{"id":8452,"date":"2014-10-16T16:36:52","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T20:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=8452"},"modified":"2014-10-16T16:36:52","modified_gmt":"2014-10-16T20:36:52","slug":"just-the-facts-maam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/just-the-facts-maam\/","title":{"rendered":"Just the Facts Ma’am"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Police Departments Skirting Public Accountability By Using Private Foundations To Obtain Controversial Surveillance Technology<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/header>\n
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The less the public knows<\/a> about law enforcement surveillance technology, the better. That’s the thought process governing the purchase and deployment of technology like Stingray devices<\/a> and automatic license plate readers. In the case of the former, even the nation’s top cops (the FBI) actively discourage<\/a> talking about the cell tower spoofers through the use of restrictive non-disclosure agreements.<\/p>\n

Being public entities, it’s sometimes hard to keep the public and local law enforcement’s new tools and toys separated. FOIA requests and a whole lot of persistence have managed to uncover details about surveillance tech, but what’s turned over is often heavily-redacted or several months out of date. The purchasing process should<\/i> run through local governing bodies, but many of those are only too happy to defer to law enforcement and rubber-stamp purchases sight unseen or keep discussions of purchases off the public records.<\/p>\n

If the normal routes — as deferential as they are — seem to be a bit too “leaky,” many law enforcement agencies have a third option available to keep the public in the dark about their technology acquisitions: private funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Across the nation, private foundations are increasingly being tapped to provide police with technology and weaponry that — were it purchased with public money — would come under far closer scrutiny.<\/i>In Los Angeles, foundation money has been used to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of license plate readers<\/a>, which were the subject of a civil-rights lawsuit filed against the region’s law enforcement agencies by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (A judge rejected the groups’ claims earlier this year.)<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Private funds also have been used to upgrade “Stingray<\/a>” devices, which have triggered debate in numerous jurisdictions because they vacuum up records of cellphone metadata, calls, text messages and data transfers over a half-mile radius.<\/i>These private foundations have been useful in the past, supplying cops with needed equipment like bulletproof vests and office equipment during times of budget shortfalls. Unfortunately, they’ve now stretched far beyond funding to fill in budgetary gaps to become the checkbook of choice when purchasing controversial surveillance technology.Not only do these foundations help law enforcement sidestep public accountability, but they also serve as convenient recipients of private contractors’ largesse. The LAPD avoided creating a paper trail when Palantir and Target Corp. teamed up to donate the former’s surveillance software to the department through the Los Angeles Police Foundation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

SOURCE: TechDirt – read the rest of this article here.<\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police Departments Skirting Public Accountability By Using Private Foundations To Obtain Controversial Surveillance Technology The less the public knows about law enforcement surveillance technology, the better. That’s the thought process governing the purchase and deployment of technology like Stingray devices and automatic license plate readers. In the case of the former, even the nation’s top cops (the FBI)\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1433,1669,1,1426,1670,1656,1654],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8453,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452\/revisions\/8453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}