TRUMP AGENDA - On The Border

"How increased security affects life for border residents" PBS NewsHour 3/28/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In a sleepy, no-stoplight town 25 miles from the Arizona-Mexico border, you'll pass surveillance towers, border agents on patrol and checkpoints.  This is life along the border, where security has been ramped up significantly since 9/11, sweeping up American citizens in its wake.  William Brangham reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  President Trump today faced questions from both parties over who will pay for his promised wall on the U.S.- Mexico border.

He's already pledged to hire thousands of new immigration agents, whose jurisdiction extends deep (100+ miles) into the U.S. itself.

For Americans on the Southern border, interactions with Border Patrol vary.  Some see an occasional inconvenience, others a daily torment.

William Brangham has story.

CARLOTTA WRAY, Arivaca Resident:  Right now, it looks more like a war zone.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  Carlotta Wray's commute has changed a lot over the past few years.  She lives in Arivaca, a sleepy, no-stoplight town 25 miles from the Arizona-Mexico border.  You drive in any direction from here, you will pass surveillance towers and border agents on patrol.

Checkpoints run by Customs and Border Protection, CBP, stop traffic in either direction out of town.

CARLOTTA WRAY:  When the checkpoint was only temporary, I thought it wasn't a big deal, until it got serious.  They never left.

PRIVATE EYE - Everybody Is Watching

"How one exhibit is rethinking privacy in a world that's always watching" PBS NewsHour 8/15/2016

"The changing role of privacy in a world inundated with surveillance and oversharing."

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  At lower Manhattan's International Center for Photography, the new exhibit “Public, Private, Secret” examines the changing role of privacy in light of contemporary surveillance and oversharing.  The exhibition offers a historical perspective on voyeurism and surveillance and considers the definition of photography in the digital age, when camera access is nearly universal.  Jeffrey Brown reports.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  A stark message stops visitors in their tracks at the threshold of the International Center of Photography's new home:  “By entering this area, you consent to being photographed, filmed and/or otherwise recorded, and surrender the right to the use of such material throughout the universe in perpetuity.”

And that's what the museum's first exhibition in its brand-new space in Lower Manhattan explores, the changing role of privacy in a world inundated with surveillance and oversharing.

PAULINE VERMARE, Associate Curator, “Public, Private, Secret”:  What is your secret life?  How can you keep it secret?  I think that's one of the keys of this exhibition is really that, keeping your privacy, but also making sure that your secret life remains your secret life.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Pauline Vermare is the associate curator of Public, Private, Secret, a mix of visual media, modern and historical.

There's this 1946 Yale Joel photograph of a couple through a two-way mirror for a series in “LIFE” magazine, and more contemporary surveillance art by Jill Magid, who captured herself on surveillance cameras, and Merry Alpern, who secretly shot through the bathroom window of a seedy sex club for her “Dirty Windows” series.

The museum itself has come a long way from its 1974 beginnings in a Manhattan mansion under the direction of famed Hungarian photographer Cornell Capa.

Since then, the world of photography has changed.

MARK LUBELL, Executive Director, International Center of Photography:  It is the most Democratic format.  It is in the hands of all of us.  We all are now visually communicating.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Mark Lubell is the current director of the museum, known as the ICP.  He's overseen an institutional shift, from photojournalism and art photography to an embrace of today's digital media landscape, where cell phone cameras are ubiquitous.

MARK LUBELL:  The big difference is, it used to be a few people taking images that went out to millions.  And now it's millions and millions of people going out to millions and millions of people.  I think that's a seismic shift in the medium, and it's something that we should be looking at and exploring.

FREE - Matthew Trevithick

"American released from Iran prison describes solitary confinement, constant surveillance" by Larisa Epatko, PBS NewsHour 1/28/2016

Excerpt

Matthew Trevithick, the fifth American released from Iran’s notorious Evin Prison this month, described being watched in the months leading up to his detention and the treatment by his interrogators.

Foreigners are openly watched on the streets; their emails and Skype conversations are monitored, he told PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan on Thursday.  “You just accept it as the cost of being in Iran.”

A photo Trevithick posted on Twitter perfectly illustrated the combination of Iran’s deep beauty and scrutinizing surveillance, he said.

Trevithick, who was not a part of the prisoner exchange but was released at the same time as the others, was picked up by Iranian authorities as he was leaving Tehran University to buy an airplane ticket home for the holidays.

“I had a simple check-in system with my mother” of texting each day.  When he no longer replied, it triggered her concern, he said.

“I was arrested and accused of trying to overthrow the Iranian government.  They said I had access to bank accounts with millions of dollars in them, and that I knew the locations of weapons caches around the country,” he said, adding that they weren’t happy when he told them all he had were some Farsi textbooks and a pencil.

In all, Trevithick spent 41 days in the prison, 29 of them in solitary confinement.  The six-by-seven-foot cell was empty except for a thin rug.  Everything was worn, including the flip-flops they gave him to wear, indicating that many people passed through before him and many would likely follow.  “In a very bizarre way, you take a small bit of comfort that you’re not alone in being in this less than desirable place.”

PATRIOT ACT - Authority Update

COMMENT:  This highlights the misunderstanding of what metadata is.  In the past I worked for a company that made telephone equipment that collected metadata, so I KNOW what it is.  Metadata does NOT contain names or addresses, it contains ONLY phone numbers (which are owned by the phone carrier by the way) and date-time stamps needed to calculate the duration of a call.  Name and address information is kept by phone carrier on SEPARATE computer, a billing computer.  Access to a phone carrier's billing computer would require a warrant.

"‘Uncontroversial’ authorities at risk if Patriot Act provisions expire, says White House" PBS NewsHour 5/28/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Three U.S. intelligence tools are scheduled to expire Sunday, including the NSA's controversial bulk collection of Americans' phone metadata records.  President Obama has urged lawmakers to renew the Patriot Act programs, but so far the Senate has failed to compromise on their extension.  Judy Woodruff talks to Lisa Monaco, assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  This could prove to be a pivotal week for the future of both surveillance and privacy in the United States.  Three key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire, and so far there is no compromise in the U.S. Senate over whether or how to extend them.  That has the White House raising alarm bells.

President Obama on Tuesday pressed the Senate to renew Patriot Act surveillance programs that are set to expire late Sunday.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  It’s necessary to keep the American people safe and secure.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Three different intelligence tools are scheduled to expire, roving wiretaps that allow monitoring of terror suspects’ calls even when they switch phones, the so-called lone wolf provision that permits surveillance of individuals not affiliated with terrorist organizations, and, finally, the National Security Agency’s controversial bulk collection of Americans’ telephone metadata records.  It’s authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The Senate failed to pass a temporary extension Saturday.  Kentucky Republican Rand Paul was among those objecting to the metadata collection.

SEN. RAND PAUL, R-Ky.:  This is a debate about whether or not a warrant with a single name of a single company can be used to collect all the records, all the phone records of all of the people in our country with a single warrant.

"Are the Patriot Act provisions essential for fighting terrorism?" PBS NewsHour 5/28/2015

My answer, YES.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  What will happen if Congress allows key portions of the Patriot Act to expire?  Judy Woodruff gets views from James Bamford, author of “The Shadow Factory,” and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey on what’s at stake, and whether the USA Freedom Act offers a better alternative.

U.S. CONGRESS - Patriot Act

"Patriot Act Faces Revisions Backed by Both Parties" by JONATHAN WEISMAN and JENNIFER STEINHAUER, New York Times 4/30/2015

After more than a decade of wrenching national debate over the intrusiveness of government intelligence agencies, a bipartisan wave of support has gathered to sharply limit the federal government’s sweeps of phone and Internet records.

On Thursday, a bill that would overhaul the Patriot Act and curtail the so-called metadata surveillance exposed by (traitor IMO, Tecknomage) Edward J. Snowden was overwhelmingly passed by the House Judiciary Committee and was heading to almost certain passage in that chamber this month.

An identical bill in the Senate — introduced with the support of five Republicans — is gaining support over the objection of Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who is facing the prospect of his first policy defeat since ascending this year to majority leader.

The push for reform is the strongest demonstration yet of a decade-long shift from a singular focus on national security at the expense of civil liberties to a new balance in the post-Snowden era.

Under the bipartisan bills in the House and Senate, the Patriot Act would be changed to prohibit bulk collection, and sweeps that had operated under the guise of so-called National Security Letters issued by the F.B.I. would end.  The data would instead be stored by the phone companies themselves, and could be accessed by intelligence agencies only after approval of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

The legislation would also create a panel of experts to advise the FISA court on privacy, civil liberties, and technology matters, while requiring the declassification of all significant FISA court opinions.

The debate has resulted in a highly unusual alliance of House Speaker John A. Boehner, the White House, the Tea Party and a bipartisan majority in the House.  They are in opposition to Mr. McConnell, his Intelligence Committee chairman, and a small group of defense hawks.  In addition, two Republican presidential candidates in the Senate, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have made it clear they will not accept a straight extension of the current Patriot Act.

Unlike last year, when a similar bill passed the House overwhelmingly but failed in the Senate, this year’s USA Freedom Act was drafted in delicate negotiations among the House Judiciary Committee, House Intelligence Committee, House Republican leaders and supporters in the Senate.  The Senate, now in Republican control, includes four freshmen who supported the bill in the House last year.

The act, which expires June 1, is up for its first reauthorization since the revelations about bulk data collection.  That impending deadline, coupled with an increase of support among members of both parties, pressure from technology companies and a push from the White House have combined to make changes to the provisions more likely.

The overhaul bill passed the Judiciary Committee 25 to 2, uniting the likes of politicians who rarely agree, like Representatives Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, and Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York.  An identical measure, by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, was unveiled Tuesday, a week after Mr. McConnell proposed a blanket five-year extension of the Patriot Act passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“I don’t think he’s listening to America,” Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, said of Mr. McConnell.  “The seminal question is how much liberty are we going to give up for security?  People are on the brink.  They’re scared out of their wits.”

But Mr. McConnell holds powerful levers as the Senate leader that could halt the momentum or eventually alter the legislation.

For the moment, Mr. McConnell and Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina and Intelligence Committee chairman, seem to be increasingly isolated.

The Snowden disclosures, along with data breaches at Sony Pictures, Target and the insurance giant Anthem, have unsettled voters and empowered those in Congress arguing for greater civil liberties protection — who a few years ago “could have met in a couple of phone booths,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

That has proponents of the metadata collection straining to gain support.  “I think people are reacting to a program they don’t know,” Mr. Burr said.  Asked about turning back the momentum against him, he conceded, “I’ve got a big task.”

Mr. Snowden’s disclosures prompted a public backlash that ultimately convinced President Obama to back an end to that part of the program.  But since the President declared an end to “bulk metadata program as it currently exists” in January 2014, little has changed, Intelligence Committee members said.

Lawmakers on the Intelligence Committee pushed for changes in the legislation to allow intelligence agents to continue to track suspected foreign terrorists when they enter the United States, even though at that point they are supposed to get a warrant.  Agencies could continue their surveillance for 72 hours while they obtain legal authority.

The Intelligence Committee also insisted on a new procedure to use the Patriot Act to sweep up data in an emergency, but that information would have to be destroyed if the FISA court subsequently denies the request.

Mostly, though, the committee insisted the bill steer clear of the amendments of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, added in 2008, which legalized warrantless surveillance so long as the target is a noncitizen abroad.  The current legislative effort in Congress would not stop surveillance of noncitizens overseas.

“I believe that the work of the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee has produced a very good package,” Mr. Boehner said just before the Judiciary Committee vote.

The government would still be able to conduct some bulk data collection.  The N.S.A. has used a section of the law that created the FISA court for vast sweeps of phone and email data. Judiciary Committee members from both parties sought to end that data-collection avenue as well, but leaders of the committee beat that effort back, saying the Republican leadership would torpedo the bill if it passed.

“If the perfect defeats the good, then bad prevails,” said Representative James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, an author of the Patriot Act who is now leading efforts to change it.

Mr. McConnell’s allies are trying to build support. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas who voted for a similar bill last year as a House member, met with freshman senators on Thursday to try to sway them to the leader’s side.

Along with Mr. Cotton, four other Republican Senate freshmen supported last year’s failed House bill.

Besides Mr. Lee, the Senate USA Freedom Act has four other Republican co-sponsors, including Mr. Cruz.

Another White House hopeful, Mr. Paul, does not think the bill goes far enough.

Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said, “After 9/11 I have been a supporter of the Patriot Act.”  But he added, “At the end of the day you have to look at what you can craft with the current majority.”

A strong bipartisan House vote, expected as early as mid-May, “will send a strong message to the Senate that in the House, both sides of the aisle want reforms,” said Representative Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.

Facing a tight deadline, Mr. McConnell is also likely to bring his alternative bill to the Senate floor soon.  It is unclear whether he would have the votes for his measure, although it is possible that with a slew of amendments, the Senate could produce a bill on the floor that could be melded with the House version.

SOCIAL MEDIA - Book on Erosion of Privacy

"How can we return privacy control to social media users?" PBS NewsHour 4/7/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  What’s the cost of being constantly connected through social media?  A new book, “Terms of Service” examines the erosion of privacy in the digital era.  Author Jacob Silverman sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss what data is being tracked, stored and sold.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Now the latest addition to the NewsHour bookshelf, “Terms of Service.”  It’s a look at the erosion of privacy in the age of social media.

Jeffrey Brown recently talked to author Jacob Silverman at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant and bookstore chain in and around Washington.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Welcome to you.

JACOB SILVERMAN, Author, “Terms of Service”:  Thanks for having me.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The case you’re making — and it’s a strong case — we don’t know or we don’t seem to care enough about what we’re giving away in our digital lives.

JACOB SILVERMAN:  Right.

Well, the same systems that make it so easy to communicate with one another and live these lives where we’re essentially all public figures now also make it very easy to sort of spy on us, to collect personal information, whether you’re companies or governments or other bad actors.

And I think that a lot of people don’t really realize how much is being collected on each and every one of us, that there are big data brokers out there forming dossiers on hundreds of millions of people.

JEFFREY BROWN:  There’s been a lot of emphasis on government surveillance.   Here, you’re really pointing to what we perhaps don’t know as much about, corporate surveillance.

JACOB SILVERMAN:  Right.

Well, actually, corporations have really led the way turning the Internet into what is really a remarkable surveillance machine.  Ever since the introduction of the cookie about 15 years ago, we have sort of shifted paths to make the Internet all about monitoring what users do, so that we can direct ads toward them.

POLICING - Surveillance vs Protection

"Who Do You Protect, Who Do You Surveil?" by Joel Handley, In These Times 4/6/2015

Excerpt

The Chicago Police Department has spent millions on high-tech spying equipment, including cell-phone tracking technology, but is extremely secretive about its use.

On Black Friday, 2014, the biggest shopping day of the year, hundreds of protesters marched to Wicker Park, a trendy neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side.  It was the third stop in a day-long march from one commercial district to the next:  Starting at downtown’s Magnificent Mile, then heading north to an Apple Store, then west.  Four days after the grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, the event was part of a nationwide action decrying complacent consumerism in the face of a national tragedy.  Wicker Park’s retail epicenter seemed an appropriate place to go.

A Chicago police officer, however, couldn’t figure out the route.  He took to his radio and called in a request to the local “fusion center,” the Chicago Police Department (CPD) intelligence hub.  “One of the girls, she’s kind of an organizer here, she’s been on her phone a lot.  You guys picking up any information, uh, where they’re going, possibly?” the officer asked.

“Yeah, we’re keeping an eye on it.”

The conversation was quick, but when the audio from the call leaked online, activists saw proof of something they’d long suspected:  Chicago police were tracking their cell phones, using a controversial new technology.

The StingRay—both a brand name and a generic term—is a suitcase-sized device that acts as a wiretap for the wireless age.  But while a wiretap monitors a single line, a stingray acts like a roving cell phone tower, vacuuming in data from all nearby phones, tablets and other wireless devices.  This includes call history and current and previous locations.  Enhanced stingrays can also record and eavesdrop on phone calls.

An assortment of add-ons are now available:  The FishHawk listens in on calls; the Harpoon broadens the StingRay’s range; the AmberJack antenna helps pinpoint individual phones; the KingFish analyzes call patterns, doing in one stroke what might have taken Detective Lester Freamon an entire season of "The Wire" (cable series) to accomplish.

U.S. military and intelligence agencies developed stingray technology in the 1990s, and police departments began using it as early as 2003.  Before receiving StingRays, police departments must sign non-disclosure agreements.  It wasn’t until 2011, when the FBI presented information gathered from a stingray in court, that domestic use of the devices came to public attention.  Civil liberties groups immediately sounded the alarm.

The ACLU says stingrays violate privacy rights because they capture information from every phone in the vicinity, not just a suspect’s.  There are also concerns regarding Fourth Amendment restrictions on unreasonable search and seizure, since StingRays can penetrate the walls of a home and track a person’s movements even while inside.

The ACLU has identified at least 48 state and local law enforcement agencies that are using stingrays.  While the Harris Corporation, maker of the StingRay brand device, assured the FCC the devices were for emergency use only (because they interfere with cell networks), the few available examples of their deployment show they are used for routine police work—and to spy on peaceful activists.

On November 12, 2003, for example, police in Miami-Dade, Florida, sought “retroactive authorization” from the county for the “emergency” purchase of a stingray on November 1.  It was used to monitor protests at the Free Trade Area of the Americas Conference, according to a purchase request released to the ACLU.

Police departments have striven to keep the details of their stingray use under wraps.  The Chicago Police Department denied owning the devices until April 2014, after local activist Freddy Martinez filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  In response to that and subsequent requests from Martinez, CPD admitted it has owned StingRay devices since 2005 and has purchased upgrades, antennae and software at a total cost of at least $640,000—but has not disclosed how or when the devices are used.

Stingrays are part of a post-9/11 push by the federal government to step up local police departments’ intelligence-gathering and coordination.  Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has given more than $34 billion to local law enforcement, in part for high-tech surveillance gear like StingRays and facial recognition systems.  Seventy-eight DHS-funded fusion centers, where police officers work side by side with federal agents, have sprung up across the country, and 18,000 departments and agencies swap reports daily.

The Chicago Police Department has led the way in the new surveillance age.  A six-month investigation by In These Times indicates CPD is using its new tools to target poor communities of color and peaceful activists organizing against the city’s power-holders.

New tech, same policing

Policing in Chicago has changed little since the department was founded in 1855.  When the old “police force” (a group of part-time constables) couldn’t put down a construction workers’ strike, the city’s business class pushed the city government to fund a professional police department.  CPD was tasked with shielding the well-to-do downtown residents from the surrounding rabble.  Officers targeted the poorest immigrant group at the time, the Irish.  In "The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894," Sam Mitrani writes that while Irish Chicagoans made up only one-fifth of the city’s population, they accounted for two-thirds of arrests in the first six months of CPD’s existence.  “While the police investigated a small number of serious crimes, the bulk of their activity consisted of patrolling the everyday activity of the immigrant working class,” Mitrani writes.

They also attempted to keep a lid on growing working-class unrest (which would erupt in the Haymarket affair in 1886).  As early as May 1867, officers were monitoring rallies for the eight-hour workday.  Police listened to soapbox speeches, infiltrated meetings, arrested speakers, intimidated strikers and shot demonstrators.

In the 20th century, various CPD intelligence units—known collectively as the Red Squad—broadened their target lists from labor unions and anarchists to, over time, Communists, black radicals, neighborhood organizations and New Left groups.  Frank Donner, in Protectors of Privilege:  Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America, writes that officers stole mailing lists, burglarized homes and maintained files on hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans.  One small community organization was infiltrated “apparently … because it opposed a cross-town expressway.”  CPD launched its first effort at high-tech surveillance in the 1960s, using telephoto cameras to document the faces of protesters and rioters.

In 1982, a class action lawsuit quelled such abuses when a federal judge imposed a consent decree on the city of Chicago that prohibited “investigative activity … that is directed toward First Amendment conduct.”

However, playing on fear of black gangs and terrorism, Mayor Richard M. Daley convinced a federal court to ease the rules in 2001.  The following year, undercover police infiltrated meetings of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization.  In 2009, a judge dissolved the consent decree in full.  In other words, at a time when CPD was testing out a new fusion center and an arsenal of high-tech surveillance gadgets such as StingRays, it was freed from the oversight that protected Chicagoans from investigation for exercising the First Amendment.  Police could again conduct secret surveillance, so long as they filled out a brief “First Amendment worksheet” and received departmental approval.

Whom they chose to surveil was in keeping with the department’s long history.  In addition to its covert obsession with activists, the department has never given up its day-to-day focus on the poor and working class.  Today, African Americans are the city’s lowest-income racial group.  Although they comprise only one-third of the city’s population, an analysis of 2010 arrest rates conducted by In These Times shows that 72 percent of all CPD arrests were of black residents (most frequently for alleged drug violations).  Similarly, an ACLU of Illinois report released in March found that black Chicagoans were subject to 72 percent of “stop and frisks.”

Malkia Cyril, the founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, wrote in a recent Huffington Post op-ed that “indiscriminate and covert collection of private data expedites, expands and entrenches” such discriminatory policing.

CPD meets Big Data

In 2003, the Chicago Police Department introduced Police Observation Devices, or POD cameras—30 large blue-and-white boxes mounted on poles—with the aim of filming open-air drug markets.  In March 2005, the city trumpeted the program’s first success.  Camera operators had spotted hand-to-hand drug transactions and notified a gang unit, which arrested three alleged West Side dealers.

Despite this slow start, CPD tech wunderkind Ron Huberman, the founder of the program, touted the cameras as “the future of crime fighting.”  Giving a tour of the control center to a Wired magazine writer in 2005, Huberman showed off the cameras, becoming agitated when he spotted what he thought was a drug deal.  “You see that guy?  … He’s pitching dope—you can tell.  Fucker,” Huberman is quoted as saying.  They zoom in on the suspect (“so tight I can see the wisps of a mustache,” the writer says) and see him holding a brown bag and money.  Huberman threatens to call in a bust then and there, but relents, saving the footage to use another day.

Evidently inspired by the program even before the first arrests, in 2004 Mayor Daley announced the creation of Operation Virtual Shield.  In the downtown business district, 250 new cameras would be equipped with algorithms that could flag someone’s behavior as suspicious and alert the police.

These cameras proved a modest beginning to what would become the “most extensive and integrated” surveillance network in the country, according to former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff.  Funded by tens of millions of dollars in DHS grants, Chicago’s network has expanded to include cameras in more than 1,000 private businesses that have granted access to the city, plus 7,000 cameras in public schools and 3,200 on Chicago Housing Authority property.  (Notably, 84.9 percent of the city’s public-school students and 93 percent of CHA households are black or Latino.)  Another 23,000 cameras have been installed in Chicago Transit Authority stations, buses and trains.

By 2011, the last time CPD released complete stats, the number of POD cameras had swelled to more than 1,200.  Of the 632 POD addresses currently listed on CPD’s website, more than 90 percent are in communities of color, primarily in the city’s low-income South and West Sides.

When CPD boasted in 2013 that the surveillance network had led to 4,500 arrests in a four-year span, Adam Schwartz, an ACLU attorney in Illinois, noted that this was less than 1 percent of all arrests.  Numerous studies have shown that video cameras don’t reduce violent crime and do little to curb property crime.  Given this, the ACLU wonders why Chicagoans should give up so much privacy, noting that the cameras’ zoom functions allow operators to closely watch targets and peer into cars and windows.

Meanwhile, in 2005, the department secretly bought its first stingray equipment, taking advantage of an Illinois law allowing police to make purchases outside the normal budgetary and procurement processes by using seized drug money.  Between 2009 and 2014, CPD acquired multiple upgrades to its original devices, as well as AmberJack and KingFish attachments.

While it was buying StingRays, CPD introduced automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) with some fanfare.  In 2006, Police Superintendent Phil Cline unveiled to the Chicago Sun-Times a “futuristic squad car” outfitted with an ALPR that could scan 3,600 plates per hour, automatically cataloging the date, time and GPS location in a central database.  Police would be alerted if their car’s scanner caught a plate on a “hot list” of wanted vehicles.  A 2007 CPD report explained that the ALPR-equipped cars were sent to high-crime neighborhoods, as well as “demonstrations and numerous special events throughout the city.”

Today, of CPD’s 25 ALPR-equipped squad cars, 22 are assigned to police districts and patrol areas with majority non-white populations.  The five majority white districts share three of the cars.  The department has also installed plate-scanning software in its POD cameras.

The cameras automatically send license-plate scans to a police database, which officers can check whenever they’re curious about where a certain car has traveled.  The CPD also subscribes to a private ALPR database that lets it run plates against more than 3 billion records.

This retention of data is what most worries the ACLU’s Schwartz:  “If you have hundreds of ALPRs around your city capturing hundreds of license plates every hour … you can punch in somebody’s license plate number and see where they’ve been, or after the fact, you can punch in the location of a protest three years ago and see who was there.”

SURVEILLANCE - NSA's Secret 'Google'

"The Surveillance Engine:  How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google" by Ryan Gallagher, The Intercept 8/25/2014

Excerpt

The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept.

The documents provide the first definitive evidence that the NSA has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies.  Planning documents for ICREACH, as the search engine is called, cite the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration as key participants.

ICREACH contains information on the private communications of foreigners and, it appears, millions of records on American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing.  Details about its existence are contained in the archive of materials provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Earlier revelations sourced to the Snowden documents have exposed a multitude of NSA programs for collecting large volumes of communications.  The NSA has acknowledged that it shares some of its collected data with domestic agencies like the FBI, but details about the method and scope of its sharing have remained shrouded in secrecy.

ICREACH has been accessible to more than 1,000 analysts at 23 U.S. government agencies that perform intelligence work, according to a 2010 memo.  A planning document from 2007 lists the DEA, FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency as core members.  Information shared through ICREACH can be used to track people’s movements, map out their networks of associates, help predict future actions, and potentially reveal religious affiliations or political beliefs.

The creation of ICREACH represented a landmark moment in the history of classified U.S. government surveillance, according to the NSA documents.

“The ICREACH team delivered the first-ever wholesale sharing of communications metadata within the U.S. Intelligence Community,” noted a top-secret memo dated December 2007.  “This team began over two years ago with a basic concept compelled by the IC’s increasing need for communications metadata and NSA’s ability to collect, process and store vast amounts of communications metadata related to worldwide intelligence targets.”

The search tool was designed to be the largest system for internally sharing secret surveillance records in the United States, capable of handling two to five billion new records every day, including more than 30 different kinds of metadata on emails, phone calls, faxes, internet chats, and text messages, as well as location information collected from cellphones.  Metadata reveals information about a communication — such as the “to” and “from” parts of an email, and the time and date it was sent, or the phone numbers someone called and when they called — but not the content of the message or audio of the call.

AMERICA - The Tog-of-War Between Journalists and National Security

"Report examines effects of surveillance on reporters’ sources" PBS NewsHour 7/29/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  The relationship between government and investigative journalists has often been fraught, one wanting to hold onto classified intelligence, the other seeking to pry open secrets, each believing it’s serving the public interest.

But a new report makes the claim that in the post-9/11 era, the government has gone too far in clamping down on the work of reporters and their sources.

Jeffrey Brown has our look.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  The report comes from the advocacy groups Human Rights Watch and the ACLU and is titled “With Liberty To Monitor All:  How Large-Scale U.S. Surveillance Is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy.”

It was produced after talking with dozens of public officials, lawyers, and most of all, journalists.

One of the latter is with us now, Dana Priest, an investigative reporter for The Washington Post and a professor at the University of Maryland.  With another view of the situation, we’re joined by Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security in the Bush administration.  He’s also a former general counsel at the NSA in the 1990s.

NATIONAL SECURITY - The Greater Harm Done by Revealing Surveillance Tools

I totally agree with title....

"Former NSA director: Having surveillance tools revealed puts U.S. in greater harm" PBS NewsHour 5/13/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Now to a close look at the U.S. government’s surveillance programs.

It’s the subject of tonight’s “Frontline” on PBS, the first of a two-part series titled “The United States of Secrets (includes 2hr video).”  Their reporting focuses on inside accounts of the controversial spying operations put in place after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Here, you will see former National Security Agency employees affiliated with a program called ThinThread, a tool which could capture and sort massive amounts of phone and e-mail data, but had an encryption function to protect the privacy of individual Americans.  They and others describe the moment they found out that the technology was being used without the privacy protection.

NARRATOR:  It didn’t take long for clues to emerge that something much bigger was going on.

WILLIAM BINNEY, Former National Security Agency Technical Director:  They started seeing stacks of servers piled in corners and so forth.

So we had to walk way around all this hardware that was piling up out there.  And so we knew, you know, something was happening.

JAMES BAMFORD, Author, “The Shadow Factory:  The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America”: All of a sudden, people who normally would communicate with each other were keeping secret this new operation of some sort.

OPINION - Brooks and Marcus 1/17/2014

"Brooks and Marcus on Obama's surveillance reforms, Benghazi attack blame" PBS Newshour 1/17/2014

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus join Gwen Ifill to discuss the week's top political news, including whether or not President Obama went far enough with his recommended surveillance reforms, who's blame for the Benghazi attack and the possibility for new sanctions on Iran.

NSA - Internet Surveillance Program

"NSA Ability to Intercept Domestic Communication Raises More Privacy Questions" PBS Newshour 8/21/2013

Excerpt

MARGARET WARNER (Newshour):  The nation's top intelligence official today declassified documents showing that, for three years, the National Security Agency, or NSA, collected more than 50,000 e-mails a year between Americans with no connection to terrorism.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2011 ruled the collection methods unconstitutional.  And today's documents show changes the NSA made so that the program, designed to target foreign intelligence, could continue.

The release came hours after The Wall Street Journal reported the NSA has built a surveillance network covering roughly 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic, including e-mails, Web searches and Internet phone calls of Americans.

And we're joined now by Siobhan Gorman, intelligence correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.

SURVEILLANCE - Progress of Facial Scanning Technology

"Facial Scanning Is Making Gains in Surveillance" by CHARLIE SAVAGE, New York Times 8/21/2013

Excerpt

The federal government is making progress on developing a surveillance system that would pair computers with video cameras to scan crowds and automatically identify people by their faces, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with researchers working on the project.

The Department of Homeland Security tested a crowd-scanning project called the Biometric Optical Surveillance System — or BOSS — last fall after two years of government-financed development.  Although the system is not ready for use, researchers say they are making significant advances.  That alarms privacy advocates, who say that now is the time for the government to establish oversight rules and limits on how it will someday be used.

There have been stabs for over a decade at building a system that would help match faces in a crowd with names on a watch list — whether in searching for terrorism suspects at high-profile events like a presidential inaugural parade, looking for criminal fugitives in places like Times Square or identifying card cheats in crowded casinos.

The automated matching of close-up photographs has improved greatly in recent years, and companies like Facebook have experimented with it using still pictures.

But even with advances in computer power, the technical hurdles involving crowd scans from a distance have proved to be far more challenging.  Despite occasional much-hyped tests, including one as far back as the 2001 Super Bowl, technical specialists say crowd scanning is still too slow and unreliable.

The release of the documents about the government’s efforts to overcome those challenges comes amid a surge of interest in surveillance matters inspired by the leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.  Interest in video surveillance was also fueled by the attack on the Boston Marathon, where suspects were identified by officials looking through camera footage.

In a sign of how the use of such technologies can be developed for one use but then expanded to another, the BOSS research began as an effort to help the military detect potential suicide bombers and other terrorists overseas at “outdoor polling places in Afghanistan and Iraq,” among other sites, the documents show.  But in 2010, the effort was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security to be developed for use instead by the police in the United States.

After a recent test of the system, the department recommended against deploying it until more improvements could be made.  A department official said the contractor was “continuing to develop BOSS,” although there is no sign of when it may be done.  But researchers on the project say they made progress, and independent specialists say it is virtually inevitable that someone will make the broader concept work as camera and computer power continue to improve.

SURVEILLANCE - License Plate Readers

What!?  A car license plate that is in open public view is a privacy issue?  Come on folks, be serious and logical (if possible).  NOTHING in public view is private, including your face while in the car.

"Do License Plate Readers Prevent Crime or Create Privacy Abuses?" PBS Newshour 8/12/2013

Excerpt

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour):  You see them on roadsides, bridges, toll plazas and in the hands of police.  More and more these days, when Americans take to the road in their cars, cameras are in place to photograph and record their license plates.

Police forces are widely adopting the technology.  The date, time, and location of each image is uploaded into a database and can be used for a variety of things, from enforcing traffic laws to tracking stolen cars and suspects sought for criminal activity.  But these license readers have also raised privacy concerns.

We look at the issue now with technology consultant Sid Heal, formerly a commander with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and Catherine Crump of the ACLU.  She wrote a recent study evaluating the program.

NATIONAL SECURITY - Push-Back on NSA Internet Surveillance Program

Really think hiding possible terrorist communications makes U.S. safer?  The Internet has NEVER been a private medium, never.  Privacy on the internet is like expecting privacy while having a conversation in a public park, you do risk the possibility that you could be overheard.

"Secure email providers shut down citing government pressure" by Rachel Bennett, WMCTV.com 8/9/2013

Two secure email providers ended their services Friday, implying that the National Security Administration was prying into their customers' accounts.

Lavabit, an encrypted email service used by exiled NSA leaker Edward Snowden, made the announcement Friday, killing email addresses for more than 350,000 users and ending all access to their services.  Shortly thereafter, Silent Mail followed suit.

"I have been forced to make a difficult decision:  To become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit," said Lavabit owner and operator Ladar Levison in a statement.

Levison claimed he could not discuss what forced his decision because it's not allowed under the law.  Nowhere in his statement did he mention NSA, but the organization is strongly implied.

"As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests," Levison said.

It was revealed in mid-July that NSA leaker Edward Snowden had used Lavabit to correspond with human rights organizations and the press.

Lavabit offered privacy protection for its users, including encryption and not using email data for advertising purposes, which is a widely used practice for other providers such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Soon after Lavabit's announcement, Silent Circle, the company behind Silent Mail, announced they had come to the same decision.

"We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now.  We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now," said Silent Circle founder Jon Callas in a statement.

Silent Circle also provides encrypted phone services, Silent Phone and Silent Text, which they say are "end-to-end secure."  These and their other services will continue as usual.

These shutdowns come only a week after the New York Times reported that the NSA has the ability to, and actively does, search the content of messages to and from the United States without warrants.

Meanwhile, Levison said the fight over secure email isn't over.  He said Lavabit has "started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals."

Levison said a favorable decision would mean the resurrection of Lavabit as an American company, but until then, he is warning others to stay away.

"I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States," he said.

NSA - Blanket Restrictions on Surveillance Defeated in U.S. House

Good move.

"House Defeats Effort to Rein In N.S.A. Data Gathering" by JONATHAN WEISMAN, New York Times 7/24/2013

Excerpt

A deeply divided House defeated legislation Wednesday that would have blocked the National Security Agency from collecting vast amounts of phone records, handing the Obama administration a hard-fought victory in the first Congressional showdown over the N.S.A.’s surveillance activities since Edward J. Snowden’s security breaches last month.

The 205-to-217 vote was far closer than expected and came after a brief but impassioned debate over citizens’ right to privacy and the steps the government must take to protect national security.  It was a rare instance in which a classified intelligence program was openly discussed on the House floor, and disagreements over the program led to some unusual coalitions.

Conservative Republicans leery of what they see as Obama administration abuses of power teamed up with liberal Democrats long opposed to intrusive intelligence programs.  The Obama administration made common cause with the House Republican leadership to try to block it.

House members pressing to rein in the N.S.A. vowed afterward that the outrage unleashed by Mr. Snowden’s disclosures would eventually put a brake on the agency’s activities.  Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and a longtime critic of post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism efforts, said lawmakers would keep coming back with legislation to curtail the dragnets for “metadata,” whether through phone records or Internet surveillance.

At the very least, the section of the Patriot Act in question will be allowed to expire in 2015, he said.  “It’s going to end — now or later,” Mr. Nadler said.  “The only question is when and on what terms.”

Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, promised lawmakers that he would draft legislation this fall to add more privacy protections to government surveillance programs even as he begged the House to oppose blanket restrictions.

NATIONAL SECURITY - President Obama, Don't Defund NSA Surveillance

President Obama is correct on this.

I am very familiar with the mata-data collected from phone systems.  I worked for a company that made the type of phone equipment that collected mata-data for 9yrs.  The data is ONLY phone numbers (including country codes), duration of calls, and date-time stamp.  No names or address are part of this data.  And, today, not even which phone company bills the number.  This is why you can keep your phone number even when switching phone providers.

Your personal data is ONLY on your phone provider's computer, and getting that data requires a warrant.

"Obama:  Don't defund NSA surveillance" by David Jackson, USA Today 7/24/2013

The White House is weighing in against a congressional proposal that would block funding for the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone data.

"We oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our intelligence community's counterterrorism tools," said a statement from President Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney.

In opposing an amendment being pushed by Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., Carney said that Obama welcomes a debate on surveillance, but opposes a "blunt approach" that could compromise national security.

It's not known whether the full House will approve the Amash amendment, or if the Senate would follow suit.

In any event, Obama would likely veto any attempt to cut NSA surveillance funding.

Carney's full statement:

"In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the president has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens."

"The administration has taken various proactive steps to advance this debate, including the president's meeting with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, his public statements on the disclosed programs, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's release of its own public statements, ODNI General Counsel Bob Litt's speech at Brookings, and ODNI's decision to declassify and disclose publicly that the Administration filed an application with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  We look forward to continuing to discuss these critical issues with the American people and the Congress."

"However, we oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our intelligence community's counterterrorism tools."

"This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.  We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation."

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 6/14/2013

COMMENT:  This piece contains a very good debate on the Syrian issue.

"Shields and Brooks on Syria, Snowden and Surveillance" PBS Newshour 6/14/2013

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks analyze the week's top political news with Judy Woodruff, including the Obama administration's decision to provide aid to Syrian rebels, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and American attitudes towards domestic surveillance.

GOOGLE - Their View on NSA Surveillance Program

"Google Asks Approval to Offer More Transparency About Role in PRISM Program" PBS Newshour 6/11/2013

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  And we return to the surveillance programs and the questions surrounding them.  Beyond the government itself, there are many concerns about the role of companies like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo!

Today, Google sent a letter to the Department of Justice and the FBI, saying it wants to be allowed to be more transparent about the government's requests for data -- quote -- "in terms of both the number we receive and their scope."

Within hours, Facebook and Microsoft issued similar statements and requests of the government as well.

Jeffrey Brown spoke with Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, from Amsterdam this afternoon.  It was Google's first U.S. broadcast interview since the news broke.

Watch Google Asks Approval on PRISM Program Role Transparency on PBS.
See more from PBS NewsHour.

AMERICA - More on the NSA Surveillance Issue

"Whereabouts of NSA Whistleblower Unknown as Lawmakers Call for His Prosecution" (Part-1) PBS Newshour 6/11/2013

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  U.S. lawmakers are calling for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  Speaker of the House John Boehner called Snowden a "traitor" and says he put Americans at risk by disclosing the information.  But not every member of Congress sees Snowden as the problem.  Gwen Ifill reports.

"How Does the Government Manage Workers With Access to Classified Information" (Part-2) PBS Newshour 6/11/2013

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Edward Snowden's leak of classified NSA documents bring up concerns about the reliance on contractors within the intelligence community.  Gwen Ifill talks to Irving Lachow of Center for a New American Security and Dana Priest of The Washington Post about how the government protects employees' access to sensitive information.

COMMENT:  Do to my background in computers and security (including from my Navy carrier) and a previous civilian job related to phone systems, here are some facts.

■ The internet (aka World Wide Web) has NEVER been private.  The internet is like holding a conversation in the middle of a shopping mall and expecting that it will never be overheard.  To expect privacy on the internet is nieve.

■ As to the phone surveillance, IF what the NSA says they are collecting is true, they are correct.  From my phone related job, I am familiar with the  'meta-data' being collected (calling phone, called phone, duration, country codes, etc).  It is the same data that is collected from a Phone Switch System for your phone billing.  The connection between a phone number and a name is done by a SEPARATE billing system computer, so your name is not collected without getting access to a phone billing computer, which would require a subpoena.