Help MuckRock crowd-FOIA Stingray usage around the country
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But it does make the whole "USA IS A POLICE STATE!!!1" claims a bit harder to take seriously. I keep trying to imagine East German civil libertarians publically crowd-sourcing requests to the Stasi to divulge the particulars of their surveillance appartus, in ways that don't result in the murder of themselves or their families.
I don't mean this to be snide though, this kind of civil action and distrust of authority is precisely what it means to be an American, and precisely what is needed to ensure that our various police forces don't actually become a modern day Stasi, so keep it up! :)
(I don't really mean to speak against the checkpoints, I just wonder if "police state" has a clear enough definition to provide an interesting framework for discussion of modern governments)
That's a really good point, but I suspect that those for whom 'police state' has the most meaning would also have the most incentive to keep the definition from ever getting too specific. That's not counting the idea that one person's "police state" is another person's "safe spot to raise my kids".
But even non "police states" involve social control (e.g. against serial killing), there's no getting around that. Even anarchies involve social control—the members of each commune are expected to abide by the democratically-reached decisions.
If I had to start on a definition I'd probably key off the difference between "social control for the benefit of the people/society" and "social control for the sole benefit of the government in power". There are implementations of sobriety checkpoints are not too hard to classify in the former.
At some point living with other people will necessarily inconvenience you, whether it's sobriety checkpoints, or directing traffic, or jury dury, or voting, or taxes, or any of the dozens of other things that go into the civic duties of maintaining the general welfare.
Obviously there's a balance that must be chosen (e.g. the speed traps in rural Georgia that are so dense that you have to assume they are more for revenue than for safety), but I don't think police activity only becomes legitimate when it's directly focused on a specific and known criminal occurrence.
I'm speculating that it is really only different from more dire authoritarianism in degree. If that's true, then we've essentially chosen a police state (it just happens to usually be friendly and reasonably egalitarian).
If that's the case, then everything is authoritarianism (to some degree) and then Syndrome's quote from The Incredibles applies.
But it's now pretty well documented that the federal government is currently encouraging, sometimes by force, local agencies to violate their state laws in order to keep secret a widespread federal program that has, at least by one circuit court, been found illegal.
Given past experience, it's probably also incredibly wasteful, and without this you're giving local police that can literally barely operate a thumb drive the surveillance equivalent of a flamethrower, and just hoping nothing goes wrong.
In other words, I don't think we're trying to expose a New World Order so much as a lot of legal and practical problems just waiting to explode.
As a member of the military myself, the increasing militarization of law enforcement in the U.S. is something that has me concerned, which is why I hope your efforts are successful in identifying (and fixing!) any of the legal and practical problems with new technologies in the hands of untrained police departments.
https://news.vice.com/video/swatting
Because well-off suburban NJ needs a federally granted armored vehicle for... who knows what.
You and me both are terrified.
Sort of how people take White House petitions as meaningful in any way.
I hope this campaign successfully increases the awareness and insight into the fact that this is happening everywhere and has been for close to a decade.
That was the template Beacon Reader gave us and how they're set up. We're looking at building out our own donation tools to enable one-time, zero-signup donations, but not quite there yet (we do take PayPal at info@muckrock.com though).
My state also has laws to help the public access public records. We just dont call them FOIA because they have a different name as they do in other states.
I understand its probably nitpicking. :>
A while back, I knew someone who played a significant role in helping pass a FOIA-like measure in British Columbia. (I'm no longer in touch with them.)
If various U.S. authorities remain uncooperative, I'm not overly hopeful about Canadian, but maybe?
And while I guess that wouldn't focus on U.S. authorities' use of what is already a fairly well understood technology, I bet a few Canadians would like to know when and how this technology is being used up there.
We're working on more options for getting people involved while trying to keep the model simple.
Good to get this feedback!
http://www.justice.gov/crt/abo...
It is also agains FCC rules with 2 years in prison on $50,000 fine.
Section 705 of the Communications Act
Section 705 of the Communications Act adds to the Federal Wiretap Act additional restrictions on the unauthorized interception of communication "by wire or radio." Specifically, the Act provides
No person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any radio communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person. No person not being entitled thereto shall receive or assist in receiving any interstate or foreign communication by radio and use such communication (or any information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto. No person having received any intercepted radio communication or having become acquainted with the contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such communication (or any part thereof) knowing that such communication was intercepted, shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such communication (or any part thereof) or use such communication (or any information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto.Violations of Section 705 carry strict penalties, with willful violations "for purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage or private financial gain" meriting fines of up to $50,000 and prison for up to two years for the first offense.
So I'm all for using FOIA to make public data accessible for the greater good, but I'm not sure if what you're doing is the right approach.
We don't typically take too many ideological stances except that agencies should probably follow the public records laws that they're subject to, which generally isn't too controversial an opinion. We're looking for other ways to allow more analysis and context, but keeping the data clean and easily accessible will always be a part of what we do.
I, like every other person in America, do live within the jurisdiction of a law enforcement agency that may be buying/using this technology.
It seems strange to suggest that an entity must be ideologically driven because it's focusing on something that affects an entire country instead of a distinctly local issue.
A very significant fraction of public records requests relate to something that the requester is concerned about or objects to or fears is being mishandled in some way. Deciding where to focus one's concerns and questions could be viewed as ideological, or at least ideological concerns help make particular topics more salient and interesting to people.
By way of analogy, take a look at the series of questions that these journalists decide to pose to Victoria Nuland, then spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State, about the activities of European election observers in Texas during the 2012 elections there:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2012/10/199824.htm
Obviously journalists have the right to ask Ms. Nuland about anything that interests them, and supporting that right isn't (very) ideological (within the U.S. political context). But it seems pretty clear that the line of questioning that they were pursuing was inspired by a concern or belief that Ms. Nuland herself didn't share: that there was something improper or disturbing about European international institutions observing an election in Texas.
If you share that belief, you might find the questioning pretty natural and obvious and even wish that it had been pursued a bit further and uncovered more information about the relationship between the U.S. and OSCE. If you don't share that belief, you might find the questioning perplexing or annoying, and be bewildered that the journalists didn't accept Ms. Nuland's perfectly reasonable replies.