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Power Loves the Dark <\/strong> \n Can\u2019t you see the writing on the touchscreen? A techno-utopia is upon us. We\u2019ve gone from smartphones at the turn of the twenty-first century to smart fridges and smart cars. The revolutionary changes to our everyday life will no doubt keep barreling along. By 2018, so predicts<\/a>Gartner<\/a>, an information technology research and advisory company, more than three million employees will work for \u201crobo-bosses\u201d and soon enough we — or at least the wealthiest among us — will be shopping in fully automated supermarkets and sleeping in robotic hotels.<\/p>\n With all this techno-triumphalism permeating our digitally saturated world, it\u2019s hardly surprising that law enforcement would look to technology — \u201csmart policing,\u201d anyone? — to help reestablish public trust after the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the long list<\/a> of other unarmed black men killed by cops in Anytown, USA. The idea that technology has a decisive role to play in improving policing was, in fact, a central plank of President Obama\u2019s policing reform task force.<\/p>\n In its report, released last May, the Task Force on 21st Century Policing emphasized the crucial role of technology in promoting better law enforcement, highlighting the use of police body cameras in creating greater openness. \u201cImplementing new technologies,\u201d it claimed<\/a>, \u201ccan give police departments an opportunity to fully engage and educate communities in a dialogue about their expectations for transparency, accountability, and privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the report emphasized ways in which the police could engage communities, work collaboratively, and practice transparency in the use of those new technologies. Perhaps it won\u2019t shock you to learn, however, that the on-the-ground reality of twenty-first-century policing looks nothing like what the task force was promoting. Police departments nationwide have been adopting powerful new technologies that are remarkably capable of intruding on people\u2019s privacy, and much of the time these are being deployed in secret, without public notice or discussion, let alone permission.<\/p>\n
\nPolice Nationwide Are Secretly Exploiting Intrusive Technologies With the Feds\u2019 Complicity<\/strong>
\nBy Matthew Harwood<\/a> and Jay Stanley<\/a><\/p>\n