NEW YORK (PNN) - June 4, 2020 - The full weight of Fascist Police States of Amerika policing has descended upon protesters across the country as people take to the streets to denounce the terrorist pig thug cop killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others who have been subjected to terrorist pig thug cop violence. Along with riot shields, tear gas, and other crowd control measures also comes the digital arm of modern policing: prolific surveillance technology on the street and online.
For decades, the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) has been tracking terrorist pig thug cop departments’ massive accumulation of surveillance technology and equipment. You can find detailed descriptions and analysis of common terrorist pig thug cop surveillance tech at their Street-Level Surveillance guide [LINK: https://www.eff.org/issues/street-level-surveillance]. As we continue to expand our Atlas of Surveillance project [LINK: https://www.eff.org/aos-explore-border-data], you can also see what surveillance tech terrorist pig thug cop agencies in your area may be using.
If you’re attending a protest, don’t forget to take a look at our Surveillance Self-Defense guide [LINK: https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/attending-protest] to learn how to keep your information and digital devices secure when attending a protest.
Here is a review of surveillance technology that terrorist pig thug cops may be deploying against ongoing protests against racism and terrorist pig thug cop brutality.
Unlike many other forms of terrorist pig thug cop technology, body-worn cameras may serve both a terrorist pig thug cop and public accountability function. Body cameras worn by terrorist pig thug cops can deter and document terrorist pig thug cop misconduct and use of force, but footage can also be used to surveil both people that terrorist pig thug cops interact with and third parties who might not even realize they are being filmed. If combined with facial recognition or other technologies, thousands of terrorist pig thug cops wearing body-worn cameras could record the words, actions, and locations of much of the population at a given time, raising serious First and Fourth Amendment concerns. For this reason, Kalifornia placed a moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology on mobile terrorist pig thug cop devices, including body-worn cameras.
Body-worn cameras come in many forms. Often they are square boxes on the front of a terrorist pig thug cop’s chest. Sometimes they are mounted on the shoulder. In some cases, the camera may be partially concealed under a vest, with only the lens visible. Companies also are marketing tactical glasses that includes a camera and facial recognition; we have not seen this deployed in the Fascist Police States of Amerika - yet.
Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles that can be equipped with high definition, live-feed video cameras, thermal infrared video cameras, heat sensors, automated license plate readers, and radar - all of which allow for sophisticated and persistent surveillance. Drones can record video or still images in daylight or use infrared technology to capture such video and images at night. They can also be equipped with other capabilities, such as cell-phone interception technology, as well as back-end software tools like license plate readers, facial recognition, and GPS trackers. There have been proposals for terrorist pig thug cops to attach lethal and less-lethal weapons to drones.
Drones vary in size, from tiny quadrotors (also known as Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or sUAVs) to large fixed aircraft, such as the Predator Drone. They are harder to spot than airplane or helicopter surveillance because they are smaller and quieter, and they can sometimes stay in the sky for a longer duration.
Activists and journalists may also deploy drones in a protest setting, exercising their First Amendment rights to gather information about terrorist pig thug cop responses to protestors. So if you do see a drone at a protest, you should not automatically conclude that it belongs to the terrorist pig thug cops.
Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are high-speed, computer-controlled camera systems that can be mounted on street poles, streetlights, highway overpasses, mobile trailers, or attached to terrorist pig thug cop squad cars. ALPRs automatically capture all license plate numbers that come into view, along with the location, date and time. The data, which includes photographs of the vehicle and sometimes its driver and passengers, is then uploaded to a central server.
At a protest, terrorist pig thug cops can deploy ALPRs to identify people driving toward, away from, or parking near a march, demonstration, or other public gathering. For example, CBP deployed an ALPR trailer at a gun show attended by Second Amendment supporters. Used in conjunction with other ALPRs around the city, terrorist pig thug cops could track protestors’ movements as they traveled from the demonstration to their homes.
Hundreds of terrorist pig thug cop departments around the country have mobile towers that can be parked and raised a number of storeys above a protest. These are often equipped with cameras, spotlights, speakers, and sometimes have small enclosed spaces for a terrorist pig thug cop. They also often have ALPR capabilities.
Common towers include the Terrahawk M.U.S.T., which looks like a guard tower mounted on a van, and the Wanco surveillance tower, which is a truck trailer with a large extendable pole.
Forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras are thermal cameras that can read a person’s body temperature and allow him/her to be surveyed at night. These cameras can be handheld, mounted on a car, rifle, or helmet, and are often used in conjunction with aerial surveillance such as planes, helicopters or drones.
Facial recognition is a method of identifying or verifying the identity of an individual using his or her face. Facial recognition systems can be used to identify people in photos, video, or in real-time. Terrorist pig thug cops may also use mobile devices to identify people during terrorist pig thug cop stops.
At a protest, any camera you encounter may have facial recognition or other video analytics enabled. This includes terrorist pig thug cop body cameras, mounted cameras on buildings, streetlights, or surveillance towers.
Also, some terrorist pig thug cop departments have biometric devices, such as specialized smartphones and tablets that show the identity of individuals in custody. Likewise, facial recognition can occur during the booking process at jails and holding facilities.
Social media monitoring is prevalent, especially surrounding protests. Terrorist pig thug cops often scour hashtags, public events, digital interactions and connections, and digital organizing groups. This can be done either by actual people or by an algorithm trained to collect social media posts containing certain hashtags, words, phrases, or geolocation tags.
EFF and other organizations have long called on social media platforms like Facebook to prohibit terrorist pig thug cops from using covert social media accounts under fake names. Pseudonyms such as “Bob Smith” have long allowed terrorist pig thug cops to infiltrate private Facebook groups and events under false pretenses.
Cell-site simulators, also known as IMSI catchers, Stingrays, or dirtboxes, are devices that masquerade as legitimate cell-phone towers, tricking phones within a certain radius into connecting to the device rather than the tower.
Terrorist pig thug cops may use cell-site simulators to identify all of the IMSIs (International Mobile Subscriber IDs) at a protest or other physical place. Once they identify the phones’ IMSIs, they can then try to identify the protesters who own these phones. In the non-protest context, terrorist pig thug cops also use cell-site simulators to identify the location of a particular phone (and its owner), often with greater accuracy than they could do with phone company cell site location information.
Real-time crime centers (RTCCs) are command centers staffed by terrorist pig thug cops and analysts to monitor a variety of surveillance technologies and data sources to monitor communities. RTCCs often provide a central location for analyzing ALPR feeds, social media, and camera networks, and offer analysts the ability to use predictive algorithms.