MassPrivateIThe International Association of Chiefs of Police is having their annual conference this week. The conference provides a venue for officials from departments nationwide, as well as representatives from the federal Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and private corporations, to meet and share information about policing methodologies, technologies, and political issues related to their profession.
Among the subjects discussed yesterday was the way in which the NSA leaks are affecting the public’s view of police department surveillance. From Reuters:
The leak of highly classified documents by National Security Agency Edward Snowden prompted tighter restrictions on key technology advances, said Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vernon Keenan, speaking at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference.
The disclosures, including about monitoring of U.S. phone records, threaten to erode existing authority to use high-tech equipment, he said.
“The scrutiny that the NSA has come under filters down to us,” Keenan said at the annual gathering that draws top law enforcement from the United States and elsewhere with workshops, product exhibits and conferences.
He said guidelines for collecting data varied widely from state to state. License plate data is retained for 48 hours to five years, for example, depending on local law, he said.
For many new technologies, there is no clear legal standard to govern their use, he said.
“If we are not very careful, law enforcement is going to lose the use of technology,” he said.
New technology including advanced facial recognition software, mobile license plate readers and unmanned aircraft are reshaping U.S. law enforcement, officials said.
Such advances will be “both the benefactor and the curse of policing” and demand that law enforcement be thoughtful about their deployment, Philadelphia Police Chief Charles Ramsey said on Saturday at the start of the weeklong conference.
“Imagine instead of driving down the street scanning license tags, driving down the street checking the faces of individuals walking down the street,” Ramsey said.
“We have to remind ourselves – just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should do it.”
The Philly police chief is right. Law enforcement is confronted with a citizenry that is waking up to the reality of the surveillance state, which includes local police department participation in federal monitoring programs like “Suspicious Activity Reporting,” as well as the deployment of high-tech tools like license plate readers, surveillance cameras, and automated tracking technologies.
Ramsey warns that police shouldn’t do things simply because they can — that they shouldn’t take advantage of a legal climate in which technology has far surpassed legal protections. But that doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Instead of asking police departments to police themselves, we need clear laws to govern how departments can use these new technologies. The Fourth Amendment provides critical guidelines, but courts, legislatures, and police departments have varying views on how exactly to apply those guidelines to new surveillance and identification technologies.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/20/us-usa-police-chiefs-idUSBRE99J07Y20131020?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
http://privacysos.org/node/1215
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http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/10/police-chiefs-are-worried-theyll-lose.html