Baltimore has an aerial surveillance program that uses a small plane equipped with high resolution cameras flying over the city for hours at a time.
This is eternal story of surveillance: first it's terrorism, then it's drug cases, then it's unregistered drivers. https://t.co/lXhAqYwoK0 pic.twitter.com/t8K0b8D7mY
— R Levinson-Waldman (@RachelBLevinson) October 25, 2016
When the program was announced there were many privacy concerns but the public was assured that
- The data would be used only for major crimes.
- The data would be destroyed after 45 days unless it was being used in an active investigation.
If you’re familiar with the Iron Law of Data Collection, you know how this story ends.
The data was not destroyed after 45 days and was subsequently used to charge individuals with crimes without informing the court or defense council where the evidence came from. Worse, the company running the program, Persistent Surveillance Systems, admits that they have archived all the data—not destroying any of it—and is now considering selling the data to third parties. Follow the link to see some of the consequences of that.
At the risk of being tedious, it’s worth repeating the lesson that this and similar stories are trying to teach us: Never believe anything the snoopers tell you and resist their pleas for “just one more small program that is, of course, for your own good.”