(TNS) — With the technology that exists today, can anyone reasonably expect everything they do to be private?
Do people who have done nothing wrong really need privacy?
Attorney and former Santa Cruz County Supervisor Gary Patton answered these hypothetical questions and more Monday night at a panel speaker event hosted by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said people who say they have “nothing to hide” are fairly privileged people who don't realize how harmful their neighborhood's hypervigilant surveillance systems can be. I answered that there was a high possibility that I would be in the same position.
“You still don't really know what you have to hide,” Guarigri said. “First of all, ordinary people commit crimes every day, and they probably don't even know it's a crime. They stop short of a red light, throw out trash, cross a pedestrian bridge, etc. When you put any community under a microscope, those things become clear.'' In our society, it just so happens that only some communities are under such scrutiny. ”
The webinar, “Community Conversations on Surveillance and Privacy Expectations,” was presented by Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of the East Bay-based Media Alliance, to a Zoom audience of several dozen people. It began with an introduction to mass surveillance by institutions. .
Rosenberg said modern technology is blurring the lines between what is considered public and non-public space. He said the purpose of mass surveillance has traditionally been two-fold. One is to catch people doing things that are considered wrong, and the other is to “cool down and deter destructive behavior and encourage social compliance.”
“Surveillance, simply put, prevents us from thinking that the world is not flat, it's round,” Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg argues that the remedy for the overreach and inappropriate use of public surveillance is the presence of “policy readers,” local residents who carefully read government policy and are willing to defer to elected leaders. suggested.
Guariglia expressed a similar sentiment, saying that local laws give communities the option to stop using technologies such as facial recognition and police predictive software, as was the case in the city of Santa Cruz in the summer of 2020. He said there is. The Santa Cruz City Council also voted in favor. A law that would require a vote on fact-checking and approval that technology is effective and does not promote bias before police use it.
Guariglia called surveillance technologies such as those designed to alert police to active shootings “like snake oil for cities of fear,” saying such tools can be expensive and highly contagious. He said there are many.
“It's very difficult for the American public to know all of these techniques that police are using, how they're justifying it, how much they're spending on it,” Guariglia said. “This is important because it's dangerous. Many of these techniques take armed people who expect to be shot and put them into situations where they don't need that kind of force.”
Guariglia said technology such as gunshot detection, surveillance cameras and license plate readers often cannot prevent crime.
“When people want safety, the only thing governments can offer them is more policing and surveillance. They ask for safety and all they get is more policing and surveillance,” Guariglia said.
Guariglia proposed alternatives that include non-punitive responses, such as strategies that don't focus on people of color, disadvantaged communities, petty crimes, and crimes that undermine quality of life. Improved public lighting and increased mixed-use zoning to maintain activity in residential areas at night.
Panelist Nick Hidalgo, ACLU technology and civil liberties program attorney, said both federal and state laws already exist that protect a reasonable right to privacy. However, continuous readjustment is required to adapt to ever-changing technological advances, he said.
“As society and its norms, practices, and expectations adapt to the increasing intrusiveness of technology, courts begin to recognize that we have a reasonable expectation of freedom from new forms of surveillance. And I believe it's not all about the court's still there,'' Hidalgo said.
© 2024 the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, California). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
