We Know What You Did Last Summer… and Every Day of Your Life

We all know how completely fragile, if it exists at all, privacy is in a modern world. Literally, anything that is electronically transmitted seems to be able not only to be recovered on the originating devices but from remotely accessible data storage depositories that many of us are completely unaware exist. That Cambridge Analytica shut down and closed its doors, having abusively accessed and used Facebook-generated data to influence the 2016 presidential election, might console some of us, but it will make little difference.

Facebook has used and continues such data internally to usurp the business plans of some of its income-generating users, eventually to launch its own parallel services, putting such users out of business or tanking their business plans. Just ask the shareholders in Snap. It is too big, too powerful and unrestrained. And as for data-abusing companies like Cambridge Analytica, the whack-a-mole persistence of data abuse will always pop up somewhere else.

“According to this The New York Times report, some of the executives of [Cambridge Analytica] and its parent’s SCL Group, along with the company’s creator Robert Mercer and his family, have created a new firm called Emerdata, based in Britain. According to this portal, Emerdata was incorporated in August 2017 is listed under ‘data processing, hosting, and related activities’ as it type.” Medianama.com, May 3^rd. They’re baaaack!

But what is equally challenging is the amount of governmental data generated about each and every one of us, growing increasingly more intrusive as facial and license plate photo-recognition software generates exceptionally accurate identification capacity… and as governmental agencies increasingly store such imagery (from “cameras everywhere” and even from the body cameras ubiquitously attached to street cops all over the land), along with time, location and identification information in file servers that can be accessed by any qualified policing agency, state or federal.

Which brings me to the mistaken notion that “sanctuary” cities and states can actually deny access to information to the federal government that can link undocumented aliens to specific locations and specific jobsites. That may be a goal, but if the relevant police departments in such “sanctuary” cities and states subscribe to that central database and provide information into that database, the feds can pretty much gather all the information they need to track and capture those undocumented residents and workers. And, privacy fans, most of those sanctuary cities and states participate in that database!

Cyrus Farivar, writing for the May 2^nd Los Angeles Times, explains how this technology is sneaking into our governmentally intrusive world as the “new normal”: Today, patrol officers in many U.S. cities, including where I live in Oakland, wear small video cameras that capture endless hours of video. In the not-too-distant future, those same cameras will have facial recognition capabilities, like the kind that recently enabled police in China to pinpoint a suspect in a crowd of 60,000 people at a pop concert.

“Much of this gear is acquired by cities and counties through federal grants. Often, well-intentioned police chiefs and other officials come before city councils or county supervisors with some anodyne request to approve a chunk of free money in the name of fighting terrorism. Lawmakers may have little idea what exactly they’re approving and usually don’t ask how that gear is going to be put to use.

“Case in point: In September 2012, the San Leandro City Council first discovered that its own Police Department had license plate readers — five years after they’d been deployed. Who enlightened them? Not the police chief. Instead, a local privacy activist, Mike Katz-Lacabe, looked into the matter. He filed a public records request to get police images of his own car — more than 100 in all, taken over two years — then told a reporter from the Wall Street Journal about it. It made the front page.

“Still, how broadly cities have deployed such surveillance technologies has gone largely unnoticed, even by informed policymakers and citizens. But that is starting to change, thanks, in part, to President Trump.

“Six months ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 54, also known as the ‘sanctuary state’ law. The law forbids state or local law enforcement agencies from investigating a person’s immigration status and limits how they cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since then, a few conservative communities have joined a lawsuit contesting the law. And a few cities that embrace sanctuary status have woken up to the fact that their crime-fighting technology is at odds with their progressive values.

“Turns out, the same license plate readers, or LPRs, that locate stolen or wanted cars can also be used to find cars belonging to immigrants here illegally… LPRs capture the plate number and automatically record the date, time and precise GPS location where it was seen. Police will say that this isn’t true surveillance; it is merely a discrete snapshot in time. Given enough data, however, patterns can easily be discerned. Does a person go to work at a certain hour? Come home at a particular time? Head out of town on Fridays or go to church on Sundays? LPRs never sleep.

“Most cities don’t just keep this data to themselves. Rather they share it with their regional ‘fusion centers,’ of which there are 77 across the country. These are federally funded clearinghouses for information about crime and public safety threats.

“In addition, there are private companies that are assembling huge databases based on surveillance technology like LPRs and facial recognition. Vigilant Solutions, based in Livermore, Calif., is one of the largest with a nationwide multibillion-record LPR database. Vigilant happily offers access to law enforcement agencies that share their own data. ‘Joining the largest law enforcement LPR sharing networking is as easy as adding a friend on your favorite social media platform,’ Vigilant boasts on its website. As of December, Vigilant has a new client: Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“So even though the San Francisco Police Department, for example, is forbidden to target immigrants who are undocumented under city and state sanctuary laws, ICE agents can simply log in to Vigilant or a fusion center database and effectively turn the SFPD’s cameras into snitches for ICE.”

Feeling warm and fuzzy yet? No? But this is the life most of us lead, particularly in modern urban centers where massive federal grants to local police departments, including providing military assault vehicles and high-tech spyware, have shattered any notion of privacy on a scale most of us simply do not realize. Somewhere in this mix, our legislation and supervision of such activities is way, way behind the physical reality of the physical intrusion. 

Somewhere, too many governmental authorities have simply assumed that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures – no longer exists. Using immigration, crime fighting and fear of terrorism policies as an excuse, state and federal police agencies simply act, intrude and fail to ask the questions our Constitution’s framers always believed needed to be asked when the government invades our private lives. Governmental responsibility and adherence to constitutional limitations seem to have left the building… and too many Americans just don’t care or even support the intrusion.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is about time for individual rights and liberties to retake the high ground in governmental policy-making!