On Thursday the American Civil Liberties Union hosted a panel on the state of surveillance in North Carolina and focused on how technology like drones, automatic license-plate readers, and mass-surveillance cameras are being regulated to protect Fourth Amendment rights and citizen privacy. The overarching message was alarming: regulations aren’t in place.
Not a single law exists to determine how to limit surveillance data compiled on North Carolina’s citizens, including how long the data can be stored and who can access it. Some panelists argued for more transparency while others defended the open exchange of such information, at least within the government.
Mark Newbold, attorney for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, said citizens in public places should have no reasonable expectation of privacy, therefore surveillance is fair game. But Sharon Bradford Franklin of the Constitution Project, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on the constitution, said that doctrine is eroding as technology that can easily stitch together a dossier of a private citizen’s movement throughout a whole city emerges. She argued that although you use public streets, your destination may be private.
Sarah Preston, policy director of the ACLU-NC, agreed with Franklin and discussed several bills that were put before General Assembly this session that preserve privacy and protect against unwarranted surveillance, including House Bill 312, which would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before using drones to collect evidence against an individual. If you think these unmanned aircrafts are only used in military ops, think again. Monroe just approved $44,000 to purchase a drone. Even Gastonia has one. Local governments love them because they are cheaper and smaller than police helicopters, virtually silent (making them hard to detect), and don’t require a pilot.
Other bills include SB529, which would essentially require a warrant for obtaining an individual’s location via GPS tracking of their smartphone, and SB623, which would regulate the use and retention of data collected by automatic license-plate readers. In Charlotte, data from the readers, which take thousands of photos per minute of license plates, is currently stored for 18 months. The ACLU is pushing for a warrant requirement and 10-day storage limit.
Despite that two of the bills enjoy bipartisan support, all three are presumably dead in committee this session. (Interestingly, the smartphone privacy bill did not have the support of any Democrats.) Preston said the ACLU vowed to keep fighting for all three bills to be passed in 2014.
CMPD attorney Newbold disagreed strongly with the bills saying as written, they’d require police get a court order to look into their own database. He said license tag information needs to be stored for six months. When asked for a scenario that would require police to know if a car drove through a certain intersection six months ago, he cited the need to corroborate or discredit the testimony of “jailhouse snitches.” (Police need to know everywhere you’ve driven so far in 2013 because of snitches. Let that sink in for a minute.)
Newbold said obtaining a warrant is too high a threshold for all these technologies and that reasonable suspicion should be the standard, determined by the local police. He said we should just trust them.
Franklin countered that a good step toward building trust with the public would be total transparency. She suggested the government release a list to the public of every block that has a camera and a report of how all data is used.
An audience member’s comment was perhaps the most poignant of the discussion. He said perhaps we’d trust the government more if they trusted citizens enough not to subject them to constant surveillance.
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This article appears in May 29 – Jun 4, 2013.
What is scary is not that the government is doing this, it’s that no one cares. In fact a great many people think it’s a great idea.
He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security. He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.
Ben Franklin
So DLP, did you vote for the guys implementing these things (Obama, Holder, Foxx, Monroe) or did you vote for someone who was against them (Ron Paul, Gary Johnson)?
Look in the mirror.
GWO:
You totally missed the point of my post in your political comment.
“It’s that no one cares. In fact a great many people think it’s a great idea.”
DLP, if you cared you’d not have voted multiple times for those doing this. You on Verizon?
Some people see every subject through the semi opaque window of politics.
Indeed DLP. There were candidates on your ballot who would not be engaging in the surveillance you aptly decry. In your blind allegiance to a political party, you voted against those candidates and instead supported the spies.
From The New York Times editorial board:
“The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.
The Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
Those reassurances have never been persuasive.”
For what it’s worth, GW, I agree that this administration’s policies on surveillance and privacy have been deplorable. But if all us liberals had voted 3rd party (which I wouldn’t have for other parts of their platforms, we’re not all single issue voters you know), guess what? We’d be under a Romney administration right now, which would likely hold the same or worse policies all under the guise of fighting terrorism. Don’t act like that obvious consequence shouldn’t be on our minds when voting.
GW:
YOU are the only person posting here who keeps ranting about parties and politics.
I Stated that it is scary that the American People support these blatantly unconstitutional infringements of our Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It is you, not me, who is being blindly loyal to a political party. I am, and have always been, an independent.
DLP I find it amusing that you continue to smear me as “loyal to a political party” when I voted in one party’s primary but then voted for another party’s nominee for President. You might be registered Independent but I’ll bet you’ve never voted for a non-Democrat for any race where a Democrat was running. Feel free to correct that – but first apologize for smearing me.
rumbrave – if you don’t vote your conscience then why bother pretending you have one?
I’m smearing YOU as loyal to a Political Party? I don’t care who you are; that’s funny. Read all the posts under this article and see if you can find a single instance of me assigning blame to a political party. Now review them again and see who keeps telling me it’s my fault because without any actual knowledge, you just KNOW that I voted for the wrong party. I complained about the foolishness of the AMERICAN PEOPLE.
On 6/8 DLP writes:
“It is you, not me, who is being blindly loyal to a political party.”
On 6/10 DLP writes:
“I’m smearing YOU as loyal to a Political Party? I don’t care who you are; that’s funny.”
Conclusion: DLP is a fembot whose head has already exploded.
And GW is a troll who is just trying to pick a fight.