Transcripts For CSPAN2 Government Surveillance Privacy Conference - Part 3 20240713

Fascinating stuff happening in the world of surveillance that can be covered in fully panels and we are always glad to have a lineup and smart focus to address that range of topics in our shorter flash talks and to begin the senior counsel and director of Freedom Technology and freedom, this is a time where we hear a lot about the goal of putting the first but surveillance based in this often creates friction with our allies when our surveillance goals conflict and im happy to welcome that from an international perspective. [applause] thank you and hello. I am with the center for democracy and technology, ww the cdt. Org. I want to talk about the applications of America First surveillance policy. When i say America First i mean americans first, the surveillance policy on the intelligence side of the equation discriminates in favor of americans and against foreigners in a dramatic way when it comes to surveillance that occurs outside the United States. Inside the United States it is relatively even between americans and foreigners. In both cases when the government wants to surveilled a person in the United States and collect Communications Content for intelligence purposes it has to show that the purpose is an agent of a foreign power or an entity like a Foreign Terrorist Organization or Foreign Government. That requirement is a very high level of proof of probable cause that the person is an agent of a foreign power and the has to be done in front of a judge in the supersecret pfizer court. The outside the United States, International Intelligence surveillance directed at foreigners does not have those protections. If conducted under executive order there is no probable cause requirement, no requirement that the person being agent of the government or of a Foreign Terrorist Organization and no judge making determination at all. Any activity and intentions of a foreigner a fair game and both collection meaning not targeted collection is acknowledged. Internationally for foreigners who are using u. S. Cloud providers, the news is not better that surveillance is conducted under section 702 and you heard about that on the last panel in no probable cause, no determination that the target is a foreign power and no judge is approving individual targets and theyve approved problematic surveillance based on the certification but no determination with respect to individual targets. Any information relevant to u. S. Foreign policy for National Security is fair game. So America First surveillance policy can impact the right to foreigners because of standard or low in the u. S. Government ability to Access Communication is very high especially relative to other countries, it is high in part because a large providers are located in the United States. But America First diminishes the rights of americans and i say that because we americans can mitigate more than ever with foreigners were abroad, even the domestic communication can be routed abroad where they might be subject to permissive surveillance regimes. By targeting foreigners u. S. Government collects communication of people United States intentionally incidentally, that means we intend to collect the communication of americans who are communicating with foreign target, it is intended. By targeting foreigners of low standards the u. S. Government amasses a database of the communication that includes communication of americans and then it turned around and queries the data for american communication without probable cause that its in foreign power with the result of America First surveillance policy is a diminishing in the rights of americans. By failing to extent basic protection to the foreigners, we allow the database of communication to grow and grow quite huge and includes a communication of american because we communicate with foreigners abroad and communications are collected in the database even though domestic to domestic. America first offers little protection to foreigners and also diminishes the protection that would be available to americans. I talked about american first and the intelligence contest because thats worth most pronounced. In the context of criminal surveillance where the government is investigating a crime, they had not been, until last year a distinction between americans and foreigners. Everybody got the same rights. The combat adopted in 2018 for the first time extended a version of America First to criminal surveillance. Under the agreement that the United States entered into with the uk. The uk can compel disclosures of stored content and in real time under uk law which is more permissive than the u. S. Law of all surveillance targets except for americans and except for people present in the United States. That is the first time that criminal surveillance laws have distinguished between americans and everyone else. America first in the criminal side of the equation and had a good adverse effect on americans that it does on the intelligence side. The uk can show that to the United States government, communication that involve americans that were collected when others were targeted. Without the intervention of a judge. The next big test for whether we will continue to extend America First which as ive said is not even protecting americans, the next big test will be a treaty that is being negotiated between the United States, the council of europe and other governments. That treaty is a protocol to existing treaty called the cybercrime convention. This protocol is designed to permit crossborder demands for communication traffic data, think of an email log for subscriber information. The protocol says how we can do that for a Domestic Order for its own process which i presume based on stats provided by the Foreign Government for go with a foreign order to disclose wherewith your browsing history that issued without judicial review from a Budapest Cybercrime Convention signatory like hungary Turkey Russia albania or ukraine. Did i say ukraine . [laughter] yes. It is a signatory for the Budapest Convention presumably to sign the protocol of cybercrime a mile down the road from this conference there is a big discussion among members of congress whether to remove from office the president of the United States because he attempted to list ukraine in an effort to investigate his political rival joe biden through his son hunter biden who had a position on the board of directors of a company in ukraine. How would ukraine investigate hunter biden . What would it do . Over half of criminal investigation involve electronic evidence one could presume that what ukraine would do is seek email logs from hunter biden presumably using a us provider his email logs are stored by that provider and could become available to the Foreign Government under the Budapest Convention. Even today that providers can volunteer this information unless the law has a flaw it does permit Foreign Governments even your email logs without there being any restriction except from the Foreign Government itself and what that apply is. The issue with the Budapest Convention it gives the Foreign Government a way to compel the information under Foreign Government laws. If ukraine once Hunter Bidens email log both the United States and ukraine signed the convention unless the us makes certain reservations, the ukrainian order could be honored by the us and compel the disclosure of the biden email logs. I think congress will not allow this result based on the track record so far Congress Instead will want to protect americans to throw the foreigners under the best yet again. This is the same approach throwing the foreigners under the bus that has also thrown americans under the bus with them because it changes the communications without having to go through the normal Legal Process as if it obtained them directly. The government could choose to give effect to the foreign order by reserving the right to issue due process section 27 oh three of title 18 and it would have to go in front of a judge to show reasonable suspicion to get the information sought by the foreign order. But the Budapest Convention doesnt prohibit discrimination currently but for the government to apply that process and a different process for the foreigner data such as the process of simply honoring the foreign demand. This is a problem that will be facing Congress Last year next year or the year after when it is asked to ratify the Budapest Convention protocol. We need advocates and people who work at companies and those who are interested in surveillance to be proactive and we need to ensure the Budapest Convention protocol has equal treatment of data of foreigners and nationals with a strong due process protection and it currently doesnt do that. I want to leave you with a thought to be aware of the siren call of America First it doesnt protect americans or put us first and diminishes the rights of everyone. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much up next if you debated surveillance you probably heard someone Say Something along the lines why should i be worried about this im not worried the government is not investigating me but if you have heard that the person speaking was probably was white because surveillance doesnt fall equally on all groups and its because they fall unequally on certain persons so we will do a little bit about the way programs operating under violent extremism surveillance communities much more are under scrutiny than middleoftheroad political views. [applause] hello i am a legal scholar from damascus and National Civil Rights Organization ensuring the freedom of americans of all faith today i will talk about one Surveillance Program imagine if no matter where you go or what you say or how you feel is tracked and the government can monitor you at school or at universities and hospitals Mental Health visits, what if the government aggregated all of this data to make a determination . Will come to violent extremism a Government Program that claims they can identify the violence before it occurs by monitoring their behavior and using Public Resources and private spaces so what if we frequent a mosque to discuss policy . You would expect sadness but that would not be a precursor for violence that is how it will define the act so where does one go to find a program like this . Not far. Welcome to illinois. Illinois is just one grant recipient for a Program Designed to lead federal local government to private entities in order to monitor individuals. The dip grant from department of Homeland Security calls in a full government approach this document is the program plan in illinois as you can see according to their own materials the state agency wanting to link federal agencies the fbi and Us Attorneys Office to state agencies the governor and the air illinois a Terrorism Task force educators social Service Providers faith and community groups. This isnt just happening in illinois. Programs operate across the country in each of these locations adjust the past four years there have been 57 to the department of Homeland Security alone operating at every level of government. But to argue that these programs are effective they are not our own government says so those that have evaluated the programs the evaluation has looked at similar programs and what has happened in looking at a uk program called the prevent those that were mandated to report the radicalization and the result children under 18 were reported for normal behavior there are ethical concerns regarding surveillance and talk of potential repression this august Duke University flagged the programs failure under the Obama Administration because of a lack of structure and opposition from the Muslim American community. Over criminalized with a huge surveillance concern but how do we get here . In 2009 the fbi called this a Public Relations with an Outreach Team a Pilot Program meant to connect somali communities in minnesota to determine how much access the half the fbi has to the Somali Community and to identify targeted compacts within the community this underground program morphed into a Community Partnership of the program we know today to foster these relationships and minority groups. Following this in 2009 the fbi designated additional communities of interest including denver and washington dc this is all part of the Current Program we are discussing today the racial and religious targeting are discriminatory into this day they continue to focus on somali communities across the us. Monitoring the Program Since their origin to have enough surveillance for the communities most of the information about these programs are not public and since 2018 the freedom of information act was sent to 16 different agencies what we found was an everexpanding program. Take for instance with record request from the Muslim Justice league found one program run by the Boston Police department claims in their language somalis were inherently violent and left alone will commit violence the somali Youth Coordinator withdrew from the program over concerns it even drafted surveys to see if attitudes after the program toward the muslim ratified was positive or negative. Could you imagine they target to their faith but yet for such a broad program lets talk about how much funding they have received. Surveillance is expensive both in 2014 and 2015 the department of Homeland Security provided 10 million Grant Funding these types of programs receive funding from other agencies including department of defense and department of justice. So what kind of oversight follows . It is minimal. The documents we found shows that at best agencies have to submit a paragraph long report there is no evaluation or reporting and a complete lack of guidance on Civil Liberties or privacy protections so we have to ask where are the programs . Houses of worship in Montgomery County maryland among other places mosques these programs operate that in 2017 the denver Police Department has a Grant Application that stated they would focus on schoolage children particularly refugee students because of their risk of radicalization. The investigation revealed it was after School Program and the Denver Police have disavowed the language but that it does do harm to communities Law Enforcement also gets funding but the Illinois Program the state agency works with multiple agents and the chicago Police Department gang Intelligence Unit and the Illinois Police and has plans to collaborate with i. C. E. Here are some draft agreements for something they had a shared Responsibility Committee where the fbi would flag and refer individuals for special monitoring by their own community again no protections for Civil Liberties or privacy were included in this agreement at operates with Mental Health providers university of illinois offered continuing medical Education Credits for Mental Health providers how to implement the program like warning signs and behaviors this is particularly egregious as this is vulnerable for many individuals the program operates online there is a path to tracker on track online content tries to incorporate information like crossborder travel and injecting this into every setting this document that you can see from the early iteration. The plan was always to link private spaces and behaviors to Government Agencies the program can teen on continues and just this year we have seen three different candidates propose a program in additional funding for it william bar release Day Department of justice memo over mass shooters calling early engagement and the plan to address the plan and then to repurpose a version of it to enact Early Intervention to address White Nationalism regardless who it is deployed against it is another effort to justify pre crime intervention. In an era where information sharing is easier than what does it mean to bring together to focus on small groups of people . This is a long run of counterterrorism campaigns across the us the Program Continues to target muslim and minority communities. The programs over civil liberty and privacy protections at all levels as it expands the authority and reach of Law Enforcement agencies become more entrenched and the Program Needs to be dismantled. We add Muslim Advocates remain opposed to them we have the right to know what Government Programs operate within their spaces we have a lot more to say and more coming up. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Coming up next policy legislator who will be talking about a new report on the enduring history of the fbi abusive power and its implications for the First Amendment of the battle and the worrying trend today and other various papers related to the talk on people outside by the Registration Desk so be sure to take a look at the deeper dialogue of what you are hearing today. Thank you so much to the Cato Institute for having me and everyone in the audience for watching and also watching on cspan2 and the lifestream if youre not in the audience you heard the announcement about the report and want to copy you can find the pdf and order a print version of it. The name of the report is called the enduring problem as the name would indicate as well as the enduring problem this is continuous, its not new and its been happening for a long time so what does it mean we have a long history of fbi political surveillance . We know longer treat these as exceptional they are either very normalized or invisible if you talk to activists they will say the fbi is spying on us. They are infiltrating us. On the other hand its not exceptional and not newsworthy people who should know better will not realize what is going on i accompany the gentleman from the antiwar group to put out with congressional offices at an act before congress as well as a surveillance with occupy wall street and black lives matter the representative was very concerned about the Fourth Amendment and the nsa and staffers were aware of the issues and we did the whole presentation and as the staffer just said to us i had no idea the fbi did that. So it is perverse on the one hand it means that we accept it as normal for people dont act like its going on. One of the parts of the report is to push back on this narrative that we see about the fbi but one in particular is when we treat these as an isolated incident. Even if the Mainstream Media will cover the fbi abuse or new documents show they occupied wall street but they never say today we learned the fbi was knocking on the doors last month we found out they were knocking on the doors of solidarity activists and last year we discover they were spying on occupied wall street indicating the problem was widespread and severe and systemic and part of a 110 year investigation. So to put together the incidents and the reason we picked 2010 not just because of a decade but in 2010 they believe a report the year of the fbi and as you can tell but that is a last time there has been an official review and then just four days after they release that report they were passing that solitary activist across the midwest. So what has happened . What do we know . The first protester ever to stat foot the fbi was monitoring wall street we know that they were monitoring as early as ferguson and have come up with the intelligence assessment about the threat of identity extremism and this is insidious. And with Police Racism and social injustice as retaliatory violence to be aware of this threat then to mitigate the threat. What that argument says is that it didnt protect political expression but as a precursor but people may be upset at the social injustices that they experience and endured to cry. Other things we know about from Standing Rock is anti pipeline protesters or palestinians solidarity activists after going after a foia request and in relationship hopefully you will hear more about later this month they were at occupy abolish i. C. E. Even the opponents of cuban normalization i asked them questions we know pretty much know every political event the fbi has been there watching and monitoring. And in some cases engaging in disruptive tactics we will talk about later. The report is about 2010 hope you will permit me to go back a few years to 19 oh eight when the fbi was founded while congress was on recess and to this day they have no congressional charter. Which is something that goes back to the civil libertarians like myself. In 1919 J Edgar Hoover was getting his start at the fbi which was originally called the radical division and was named the general Intelligence Division it was a hundred years ago but this is an important thing. First of all this is not abnormal. Different Police Departments around the country like that radical position which brings me to my second part of the equation is that the fbi is not the only Law Enforcement agency but also gathering evidence to be used to prosecute a crime. We can dispute if they do but that is the theory but also that intelligence is far more permissive to have this trend of people to have that Intelligence Division to track unrest in socialist and those that are not found desirable and hoover comes out of that tradition and then becomes the director of the fbi. The general Intelligence Division he is responsible for the bomber raids if you are ever fbi director they will ask you has the fbi ever violated Civil Liberties if you say yes the palmer raids that is how bad they are to this day that every candidate for fbi directorship says they are bad. And then in 1924 the attorney general is disturbed the fbi is engaged in political spying so he puts limitations on them makes them head on dash meet with the president that they are secretly spying and then they say show is a statute it is against the law that they would limit the fbi to only investigate violations of federal criminal code they found a way to get around that but the important thing is in 19 forties fdr puts forth an executive order to give them National Security which hoover interprets as giving him a broad mandate. So they use this in 1939 that is literally a list of people to detain in a National Emergency attorney general discovers this and says what . A secret list of people with names . You have to get rid of this so hoover changed the name. We are not spying. We dont have this list and later but in this instance he seeks you changes the name and we should treat the threat of detention not abstract but we found out that in 196012 days after the korean war hoover asked them to put 12000 people in the camps he thought were threats to National Security. They said no they would not do this but the list continued. At the height of the security list 20174 people. Thats not the only listed there is a reserve index of people who are dangerous but not National Security and then the fbi would connect the numbers to people off of the security index. But the point is there is a lot of indexes but what hoover does is he takes these and use them as a tool for mass political surveillance that between all the indices 430,000 files are allegedly aimed at individuals. Tell me thats not surveillance we usually talk about Counterintelligence Program that was in the battle days of the fbi surveillance people have been saying that since the investigation of Ronald Reagan foreignpolicy in the eighties so i think its important not to replace that with surveillance because of the Committee Says it is a misnomer this is a domestic covert action to protect the status quo. And then somebody mentioned the murder of fred who was killed by the police 50 years ago earlier this week that was a police raid set up at a point of operation. So in 1956 hoover convince the Supreme Court he cannot prosecute for criminal law so he uses to neutralize and disrupt and it is perfectly legal and speech that he deems th it starts communist, goes into civil room and, the ku klux klan is a tricky bag im not going to talk about. The informant for the fbi testified but did not want to put his face on tv, but was on the jar. All around bad choices. We had Church Committee reform, there was definitely over era and we got chewed out about terrorism so theres mythical era of the fbi but one of the biggest scandals was surveillance of the committees of el salvador, a group that oppose what reagan was doing in central america. The Central Intelligence committee didnt have a hearing but an entire investigation and released a report to the fbi. The geo had to look at this center was a huge incident and in the 90s the fbi visited the homes of arabamericans asking them their views of palestine so there was a reformed fbi. And the main recommendations was to impose as i mentioned earlier a statutory charter on the fbi, because of that, later attorney generals could make guidelines to protect our Civil Liberties. George bushs lameduck attorney general went into office allowing the first time the Church Committee, they are using National Security threats. Two categories are assessments predicated investigations. That means having an actual predicate. Let that sink in. There is the patriot act and we know they are up to all these Different Things during the bush years. There is spying on antiwar activists, spying on greenpeace and in 2006, Congress Asked the elijah to look into this and in 2010 they issued a report in the report is very critical of the fbi but also in a lot of ways illustrates how loosened up the guidelines are. They discussed whether it is okay for the fbi to engage the Worker Movement and the oig was like somebody damaged a window and then they sent a letter saying this is for the people of iraq, and the oig was like that is the red tape and use of force or violence and the letters showed it for political end. Use of force or violence for political end is terrorism so it is totally proper to investigate nonviolent people as terrorists. That is an important thing to remember when the fbi comes on television and tells you you dont have enough tools to investigate white supremacist or any other type of terrorist activities because when it comes to quakers and antiwar activists they always find a way and always find a reason. They have plenty of tools. Even though the problem is ongoing we should just accept it, we need important reforms with the fbi in check. We have recommendations at the end of the report and i hope you will see that even if all of them were put in place we would not instantaneously solve the problem. The biggest one is trying to reign in the fbis investigative powers to limiting situations where they have reason to suspect criminal activity. It doesnt sound that radical but it is and thank you very much for the presentation and i hope everyone takes a reported if you are watching online please go to rightsdissent. Org spying and get your pdf or hard copy. [applause] thanks so much. Next up those of you who have some french may no surveillance means to watch from above. You cant get more watchy from above then with satellites, orbital into these capable increasingly of tracking us and increasingly in collaboration with much closer tracking devices we keep in our pockets. Combination of that, monitoring very close up to monitoring from above, the topic of a fantastic paper. Anthony mckenna, a distinguished scholar at penn state dickinson law and i recommend to every one but and amply paid study, analysis of the data nexus, the intersection of these technologies. This is something that requires a bit more exploration. [applause] good afternoon. Thank you to the Cato Institute. Theres a lot of research my coauthors couldnt be here today. The penn state institute for computation is also a professor of meteorology. None of this would be possible without penn state research. I am excited to talk to you about these things. I have a story that might jog your memory as it happened last year. As julian pointed out it comes from things like fit bit and what happens when combined with a satellite. It is like facebook, the fitness apps. I did that by aggregating the data, wearable devices from your cell phone and satellite data, understanding how much data is interesting, the content, the data that is involved, five terabytes of data, as much data the Hubble Telescope generate in 6 months. And a couple hundred dollars in computing processing so very easy to access data so shortly after stratified publishes the global heat apps which is showing all of the strata users everywhere around the world we get this tweet from the 20yearold australian student, it released its map, cool but not so cool for operations that require secrecy. New york times picked it up. The story overnight blows up, we have a National Security crisis. What is interesting is in looking at this, the unsupported, the pentagon had given some of its soldiers fit bits which they wanted to encourage soldiers to exercise and so fit bit encouraged that. This platform for supreme athletes allowed bases around the world to be identified overnight creating immediate risk threat, harm to our armed forces and so im looking at this, my background is electronic surveillance law. I have coauthored really large wired tapping and eavesdropping. If you have insomnia its really good for it. What i was looking at, how this happened in the satellite data, where did the data that went into this global map come from and how is it there is a shutter controller satellite images . Putting this together i was struggling and realize i know so little about this information, reaching out and working with my colleague tony evans we tried to put this together and we came up with the term satellite smart device information nexus and i want to spend a little time going through that and talk about how did we get here . How does this work . What comes at this . I realize theres this marked gap in the literature, privacy law literature, space literature, space attorneys tend to stay in their lane, privacy scholars, we hear from ethics general counsel about Location Tracking, that will save me some time later but in looking at this it seems how do we regulate satellite data done by private companies . We will talk a little bit or i will talk a little bit about electronic surveillance in the us but i was realizing Smart Devices, phones, fit bits, social media, we had a lot of questions, how do satellites work, what types are there, who can own them. How do they Work Together as Smart Devices to regulate satellite. Is this all government . That private entities . You can access it . I have been reading, writing and researching and practicing surveillance law for decades and i havent come across what do courts do with commercial robo sensing data so just starting with a basic overview how do satellites work, they work similar to the human eye, direct sensing is when we touch something. Remote sensing is different. Remote sensing occurs, the process of acquiring information about our surroundings without being in contact with those surroundings. Thats what the human eye does, that is what satellites do. Different satellites have different sensors for different purpose, there are geostationary satellites, geosynchronous satellites and they all serve different purposes, different altitudes, stationary satellites, it is a consistent image over time, you see the same place on earth consistently so you looking for look for changes in troop movements but satellites and the presence of satellites is rapidly increasing and so is how satellites Work Together with Smart Devices. Trying to figure that out we heard about gps tracking and how gps works. Every smart device has a gps ship in it and it is based on the us Global Positioning satellite. It made it satellite system publicly available before any other country did. What the us guaranteed was a place in the market so if you want to device to use gps Location Service you needed gps ship that works with us gps satellites so all our fit bits and Smart Devices have these, they are tiny, they are how it works in the gps system, any time a chip is connecting with satellites identifying where the satellites are and using multiple data from satellites to say this is precisely where i am the gps chips work with sensors in our Smart Devices and distances are pretty remarkable, microelectromechanical systems, they are tiny, they are silicon based and these tiny tiny sensors give us assisted gps which is incredibly precise, we heard from earlier today about Location Tracking and how cellular tracking works through triangulation. Assisted gps is harnessing the power of the cell phone as well as the gps satellite but the senses and Smart Devices, there are all kinds of devices and it is remarkable the kinds of sensors that can be embedded because lookout tiny they are, look at this diagram and you see where it is in relation to the red blood cell, these devices can be put in anything, they are in sensors all the time and one thing that should be up there, we see health and fitness centers, automobile centers, employment space centers, smart phones sensors, toy sentences, more toys are built with these sensors in them with gps tracking chip so remember all of this is working off of satellites. Even shopping carts have these sensors built into them. This is a Patent Application filed by walmart. Biometric data centers at walmart, dont know about you but when i go to walmart i dont want walmart to know my heart rate. What is interesting that we will get to the second is how is this regulated. Heart rate, temperature forcing us to handle car speed, location. It is all working with the backbone of satellites, gps and these sensors. In terms of why this happened, satellite Smart Devices, the situation is exactly that, data, including movements from device sensors and so when we think about that kind of movement it is very precise, gps data from Smart Devices and remotesensing imagery from satellites urged together and thats what we get. When we think about that. What is interesting is it reveals and i should be really clear, it was doing nothing wrong, strap are broken no laws, it is giving users what they want, this product. What we realized from this is how little understanding we all have a regulatory perspective, National Security perspective, civil liberty perspective about beer all of satellites interacting with Geospatial Data. The other piece was the social media data. We are constantly interacting with social media. People have been tweeting all day. When we are tweeting our tweets have a geolocation tag in the metadata associated with the tweet. That is Public Information. All of this is coming together. My question with an electronic surveillance background and working with cyberlaw and privacy law, how do we regulate satellites and realizing commercial remotesensing satellites, being run by private companies, how is that regulated. One thing, outer space is Global Commons. That idea about the National Treaty concept, it is there for everybody. We want the Global Commons to be peaceful, exploration of space to be peaceful, we dont want claims of sovereignty the we are changing that. We looked at this, where does this come from . The regime about satellites is related to licensing and security and the National Security location but the domestic electronic surveillance scheme isnt part of it and i will talk about that in a minute but it is byzantine to figure out where do i go to figure out what satellite companies, companies that are operating commercial sensing failing to do with data. How do i figure out what is legal and not legal . That are tough thing to figure out and tougher to figure out what data is being collected and how it is being collected. One of the things i found was interesting is who in the us regulates commercial remotesensing satellites . Who could it be . It is the weather people, noah. At least thats what i was thinking of and i know many people, noah regulates satellites. That is fascinating. When we presented this paper in berkeley this year we had a great commentor who was a former department of commerce attorney. He did not know that noah regulated commercial remote sentencing. It is not a very rare thing. Who knew . Noah. We know they make charts. We can understand why they are integral to weather prediction, climate analysis, when they give us these charts you know, i was thinking okay, what about other laws . There is no federal legislation that directly regulates this. All right. We dont have any kind of Location Tracking, privacy regulation. I want to talk about the legislation we do have in place but no federal legislation directly regulates the tracking of data aggregation from individuals data but why pass legislation to regulate this when the governor vetoed that legislation . What do we have . We have robust electronic medications privacy act where congress clearly protected the privacy of electronic and Wire Communications of america. We heard again a great overview from alan butler this morning taking us through laws and how tracking laws work and how information can be accessed but again, satellites and satellite data, commercial remotesensing is done in outer space. What is fascinating is the regulatory process, how that is handled and white is problematic. When i am looking at this, there are bills in congress about regulating geolocation data, to protect it. It is a big point, isnt it cute you part of the problem is just regulating geolocation data satellites contain different sensors for different purposes so different sensors equal different information. Part of the confusion in how this is addressed from a privacy law standpoint, actually court decisions. Not to repeat alan again but warrantless use of gps tracking chip or tracking device is unlawful. Or location data, unlawful or thermal imaging, unlawful. Surveillance, warrantless use of the helicopter to photograph private property, lawful. Warrantless use of airplanes to take photographs of private property, lawful. Aerial surveillance, camera surveillance, fine yet the disconnect is satellites consent heat, they can operate in a way and get the same information a thermal imaging device can get. So we have this disconnect in our courts, we have a robust domestic electronic surveillance privacy law scheme but it does not apply to satellites so where do we go from there . How are satellites regulated . Why is this creating such privacy and civil liberty concerns . Noah does regulate satellites. They have an office of commercial remotesensing affairs. There is a robust narrative between commercial remotesensing and the Us Government. Part of that licensing process is part of the problem. The licensing process is not public and i will talk about why that is the problem. This warrantless satellite, where are we hearing about when satellite data is using what do we hear about it . The interesting thing is because it is outside the scope of our domestic laws and regulations or electronic surveillance what is occurring is not happening in public. One thing that is required by noah, we look at regulation of satellites, we know satellites are regulated internationally and nationally in the domestic regime for satellite regulation is focused on safety, security and promoting commercial sensing activities. Why do we want to promote commercial sensing activities, it is incredibly valuable information and if we harness the technology and Development Efforts of private industry in commercial remotesensing it is a benefit for the government. The privacy Civil Liberties concern should be pretty inherent, we can all sense that here but we have satellitebased information sensors that emerged into this. No federal regulations and our jurisprudence permits aerial surveillance and it is disconnected from Location Tracking jurisprudence so what do we do with that . How do we address that . We also know it is a persistent growing National Security concern. That was illustrated by the strata act. That lets locations of spies and military personnel so when we look at what happened, it is revealing military patrol and supply and identity and locations of individuals and it extends beyond military personnel, is interconnected with privacy and civil liberty concerns i talk about so part of how we dismiss our myths and National Security threat is we were focusing on malicious state actors. We were focusing on russia and china, over there satellite of element advances and cyber satellite systems and physical construction of things that could happen both accidental and intentional and talked a little bit about this. A very disjointed and cumbersome Regulatory Regime when it comes to satellites so we have some recommendations here and the first is to increase the space object registry and transparency, the Space Objects registry registers all satellites and all that is really required is that satellites, location, orbital level and things like that, the entity, the government that is operating the satellite or the Company Operating the satellite and the location from which it is being launched, that is the liability, the country from which the satellite is launched tends to bear the liability or will bear the liability but this part, about making public the licensing process, it is remarkable that these licensing processes, while it requires many things including the data that is going to be collected, how the data is collected, where the data is stored, who the company is, all those things, they dont have any Public Information provided about that. Under the guise of National Security framework, they dont reveal that information. They have commercial remotesensing satellite, a few big players are here and they are providing information to the us military and aggregating this data from our devices, aggregating data from satellites and performing geospatial analysis. If you want to check out the digital website it is really fascinating. We can extract insights as Geospatial Data and form geospatial analysis and tell you who is where, when, and why so we are looking at satellites that advance the technology, they are enabling realtime Location Tracking and yet that information that is part of the licensing requirement requires the Us Government have control over commercial remotesensing actors and commercial remotesensing satellite data so we are spending time hearing about surveillance with lots of focus on surveillance of particular groups, satellites are a fundamental part of this. We hear and see in Congress Efforts to protect privacy or give us a better balance on a federal level of privacy law, we dont see satellites being addressed as part of this and it is a void that is astonishing. To the cynic in the room it is intentional because we have an open stream between companies, data and government outside surveillance law. Something how do we address this . Part of it is making public the process, making it public about what data is being collected. How is data being used, how is it being disseminated, how long is the data remaining and other kind of data and data aggregation but missing from that piece is Geospatial Data, lots of information. Another piece of this is international components. We are in truly a space race from commercial actors. When talking about the us gps system, russia has its own gps system, china is leading the way with launching satellites so in terms of future international discussions. These concepts of data that we are having because the eu, how that is affecting data that is aggregated and collected. In the commercial remotesensing regulation is missing from these regulations including the rewrite of regulations by commerce with remotesensing. Is any discussion that supports privacy or civil liberty. How do we make them more capable and make their process less encumbered. We want to unfettered what we do with us. That has to be part of our discussion and that leads me to making satellite smart device information a priority. We are rapidly at a point where laws are being an accident past, ending up with disjointed legislation, and vetoed by the governor for commercial reasons or complexities. How do we make that a priority and that is figuring out how did we take existing privacy law scheme and related legislation, how do we make sure government can get data from satellites lawfully consistent with constitutional privacy, First Amendment concerns consistent with our concept of privacy as expressed through Electronic Communications privacy act. How do we do so in a way that is National Security. A startup fitness apps, multiple location, intermediate data. This is a problem affecting everyone. Should civil liberty be concerned about . National advocates should be concerned about it and we suggest this through legislation. There is a lot here. A quick overview here. Everyone has different levels. Sorry my coauthors couldnt be here but thank you very much. From the a potential level. This indicated agencies like nsa, fbi, cia, but as often happens the cutting edge attack that is used by nsa Consumer Devices for local authorities down the road, facial recognition, something worth paying attention to freddie mac is talk about their new guide of using facial recognition in their backyard. Thanks for having us here today. Across the country, primarily what we have been finding is all the Police Department have access to this technology we are finding it a new and surprising place. We want to address that, where you should be looking in your own backyard, where are those things you would not think to overturn the silver dollars so that is what we are talking about today and thanks for having us here. I am freddie martinez, the government is a Nonpartisan Coalition that works to strengthen democracy by empowering the public and promoting policies, so i am a policy analyst, 51 2 years, 5 years. This is an issue i worked on closing for a great number of years. I wanted to start with chris, and officer at a county in oregon, in his free time he decided to roll out of facial recognition system. On the weekend he wrote some computer codes where he integrated counties data with amazons facial Recognition Technology, didnt ask anyone, there are no concerns about Civil Liberties or requirements to let anyone know this is happening, reached out to amazon and has become an evangelist for amazon and this is the future, where we are with facial Recognition Technology, unelected officials deciding this is something they want to roll out and this is why we have so many concerns, not just this person here. We created a couple of guides. Over the summer we wrote a beginner introduction guide. If you are not familiar with the states public records, a great resource that is 7 pages where you not only go through what your rights are but what specific language you are using, sometimes there are particular algorithms but the name of the vendor is different from the technology. We have guides outside. For anyone watching live stream you can click either of those links. After releasing the guide, we set hundreds of requests to the Police Departments across the country so they, we created a project page where you can take draft language and if youre interested in particular policies or vendors you can investigate this in your backyard as well. Our graphic guides, we have some outside as well. The primary thesis is the way they access facial recognition is indirectly. Sending out a request and say i want to see your policies and data sharing agreement, and something a little bit clever, we dont intend to purchase it. If you took them at their word you would say they are not using this technology. It is a carefully phrased expression they have not purchased, doesnt say anything about actual data or sharing data, doesnt talk about other third parties so we wanted to talk about how that might look and fill in the blanks about what you might expect across the country so going back to chris, his position at amazon was talking about integrating their data with other data. What we found out was not only was Washington County rolling out facial recognition data using amazon they were also building a system by which other counties could look at their data and they could look at other counties data, there is an agency next to Washington County that shares a border and after they saw this they said will you come in and we will share our data and again i dont know if you can see this highlighted, Putnam County has no policies for controlling access or informing them public, they did on a test basis so that is one way we noticed agencies share data is they create ways to read others data without having to physically copy or create any policies. We were finding facial Recognition Technology in Fusion Centers. For those who might not know, Fusion Centers are only supposed to be sharing data. They are not actually supposed to do that in any way. That is not what we are finding. And st. Louis the st. Louis metro Police Department does not have the technology but they do have agreement with the Fusion Centers that they can access their booking data on people that are in jail in st. Louis. That is surprising. I did not expect a Fusion Center would have this technology but it wasnt just finding this, two weeks ago buzz feed news created a report where surveillance cameras, Police Department are able to access this data with Surveillance Footage and then turner, arizona which again does not have access to facial recognition were guessing they could send the data to the Fusion Center and run scans against that return data based on this ring data so surprising knowing they are not supposed to investigate crime but that is where we are fighting it. Secondly we were fighting a private vendor, private data work in secret trying to get Police Department to share data to coordinate regional taskforces. As of San Francisco police, Sacramento County is on here, you have a private vendor secretly organizing these tasks force. This email is from two years ago, from 2017 and the article just came out in august of this year. In august and september of this year San Francisco moved to ban the use of facial recognition by Law Enforcement. It creates a lot of issues of secrecy where you have a private vendor in secret building up regional taskforces and in the public space you have people who dont want creating a lot of problems around secrecy and public right to notice. Much like we saw in facial recognition contracts we are seeing contractual data sharing agreements. For those who might not know when license Plate Reader Technology was rolled out across the country, there would be one of the Largest Companies and they have 4 billion images now in their license plate reader databases and the way they build those is one Police Department at a time and every one of them would collect 2000 images a day and then go to motorola and we are seeing similar language emerging in facial recognition contracts. This was a baritone, this contract is out of california so i think a lot of the trajectory people are talking about in regulating facial Recognition Technology is similar to the problems we are seeing with license plate reader. Another way we are finding this, we found three statewide initiatives where the attorney general of the state was the one who ran the programs. We found this, Honolulu Police do not by the technology, they dont plan on buying it but the attorney general of hawaiis criminal Justice Data Center that runs the actual scans, we saw a similar system in pennsylvania where theres a, justice network, every single Law Enforcement agent in pennsylvania has access to this technology but none of them actually own it. Ohio is similar as well. I didnt think the attorney general would be the one doing this but apparently that is the case in those states. Other findings, training manuals are almost nonexistent. We were able to find one and this was a training manual from loving, texas, they sent Police Officers on a vigorous 8 hour Training Session to reach Vigilant Solutions which is owned by motorola and at the end of those they get 30 multiplechoice questions. This is one of the only training documents we were able to get. What we are finding across the country is there seems to be very little training but if there is training it is being done by the vendors and multiplechoice question is the best way to test proficiency with this technology. Other things we have been finding is any kind of foia requests for any kind of regulatory policies doesnt seem to exist. We did have in our guide some language about policies and things like that, we almost University Got those denied. We might have gotten 5 or 6. For the most part any kind of foia or public records request on facial recognition they treated as did you participate, yes or no. That was very troubling. And any discussion on bias, there are none. No one is looking into any kind of algorithmic bias or anything like that on this technology so we tried really hard but with policies we got a handful. With bias and accuracy assessment, none, 0. Thats troubling for lots of reasons but if you do plan on doing this in your backyard please look into that because so far it is a nonstarter. No one has any records on that or cares and just briefly looking into the future use of facial Recognition Technology we are seeing it being deployed by private rebel things that are patrolling in california, it has license plate reader in facial Detection Software for some reason and they scan parking lots of malls and things like that. I have no idea why. It is obviously not limited to Law Enforcement or other commercial interests. We are seeing realtime facial recognition being pitched by motorola. The idea being if you want to prevent School Shootings he will create a blacklist of people who should not be allowed into the school and test facial recognition of everyone coming into or out of the school, that is the way they are selling it. They dont call it realtime facial recognition. They call it alert detection and geosensing, something that isnt what it is but you will see that across the country as well. For a long time Police Departments only used things like photos for their facial recognition databases knowing there the public would not like other things like data taken off the internet, facebook photos and things like that being used for the database. We have stories coming out that that is no longer the case so the thing we have been worried about that we are only using it to catch criminals and things like that no longer seems to be the case or you will be hearing about that a lot more. Thats what we have i did want to mention that we do have again outside and on our website some sort of recommendations for what we think needs to happen with this technology. It is generally the Government Supports a moratorium on its acquisition. We know this technology is complex and inaccessible to members of the public and lawmakers that we support things like additional funding for members of congress so they can actually investigate these problems. We also support private contractors to learn more about these kinds of technologies. We believe in expanding foia in general and with that we have 5 minutes for questions. We will be available for questions after. Thank you. [applause] we have a 20 minute break to give everyone a chance to hydrate our caffeinated is necessary but also please take this opportunity to chat if you have questions for our flash talkers. They have an opportunity to pin them down and ask them about the things you have seen, the George William r2d2 bought in the last talk. We will start at 3 00 pm sharp with Christian Daschle American University in the private Civil Liberties Oversight Board with important surveillance and intelligence oversight, Board Members will talk about their work and how they approach it so please dont miss that, and tune back in at 3 00 for the Oversight Board. Until then, thank you for coming. [inaudible conversations] this weekend, booktv features three new nonfiction books. Tonight at 8 4 05 pm eastern scott adams, creator of the comic strip dilbert and other losers think. We are all elevated in our opinions because the news model is toward provocative stuff so were before they would just sit here is the news and there is my news, now it is replaced entertainment. 11 05 eastern, former nato supreme allied commander james priebus discusses his book same true north. I would go into afghanistan in my bulletproof everything and my helmet, guys on my right and left, big guns. I was actually pretty safe, next to me is someone like richard angle from nbc news standing there in an ill fitting bulletproof vest that i assure you wouldnt stop a bullet, he has a littleton part helmet off canted off of one side. He is risking his life to tell us what is happening. You think he is serving us . I do. Sunday at 9 00 pm eastern on afterwords New York Times contributing opinion writer lindsay west talks about the me too movement in her book the witches are coming. Shes interviewed by new York Magazine writer at large and doctor rebecca traced her. People are always asking me what is the path, what do we do, we have to have something and i have been trying to come up with an answer because people keep asking me and i realized the answer is about not my responsibility to figure it out, you workshop it, you troubleshoot and keep trying stuff until people figure view. Figure it out. Watch tv every weekend on cspan2. Cspan student cam 20 20 competition is in full swing. All across the country middle and High School Students are hard at work, talking about the issues they would like the top president ial candidates to address in their campaigns. We would love to see your progress. Take us behindthescenes and share your photos using hashtag studentcam2022 when additional prizes. Working on an idea . We have resources on our website to help out. Our Getting Started page, studentcam. Org has information to guide you through the process of making a documentary. Cspan will award cash prizes including a 5000 grant prize. All eligible entries must received by midnight on january 20, 2020. Best advice i can give young filmmakers is not to be afraid to take your issue seriously. You are never too young to have an opinion to let your voice be heard now. For more information go to our website, studentcam. Org. Former nato supreme allied commander will talk about the leadership lessons that can be learned from naval commanders throughout history. All of that and more hearing today in tomorrow