they'll have these like Interesting breakdowns like one I forget the exact amount of money. They're spending x millions of dollars on like special vehicles Well, what is a special vehicle? I mean that could be anything really I mean it could be a something that is you know converted for people with wheelchairs to like a tank Um, and we're going to spend seven million dollars or whatever it is on it We have no idea what it is that I think even sometimes our elected representatives aren't empowered enough But I also think like knowledge is powered for the average everyday citizen You know doing a lot of community organizing the number one thing people always ask you is What can I do like right now? Like if I pick up the phone and call this council member like what can I say and what can I do And the more detailed breakdown you can give to people about this is what the government's doing This is what it's costing These are the people who have to approve x y z at each process The easier it is to sort of break all that down into little bite-sized pieces And then when people want to advocate to be able to give them the tools to advocate more effectively because instead of Just generally calling or showing up or you know testifying in a broad sense or saying nothing Or just voting and hoping for the best You have the ability to say you can call this person at this time to do this I think it makes it more effective both for organizers ourselves to be able to engage people But I think also for people who are busy limited time limited resources to find a way in and engage on an issue that they think is important They the police department had acquired. I think I'd mentioned this earlier a drone um, and this was just a Kind of mentioned in the line item buried under I guess a long budget And uh, it wasn't When this when this came out in the open city council members were like, I had no clue that this was even the case I we had no clue that they were going to be acquiring this And so then we had to begin this whole public discussion And cause a stink about it because we're like, hey, you know, we were not the community was not informed about this The council was not, you know, really aware of this And and only afterwards did the public discussion happen But with having c cops and these ordinances in place, it's going to happen before this even You know Is decided by the council and that's what what really needs to happen But in terms of um, you know, we've already seen the surveillance ordinance in practice like with santa claire county Shortly after the ordinance was adopted and this is the first in the nation They wanted to acquire some electronic helicopter mapping some type of system And it came before the board. We were able to have a public discussion We had community members come in and say, hey, you know, is it going to be used for this? Is it going to be used for that? I'm concerned about this and they were able to answer questions The the the board of supervisors were able to, you know, kind of clarify some things make some changes to the To the usage of it and it passed it didn't hinder the process They were able to still acquire it. So anybody who says that oh, this is not going to keep our community safe This is going to prevent us from acquiring, you know, this type of technology that's going to Keep our community safe. That's it's not the case at all. And we were it's we've already been able to do so right so I'm curious. Do have you encountered examples of the police Deceiving the elected government or is it more a case of the city council not doing its job and asking questions? I mean, I think that You know, this is very dc specific. I I don't know people who know me know I think this I think that a lot of council members are only educated on the things that like they are on the committee of Oftentimes that they are the chair of and everything else. It's kind of like a go along to get along and that's often what you'll hear from A council member. Well, what does x person think about it or what does y person think about it? And i'm going to make my decision based on what x or y person is going to do which, you know, from a collegiality perspective I recognize that you want to have some level of deference to people Who are heading a committee to turn on a member of or whatever it may be But it's often sort of like I don't even really need to know like if they think it's cool Like I think it's fine. I think on policing issues for sure Here in the district of columbia. There's almost no oversight and I think that is You know, quite frankly a function of desire because I think there's a lot of trust in council members that the police always tell them the truth But I think if you look at something like the near act, which we just put in very differently It's broadly for people who don't know Basically around addressing violence as a public health issue not a criminal justice issue Relying on things that are not the police to address community violence. We've seen outright deception. We've seen we are doing x y and z and This is just like what's happening and then we find out something else is totally different happening There is an issue in there and certainly I can plug this the so utc stop police terror project in black glass matter dc We are we sued the city over stop and frisk data and they had been required by statute to release the stop and frisk data They released it's not fake. It's real data, but they released data That was not at all what they were supposed to release and claim that's what it was So I mean I would say like mild deceptions, but I think you could even go further back You know the pershing park case which has deep civil liberties implications on the rights of protesters where the npd actually destroyed evidence And that was became a major issue in pushing new laws here around accountability around protest rights So I've seen it on all sides. I've seen a lack of oversight But I've definitely seen a desire on the part of the police to at least Fudge the edges of what's really going on around a lot of issues as opposed to just tell the truth I'm gonna give you two kind of examples that are kind of large and small one in anchorage, alaska Where there was kind of a Long-going Knowledge by everyone that their police department did known a stingray device Turns out the police didn't want to completely lie about that fact And so there was a public hearing discussing some very small matter of public safety And if you watch it halfway through the video the guy's talking about public safety. Oh, by the way, we've got a stingray Move on nobody caught Nobody caught it and we were reviewing with the issue of alaska to try to figure out whether they had one And we came across the video and they were like, oh that stingray Right, there's that one right, but other than that we haven't and a bigger example, which was unearthed by bloomberg Wasn't baltimore baltimore not doing really good on surveillance technology They were operating a plane with a Incredibly high definition wide angle lens that actually gave them the ability to film the entire city And to be able to zoom in to the point you couldn't necessarily see someone's face But you could see someone walking out of their house into their car follow their car around Once bloomberg unearthed it the shouts of I didn't know came from everywhere The community certainly didn't know the elected officials were up in arms And my favorite is guests who said they didn't know about it the police The actually the police union and I said really you didn't know about your own program And so and and certainly, you know, we can talk about when we talk about Not just the actual technologies, but how they're using it. They never say even though, you know Lauren her group had found that both were they weren't saying. Oh, yeah, not only do we own the alpr But we're just focusing on the communities of color and the nypd is certainly not saying oh, we're absolutely watching moss We're even going to new work to do it, you know, so so so there is a lot of You know deception and actual misleading statements But a lot of the deception or where seacups really comes in is just the It's the it's the lying and absence of statement They just don't talk about what they're doing and they use national security and these sort of things as excuses for doing a Crime protection, but that's the real problem. That's the whole out of the darkness and into the light concept behind this So so there are actual examples of lying to be certain But the larger bucket is just not being forthcoming on what they're doing and and the methods in which they're doing In this hearing in the Maryland state legislature not too long after the stingray complaint and I did see a representative of a state law enforcement agency sit there in that legislative chamber and say Cell site simulators are not our cell site simulators. We don't need to get a license to use them It's like using a it's like you I think he said it's like using a it's like using a wi-fi connected baby monitor in your home And he just made that state he made that statement in front of the legislature and I was sitting there watching I was like, are you kidding me? I can't believe you just said that but you know, but there's There was this I think there was this this relationship of trust that that individual had with a number of members of the committee That enabled him to just make a statement like that and feel relatively confidence that he would not be challenged directly As to its veracity, but you know on this on this issue of obfuscation as well, you know that the obfuscation of use of surveillance technology So it not only helps protect from you know from a law enforcement perspective perhaps not only helps protect their their Use of the of a surveillance technology From scrutiny From the public and from the legislature But also helps them to It also helps them to bring cases and prosecute cases More seamlessly with less challenge from the defense side And that you know, that's something that we've run into as a as a as a problem in a number of jurisdictions Which is that a number of jurisdictions that have been using cell site simulators for years It has not been clear to defense attorneys attempting to defend their clients That that their client was in fact located using a cell site simulator this forecloses You know the a number of options for legal recourse that a defense attorney might take including challenging the constitutionality of using such a device without a warrant But you know, there might be there are ways that law enforcement may obfuscate use of the device in order to avoid that type of legal challenge that could Result in establishment of a legal standard that is unfavorable to their ability to use it in the future So they they'll use euphemistic terms in some in some instances In their applications for orders or their applications for warrants And you know, and then and then it's only it's been through the work of Of reporters such as yourself And and and and of groups that are that are advocating for public access to records that Sufficient information has come out in certain jurisdictions Um That for defense attorneys to find out that devices were used that they that then allowed them to mount a legal challenge And then that established what you know Clarified what the constitutional standard was as as it relates to those to those devices So in baltimore, for example, I think it I think it may have been your FOIA requests that resulted In the information necessary to establish that a cell site simulator had been used in a case Without a warrant and that case went all the way up to the maryland supreme court the maryland supreme court said You must have a warrant in order to use a cell site simulator and and a warrant standard was clarified in the state Where previously the police agencies had been using cell site simulators without a warrant So that takes me to another obfuscation question though is like And I hate to go back to baltimore with this but it is a pretty good example of for a long time Everybody knew the police were able to track cell phones not everybody not the stick up guys but Nobody knew the specific circumstances in which they were used And to a large extent I I think they still don't how much does something like ccops go to the issue of You know, we possess this technology, but we're still not going to tell you it was used in this case versus that case And it might never show up in the prosecution So you don't get the ability to develop the The sort of fourth amendment or other legal framework around it Right, so so so ccops requires reporting On a kind of a larger aggregate level not so large that it's meaningless But you know deployments by a census tract is one way that that you can have to look at it So you get a sense of whether they're using it in a disproportionate way But very intentionally doesn't ask you to report it on a case by case basis As that would really kind of get into the level of perhaps You know encumbering their ability to to um to enforce the laws But one of the things in ccops that I think is important and again It's in the model bill whether it goes into individual state laws is is up to the individual jurisdictions But it bans nondisclosure agreements Between the entity the government obtaining it in the private company the private companies often want to work them in there They say to protect their intellectual property, but that's not really the case It's just it's easier to roll them out when the public doesn't have a chance to kind of push back against them So, you know Will ccops address the problem of the police who are given the authority to use surveillance technologies Violating their own rules and policies. No, unfortunately that will still be up to lawyers and courts and those processes But uh, it will uh, it will tell advocates that they need to be looking And you know, I I I do believe largely That police departments again most of their members See to adhere to their policies, you know all evidence of the contrary, I guess with with with respect to policing certain groups, but Um, it it is not it will not solve the whole problem For certain, but I think it moves us into a more protected space No, there may be certain technologies that are so nefarious that the community elected officials say we're just not comfortable with this being used And that is that is certainly an option that's available What's and go back to my hypothetical shaking cell phone to detect this fight and dc adopts it and sets a rule You can only use it to detect fistfights. Um, and then there's a string of liquor store robberies or something and just this one time Um, they use it for something else because it works. It's there. We've acquired the information Um, what's the remedy? What happens? Well in the laws and again, it depends on the local jurisdiction, but in the laws it actually can can set up disciplinary standards Including fine the significant fines and other penalties. Obviously, there's legal remedies If someone uses something in court in a way that's a violation The law actually states that you cannot use any data you find in any court or any hearing It immediately gets thrown out kind of a poisonous fruit of the tree remedy But and again if they realize that there is a rash of liquor store robberies and they and this device might help They can always go back to the city council and say we would like permission for a new use And if the public thinks that's valuable then that can happen But but there are penalties in there. There are provisions that would prevent the the data from being used in court Um, but again, it's it's not a perfect solution But it it prevents, you know, it's I would say that it puts in those cases a series of speed bumps in the ways It wasn't necessarily impenetrable brick wall. I think it also No, sorry It's just gonna add that you want to make sure that there is that level of enforceability through either, you know The proud right of action or you know, it wants attorneys fees being covered as well Um, if it is found that that, um The ordinance has been violated. Yeah, I was just gonna say I think it also provides us a north star to know Like who are our elected officials or people in You know high positions and what are they doing and do we need to remove them right like just that one time? I think we all know that's like the ultimate slippery slope argument So if someone's going to be making that argument, maybe that's a statement about them as much as it is about an individual policy I think more and more this I think especially for activists and organizers becoming a bigger issue because of the sort of legislative You know blanket that's being thrown over a lot of activities friends since you may or may not know this So all pipelines are critical infrastructure now, right? So if you're critical infrastructure, that means that most of like the national security anti-terrorism tools become fair game for you I think we saw a lot of things with the occupy movement and similar pieces in the context of the black identity extremism Document that came out from the department of justice And what that actually means for black lives matter and other younger black activists and what it means in terms of your Quote on quote threat assessment I think that starts to create a lot of gray area around how these different things are going to be used And so to me the person who is going to say well, you know We are only using it for fistfights now We're going to use it for robberies is like also the person that if there's a bunch of disruptive peaceful Let's say disruptive protests and the fbi comes in unless they often do and say well Some of these groups are basically violent terrorist groups They're also going to say well, why don't we use this fistfight liquor store thing also on protest groups So I think it also gives us a way to sort of Suss out kind of who are our elected and empowered officials and give us a sense of whether they're the people We want wielding that kind of power one more thing that is in the cop's law that that that is a question that the police have to answer Uh in in the list, I think it's I believe in that there's an impact report in a use policy I can't remember which one it's in but what type of auditing and oversight are you going to have in place now? They can write none in which case the city council can either say fine or no We're not going to do it with that but there are opportunities to engage even in a discussion and to put into Places auditing and oversight procedures So maybe there is an external entity that gets to look over the records To make sure that they're not using it inappropriately. So again Adds it into the discussion and so it kind of fills out the system that way and one thing I'll also add is that we also one thing that is Discussed with these ordinances is how is this information going to be used and how is it it's going to be shared Or will it be shared and especially, you know with the administration that we currently have I think a lot of communities are very concerned with how that data is going to be shared with with federal agencies specifically with Especially there are a lot of cities In california that are sanctuary cities and if that information It's found to go You know trickle into a database Like nick rick That could be accessed by ICE that would be indeed a violation of one's Sanctuary status like currently we had like recently we had with a bart. That's our transit authority that there was a ALPR You know that that that was collecting think about like tens of thousands of license plates The information and that was put into nick rick and that could potentially have been accessed by ICE And so, you know, thank thank goodness, uh, you know shortly thereafter we were able to Now have a bart ordinance that just got passed this this past week And again, I mean but but it wasn't done Actually, no it took quite some time in order to get this this past and it took the efforts of Community members and community organizations that are on the ground such as oakland privacy or media alliance or aclu or EFF that that raised these concerns of how this information is acquired and who it could be potentially Shared with and that is something Um critical with these ordinances. There's also I should mention just quickly that Also within the cop. So there is annual reporting like it's it's not that it's approved and then we're done There's annual aggregate reporting of certain data points and certain information That that's reported to the public so the public itself has the ability to kind of keep an eye on things So I have one more question and then I think we'll open it up some But and that's why why it's valuable to pursue this at a city level when in a lot of cases I mean you you can't then tell The dc is an odd case in this for a lot of reasons, but you can't then tell the residents. Okay Rest easy, you know the extent of surveillance in your community because the the tools can still be used by the state police They can still be used by the fbi the dea the marshall service loves these And is really effective with them Why so what's the what's the utility and tradeoff in pursuing this as a local ordinance? I mean, I would say a couple things I think first and foremost, it's just a good way to start the conversation, right? I think that at the local level, which is a little bit more tangible I think it may be easier to make move and to move changes and to start these conversations And then once you've said X city is going to have X level of oversight over y and z types of surveillance technologies Why doesn't the state government? Why doesn't the federal government? It gives you that sort of initial push I think also too. I'm just a big believer that If a problem has identified anything you can do to lessen that problem is important And I think definitely localized pieces I mean Maybe a bit another good example of this might be very different contexts the minimum wage, right? There's a federal minimum wage and a state and local minimum wages Obviously, I'm a person who thinks the federal minimum wage should go up But like irrespective of that happening like definitely let's do the $15 an hour whatever we can do Whatever we can get it however we can get it because ultimately it's sort of the proliferation of those conversations That are going to sort of bubble up and create that national change So I also think it helps us create the context to have a federal level discussion Which I think could be a little harder to sink your teeth into because once you get to the federal level Especially and like national security terrorism starts to become the watchword I think that's harder for people I think it just washes out a little bit more of the critical conversation you can have When it's a little bit more focused on policing criminal justice matters that I think people maybe feel a little bit more comfortable Restricting the rights of the police because they have a little bit more of a sense or at least potentially restricting them Of what that means as opposed to what the implications might be at a higher level So, you know in the bay area I mean we have been able to pass it in the local level in the county level We've been trying to do it on the state level We're having a bit of trouble with that but we're working on that But here's the other thing is that when you have the federal government who's been trying to Utilize local police in order to carry out their work through the joint terrorism task force the JTTF That is how you can Use local ordinances in order to make an impact on on federal, you know In federal issues as well And I feel as though also with the the federal government trying to Give grants of military technology to local police. That's incredibly concerning The fact that the the militarization of our local police And so having ordinances like this Across, you know numerous cities you'd be able to ensure that that that federal reach would also You know be minimized through these type of ordinances in the sharing There are around I think there are around 18 000 law enforcement agencies in the country and that's so you know I mean the the vast vast majority of those are not state or federal agencies They're local agencies and and and while there is a lot of really good work that can be done And and that many organizations are working to do and individual advocates at the at the state and federal level The bulk of the work really does have to be done at a community level by community advocates and organizers And those are the people that this type of this type of structure aims to help by creating opportunities To engage to learn more information about what's happening in their communities and and to intervene Does this deal with the I mean if the city council says no stingray for you Um, can I still call my friend at the marshal stare versa and say you you guys stingray him for me? That would actually fall under data sharing, which is one thing that's controlled. So it's actually we thought of that Yeah, I mean so so obviously No local jurisdiction can control what the federal government can do in its borders However to go and say you're we're going to bring in the fbi or the marshal service You're going to do it for us and then give us the data Well, you would have to get approval for the sharing of stingray data. Not the data the guy You're gonna give me the guy Well, I mean but but then it would have to be what would be the purpose of the local entity getting the guy when the local And he doesn't have the ability to prosecute the guy Like it's gonna if if the federal government wants to run a prosecution on federal law In dc or anywhere else, they're gonna go ahead and do that But if if we have uh, you know prohibitions on the use of of data, which is again, that's the stuff Right, you get the guy, but if you can't use the data you have no evidence Right, so hand you over the guy and his lawyer will have a motion to dismiss pretty quickly in front of you So I think that's the that's the best thing you can do with that And by the way, there's not only there's there's not only limitations on the sharing the data, but also Borrowing equipment. That's also something that's you know, we thought of that too All right, well, I This has been very helpful to me. Um, but if you guys have questions, um, I do we have a microphone? We do have a microphone So like anybody who's got questions not speeches Come to the microphone Okay, uh, my question is about stingrays and I appreciate the focus on local control of this meeting But some of the material I've seen seems to suggest that That networks of stingrays are being operated by other than duly constituted authority foreign governments private parties Senator widen did an inquiry into these things recently and it just from what I recall the response from the agencies Was pretty limpid and vague. We're not sure. We don't have the funding and so forth So as anything you've seen suggest That the that this equipment is uh is being operated by By spook or or non us parties I was also surprised to see that the FCC Was never Sided here. I covered the FCC as a trade journalist for many years focusing on enforcement The commission has been locating illegal transmitters since world war two They have a lot of expertise in this they were never brought into identify or interdict these devices So we have no idea How many are there and again focus on local government? Absolutely. I just wonder if you've seen some wider issue there I I love this question For so many reasons So, yeah, so the cell site simulators are able to They're able to to to latch onto your phone and to identify it and locate it By exploiting a vulnerability in the cell network, right? I mean that's that is what they are doing The fact that a fake cell phone tower is able to authenticate itself falsely with a phone as though it were part of the network That is that's exploitation of a vulnerability that exists in the network that in theory could be corrected And in theory the federal communications commission is the entity that ought to be responsible for ensuring that the that for protecting our our cellular network From security threats like that by requiring that the phone companies essentially correct that vulnerability I So yes that that is a vulnerability that exists to the extent that police agencies are able to exploit that vulnerability So are other entities that are not police agencies that have the technical wherewithal to exploit the vulnerability and that Probably includes almost certainly includes Actors of foreign governments And and you know and maybe just maybe just other people to Troublemakers people who are who are able to to build these devices We did file a complaint with the FCC in 2016 and asked the and alleged that That use of cell site simulators by police agencies by state and local police agencies constituted an unlicensed use of licensed spectrum, right? So radio frequency bands that are licensed already exclusively to phone networks And you know and furthermore that that that the FCC by failing to To protect the security and privacy of the phone network was not only failing on its security Obligations, but was failing as well on its obligations to ensure that that our networks are available to all Without discrimination on the basis of race sex, etc Yeah, because these devices are being used so disproportionately in black neighborhoods The FCC is clearly aware of the problem very aware and and has not done anything about it. So Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you about that. I'm I'm with you all the way Well, thank you all for a fabulous panel my question is for samina based on your experience Getting these bills enacted in several jurisdictions in california. Could you tell us first of all what were the Biggest or most prominent arguments that were made against it by skeptics And second if you have any tips for us as the dc initiative starts out on the best arguments and strategies You used to push back and get the bills successfully enacted So the first question I think um one of the One of the pushbacks was that this was overly broad that it was uh, you know that that it was just it was just Too many things would be covered, but at the same time I think because technology is constantly changing That's why this was drafted to be broad in order to capture all of it because you know right now We have certain technology, but we don't know it's going to be coming out You know five years 10 years or even one year from now Because technology or tomorrow because technology is always changing. So that's why I think that That was that was one of the issues Or one of the concerns that we brought up, but I think you know They quickly understood that that's why it was drafted that way Um, you know, I mean, I think whatever we discussed earlier about Oh, is it going to you know, hinder the process of or hindered the ability for law enforcement to acquire technology that's going to Keep us safe. Um, you know We were able to to show that hey look we have been the process does work We were able they were able to acquire the technology that they wanted But we just wanted that public process Um, I think that you know when when law enforcement or when like one of the things that we do is that we actually do meet with chiefs of police prior to Prior to the hearings or the city council meetings To push this Yeah, there might be some pushback in the beginning, but afterwards They come to realize that actually this is a pretty good thing for them to have Put in place because one again it creates Um, uh, that I mean, there's already so much mistrust with law enforcement So this is one extra step that can can try to help with that. Um, the other thing is, uh, I spoke to a police chief that said that I want something like this to be in place because I want There to be some rules around how long am I going to be keeping this data for this information for because it's costly to To be storing this type of data It's and and so, you know, he's like, yeah, I actually want something like this So when we have met with police chiefs, they're like they actually end up becoming our advocates Oftentimes for for these ordinances, and I'm sorry. What was the second question again? Okay There's one other argument that that that I've come up against Which and I don't mean is that this is very burdensome On police forces filling out the reports and the answers and so I would say two things I'm not trying to belittle that response But the first is how much surveillance are you actually using That this would be a bird and you get that in certain smaller jurisdictions like oh my god It fills out like I get that they're doing this in seattle But we couldn't handle this really would you have all the surveillance technologies that seattle has like in yellow springs Ohio where we're doing one of these So that but the other thing that I would say is In a way the responses That's right It is burdensome And if if you're going to use a technology that has the ability to you know to to to go after some pretty core first and Fourth amendment rights Yeah, maybe it should be a little burdensome Before you you roll it out if in fact it is easy Then then it's probably not being done with the degree of care that is required And again, I think one of the benefits that we're at now having already passed this in nine jurisdictions Is that they are nine active jurisdictions that are doing this? So when we first started rolling the thought I'm sure you can find the saying that no one else is doing this We couldn't possibly operate, but that's just not the case anymore. We have small jurisdictions big cities transit systems That are doing this so so the fact is you know, I love to say to you know, new york city Who says you know we could never possibly do this a really I thought new york could do anything seattle or oakland or nashville could do So so I do so I do think the burdensome comes out there But I but I think that that it's a little bit overstated and that's kind of the point to some degree as well to To put programs like this in place It to do it Appropriately and with consultation involves getting groups that are sometimes demonizing each other and exaggerating about each other To enter into a public debate if you're going to pass local legislation So i'm curious, you know Short of having the five of you travel You know around to every jurisdiction and give a talk like this that helps people kind of get a balanced sort of set of information What's your advice to jurisdictions about how to have a public debate and a consultation process where there's A shared set of information that both quote sides Unquote on any of these issues can share is that part of the c cops recommendations? And then also more about the burden point the chat was just talking about Part of that burden is sometimes law enforcement and local legislators Um or city councils. They don't have the the um the capacity to hold a good public consultation for those same reasons So i'm curious methodologically. How do you make it a a good public conversation? I mean i can i can start by saying To extent it's helpful that the you know the aclu has affiliates in every single state plus dc plus Puerto Rico If you're thinking about doing something locally That's the first call that you may want to consider to make again not that we are the starting point We are decidedly not the starting point the communities are the starting point But if you need assistance you want us to remind you what the website address is Provide you with some supporting documents like we we can participate in that And we can help guide you in ways. We've got we've helped to guide other jurisdictions or to tell you about other organizations You know in the bay area there it's pretty i don't say it's easy to pass these but you guys You're on a roll So so we're gonna obviously we're gonna step aside to other organizations But you can always reach out to us and we can we can try to help you know get get you started On the aclu website. I mean they have the model ordinances in place. I mean it's pretty much You know done. I mean it actually I like the fact that you have a another model ordinance for To include militarization as well of local law enforcement that we want to you know Have some language put in there as well, but um, but again each city is gonna Require different needs and so that's why you can tailor the ordinance To what would benefit your particular city and that's where you need organizations who are on the ground Who are working on this issues like such as like in the bay area with open privacy or of course EFF or care. I mean, you know, we have a number of of offices nationwide, but I mean again That's where it's it's the local power and the local community members that have to have that kind of buy-in But you know and that's where we also reach out to people who are you know In colleges or universities as well professors who Who would buy into this as well and and could come and speak to Their support for something like that We're time for one more Thanks so much for a great panel. My name is Kevin Mira. I'm on the privacy team at Palangier and my question is more of a general one about Accountability and who we should hold accountable for this And if you'll you'll forgive a brief digression to europe. I think about the law enforcement directive there a lot as Kind of you know installing this data protection authority and data protection unit in the organizations themselves That's tasked with sort of these auditing and accountability things Kind of on a weekly basis as opposed to the like yearly annual report basis And so my question is I completely agree that we want more transparency in sort of Installing these technologies in the first place, but but my question is more How do we actually ensure that on a week to week basis? We're not actually digressing from The data retention standards are on its standards that we set up in the first place I think I think I think that is why The conversation about auditing and oversight that has to be put in one of the policies is a very critical thing to function on Again, this to me is the value of spreading this out to a community, right? Different members of the community are going to raise different points And and you know, maybe this group is going to be be focused on, you know, the racial justice implications, right? You are going to bring up the the the ongoing need for strict auditing and oversight or else It's going to slip but that that is in there and it has to be specific again if the model bill is used It it it has to be discussed each and every time The the answer to that the deeper answer is not one that that I would be able to give But that would have to be arrived at which is what level of auditing and oversight needs to be there To perhaps not encumber the function of the police department at the same time Provide real confidence amongst the elected officials and the public that these policies are being adhered to and that You know, that's going to be an important discussion in pushing for secops in general But also every time a technology comes up That's going to have to be part of the discussion under the law So it's going to have to be you know and and hopefully over time There'll be a process where each time a new technology comes up There's going to be a certain standard that comes in every single time because it's going to be the standard that everyone is comfortable having I think that's a good point I don't know if this speaks exactly to your point But I think that you know one issue that you're raising like the police department is part of the government Right and I think that your question also is speaking very heavily to are we behind the eight ball? I think is a lot of local governments in terms of data issues overall data retention issues overall security issues overall and where is the sort of like whole government effort to really sort of focus on that And I mean to me this is the starting point of a conversation about how do we actually do that because I think on many different levels I mean even we're asking the same question because every I mean in my experience Most cities now are passing more and more bills requiring more and more agencies to keep more and more data In relatively vague ways, right? And so to a certain degree I think we also have to look at how we're centralizing that capability In sort of a congressional budget office type of way, right? Where there's sort of like an entity that's more of dealing with it rather than just siloing it out to each individual agency as well Which I also think means that you're going to get less in terms of efficiencies new ideas and different ways to do things better So I think that has to be confronted as we're sort of passing these laws and looking at these different things across a wide variety You know agencies Well That was hope So I mean to me selfishly interested So I think we have a couple closing remarks by Monica Hopkins from aclu of dc So hi everyone. I'm Monica Hopkins. I'm the executive director of the aclu of dc And I want to thank the open technology institute for hosting us Here today and all of our panel members for a great Conversation if we could just give them a round of applause I also want to thank all of you who have joined us in this room and also live Streaming as the local affiliate of the aclu We have been concerned about this for quite some time Especially in the wake of the prince jones case, which we were part of that discovered only through litigation that from 2002 to up to 2014 The metropolitan police department had spent approximately 481 thousand dollars on stingray technology The majority of which was acquired from grants through the department of homeland security So, uh, we are looking forward to partnering with uh open technology institute here locally and with all of you to Explore local solutions to the proliferation of these technologies by our local law enforcement and In the wake of sort of the last 18 months under the trump administration and I do think To this point about being behind the eight ball The more minds working On the ground and thinking big about these issues the better off we will be so I thank you For joining us and we look forward to partnering with all of you in the future Thank you very much. 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