WEBVTT

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The shocking police
crackdown

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on protestors in 
Ferguson, Missouri,

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in the wake of the police 
shooting of Michael Brown,

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underscored the extent to which advanced
military weapons and equipment,

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designed for the battlefield,

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are making their way

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to small-town police departments
across the United States.

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Although much tougher to observe,

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this same thing is happening 
with surveillance equipment.

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NSA-style mass 
surveillance is enabling

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local police departments 
to gather vast quantities

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of sensitive information
about each and every one of us

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in a way that was
never previously possible.

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Location information can 
be very sensitive.

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If you drive your car around
the United States,

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it can reveal if you go 
to a therapist,

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attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,

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if you go to church 
or if you don't go to church.

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And when that 
information about you

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is combined with the same
information

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about everyone else,

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the government can gain a
detailed portrait

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of how private citizens interact.

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This information used to be private.

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Thanks to modern technology,

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the government knows 
far too much

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about what happens
behind closed doors.

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And local police departments make decisions
about who they think you are

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based on this information.

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One of the key technologies 
driving mass-location tracking

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is the innocuous-sounding
Automatic License Plate Reader.

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If you haven't seen one,

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it's probably because you didn't
know what to look for

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--they're everywhere.

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Mounted on roads or 
on police cars,

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Automatic License Plate Readers
capture images of every passing car

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and convert the license plate

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into machine-readable text

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so that they can be checked
against hot lists

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of cars potentially wanted
for wrongdoing.

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But more than that, increasingly,

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local police departments are 
keeping records not just

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of people wanted 
for wrongdoing,

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but of every plate that 
passes them by,

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resulting in the collection
of mass quantities of data

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about where Americans 
have gone.

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Did you know this
was happening?

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When Mike Katz-Lacabe asked
his local police department

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for information about the Plate
Reader data they had on him,

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this is what they got:

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in addition to the date, 
time and location,

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the police department had 
photographs that captured

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where he was going and 
often, who he was with.

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The second photo 
from the top

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is a picture of Mike and
his two daughters

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getting out of their car
in their own driveway.

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The government has 
hundreds of photos like this

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about Mike going about 
his daily life.

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And if you drive a car 
in the United States,

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I would bet money 
that they have photographs

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like this of you going
about your daily life.

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Mike hasn't done
anything wrong.

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Why is it okay that 
the government

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is keeping all of
this information?

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The reason it's happening
is because

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as the cost of storing
this data has plummeted,

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the police departments
simply hang on to it,

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just in case it could be 
useful someday.

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The issue is not just that
one police department

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is gathering this information
in isolation,

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or even that multiple police 
departments are doing it.

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At the same time, 
the Federal Government

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is collecting all of these
individual pots of data,

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and pooling them together 
into one vast database

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with hundreds of 
millions of hits

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showing where Americans
have traveled.

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This document from the 
Federal Drug Enforcement Administration,

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which is one of the agencies
primarily interested in this,

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is one of several that reveal 
the existence of this database.

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Meanwhile, in New York City,

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the NYPD has driven police cars

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equipped with License Plate Readers

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past mosques in order to
figure out who is attending.

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The uses and abuses 
of this technology

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aren't limited to the United States.

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In the UK, the police department

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put 80-year-old John Kat
on a Plate Reader watch list

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after he had attended dozens of
lawful political demonstrations

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where he liked to sit on a bench
and sketch the attendees.

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License Plate Readers aren't the
only mass-location tracking technology

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available to law enforcement
agents today.

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Through a technique known as
a Cell Tower Dump,

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law enforcement agents can
uncover who was using

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one or more cell towers
at a particular time,

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a technique which 
has known to reveal

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the location of 
tens of thousands

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and even hundreds 
of thousands of people.

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Also, using a device 
known as a Sting Ray,

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law enforcement agents
can send tracking signals

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inside people's houses

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to identify the cell phones 
located there.

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And if they don't know
which house to target,

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they've been known to drive

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this technology around through
whole neighborhoods.

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Just as the police in Ferguson possess
high-tech military weapons and equipment,

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so too do police departments across
the United States

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possess high-tech surveillance gear.

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Just because you don't see it,

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doesn't mean it's not there.

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The question is, what should
we do about this?

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I think this poses a serious
civil liberties threat.

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History has shown that once

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the police have massive 
quantities of data,

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tracking the movements 
of innocent people,

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it gets abused, maybe 
for blackmail,

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maybe for political advantage,

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or maybe for 
simple voyeurism.

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Fortunately, there are
steps we can take.

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Local police departments can 
be governed by the city councils,

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which can pass laws
requiring the police

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to dispose of the data 
about innocent people

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while allowing the legitimate
uses of the technology

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to go forward.

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Thank you.

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(Applause).