Atlas of Surveillance: Documenting Police Tech...

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"The Atlas of Surveillance is a database of surveillance technology deployed by law enforcement in communities across the United States.

This includes drones, body-worn cameras, automated license plate readers, facial recognition, and more.

This research was compiled by more than 500 students and volunteers, and incorporates datasets from a variety of public and non-profit sources."

China: Police Big Data Systems Violate Privacy, Target Dissent
"The Chinese government should stop building big data policing platforms that aggregate and analyze massive amounts of citizens’ personal information, Human Rights Watch said today. This abusive 'Police Cloud' system is designed to track and predict the activities of activists, dissidents, and ethnic minorities, including those authorities say have 'extreme thoughts,' among other functions.

China has no enforceable protections for privacy rights against state surveillance.

'It is frightening that Chinese authorities are collecting and centralizing ever more information about hundreds of millions of ordinary people, identifying persons who deviate from what they determine to be ‘normal thought,’ and then surveilling them,' said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. 'Until China has meaningful privacy rights and an accountable police force, the government should immediately cease these efforts.'”

The FBI is Building a National Watchlist that Gives Companies Real-Time Updates on Employees
"The FBI's Rap Back program is quietly transforming the way employers conduct background checks. While routine background checks provide employers with a one-time “snapshot” of their employee’s past criminal history, employers enrolled in federal and state Rap Back programs receive ongoing, real-time notifications and updates about their employees’ run-ins with law enforcement, including arrests at protests and charges that do not end up in convictions. ('Rap' is an acronym for Record of Arrest and Prosecution; 'Back” is short for background.)'

Rap Back has been advertised by the FBI as an effort to target individuals in 'positions of trust,' such as those who work with children, the elderly, and the disabled. According to a Rap Back spokesperson, however, there are no formal limits as to 'which populations of individuals can be enrolled in the Rap Back Service.' Civil liberties advocates fear that under Trump’s administration the program will grow with serious consequences for employee privacy, accuracy of records, and fair employment practices."

DNA Dragnet: In some Cities, Police go from Stop-and-Frisk to Stop-and-Spit
"...Over the last decade, collecting DNA from people who are not charged with — or even suspected of — any particular crime has become an increasingly routine practice for police in smaller cities not only in Florida, but in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as well.

While the largest cities typically operate public labs and feed DNA samples into the FBI’s national database, cities like Melbourne have assembled databases of their own, often in partnership with private labs that offer such fast, cheap testing that police can afford to amass DNA even to investigate minor crimes, from burglary to vandalism.

And to compile samples for comparison, some jurisdictions also have quietly begun asking people to turn over DNA voluntarily during traffic stops, or even during what amount to chance encounters with police. In Melbourne, riding a bike at night without two functioning lights can lead to DNA swab — even if the rider is a minor."

Related Article: Watched: Police forces across the U.S. are stockpiling massive databases with personal information...

Facial Recognition Software Moves from Overseas Wars to Local Police
"Facial recognition software, which American military and intelligence agencies used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify potential terrorists, is being eagerly adopted by dozens of police departments around the country to pursue drug dealers, prostitutes and other conventional criminal suspects. But because it is being used with few guidelines and with little oversight or public disclosure, it is raising questions of privacy and concerns about potential misuse."

CISA: the dirty deal between Google and the NSA that no one is talking about http://t.co/QidLU3dx2j

— Crim Library UTL (@CrimLib) July 30, 2015

When Cops Check Facebook
"America's police are using social media to fight crime, a practice that raises troubling questions.

In 2012, Brooklyn police officer Michael Rodrigues arrested a burglary gang, the Brower Boys, by adding gang members as friends on Facebook. The day of the arrest was like gathering the lowest-hanging fruit. 'It’s break-in day on the avenue,' one gang member posted in his status message. Officer Rodrigues and colleagues tracked the gang members to the avenue in question. They photographed the young men committing the crime, and then arrested them....

...Social media can produce evidence in some cases, but it also fails to capture the complexity of human relationships—and can sometimes distort them. For this reason, it is important to take care that social media data is not misused or misinterpreted in the pursuit of justice."

Related article on Facebook's impact on the justice system 

Vital Intelligence Gathering or Meddling?  Police Across Canada under Growing Pressure to Stop Carding People
"You’re a cop on patrol at 3 a.m. and you see someone walking down an alley. Is it OK to stop that person and ask for ID? What if everything checks out? Should you still make a record of that encounter?

For many police agencies the answer is yes — you never know when that record might come in handy in a future investigation.

But consider the case of Desmond Cole, a 33-year-old Toronto journalist who says he has been stopped, questioned or followed by police more than 50 times in Ontario. At what point, he asks, does intelligence gathering become meddling and intrusion? Is it fair that police have now accumulated, as Cole suspects, an internal database of his many alleged encounters when he did nothing wrong?"

Related video:  Ex-Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair Talks Carding on Metro Morning

What Good is a Video You Can't See?
"Police body cameras are meant to be a tool of public accountability.  But even experts can't agree on how to make sure that happens.

Body cameras were introduced as a tool of public accountability, but making their videos available to the public might be too fraught, too complex, and too expensive to actually put into practice.

Much of the ambiguity around body cameras comes down to this: Despite their general popularity, despite being the only policy change called for by the family of Michael Brown, body cameras are a little weird. They are both a way for the public to see what police officers are doing and a way for people to be surveilled. If a body-cam program, scaled across an entire department, were to release its footage willy-nilly, it would be a privacy catastrophe for untold people. Police-worn cameras don't just capture footage from city streets or other public places. Officers enter people's homes, often when those people are at their most vulnerable"

New York: Investigate Police Surveillance of Muslims

Massive Operation Based on Religious Profiling, Not Criminal Activity

New York authorities should fully investigate New York City police for violating religious freedom in their surveillance of Muslim “communities of interest,” Human Rights Watch said today. The New York State Attorney General’s office announced on February 24, 2012, that it would not investigate the police surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods because of unexplained “legal and investigative obstacles.”

A 60-page New York City Police Department report obtained by The Associated Press details a 2007 surveillance operation of Muslims in Long Island and in Newark, New Jersey. Plainclothes officers from the Demographics Unit infiltrated and photographed dozens of areas identified as “locations of concern,” including mosques, Muslim student organizations, and businesses owned or frequented by Muslims. Using this information, the police department built databases showing where Muslims live, pray, buy groceries, and use internet cafes. The report acknowledged that intelligence-gathering efforts went beyond the department’s jurisdiction, and cited no evidence of terrorism or other criminal activity prompting the operation.

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