Transcripts For CSPAN3 Government Surveillance Privacy Conference - Part 3 20240713

Welcome back for the 2019 cato surveillance conference, i am still Julian Sanchez a senior fellow here and im pleased to welcome you for the afternoon session there is more fascinating stuff happening in the world of surveillance that can be covered in fully panels and we are always glad to have a lineup of 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 project, this is a time where we hear a lot about the goal of putting the first but surveillance space this often creates friction with our allies when our surveillance goals may conflict and im happy to welcome that from an international perspective. applause thanks julian 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 fairly 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 surveil a person in the United States and collect Communications Content for intelligence purposes it has to show that the person is an agent of a foreign power or an entity like a Foreign Terrorist Organization or a 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 has to be done in front of a judge in the supersecret pfizer court. But outside the United States, International Intelligence surveillance directed at foreigners does not have those protections. If conducted under executive order 12333 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 any determination at all. Any activity and intentions of a foreigner are 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 suffice to say 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 or National Security is fair game. So America First surveillance policy can impact the right of foreigners because of standard or low in the u. S. Government ability to Access Communications is very high especially relative to other countries, it is high in part because many of the large providers are located in the United States. But America First diminishes the rights of americans and i say that because we americans communicate 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 communications of people United States intentionally incidentally, that means we intend to collect the communication of americans who are communicating with foreign targets, it is called incidental targeting. By targeting foreigners of low standards the u. S. Government amasses a database of the communication that includes communication of americans and then it turns 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 diminishion in the rights of americans. By failing to extent basic protection to the foreigners, we allow the database of communications to grow and grow quite huge and includes the communications of american because we communicate with foreigners abroad and communications are collected in the database even though they are domestic to domestic. America first offers very little protection to foreigners and also diminishes the protection that would be otherwise 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 actually investigating a crime, there had 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. So this is not about content. Its about traffic data and subscriber information. How could a country give effect to a foreign order . Well, the protocol says how can do that. You can do that as accepting it is equivalent to a domestic border by endorsing it or by issuing its own Legal Process which i presume will be based on facts that are not provided by Foreign Governments. The u. S. Could give effect to a foreign order to, for example, disclose a lot of your email or youre browsing history, based on a demand issued without judicial review, from a Budapest Cybercrime Convention protocol a signatory like hungary, turkey, russia, albania, or ukraine. Ukraine. Did i say ukraine . Yes, ukraine. It is a signatory to the Budapest Convention, the cybercrime convention, presumably it will sign the protocol to the budapest private cybercrime convention. A mile down the road from this conference there is a big discussion among members of congress about whether to removed from office the president of the United States because he attempted to enlist 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 investigations today involve electronic evidence. One could presume that what ukraine would do would be to seek email logs from hunter biden. Hunter biden, presumabley using a u. S. 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. U. S. 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 applies. The issue with the Budapest Convention is it will give the Foreign Government a way to compel the information under Foreign Governments laws, so if ukraine wants Hunter Bidens email logs and both the United States and ukraine signed the convention unless the u. S. Makes certain reservations, the ukrainian order could be honored by the u. S. And compel the disclosure of the biden email logs. I think that congress is not going to allow this result. Based on its track record so far, Congress Instead will want to protect americans and 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 the government then obtains these communications without having to go through the normal Legal Process as if it obtained them directly. That is, the government could choose to give effect to the foreign order by reserving the right to issue its own process section 27. 03d of title 18 and it would have to go in front of a judge to show reasonable suspicion using u. S. Processes to get the information sought by the foreign order. But the Budapest Convention currently doesnt prohibit discrimination. It doesnt prohibit the government to apply that process and a different process for the foreigner data such as the process of simply honoring the foreign demand. Now, this is a problem that will be facing Congress Next year or the year after when it is asked to ratify the budapest Convention Protocol. I think we need, we 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 requires equal treatment of data demands of foreigners and of nationals and that it has 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. It doesnt put us first and it diminishes the rights of everyone. Thank you. Thanks very much. Next up, if you debated surveillance you probably heard someone Say Something along the lines, i dont know why i should 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 as we knoe from history, the burdens of surveillance dont 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 the agis of things like countering violent extremism work to surveil communities much more are under scrutiny than white, christian americans with middleoftheroad political views. Hello, my name is nabihah. I am a legal scholar from Muslim Advocates, a National Civil Rights Organization ensuring the freedom of americans of all faiths. 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, universities, hospitals, Mental Health visits . What if the government aggregated all of this data to make a determination about you . Welcome to countering violent extremism, a Government Program that claims they can identify the violence before it occurs by monitoring their behavior and flagging you across public resources, and private spaces. So what if you frequent a mosque . Discuss policy . Express sadness . That would not be a precursor for violence but 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 link federal and local government to private entities in order to monitor individuals. The grant from department of Homeland Security recommends the use of a wholeofgovernment approach this document is the program plan in illinois as you can see according to their own materials the state agency, the grantee, wants to link federal agencies, the fbi and us attorneys office, to state agencies the governor and the air illinois a Terrorism Task force, and other services educators, social service providers, faith and community groups. This isnt just happening in illinois. Programs operate across the country in each of these locations. In just the past four years, there have been 57 to the department of Homeland Security alone operating at every level of government. For anyone who may argue that these programs are somehow 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 on instance they looks at a uk program called prevent. People were mandated to report the radicalization and the result, children under 18 were reported for normal behavior. There were ethical concerns regarding surveillance and talk of potential repression of legal political dissent and speech. This august, Duke University flagged the programs failures under the Obama Administration because of a lack of structure and opposition from the Muslim American community. These programs dont work. They overcriminalize 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 fbi has to the Somali Community and to identify targeted contacts within the community. This underground program morphed into a community partnership, the program we know today, in order to bolders these relationships between state agencies 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. While they use racial language, 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 so in 2018, we send freedom of information act requests to 16 different agencies. What we found was an everexpanding program. Take for instance boston where record request from the Muslim Justice league found one program run by the Boston Police department claimed in their grant language somali youth were inherently violent and when left alone will commit violence. The somali Youth Coordinator withdrew from the program over concerns of discrimination. The program even drafted surveys to see if attitudes after the program toward the muslim attitude towards extremists was postive or negative. Could you imagine such survey targets at christians . They are targeted for 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 these large grants . Its minimal. The documents we found shows that at best agencies that receive funding have to submit paragraphlong 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 . We found them in 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. Our investigation revealed a more innocuous program consisting of after School Mentoring and the Denver Police have since 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 provided funding the Illinois Police and has plans to collaborate with i. C. E. Here are some draft agreements they had for something they called 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 draft. Agreement. This program operates with Mental Health providers. The university of illinois offered continuing medical Education Credits for Mental Health providers how to implement the program by flagging warning signs and behaviors. I this particularly egregious as this is a vulnerable site for many individuals. The program operates online there is a path to track online content. The program tries to incorporate information like crossborder travel and injecting this into every setting this document that you can see from the early iteration and demonstrates the blueprint. The plan was always to link private spaces and behaviors to Government Agencies the Program Continues and just this year we have seen three different candidates propose a program in additional funding for it, william barr released a department of justice memo over mass shooters calling it, early engagement. In her plan to address white nationalism, Elizabeth Warren repurposed a version of it to enact Early Intervention to address white nationalism. Regardless who it is deployed against, it is another effort to justify precrime 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 proogram is another boondoggle in a long run of counterterrorism campaigns across the us the Program Continues to target muslim and minority communities. The programs continue to erode civil liberty and privacy protections for all people. As it expands the authority and reach of Law Enforcement agencies become more entrenched and the Program Needs to be dismantled. We at Muslim Advocates continue to investigate these programs and remain opposed to them. Wh have the right to know what Government Programs operate within our spaces. We have a lot more to say and more coming up. Thank you. Thank you. Coming up next, chip gibbons, policy legislator who will be talking about a new report from his froup on the enduring history of the fbi abuse of power and its continuaing implications for the First Amendment of the battle and the worrying trend today and other various papers related to this afternoons talk on people outside by the Registration Desk so be sure to take a look at the deeper dive on what you are hearing today. Thank you so much to the Cato Institute for having me and thank you for everyone in the audience who is watching and also watching on cspan2 and the livestream if youre not in the audience you heard the announcement about the report and want to copy you can go online and find the pdf or order a print version of it. The name of the report is still spying on dissent, the enduring problem of fbi abuse. 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 either become very normalized or almost invisible. Conversely, 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 even realize it is going on. A few years ago i was with a gentleman froman 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. I wont say what office, but the representative was very concerned about teh 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 sort of perverse on the one hand it means that we accept it as normal and people who know better 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 incidents. When we are so lucky that 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 of water protectors, last month we found out they were knocking on the doors of palestine solidarity activists and last year we discovered they were spying on occupied wall street, indicating the problem was widespread and severe and systemic and part of a 110 year effort by the fbi. So to put together the incidents and the reason we picked 2010 not just because of a decade but in 2010 the oig released a report the year of the fbi and as you can tell but that is a last time there has been an official review of fbi spying and that covers the bush era and four days after the oid released that report they were raiding the homes of antiwar and palestine solidarity activists 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 black lives matter as early as ferguson and have come up with the intelligence assessment about the threat of black identity extremism and the logic behing this is insidious. It says if African Americans are upset about Police Racism and social injustice as retaliatory they will commit retaliatory violence to be aware of 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, they endure, ia a precursor to crime. Other things we know about is that at Standing Rock they visited antipipeline protesters. They have also visited palestinians solidarity activists and after filinf a foia request and in relationship hopefully you will hear more about later. This month they were at occupy and abolish i. C. E. Even the opponents of cuban normalization at their homes and asked them questions so we know pretty much every Political Movement of the last decade, 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 1908 when the fbi was founded while congress was on recess and to this day the fbi has have no congressional or legislative charter, which is something that is vexing to civil libertarians like myself. In 1919 J Edgar Hoover was getting his start at the fbi which was originally called the radical division and what was later renamed the general Intelligence Division and i know it was a hundred years ado but this is an important thing. First of all this is not abnormal. Different Police Departments around the country were developing red squads like that radical position which brings me to my second part of the equation is that the fbi is not only a Law Enforcement agency and in theory that is about gathering evidence that can be used to prosecute a crime. We can dispute if they do but that is the theory but also that intelligence, which is far more permissive and broad so you have this trend of people to have that Intelligence Divisions to track labor unrest, anarchist, socialists and other undesirables, and hoover comes out of that tradition and then becomes the director of the fbi. The general Intelligence Division he is responsible for the palma raids if you are ever nominated for fbi director they will ask you, has the fbi ever violated and Civil Liberties if you say yes the palmer raids and spying on mlk. That is how how bad they are considered to this day, that every candidate for fbi directorship says they are bad. And then in 1924 the attorney general is disturbed that the fbi is engaged in political spying so he puts limitations on them, hemakes meets with hoover and makes them meet with the aclu and 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 the 1930s and 1940s, fdr puts forth an executive order to give them National Security non Law Enforcement which hoover interprets and giving him a broad mandate to be the police of thoughts. 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 as an abstract but we found out that in 1950, 12 days after the korean war hoover met with truman and asked him to put 12000 people in military detention 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 on it. Thats not the only listed there is a reserve index of people who are dangerous but not for the security list and then the fbi would finesse the numbers when reporting to the ag, taking people off 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 and by 1960, the fbi between all the indices 430,000 fils are allegedly aimed at individuals. Tell me thats not surveillance we usually talk about cointelpro, counterintelligence program, that was in the bad old days of the fbi surveillance, its cointelpro 2. 0, people have been saying that since the investigation of Ronald Reagan foreignpolicy in the 80, so i think its important not to conflate that with surveillance because of the Committee Says counterintelligence is a misnomer. This is a domestic covert action to protect the status quo. And then somebody mentioned the murder of fred hampton who was killed by the Chicago Police 50 years ago, earlier this week that was a police raid set up ny the cointelpro operation. So in 1956 hoover convince the Supreme Court he cannot prosecute for criminal law so he has to have a program to neutralize and disrupt and it is be definition perfectly legal and speech that he deems threatening. It starts with the communist movement into civil rights and then it goes up against the kkk which i will not talk about that as i could go on all day as an informant for the fbi and does not want his face on tv so they gave him a disguise. Also would clash with his maroon suit. Yes there are some bad stuff in the hoover era but then 9 11 happened so theres this myth about the reformed fbi and with those scandals and what they were doing in Central America and teh Senate Intel Committe had a hearing about it and and entire investigation and the geo it was a huge incident and then in the eighties or the early nineties and the runup to the gulf war the fbi is visiting arabamericans asking them about potential u. S. War in the gulf with this recurring theme so it was not engaged in political surveillance is not true. But 9 11 comes in then they get new powers. So durign teh Church Committee that main recommendation is to have a statutory charter but that doesnt happen because they issues guidelines that are selfregulating and because of that later attorney generals could make them less protective of Civil Liberties, that but the current guidelines put in place in 2008 by george bush attorney general before obama came into office allowed for the first time the fbi to investigate people without factual predicate of criminal activity or National Security threats. The two categories are assessments and predicated investigations, which means m having a factual predicate. Let that sink in. And then of course is the patriot act we know they are up to all of these Different Things they spy on and greenpeace and petas so in 2000 says asking the oig to look into this and they issued a report that is often cited as being very critical of the fbi but it also in a lot of ways illustrates how loose their guidelines are. For example they were discussing whether or not its okay for the fbi to engage in counterterrorism investigation of the catholic worker movement. And the oig said, somebody through red paint at a military base at a window and then said this is those who suffer under Saddam Hussein and then said that the red paint as a force of violence for a political end, that is terrorism, so i think thats an important think to remember when they tell us they do not have enough tools to investigate white supremacist or any other type of terrorist activities. When it comes to quakers or antiwar activists they always find a way or reason. Given the problem is ongoing, we shouldnt be surprised it is accepted as normal and still going on. We need really important reforms to put the fbi in check. I will concede even if theyre all put in place it wouldnt instantaneiousl solve the problem. It is a long struggle but the biggest is to reign in the fbi investigative powers and have reason to suspect which doesnt sound that radical but it actually is. Thank you very much for listening to my a presentation and watching on cspan2 and i hop everybody takes the report or gets it online, pdf or hard copy. Thanks, chip. Those of you who know french may know surveillance actually comes from from to watch from above. You cannot get more watch efrom above than with satellites the orbital entities that are increasingly tracking us and in collaboration with the much closer tracking devices we keep in our pockets. The combination of that to monitoring from close up and above is the topic of a fantastic paper authored by three authors including mckenna who is here with us, computational and Data Sciences is recommended to everyone and it is an analysis of the intersection of these two technologies. We have allowed more time because this requires a little more exploration. Good afternoon thank you to the Cato Institute there is a lot of research in this paper. I want to thank my coauthors could not be here today. One who is also a professor of meteorology at penn state. None of this would be possible without so i am excited to talk to about these things so i will start with a story that might jog your memory that happened last year that starts with what comes from these things like a phone and a fitbit and what happens if they get combined with the satellite . So one of the places we saw that was the fitness app which became a global heat map aggregating the data of satellites and cell phones. Understanding how much data, it is interesting. 5 tb, as much data as the hubble generates in six months and it only cost them a couple hundred thousand in computer processing cost so its very easy to access data. Shortly after they publish their global heat map to show all of the users everywhere all around the world, we get this tweet from a 20tearold australian student that says they released the global heat map, cool, but not for operations that require secrecy. New york times picks it up and the story overnight blows up. We have a National Security crisis. What is interesting, in looking at this, the New York Times reported the pentagon had given the soldiers fitbits. They wanted to encourage them to exercise so teethree was a platform for these athletes was basis to be identified overnight, creating an immediate risk, threat of harm to our armed forces. So i am looking at this in my background as electronic surveillance law. I have coauthored a large treatise called wiretapping and eavesdropping looking at how this happened in the satellite data if it went into the global map where did it come from and how is there a shutter control with the satellite images, putting this together i was struggling and i realized i know so little about this information nexus, so reaching out and working with my colleagues we really tried to put this together and we came up with this term that i will spend a little bit of time going through and how we got there and how does this work work. When i was looking into this i realized there was this really makred gap in the literature, space literature. Privacy attorneys try to stay in their lane privacy lean scholars and we heard from the general counsel talk about Location Tracking, a great primer. But in looking at this, i was like, how do we regulate satellite data done bt private companies . We will talk about our electronic scheme in the us and realizing these device, phones and fitbits and social media, has all the satellite data. So we have a lot of questions. How does that work . Who can own them . How do they work with Smart Devices . Who regulates satellites . Is this government . Private entities . Who can access . And to practice surveillance law for decades but i havent come across what courts do with commercial Remote Sensingf data. Starting with a basic overview of how satellites work to the human eye. Direct sensing, if we can touch it it is physically there. But Remote Sensing is a process to acquire information about our surroundings about being in contact. Thats what the human eye does, and satellites do. And then to have different sensors with different purposes. We have geostationary satellites, synchronous satellites. They all serve different purposes from stationary satellites it is a consistent image over time with the same place on earth. We can look for changes, for many things. The presence of satellites is rapidly increasing and so is how they Work Together so trying to figure that out figuring out how gps works. Every smart device has a gps chip based upon the u. S. The Global Positioning satellite. We were the first to market that is because we made the gps public satellite system available before any country did. When the u. S. Did that it guaranteed a place in the market for its gps chip so if you want a device to use gps Location Service you need the chip that works with u. S. Satellites. So our fitbits, Smart Devices, they have these chips in them. They are tiny. The gps system, any time a chip is connecting to identify the where satellites are using data from multiple satellites to know precisely where i am. The sensors in the Smart Devices are micro electric systems they are silicon based and tiny. The tiny tiny sensors give us assisted gps which is incredibly precise. We heard earlier today about Location Tracking and how cellular tracking works through triangulation. The gps uses the power of the cell phone. But these Smart Devices and is remarkable those sensors that are embedded. So on this diagram you can see in relation to nanotechnology. These devices can be put into anything. One thing that really should be up there all the time, we see automobile and home and electricity, smart phone sensors sensors, we should have a box for toy sensors as more and more toys are built with the sensors in them with gps tracking chips. All of this works off of satellites, commercial Remote Sensing satelltes. Even shopping carts have these sensors built into them so a Patent Application filed by walmart biometric data sensors biofeedback shopping cart handle. I dont want walmart to know my heart rate. But how is it regulated . What is happening . Cart speed, location, heart rate, all working with the backbone of satellites, gps and these mem sensors. So in terms of why this happens, the stravos situation was exactly that. It is data including movement so when we think about that kind of movement it is precise gps data from device and phone chips and Remote Sensing imagery to merge together and thats what we get. So what is interesting about the strava is it revealed, and i should be clear, strava was doing nothing wrong. It broke no laws. It was giving the users what they want. That this product and what we realize is how little understanding we have from a regulatory perspective and a privacy perspective and a Civil Liberties perspective. About the role of satellites interacting abd Geospatial Data. The other piece of strava was the social media data. We are constantly interacting with social media people have been tweeting all day and myself included and what we hear at this conference when we tweet , there is a geolocation tag in the metadata as Public Information that anybody can look at but all this comes together so my question with a electronic surveillance background with cyber and privacy law is how do we regulate satellites . Satellites are run by private companies. How was that regulated . So one thing is that outer space is global commons, this idea comes from International Treaties is that is there for anybody. We dont want claims of sovereignty. So when we look at this, where does it come from . It is really related to client security and the National Security implications but it is byzantine to figure out where do i go to figure out what Satellite Companies can do with data . Thats a tough thing to figure out and its tough to figure out how data is being collected. But one of the things i found interesting who regulates remote commercial sensing satellites . Sec . Who could it be . Its the weather people. Noaa. Noaa regulate satellite, that is fascinating. When we presented this paper we had a great commenter , a former department of commerce attorney, who did not know that noaa regulated commercial remotesensing. Its not wellknown. Who knew . We can understand why noaa clearly is using satellites, integral to weather prediction, climate analysis, but now with National Security implications. So what about other laws regulating commercial Remote Sensing . There is no federal legislation that directly regulates commercial Remote Sensing, so because we dont have any kind of Location Tracking privacy regulation for companies and their activities so i will talk about the legislation we do have to place but there is none tracking through the satellite information. That hawaii passed legislation to regulate this but the governor vetoed that legislation. So what do we have . The robust Electronic Communications privacy act that clearly protected Wire Communications of americans. We heard this morning taking us through the laws and how the laws work and how information can be accessed. But satellites and satellite data all that is in outer space what is fascinating the regulatory process, so i will talk more about how thats handled and why that can be a littl problematic. So we know there are bills right now about regulating geolocation data to protect it. Its a big point and part of the problem is just that regulating is not enough. Different sensors equal different information and part of the confusion how this is addressed from a privacy law standpoint is actually a Court Decision and this is a disconnect if you use a gps tracking device is unlawful warrantless use location data is unlawful. Warrantless use of thermal Energy Imaging is unlawful. Aerial surveillance airplanes taking photographs of private property. Aerial surveillance is fine. Camera surveillance in public space is fine. But the disconnect is, satellites can sense heat and operate in the same way that thermal imaging device can get. We looked at satellites that can regulate temperature. There is a disconnect and robust privacy law but does not apply at all to satellites. So how are satellites regulated . Why is this creating privacy and civil liberty concerns . Noaa does have a commercial remote office. There is a robust marriage between commercial remotesensing and the u. S. Government and part of that licensing process is part of the problem. The licensing process is not public, and ill talk about why is that a problem. When we think of this warrantless use of satellite data and what we hear about it but because its all on this go above domestic laws and regulations for electronic surveillance what is occurring is not happening in public. We know satellites are regulated internationally and nationally. But the domestic regime is focused on promoting commercial . It is incredibly value information and if we harness the technology and Development Efforts it is a benefit for the u. S. Government. The concerns should be apparent and you can sense that here. So those that have merged into information nexus, no federal regulation and our jurisprudence permits surveillance and its separated. So what do we do with that . How do we address that . We know it is a persistent and growing National Security concern. Strava was not alone. If we fastforward to the military personnel looking at what happened because it reveals military control and supply and this problem extends beyond military personnel is interconnected with the privacy concerns that i talked about, so part of how we miss that National Security threat we were focusing on malicious state actors so what was their development and on physical destruction, collision that happens and i talk about this, we have this very disjointed and cumbersome Regulatory Regime when it comes to satellites. So we have some recommendations here. The first, the space optics registry registers all satellites. And all that requires, the heights, etc for safety, and the entity of the government that was operating the satellite and that is related to liability, the location launched that is the reason the country from which but it is remarkable that includes the Data Collected, how it stored in all of those things. We dont have any Public Information provided about that. Is still under the guise of the National Security framework. We dont reveal that information so they have a commercial Remote Sensing satellite, and theyre providing the information to the u. S. Military and aggregating data from our devices, multiple kinds of satellites and facial analysis. Check out the website its fascinating that we can extract insights to the Geospatial Data and perform analysis and tell you who is at your competitors store and who was there and when and why. And so we are enabling realtime Location Tracking. And yet that information and part of the licensing requirements requires that the u. S. Government has control over and of those particular groups satellites are fundamental part of this. Each year we see in the bill Congress Efforts to protect privacy to give us a better balance at a federal level, of privacy law but we dont see them as being addressed as part of this and it is a voice that is astonishing. But to the cynical in teh room, is it intentional . Because we have an open stream between commercial and Remote Sensing data and the u. S. Government outside of our regular domestic surveillance law. So how do we address this . To make public that process that makes what data is being collected and how its being used and to whom it is disseminated . How long is the data being retained . We hear that about other kinds of data but missing from that piece is this Geospatial Data that collects and uses our information. Another issue is the international component. We are in a speech race with commercial actors and governments. Talking about the system its important to understand different coutnries have different systems. China is leading the way launching satellites. So in terms of future international discussions, we have these questions about Remote Sensing data of other countries. But right now we see the constant data we are having because the eu enacted its general Data Protection regulation how thats affecting data aggregated and collected. One other piece we see in the commercial remotesensing regulation is missing from these regulations and including the rewrite by commerce which is underway right now is any discussion of the words privacy or civil liberty. They seek to make their process less encumbered, want to have satellited be unfettered in what they can do for us. That has to be second of that regulatory process to make the satellite smart. We are where the laws are being enacted or passed ending up with very disjointed legislation and the efforts to regulate satellite data for commercial reasons for complexities how do we do that . That is to figure out how we take the existing federal privacy law scheme and related legislation, how do we make sure government can get data from satellites lawfully within a framework that is consistent within the constitution with privacy protections and Fourth Amendment obviously concerns have been addressed consistent with privacy expressed that how do we make that consistent because if strava, a startup fitness app revealted multiple location bases putting us personnel in an immediate danger, this is a problem affecting everyone. This is not just Civil Liberties advocates who should be concerned concerned and the area is Common Ground there is a lot more in the paper and im trying to give you a quick overview of there is any questions i will be around. Sorry my coauthors cannot be here as well. Thank you very much. applause with the macro scale of eyes in the sky to more local monitoring we are accustomed to thinking of big brother and surveillance from entities at the National Level and it turns out tech trickles down and those Consumer Devices are used by local authorities a few years down the road. Discussing facial Recognition Technology as something worth paying attention to at the local level. Freddy martinez will talk about their about the new guide for citizens investigating facial recognition in their own backyard. So thank you for having us here today. We have been investigating the use of facial Recognition Technology across the couhtry, hundreds of requests. Although Police Departments to have access to the technology we are finding it in places we did not expect to be seen. s we want to address what are those places . Where should you be looking . In your own backyard, where are the couch cushions you have not overturn . That is what we talk about today today. Thank you for having us here. I work at open the government, a Nonpartisan Coalition working to strengthen democracy and promote a more accountable government. Before i joined them i spent five and a half years pretty much filing foias on this so this is an issue i have worked on closely a number of years. I want to stat with the Senior Information Technology officer at Washington County in oregon. In his free time he decided to roll out a facial recognition system and he integrated the countys a mugshot data with amazons facial Recognition Technology. So there were no concerns about Civil Liberties or requirements to let anyone know this is happening. Were to reach out to amazon and since then has become an evangelist for amazon and that this is the future with where we are with facial Recognition Technology. So thats where we wanted to start and thats why we have co many concerns because its not just this person here but to that end we create a couple of guides over the summer to write a beginner introduction guide if you never sent a foia request or are not familiar with your states the Public Records laws, we have a great resources that is seven pages that you not only go through your rights as a request but the specific language you might be using when you send a request on facial recognition. What vendors you might be interested in or a particular algorithm but the name of the vendor is different than the technology. And we have sample there. We have guides outside as well. After introducing the guide we sent hundreds of request to Police Departments across the country and created a project page where again you can take the same draft language and if you are interested in particular policies or vendors you can copy and paste the language and just investigate this in your own backyard as well. The primary thesis here is a lot of the way the Police Departments access is indirectly i would naively send out a request and say let me see your invoices, your policies and data sharing agreements and they the Police Department would Say Something clever, we dont own the system and dont intend to purchase. It if you took them at their word that they are not using or accessing the technology. But it means its a carefully phrased expression that they have not purchased it it doesnt say accessing data or sharing data or talk about other third parties. So talk about how that might look and then it should fill in the blanks about what you might expect. In his presentation at amazon to integrate their data with other data. What we found out not only was Washington County rolling out facial recognition data using amazon but also building a system by which other counties can look at their data and vice versa. There is an agency right next to Washington County and after they saw this presentation they said what you teach us how to do this we will share data of mugshots i dont know if you can see this but they have no policies in place for controlling access. So that is one way Police Agencies share data is they will create waves and then to create any policies but then also looking at the technology and inFusion Centers. Those are only supposed to be sharing data and by statute not to investigate crimes. But that is not what we are finding. If they dont understand and or respect then does not but they do have agreements with the Fusion Centers and backing centers i did not expect the Fusion Center would have that technology but it was finding this. Two weeks ago there was a report where surveillance cameras like ring access the footage then in arizona and the Police Department does not have facial recognition but they were guessing they could send the data to the Fusion Center and they could run scans and then that back based off of the data. But that is what we are fighting at. Second the president of vendor the data works in secret trying to get and San Francisco police Sacramento County is on here and then you have those that are secret organizing the task force for call members from two years ago and 2017 the article just came out last year on this year. Also August September of this year San Francisco moved to ban facial recognition by Law Enforcement in total. It creates a lot of issues of secrecy with a credit vendor in secret building off the Regional Task force in the public space and those who dont want to use this technology to create problems around secrecy and public right to notice. Much like we saw with license plate readers, we see contractual agreements but so when license Plate Reader Technology they are down but they have 4 billion images and their license plate database because they build that but then go to motorola and then that the language to emerge in the contracts. I think this contract is out of irvine california. So i think a lot of that trajectory people are talking about to regulate is very similar to the problems we were seeing. Another way we found this was three statewide initiatives for the attorney general so we found this and that which runs the actual stand and the we see a very similar system in pennsylvania, with a criminal Justice Network called jay net so again, every single Law Enforcement agency in pennsylvania has access to this technology but of course none of them actually own it. Ohio is very similar as well so i again did not think that the attorney general would be doing this but apparently that is the case it at least three states. Other findings, training manuals are almost nonexistent. We were able to find one and this was a training manual from luck texas. They sent these officers in a very vigorous it our Training Session to Vigilant Solutions which is owned by motorola now and at the end of those eight hours, they get 30 multiple choice questions. This was i believe one of the only training documents we were able to get to what we are finding across the country is that there seems to be very little training, if there is training being down by the vendors and, they are asking multiple choice question and i guess that is the best way to test a proficiency with this technology. Other things that we have been finding is any kind of for your request for any kind of regulatory policies just doesnt seem to exist so we did have our guide some language about how to fight policies and things like that, we almost universally got those denied, i think but what have gotten five or six, for the most part, in any kind of foyers are Public Record requests on facial recognition they were treated as, did you purchase said, yes or, no so that was really troubling and any discussion on vice, accuracy assessments, there are none. No one is looking into any kind of auger rhythmic bias or anything like that on this technology at all. So, again we tried really hard, you know, with policies weve got a handful, with bison accuracy assessments nine, zero, so that is troubling for obviously lots of Different Reasons but if you do plan on doing this in your backyard, please look into that, because so far this is a nonstarter, and then just briefly looking into the future use official Recognition Technology are seeing it being deployed by these private level cop things that are patrolling laws in california, it has license plate readers and facial Detection Software on there for some reason and you know, this guy unlike, the parking lots of malls and things like that, i have no idea why that was a feature do so it is obviously not limited to Law Enforcement use. There are certainly commercial interests. We are seeing realtime fischel recognition being sold by, or being pitched by motorola. In fact, you have it lined it if you will prevent school shootings, you will create a blacklist people who should not be allowed into the school, and you are created your fence around the school and you will run realtime facial recognition everyone coming into and out of the school and stop a shooting that way. That is the way theyre selling it. The dont color realtime facial recognition. They caught alert detection ngo fencing, some bizarre name that is not what it is so youre beginning to see that across the country as well and for a long, time and finally for a long time, Police Department only use things like photos, looking photos for official recognition knowing that the public would not like other things like Data Collected off the internet script up the internet, used for their facial recognition data bases, we have the stories coming out but well show that that is no longer the case and so that sort of thing we have been worrying about that we are only using it to catch criminals and things like that, that no longer seems to be the case, and so youll be hearing about that a lot more in the next coming months and weeks. I think thats what we have, finally, i did want to mention, i do have again, outside as well as on our website, some recommendations for what we think needs to happen with this technology. If generally, the Government Supports a moratorium on its acquisition, we know that this technology is complex and inaccessible to members the public at the lawmakers so we support things like additional funding for members of congress have begun actually investigate these problems and we also support things like applying for it a private contractors so we can learn more about these kinds of technologies so we start with expanding foyer in general, and with that, i think retire a few questions . Is that right . Okay, we will be a bit available for questions after. Thanks. applause we have a 20minute break now. Just give everyone a chance to stretch their legs, hydrate or caffeinate is necessary, but also, please take this opportunity to chat with speakers, if you have questions for our flash talkers, this is a Good Opportunity to get them now and ask them about some of the security things, you have seen that orwellian our duty to bought in the last top, i look forward to seeing it at my local mall. We will be starting at 3 pm sharp with the professor of the American University and member of the Civil Liberties oversight board, a very important civil intelligence oversight, body there here to tell us about their work and please dont miss that. For those watching at, home be sure to tune back in at three for the conversation with the privacy and Civil Liberties oversight board. Until, then thank you for coming. If two great sessions this morning, and we have two great sessions