By eliminating these critical annual use reports, the recent amendments limit opportunities for public oversight of how surveillance tech is deployed. Previous versions required law enforcement agencies that acquired surveillance tech to periodically report to civilian authorities on how they used it. We were disappointed by recent amendments watering down the bill’s provisions for ongoing oversight. This year’s SB 1186 is modeled on a similar proposal from last year’s legislative session, SB 21, which we also supported. Recent changes preserve community control over acquisition, if not deployment In particular, the bill would require law enforcement agencies to develop use policies, and justify the public safety rationale, before acquiring powerful tools that could easily be misused-and even more easily undermine the rights of community members. The opportunity to strengthen local oversight is one reason that EFF has supported SB 1186, a proposed measure currently pending before the California state legislature that would increase transparency in the acquisition of surveillance technology by local police departments.
Local elected officials and the public are cut out from the oversight process. In most cities and towns around the country, however, police unilaterally decide whether to acquire surveillance technologies. Most importantly, before the city council votes on whether to approve the spy tech, the public must be notified of the issue and given an opportunity to be heard. Public oversight offers a solutionĭue to local laws secured by grassroots campaigns, several cities around the country-including Oakland, Berkeley, and Seattle, as well as Somerville, MA-now bar local police from obtaining surveillance equipment without approval from independent local policymakers, following meaningful oversight of the technology and proposed policies. This saga reflects how executive secrecy can extend from Washington all the way down to the local level. At the time, no one outside law enforcement, the military, and corporate contractors even knew that cell-site simulators existed, since the FBI had insisted on non-disclosure agreements to keep civilians-including local officials and judges-in the dark.īut in spite of corporate and government secrecy undermining public oversight and trust, they eventually came to light after a jailhouse lawyer serving a prison sentence for credit card fraud took it upon himself to investigate, discovering a racket with tentacles gripping local police departments across the U.S. One early example involved a 2003 demonstration in Miami (in which the author of this post participated) opposing global corporate governance via undemocratic international trade agreements. While presented as tools to enhance public safety, cell-site simulators have been used in the U.S. While originally developed for use in military theaters, cell-site simulators are also increasingly purchased-and deployed without civilian oversight-by police departments across the U.S.
They monitor cell phone networks by mimicking a cell tower and gaining transmissions from cell phones near it, thereby exposing the phones’ locations and unique identifiers (such as an IMSI number), and enabling capture of metadata and unencrypted voice and text content. are cell-site simulators, sometimes described as a “Stingray” (after the trade name of an early version). The particular tools built by Harris Corp. A proposed law in Sacramento could ensure that this history never repeats itself. without any elected policymakers knowing that their tools even existed. managed to sell sophisticated military surveillance equipment to police departments across the U.S. For nearly a decade, a company known as Harris Corp.