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The shocking police[br]crackdown on protestors

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in Missouri, in the wake[br]of the police shooting[br]

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of Michael Brown

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underscored the extent to which

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advanced military weapons[br]and equipment,

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designed for the battlefield,

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are making their way[br]

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to small town police departments[br]across the United States.

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Although much tougher to observe,

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this same thing is happening

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with surveillance equipment.

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NSA-style mass surveillance is enabling

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local police departments [br]to gather

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vast quantitates of sensitive informaiton

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about each and every one of us

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that was never previously possible.

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Location information can [br]be very sensitive.

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If you drive your car around[br]the United States,

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it can reveal if you go [br]to a therapist,

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or an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting,

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if you go to church [br]or if you don't go to church,

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and when that information [br]about you

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is combined with the same

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information about everyone else,

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the government can gain a detailed[br]portrait

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of how private citizens act

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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[br]behind closed doors.

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and local police departments[br]make decisions

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about who they [br]think you are

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based on this information.

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One of the key technologies [br]driving mass location tracking

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is the innocuous sounding[br]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[br]know what to look for

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they're everywhere.

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mounted on roads or [br]on police cars,

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automatic license plate readers

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capture images of every passing car[br]

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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

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against hot lists

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of cars potentially wanted

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for wrongdoing.

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but more than that, increasingly,

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local police departments are [br]keeping records not just

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of people wanted for wrong doing,

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but every plate that passes them by,

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resulting in the collection[br]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 Lakave[br]asked his local police department

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for information about the [br]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, [br]time and location

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the police department had [br]photographs that captured

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where he was going and often,[br]who he was with

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the second photo from the top

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is a photo of Mike and his two duaghters

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getting out of their car

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in their own driveway.

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the government has hundreds[br]of photos like this

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of Mike going about his[br]daily life.

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and if you drive a car [br]in the United States,

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you can bet money [br]that they have photographs[br]

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like this of you going about[br]your daily life.

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Mike hasn't done anything wrong,

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why is it okay

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that the government [br]is keeping all of this information?

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The reason it's happening

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is because as the cost of storing[br]this data has plummeted

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the police department simply hangs on[br]

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to it, just in case it could be useful someday.

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the issue is not just that[br]one police department

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is gathering this informaiotn

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in isolation

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or even that multiple police departments[br]are doing it,

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at the same time, [br]the federal government

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is collection all of these

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individual pots of data

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pooling them together into[br]one vast database

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with hundreds and millions[br]of hits

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showing where Americans have traveled

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this document from the

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federal drug enforcement administration

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which is one of the agencies

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primarily interested in this,

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is one of several

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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

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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 deparmtnet

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put 80-year-old John Kat

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on a plate reader watch list

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after he had attended of lawful political demonstrations

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where he liked to sit on a bench[br]and sketch the attendees

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license plate readers [br]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[br]a cell tower dump,

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law enforcement agents can

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uncover who was using one or more cellphones

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at a particular time

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a technique that is known

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to reveal their location of tens of thousands

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and even hundreds

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of thousands of people

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Also, using a device known as a sting ray,

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law enforcement agents

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can send tracking signals inside [br]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 [br]house to target,

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they've been known to drive

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this technology through entire[br]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[br]the united states possess

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high tech surveillance gear

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just because we don't see it

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doesn't mean it's not there

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The question is

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
what should we do about this

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I think this poses a serious

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
civil liberties threat

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
history has shown that once

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the police have massive quantities of data