6/18/13

Voters Should Have the Option for Local Initiatives - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

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VotersShouldHavetheOption
June 18, 2013

LeeTienisaseniorstaffattorneyattheElectronicFrontierFoundation.

Surveillance technologies are being adopted by local law enforcement and other agencies throughout the United States with little attention to the impact on civil liberties. We saw this originally with video-surveillance cameras, but the trend now includes facial recognition, automated license plate recognition, fingerprint and iris scanning, G.P.S. tracking and electronic signal location technologies. Drones or unmanned aerial systems are the latest example. Iowa Citys local voter initiative aimed at banning surveillance drones, license-plate readers and red-light cameras is a welcome response to this growing deployment of sophisticated surveillance into our everyday lives. Such local outcry is bubbling up in communities from Seattle to Shelby County, Tenn. In February, Charlottesville, Va., became the first city to pass specific legislation that bars the local government from using drones. In Seattle, the mayor ordered the police department to dismantle its drone program and return the acquired units to the manufacturer. So in a few places, elected officials have acted to resist these privacy threats. But in most, they have not.
Where elected officials dont respect privacy enough to ban invasive surveillance, voters should be able to do it themselves as residents of Iowa City are.

An important part of the problem is the federal governments loose purse strings. Over the years, local government acquisition of surveillance equipment has been quietly subsidized by federal grants. At least 14 Texas agencies used more than $1.2 million in stimulus funds to buy automated license plate readers in 2010. The drones intended for Shelby County, Tenn., were requested as part of a $400,000 Homeland Security grant. Federal subsidies undermine the budget constraint on local government, which often cuts the public out of the discussion; acquisition is an administrative decision with little budgetary impact. Moreover, the general public may not be told about local surveillance technology until very late in the process; the Seattle City Council itself learned of the police drone program only after a reporter saw the departments F.A.A. authorization on a list obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. As a result, policy decisions about surveillance technology are increasingly being made by local law enforcement officials using taxpayer dollars from Washington. Fortunately, local communities are waking up to this threat. In cities and counties where elected officials dont respect privacy and freedom enough to ban invasive surveillance, voters should be able to do it themselves as residents of Iowa City are. The people dont want Big Brother. JoinRoomforDebateonFacebookandfollowupdatesontwitter.com/roomfordebate.
Topics: Law, government

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