Surveillance in the United States have existed before the signing of the Constitution. “Lantern Laws” in 18th century New York City required Black, mixed-raced, and Indigenous enslaved people to carry lit lanterns when traveling in the dark. Requiring their constant identification as a “non-white” person. Flash forward nearly 300 years later, and the bulk of the impact of surveillance laws continue to fall on BIPOC communities in the United States.
With rapidly developing surveillance technologies, through tax-subsidized investments into artificial intelligence and other weapons systems, increased opportunities for local police departments to access military-level equipment have presented themselves. In Ohio, weapons manufacturers have been embraced with open arms by our government. Look to last year’s record-breaking deal with Anduril Industries, for example. It’s up to us, as Ohioans, to question how and when these surveillance weapons might be turned on our communities.
The pervasive use of surveillance tools in marginalized neighborhoods contributes to an overarching erosion of privacy and biased policing. Residents in marginalized communities often experience a “chilling effect,” where the constant awareness of being watched deters them from participating in civic and democratic life.
It’s not just the state, either. Local governments have been quick to jump on the surveillance train for the perceived safety they provide. Without much consideration to the real dangers they pose. The most blatant example of this is the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company, Flock Safety. Founded in 2017, Flock has created a national database of the comings and goings of countless people across the country. Granting small town police departments and large federal agencies access to a centralized mass surveillance system, tracking the daily habits of anyone who may find themselves under the gaze of Flock's ever-growing network of taxpayer funded spy cams. With this sensitive location data being collected at nearly every turn, it is a matter of when, not if, this information is misused and abused by law enforcement. The independent media company, 404 Media, has published several articles linking the surveillance alliance between ICE and local police. It has been revealed that local agencies are using Flock to perform lookups on behalf of ICE. And in Texas, an officer went as far as searching cameras nationwide for a woman who self-administered an abortion. There’s even evidence of Flock surveilling people attending No Kings Protests.
What, at one time, would have required probable cause and a warrant can now be done en masse with little to no public oversight. It is our civic responsibility to question how and why these types of technologies are being use in our communities especially when standard contracts with Flock gives the company the right to “collect, analyze, and anonymize customer data ... to use and perform the services and related systems and technologies, including the training of machine learning algorithms” and allows the company to “access, use, preserve and/or disclose the [ALPR] footage to law enforcement authorities government officials, and/or third parties ... if Flock has a good faith belief that such access ... is reasonably necessary to comply with a legal process ...”. These kinds of provisions open up our daily lives to national, federal, and corporate speculation, directly violating many ACLU OH values and strategic pillars.
Further, we must work with communities across Ohio to ensure that contract provisions giving corporations ownership of our sensitive data cannot be signed without intense public scrutiny and oversight. We can do this through adopting a policy known as Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS). A CCOPS ordinance can ensure that decisions surrounding police surveillance are made with public oversight and government accountability. It’s time to demand control over police surveillance and adopt a CCOPS ordinance. The ACLU of Ohio’s statewide Action Team is committed to safeguarding our privacy rights. Join us as we call on our elected officials to not renew their contracts with Flock and ensure community safety and transparency for all through CCOPs in Ohio communities.