This piece was reprinted by OpEdNews with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Stephen Janis: Yeah, the big error again was that they said that he lived in Minnesota. They thought he was from Minnesota and had traveled to St. Louis. When in fact he actually lived in St. Louis and was from St. Louis. But among that was just, I think the errors of misinterpretation, like saying it's going to be a red event, or a high level red event, meaning they thought that it was going to precipitate violence.
But actually what that means is just that they feel the police are going to throw tear gas, don't bring your kids. And they also gave him a hard time for recounting what was happening in Minnesota with looting, what looters had done, but he was merely conveying information. He wasn't asking people to loot or encouraging people, just telling people what was happening. That's it.
Taya Graham: When law enforcement apologists or politicians say concerns over the use of social media or other technology to monitor behavior is simply a more efficient means to nab the so called bad guys. The case of Michael Avery raises several troubling questions.
Bear in mind that concerns have already been raised about facial recognition technology. A report from the Georgetown law center on privacy and technology estimates, roughly 117 million Americans are already in some form of database primed for monitoring. And let's not forget that those same systems are more likely to misidentify African-Americans and indigenous Americans and people of color. Or that the use of facial recognition software and social media will allow law enforcement to actually track your movements, friends, and associations.
Even if we set all that aside for a moment and simply focus on Mr. Avery's case, we can't help but recognize how this blend of technology and the culture of law enforcement in this country creates a troubling array of concerns.
That's because for the entirety of the show, we have focused on one single, overarching trend that has defined American policing over the past two decades. It's a unifying theme that ties all the aforementioned concerns into an unwieldy bundle of potential pitfalls. Policing, at least in this country is a growth industry.
Let's remember the graph we used in the last show which demonstrated this fact quite effectively. Since the 1990s, despite the fact that violent crime has dropped significantly, police spending has grown simultaneously. In fact, the mission creep of American law enforcement is exactly what the protesters are trying to address when they call for defunding police departments across the country.
And now with the evolution of surveillance technology that has proliferated into every nook and cranny of American life, and as we've said, an ever expansive police bureaucracy, both are conjuring new ways to observe us that demand our attention.
Consider what is happening with the popular Ring security systems owned by America's ubiquitous corporate behemoth Amazon. As you may already know, Ring allows homeowners to set up private surveillance systems throughout their homes that can be monitored remotely. The systems have proven so popular that Amazon has found a new partner to help sell them, local police departments.
That's right, the company has teamed up with roughly 400 local police agencies to offer $500 rebates to install a Ring system in your home. It's a match made in heaven. A law enforcement industrial complex, now under intense scrutiny for brutal tactics, partnered with a company that's been accused of demeaning labor practices and of firing an employee who demanded better protections during the COVID-19 pandemic. I wonder what could possibly go wrong?
Well, to give us a sense of just how fraught that question is, I'm joined by a guest who has intimate knowledge of how fast the surveillance state is growing and what, if anything we can do about it. Because he has worked for the companies that are actively involved in some of the technology we're discussing, he asked that we shield his identity and we have agreed. [Franson Code 00:07:54] , thank you for joining us today.
Franson: Thank you, Taya. I appreciate it and it needs to be said.
Taya Graham: So the case of Michael Avery is alarming because it seems to show that not only law enforcement is monitoring social media, but are willing to press charges based upon a single post. So my question is, are police really just relying on Facebook posts as investigative tools and does that apply to other social media platforms?
Franson: To think that the police are not using the social media platforms for their investigations would be naive. There's documents coming out where it's not just the local police and authorities, this actually extends further to federal three letter acronyms sending out notifications of these types of things. And they'll put their, what I'd like to call the, "We didn't do it" terminology at the bottom, saying not to take action based on this post. Well, why are you sending out the information in the first place, if you're not expecting action to be taken?
Taya Graham: So given how much social media there is in terms of quantity, what type of technology are they using to do this? I know we covered a program that our own police department wanted to use to track people, but how does this work? And what are the pitfalls?
Franson: When you have very few phone manufacturers, you have this ability to truly track from point of concept all the way to point of sale to literally the death of the device. So it's kind of one of those things, you think about a phone that's been stolen, they can disable it. Well, do they completely disable it? Do they leave the tracking feature stuff on in there?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
