#rC3 - Spot the Surveillance

rC3 preroll music

Herald: Yeah, and the next talk I'm very
proud to announce, we have a speaker who's

coming in from sunny California and he's
an attorney, he's working for Harvard.

He's doing so many things and he's
fighting for our digital rights. Very

happy to say hi. Welcome.
Kurt Opsahl: Thank you!

Herald: And "Spot the Surveillance" is the
topic. We'll see what we haven't seen

before. And I'm very happy that you're
here and... Kurt Opsahl. Please, let us

know what's up. Thank you.

Kurt: Thank you. Hello, everybody, my name
is Kurt, also I'm the deputy executive

director general counsel of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation. I'm here to talk to

you about observing police surveillance of
protests. So why do we want to observe

police at protests? Well, because protests
are political expression. And the Council

of Europe put it the right of individuals
to gather with other people and make their

collective voice heard is fundamental to a
properly functioning democracy. And this

is a right which is protected by the
European Convention on Human Rights and

other international rights treaties. But
surveillance - consumer's rights. So

knowing what technologies are used can
help you understand the threats to your

privacy and security, as well as provide
tools to advocate for limits on police use

of surveillance; surveillance that may
chill people's right to express themselves

on these public issues. Just as an analog
surveillance historically has been used as

a tool of repression. Nowadays,
policymakers and the public have to

understand that the threat posed by
emerging technologies is a danger to human

rights, and they need to understand that
to successfully defend human rights in the

digital age. So journalists who are
reporting on protest action should know

the surveillance that is in use. Activists
who are advocating for limitations on

police use of surveillance need to know
what surveillance is being used to

effectively advocate. And legal observers
may need to document the use of

surveillance at protests in order to
challenge the police actions at the

protest or challenge the police policies
that are being used after the protest with

the footage they've obtained. So where are
we going today? We're going to provide a

lot of information about various types of
surveillance technologies in use by police

around the world. We're going to look at
what the appearance is, how it works, what

kind of data they collect and how they're
used by police. And at the end a few other

resources available for those who want to
dive a little bit deeper on the topic. So

police surveillance technology is
everywhere. It's on the police themselves,

on their vehicles, on the roadways. It
could be above you in the air, surrounding

you in the environment, can be a lot of
different places and you need to know

where. The police officers themselves
often find in the form of either body worn

cameras or additional devices that they're
using, which are basically mobile

biometric sensors. Body-Worn cameras or
technology that's come out become more

popular over the last decade or so.
Originally was something that was being

used as a way to provide police
accountability that give a record of their

interactions with the public. And maybe,
for example, could you show police

brutality or maybe deter police brutality?
But there are two-way streets: these are

often used to surveil protesters, and the
footage may later be used to support

arrests and charges. For example, we use
this NPR story where after a rally weeks

later, the police went identifying people
through body cam footage and brought

action against them for obstructing the
roadway, part of the civil disobedience of

the protest, based on finding them on the
body camera footage. They can be in a all

variety of places, so if you're looking
for Body-Worn cameras, you got to look at

different places to see where they might
be. So a couple of places they might see

them: on the head - head mounted camera.
So it might be on the glasses on the side,

could be a lens right in the center. The
center one is pretty hard to find, but the

ones on the side or might be part of the
glasses or the helmet they're wearing are

generally pretty obvious. These ones,
they're not particularly common, but they

do happen. Shoulder mounted cameras also a
little bit less common, but they have an

interesting feature: in this case they're
using the Warrior 360 from Blue Line

Innovations as an example, and it is a
dome camera that looks all directions, 360

degrees off the officer's left shoulder.
All most cameras like a front facing

camera will capture only 180 degrees.
Chest mounted cameras are the most common

and these are being used very, very
widely. We give some examples here from

Amsterdam, Middelburg and from West
Midlands Police in the EU... or soon to be

not in EU for I guess Britain. And there
are several known types: Excelon, Wolfcom

and Watchguard are very common. They
operate in similar manners, though, with

some differences. And you can take a look
at some of the examples that are available

to those companies webpages where they
will explain the products they have an

offer and see what matches up for your
jurisdiction. Or you can also look in for

news article. Oftentimes there's a news
article about what may the first policy to

bring Body_Worn cameras is introduced in a
particular police department. The're also

smartphone based cameras, and these are
kind of the low end, it's basically just

an Android cell phone using its internal
camera with an app that does recording

placed in a pocket. So the camera is a
little bit above the clock and you can see

forward. But it's also a very subtle
technique. And it could be easily confused

if you were looking for someone just
starting their phone to their pocket. It

also might be clipped somewhere on the on
their uniform. But if you see anything

where the camera is facing outward and
it's attached to the officer, there's a

good chance that that is a Body-Worn
camera and the setup is on play. Last of

the Body-Worn cameras will talk about the
semi-obscured cams. So this is an example

for coverable Body-Worn,
Body-Worn Utility, and it is

partially concealed, basically looks like
a button on someone's uniform that if

you're not looking closely, you might not
notice. But if you see, if you know, it

appears where you would expect actually
not to have a button, it's slightly

larger, looks a little bit different. It
looks like a camera if you look closely.

But if you're looking at a distance,
you're not particularly paying attention.

You might not see it at all. In addition
to Body-Worn cameras, there are often used

mobile biometric devices, so these can be
handheld scanners, could be a tablet or a

camera phone, and in some cases it just is
a camera, which had an applicable app on

it. But we'll see that... so how to tell
whether they're using a phone or whether

using as a biometric scanner? By the body
language. So, for example, if the police

officer is holding up the phone trying to
capture someone's face, that is most

likely because they have a capturing of
photo and they may be connecting that to a

facial recognition application. And you
also will see mobile fingerprinting. So as

an example, in the United Kingdom, they
have an app on the officer's phone

combined with a fingerprint scanning
device and takes the people's fingerprints

and checks them against some databases.
One is a database of everyone that police

have detained, putting them into the
database and then checking against it for

new people. And the other one is a
database for immigration, collected at the

border when someone comes into the UK. And
this allows the police to do a very rapid

check of their records on somebody in the
field. Some of these devices are

multimodal. We'll do both of them to be
able to do fingerprints and take photos

for facial recognition. This here is the
Dataworks Plus Evolution - does it both,

and that can be convenient for the
officers, but it's a little bit more

dangerous to civil liberties. And some of
the Body-Worn cameras, in this example

Wolfcam, has a biometric capability built
in facial recognition so it can use its

regular camera functions and of course,
all of them to take the picture. That

picture could be uploaded to a database
and facial recognition will be done later.

But this one is designed to streamline
that process. So take a moment, as an

aside, to talk about facial recognition in
Europe per Algorithmwatch. The

organization says that there are at least
11 police agencies in Europe who use

facial recognition. I show them on the map
here. The UK Court of Appeal found that

automatic facial recognition technology
used by the South Wales police was not

lawful. However, elsewhere in the UK, they
are still using it. The Metropolitan

Police in London is doing a life facial
recognition throughout the city of London,

and it contends that the situation is
distinguishable from South Wales. So that

doesn't apply to them. We'll see how that
turns out. There's also been some pressure

on the European Commission to put a ban in
place or put restrictions on facial

recognition. And in September, there was a
quote from the commissioners saying that

they were considering whether we need
additional safeguards or whether we need

to go further and not allow facial
recognition cases in certain areas or even

temporarily, which is not a particularly
strong statement. But at least they are

considering the idea and something that
one can advocate for the United States, a

number of jurisdictions at the local
level, cities have put restrictions on

their police departments so they cannot
use facial recognition. It's a growing

movement. And while a national or
international law that would limit police

use of facial recognition would be best
for civil liberties, you can also start at

your local level. All right, what we
wouldn't be on the police officers

ourselves, whereelse - vehicles and
roadways and this can come up for the

vehicles, roadways adjacent to the
protests and within the protests

themselves. So adjacent to the protests is
looking at the exits and entrances to the

protest areas. And they may use existing
ANPR or place new ANPR, or ALPR -

automated numberplate reserve called ALPR
in the United States. These are cameras.

And they pointed towards a roadway to
where cars will be. They are designed to

take a picture, determine what the license
plate / number plate is, optical character

resolution. They will eventually...
recognition that will eventually be able

to see what it is, check the database and
find out who registered for that car. And

it can be uploaded to a central server for
police to search, can add vehicles to a

watch list. It is a very powerful tool
because many people are using cars to get

to and from protests. And even if they're
going in in a group, at least one member

of the group would have to have the car.
And it has been used to go after someone

after protest. So in this case, it was
from 11 of years back. A citizen of the UK

went to a protest and was later pulled
over because they had captured the license

plate while the protest added to database
and then used that to pull them on. So if

there is a protest, the police might come
in and use a portable number plate reader.

So here's some examples of what they might
look like either on a tripod or on a

trailer, and they can set these up
basically anywhere. They would often be

used at the entrance or exit to the zone
in which the protesters expected, to see

who's coming in, coming out during the
protest time period and try to capture the

crowd through their license plates. It
also now becoming more and more common on

police cars. You can see a couple of
examples we have here. One - it shows a

rather obvious in the top one, it is a UK
police car. And see, the camera sticks

out, fairly obvious that they have a
camera on the light bar; the lower from

the French police - less obvious, it looks
like an ordinary light bar. You might be

able to tell that it's a little bit
different than some other ones, because it

has sort of a funny thing in the center,
but it's a pretty subtle approach. So

there's all kinds, they might also be
mounted on the hood of a trunk and may be

more or less obvious. But take a look
at... close and also take a look at what

the police cars behavior. If they are
driving, for example, slowly down the

street next to a whole bunch of parked
car, as it may be that they are doing

"gridding", a practice known as
"gridding", where they are looking for

capturing every parked car's license plate
in a particular zone. Slow and steady in

order to do that. And then there are the
fixed number plate readers, these are

often at traffic lights and intersections
on the highways, any sort of high speed

toll road will have them. They also are...
here, they're used for other purposes,

like to establish fines, to check border
crossings. They are very common fixtures

on on roadways. So a protest happens in a
zone that already has them. The police

will be able to access that information
and know who entered or exited that area

to look around. All right, and then within
the protest itself. There may be adding

additional surveillance capacities, so in
this example, we have a... the Santa Fe

Police Department knew about a protest
that was protesting a statue and some

people would take action to remove the
statue. So in order to capture that

through surveillance, they placed this
trailer, which has a number of camera and

audio capabilities and just have rolled it
in right next to the statue to capture the

protest action. And these cameras can come
in a variety of forms. In this case we got

watch towers. Personal controling cameras
can be in the watchtower or they can be

operating remotely. As you can see, they
are using a scissor jack to raise it about

that van, the other one is an assembly.
It's not easy for someone to get in and

out of there. So it may have a person, but
somehow inconvenient to actually have a

person inside these watchtowers, but it's
much more convenient to use their built-In

surveillance capabilities and remotely
observe the area around the watchtower

with those cameras. And then there also
pure surveillance units. This is an

example here showing four cameras raised
pole and just adding surveillance

capability basically to anywhere. Some of
them are much more complex: thermal

imaging cameras. Thermal imaging often
come from the leading company is FLIR, it

stands for "Forward-looking Infrared".
FLIR system makes a lot of these devices

and makes them available to police
departments. Thermal imaging cameras allow

the police to be able to conduct
surveillance after dark where the lighting

is poor, where they might not be able to
identify individuals very easily. Instead,

they can use their heat signature and be
able to continue to monitor the protest

when the lighting conditions are less and
a lot of things on protest will happen at

night, candlelight vigils were
commonplace. So police will be looking to

thermal imaging to make sure that they
have strong surveillance capabilities

after dark. Another thing you might see at
a protest is an emergency command vehicle.

These are often massive bus sized vehicles
and they do have some surveillance

capabilities. They might have some
cameras, but more often they are command

and control. So they are the places where
somebody would be receiving footage from

cameras and operating cameras remotely,
like a communications with another people

in the field. They also may have some
built in capabilities and they may provide

the focal point, were a local connection,
they're getting information from local

devices and then they have the uplink in
the command center. One thing I wanted to

point out, it's a common misconception or
something that comes up a lot where people

are concerned about police surveillance,
as we'll see an unmarked vehicle or a van

with no windows. It may even have some
antennas or satellite. And well that is

possibly an undercover police vehicle, you
shouldn't assume that vehicle belongs to

law enforcement. That could very easily be
a news media vehicle. News media also goes

to protests. They also have satellite
uplinks and antennas, look very similar.

And in some cases, the media has a
security situation there. They're worried

that there may be theft of equipment and
they have unmarked vans. So it is worth

noting that there is an unmarked vehicle,
but you shouldn't necessarily assume that

it is a police unmarked vehicle. Also,
sometimes people see especially they see

some antennas or satellite dish vehicles
that maybe that's were "stingrays". This

is a misconception. Stingrays are pretty
small and they don't require an external

antenna. You could put a stingray inside a
trunk of a car, maybe it will be a

briefcase sized. So it would be unlikely
that if you're going to use a stingray or

similar, IMSI-catcher that you would
want to put it in the vehicle. I don't

need to put in a vehicle that has its own
antenna. There have been not very much

documentation of these technologies being
used in the US domestic protests. They

have been used, we know it, in some
protests and more authoritarian countries.

So it's unclear how often they will are
being used and they are very dangerous in

the surveillance. So It's aim is
capturing, it is able to determine what

cell phones are nearby, get a unique
identifier with that cell phone, and in

many cases be able to use that information
to determine while individuals president

protests. That information has been used
after some protests in Ukraine, for

example, to send a text message to people
telling them: we're onto you, we know you

were there, which can be very intimidating
to individuals. But the challenge is that

you're trying to observe police
surveillance in the protest, it is hard

for you to observe it because they are
often hidden. You may be able to find out

more information later through
investigative journalism or public record

requests, or news reports. If somebody is
prosecuted using that information, it may

become obvious. It is difficult to see it
at the protest itself. So next category,

look it up in the sky. There are lots of
forms of aerial surveillance or for the

agencies to surveil protests from above
using traditional aircraft, on board

pilots and as well as remotely operated
aerial systems - drones. Law enforcement

may also use these aerial vehicles to
communicate with the crowd, to use the

loudspeakers to send a message to the
crowd. Order them to disperse. And we've

seen this actually drones with
loudspeakers being used by the German

police in order to tell people to stay
apart - Corona That same technology can be

used for protests. And these planes and
drones will often be equipped with high

definition cameras, capable of either
extremely wide angle to get the whole

scene or an extreme zoom where they might
be able to zoom in on a particular person,

particular license plate, and then use
that data later, partnering that the

aircraft with license plate recognition,
facial recognition, video analytics and

even a cell-site simulator inside the
aircraft. And we know this has happened in

a recent protest in Texas. A Texas police
drone got some footage of a protester

allegedly throwing a water bottle. They
took that video, they took the picture,

put it out, offered a cash reward, an
anonymous tip to turn the kid in and

protester was prosecuted. So police are
definitely using these things to gather

information at protesters. So a common
method for a larger police departments is

fixed-wing aircraft; for smaller ones -
they may use private contractors to

provide these fixed-wing aircraft. So this
is an example of the kind of plane you use

by a company called Persistent
Surveillance Systems. It rents out a plane

like this, well not this exact one, you
look up that tail number, it's going to be

to a different company. But the same model
of the Cessna 207-A. And these will circle

around the protest using their cameras to
observe protesters below. And the

advantage of planes is they can often
circle for quite a long time and provide a

wide view on the area. Also, helicopters,
helicopters will often be seen hovering

over a protest, they are a little bit
easier to maneuver and be able to go

backwards and forwards over the protest
that are used by police to continually

observe. And we'll use two examples here.
One of them from the Oakland Police

Department, the other one from the
Rineland Police Department. In both cases,

they have a FLIR attached to the
helicopter, a forward looking infrared

that would allow them, in addition to
regular camera capabilities, to use

thermal imaging to follow someone at a
protest or follow what's going on after

dark. We can also see that some
helicopters will have spotlights, so that

they can signal to officers on the ground
who to follow, who do pay attention to.

Another thing for both fixed wing and
helicopters: they look for the tail

number. In most jurisdictions, they're
required to have a tail number visible,

and then you could look up that tail
number on services like Flight Aware and

be able to find out further information
about what that plane has been doing, what

the helicopter has been doing, as well as
the ownership. Finally, drones. Drones are

becoming very commonplace because they're
getting cheaper all the time and having

additional capacities; drones are also
known as unmanned aerial vehicles - UAVs;

UAS - unmanned aerial systems and a lot of
police departments are getting them for

their capabilities using what's called a
quadrotor. And they can be controlled by

remote control, have a camera built into
this and be useful for getting above the

scene view. So one way to spot it... well,
first of all - just listen to it, they

make kind of have a distinctive noise,
sometimes are really marked as police.

Also look for the pilots operating nearby.
So oftentimes a patrol out there,

sometimes they are labeled like in the
upper left there, it says "police drone

operator" - pretty easy to identify. All
the times they might have like "drone",

"UAV", "aviation unit" on their uniform,
or a nearby police vehicle. The other

thing is that if you identify a drone,
there're often within line of sight is

going to be the operator. So when do you
see the drone look around and see, if

someone has the controls in their hand, is
looking up the drone, you can probably

identify the operator and go look for
information that might have uniform about

who is operating that particular drone.
But also, keep in mind, both for drones

and other aircraft, that it's not
necessarily the police. Journalists and

activists will often fly drones over
protest, news helicopters for a large

protests are going to be more common than
police helicopters. And many times they

are labeled with picture of the BBC News
Copter. But this means that just as you

see a helicopter that has both a camera
and is flying over the protest, that does

not necessarily mean that it's a police
helicopter. Also, the technology, which is

actually not very commonplace outside of
protests in war zones, but - the

"Dronekiller" technology, which is
basically a real gun that knocks drones

out of the sky, sending radio signals to
interfere with the drones operation and

cause it to fall and crash. These have
been used in Iraq and Afghanistan and the

technology could be certainly used, but we
really haven't seen it used more freely.

Just wanted to tell you about it
because... oh, my God, Dronekillers. All

right, last place to look for police
technology - in the environment around

you. There will be in many places camera
networks. So a lot of the cameras will see

a neighborhood will be private cameras,
will be police cameras, will be cameras

being used by city, non police agencies.
That can be a lot of cameras. This also

means that you're trying to observe what
cameras are going on. There's too much

information. There'll be so many cameras
in many areas that you could spend all

your time documenting, observing the
cameras and these other things. So you

might not want to spend all your time
paying attention to that, because you can

go back later at any point and see the
fixed cameras. But there are a couple of

things that... first, identifying them for
two different brands to identify. But

here's some information about the kinds of
cameras that are available. Bullet cameras

are directional, so you can sort of see
which way it's pointing and what it would

be covering from that. Then you have dome
cameras, which are designed, so you can't

see which way it's pointing, or at least
you can see maybe some of this area one

hundred and eighty degrees. But the exact
direction is pointing is obscured by the

dome. Pan-Tilt-Zoom cameras can change
which way they're pointing. They can

sometimes be coupled with a dome camera so
that the dome camera can both change the

way it's looking and obscure which way its
looking. Thermal imaging cameras and ALPR

cameras are also becoming a fixed
locations and we are all having to do with

traffic control. Thermal is actually not
as common. That is mostly used as a

technology that is vehicles, is kind of
expensive. But in this case, the picture

shown is a thermal imaging camera. So
sometimes people will go to that

additional expense. And one subcategory of
all the cameras that are environment are

going to be police observation devices, so
the category of sets of sensors which are

operated by the police and they may
included multiple cameras, gunshot

detection, facial recognition. For
example, in the United Kingdom, say in the

city of London, is doing live facial
recognition as a police observation

devices are a collection of these cameras
in one location. Sometimes they're marked

as police, sometimes they are not. And
there is the way you would suspect that

it's a police observation device is - if
it has a lot of different sensors in one

location trying to cover the whole ground
around, then that is the kind of thing you

would see most frequently from a police
office image. And then finally, Smart

Street Lights. The Smart Street Lights
have a number of wonderful applications.

Some initiatives like in the US Smart
Cities and the EU E-Street Initiative are

exploiting cities to use more Smart Street
Lights, because they could turn down the

power usage when the light is less needed.
And there's some advance towards a project

by the Arnold University of Applied
Sciences has a technology, which will use

motion detection, sound detection. Being
able to tell that there are people walking

nearby and brighten their path. Sounds
great. But the same kind of technology

being able to detect motion, being able to
have audio signals, video signals - can be

used for surveillance. So here on the
slide we show the smart lighting

capabilities being advertised by Intel. In
addition to some things that you might

expect, like being able to adjusted for
traffic patterns, provide when needed.

They talk about crime
investigations, monitor parking

violations, safety announcements that are
coming from the smart cameras. So all of

these technologies are possible and
hopefully this will not become a

commonplace use. But if it is, it would
mean that a surveillance device is

everywhere along every street where
they're putting these devices. Wich

lightning the city you are lightning the
city with surveillance. So has it been

used? Yes. The city of San Diego had a
number of protests surrounding the protest

around George Floyd, and they used these
thirty five times. They searched

information gathered through the Smart
Street Light Network for evidence in

criminal cases coming out of that protest.
So what additional resources are there?

There's plenty of additional resources, if
you wanted to try to read more - and I

encourage you to take this only as a
starting point for a lot more to learn. So

we'll start out with a very important
resource. If you're someone who's going to

go, whether as an activist, as a
protester, as a journalist, you should

prepare yourself for some surveillance
self defense: at ssd.eff.org we have an

"Attending a Protest" guide. Go there and
learn important tips on protecting

yourself when you're going to protests.
Put your device with fulldesk encryption:

a strong unique password, turning off the
biometric unlock, use end-to-end

encryption for messages and calls, walking
or taking a bicycle to get to the protest,

sort of a vehicle, which couldn't be
subjected to a ANPR / ALPR device. Wear a

mask, you should wear a mask for Covid
anyway. But if you wear a mask, get a big:

the larger the mask, the more it protects
you. There is also recently a study that

showed that they're making efforts to try
to make facial recognition continue on

despite people's use of masks. And there
was a study that showed that red and black

masks were harder for the AI to be able to
determine who was behind the mask. So wear

a red or black mask. If you get one that
covers more of your face like a bandana,

it's going to be harder for the facial
recognition algorithms. So do some things

to protect yourself, both from Covid and
from surveillance. If you want to also

just practice it out, you can go to our
Spot the Surveillance. This is an online

program, you can do the desktop version or
virtual reality version, where it places

you in a virtual street corner with some
surveillance devices nearby. And you can

look around and try to identify all of the
surveillance devices that you see. It

takes just a few minutes to go through the
exercise, but it's a good way to practice

your skills and identify what surveillance
might be around on the street. And if you

want to get a lot more information about
any of these devices, go to EFF Street-

Level Surveillance project: eff.org/sls -
street level surveillance. This will

provide more detailed information about
various technologies that are in use. That

can be a good starting point, especially
if you found out what is being used in

your jurisdiction. Go there and find out
more about it. And you can also find out

just what is going on more generally with
these kinds of technologies: eff.org/sls.

All right. Well, thank you. That comes to
the close of my talk. Thank you for

turning in. And now let me turn it over to
my future self for Q&A. Thanks you.

Herald: Welcome back. Thanks so much Kurt.
Now we have some time for questions and

it's getting more and more. I'm just
hurrying up. OK, are there devices, apps

or services developed or run by private
companies and who makes sure the data is

not directly sold to third parties?
Kurt: So, yes, there are private networks.

And one of the things we talked about just
now is there's a lot of private camera

networks that are providing information to
the police, sometimes private networks

going through a registry where police from
organizers ask people to volunteer, put

their information into a registry. So they
are sort of explicitly saying they're

going to turn over their information to
the police or other things like Amazon's

ring camera. They have been promoting it
as a antitheft tool, trying to stop

package stuff stolen from doors. But this
also is creating a panopticon of

everyone's doorbell camera. If they're all
using ring will be provided... get the

video and will provide it to the police.
So and many of these organizations, you

know, if they're larger than they will
have some some privacy practices, probably

policies. But by and large, they will talk
about the privacy of the person who owns

the marketplace and not really consider
the bystanders, the people walking by. So

if you have a doorbell camera at your
front door that can hear audio, so maybe

someone could ring your bell and say
hello. It will also capture people walking

by and those people's privacy is important
to be considered.

Herald: All right, then we have: what hope
do we have against all this, which best

case legal countermeasures do we have by
been attending protests? And the another

one, which I would connect directly: is it
possible to intervene against surveillance

based on laws or presumption of innocence?
Kurt: Yes.

Herald: I don't know if German laws are
meant, but maybe you still can say

something?
Kurt: Well, I mean, so there's many

different laws that might be an issue. I
mean, we have an international audience

here, but I think there are some also
basic human rights principles that apply

to many jurisdictions. But I would say
actually one of the most effective tools

to push back against this kind of police
surveillance is working locally with the,

like, a city, the mayor, the city council
and a number of locations have passed

rules about what their police can do
against their citizens. So putting

limitations on what police can do at the
local level, where your activities in the

city, which you live, taking things to
your representative government and saying

we need to have some limitations on this,
we need to have it within civilian

controls for the police themselves are not
deciding what technologies to use, but it

has to pass through an elected
representative. And I think that is

probably one of the most effective ways to
at least start change where you live. But

you can also try and promote that to your
national legislature, state legislatures,

go up several levels. And one of the
things that I hope comes out of this

guide, where people getting more
information about what kind of

surveillance is available, so that they
can go to their representatives, go

through the political process with the
information of what tool use something

that they have drawn a line about. Go to
your representative and say we need to

make sure that the information that
they're gathered is being used in a manner

consistent with human rights principles.
And we need civilian control from the

local government on how to do.
Herald: Who's controlling the controler

instances, yes. We have more questions.
OK, so the police operate equipment like

ANPR-reader IMSI-Catcher etc. , that get
information that they could get in a

cheaper way, like reading traffic signs or
license plates, or cell info from

operators. And is there a reason for that?
Especially concerning EU, because US

differs a lot. And another question: has
police in EU, US been known to use illegal

or questionable tech for surveillance?
Kurt: So I think on the first question

about using things like ANPR to determine
license plates, this technology is common

in the European Union, though by and large
it is being put in place for other

reasons, not to get the protesters
necessarily. They are looking for, you

know, making sure that people are paying a
toll or might be a speed trap on the

autobahn, where it takes a picture of the
license plate of anyone traveling over a

speed limit - in the places that have
speed limits on the part of the autobahn.

And I think also it's being used for
enforcement of things like traffic

citations: your cars parked on location
too long. They know who to send the bill

to. And I think these technologies could
be repurposed for surveillance. And that's

what we really need, is policies that are
ensuring that if these things are being

used for a purpose, that the sort of the
citizenship agrees with in that

jurisdiction to enforce parking, for
example, that is not also being repurposed

against political activities and being
used at a wider scale than it was

envisioned. Also, maybe, you know, it's
not a good thing to have perfect parking

enforcement, you know, a lot of parking
fines were based on the notion that, like,

you might not get caught every time and
when you change it, a system where

previously the fines were set with the
notion that a lot of people would get away

with it.. to I do, like, to make an
example of those who didn't. And then you

changed that to perfect enforcement
because the computer, the ANPR system,

surveillance knows exactly the minute that
a fine is due and then assesses that fine.

That actually changes the dynamic of power
between citizenship and the state

significantly. And it will all be freeze
and forms of well, we're just trying to

enforce the existing laws. How could you
be against that? But really, it changes

the dynamic. And it's something that for
those who want to be an activist on this,

again, talk to your local jurisdiction and
try and make sure that these things have

safe and sane policies that respect human
rights.

Herald: So I would interpret that like
prevention of... don't come on the idea

that you need to to protect your data,
right? Fun.

Kurt: And just turning to the another one.
Do we have information about whether

police are misusing these technologies?
So, I mean, there's some isolated examples

where people have misused their
technologies. And I use a couple of them

in the slides. And there was someone who
went to a political protest. Their car was

put into a database to get pulled over
later. And then also in South Wales, the

court found that there the police use of
facial recognition was in violation of UK

law, though, as I noted, not the
Metropolitan Police in London don't agree

with that. They say it doesn't apply to
them. And I think actually use of facial

recognition technologies is a very
tempting thing by police. They want to use

it as much as possible, make it easy for
them. And I think you will see that. But

the other piece of this is unless there
are rules that say here are limitations on

how you can use these technologies and
they can use them without having to risk

violating them. So we need to have those
rules in place. I hope that the Council of

Europe puts at least a moratorium on
facial recognition for use for police. And

until we can figure out how to use this
technology safely, it's kind of cool that

you can unlock your phone in your face
without having to type in a password,

but... we want to make sure that
technology is used properly.

Herald: OK, so I think you're going to be
around in the 2D world. You're going to

explore that, you've told me before. Yeah,
there's more questions. I hope maybe you

find him in the 2D world and you just ask
him there. Thanks so much. Thanks so much.

Very nice having you. Bye Kurt.
Kurt: Bye.

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