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BBC News
By Jane Wakefield
image captionBaltimore had been piloting the aerial surveillance since April
Lawmakers in Baltimore have voted to end a controversial aerial surveillance program, which had seen spy planes constantly monitoring the city.
The program, set up by private firm Persistent Surveillance Systems, used camera-equipped planes to capture what was happening across a vast urban area.
The decision to abandon the scheme followed a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
It said the system disproportionately targeted people of colour. Baltimore s termination of its unconstitutional spy plane program is a hard-fought victory for all Baltimoreans, especially for Black leaders who challenged this and communities of colour who are disproportionately targeted by this surveillance, said Brett Max Kaufman, a senior lawyer for the ACLU.
This is a still from “All Light, Everywhere.” (Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute)
You’re being watched.
That’s what the film “All Light, Everywhere,” which premiered Jan. 31 at the Sundance Film Festival, wants you to remember. Not only are you being watched, you’re being recorded and someone is sitting at their desk somewhere and putting together their own narrative about the things they are observing about you.
In this film, which feels and looks like an indie PSA, the analyst is sitting at their desk in Scottsdale, Ariz., home of the Axon Enterprise. This software company, the self-professed “tech suite for public safety,” manufactures and calibrates many instruments used in the carrying out of said “public safety,” including tasers, high-tech police cars, drones, eyeglasses you’ve only seen in spy movies, and last but not least, body cameras.
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In the 1780s, an English philosopher devised an idea for a prison the Panopticon. A circular design with the prisoner cells on the outside and a guard post in the center. The prisoners are unable to know if they are being observed by the guard post, but they know that it is possible at any moment. Because of the uncertainty, the prisoners will behave properly, acting as though they were under surveillance, even if it wasn’t the case. In this way, a single guard can effectively control hundreds of prisoners.
In a close 15-14 tally, the Board of Aldermen directed Mayor Lyda Krewson to enter a contract with Ohio-based Persistent Surveillance Systems for an 18-month term.