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ACLU Sues FBI, DOJ Over Facial-Recognition Technology, Criticizing 'Unprecedented' Surveillance and Secrecy (washingtonpost.com) 28

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday sued the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI for records detailing their use of facial-recognition software, arguing that the agencies have secretly implemented a nationwide surveillance technology that threatens Americans' privacy and civil rights. From a report: ACLU attorneys asked a federal court in Massachusetts to order the agencies to release documents about how the government uses and audits the software, how officials have communicated with companies that provide the software, and what internal guidelines and safeguards regulate its use. "These technologies have the potential to enable undetectable, persistent, and suspicion-less surveillance on an unprecedented scale," the attorneys wrote. "Such surveillance would permit the government to pervasively track people's movements and associations in ways that threaten core constitutional values."
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ACLU Sues FBI, DOJ Over Facial-Recognition Technology, Criticizing 'Unprecedented' Surveillance and Secrecy More

ACLU Sues FBI, DOJ Over Facial-Recognition Technology, Criticizing 'Unprecedented' Surveillance and Secrecy

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  • We need a new Constitutional Amendment (Score:5, Interesting)

    by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:45PM (#59366882) Journal

    If privacy matters.

    Privacy isn't really in the US Constitution. That said, I'm not against cameras (I call my dash-cam the "The Ticket Maker", some people shouldn't be driving). I want footage of someone breaking into my house (or a business).

    Adding a new Amendment, loosely based on the 4th Amendment, allowing for public recordings, but requiring probable cause to search such for an individual sounds like a good solution. And I'm fine with facial recognition at that point based on a warrant.

    Something like this:

    The right of the people to have public privacy from all government agencies, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the places to be monitored, and the persons or things to be tracked.

    • It's already in there (Score:4, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @02:06PM (#59366972)
      The Tenth Amendment:

      The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

      People have this mistaken belief that the Constitution tells us what rights we have. It doesn't. It lists the powers government has. Anything not explicitly listed in it is not a power the government has, and thus a right reserved for the people (or the states). In other words, we're not limited to the rights listed in the Constitution. We have every right under the sun that we can think of, unless the Constitution explicitly says the government is allowed to transgress that right. Likewise, the government has no power to do anything, unless the Constitution explicitly says the government is allowed to do it.

      The first ten Amendments were added not to give the People rights, but to remind government not to transgress those rights in particular. Unfortunately, people misinterpret the presence of the Bill of Rights as meaning our rights come from this document. They don't. They're intrinsic, inalienable rights which we all have by living and breathing. The founding fathers actually considered not including the Bill of Rights because they were afraid it would cause this very misconception. Their thinking is spelled out clearly in the Declaration of Independence.

      "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

      Unfortunately, the Commerce Clause [wikipedia.org] has been abused to so broadly expand the Federal government's powers, that many, perhaps even most people today, now think that we don't have a right unless it's listed in the Constitution. That's not how it works. We already have an intrinsic right to privacy. The government can only violate that right in cases where the Constitution allows it.

      • Yeah, none of that matters anymore politicians will just do what they want for the most part. For example, Bernie just made some silly proclamation that there should be Federal rent control laws. Wealth confiscation (which isn't a tax since there's no transaction involved) is another one they are pushing for. Neither rent nor wealth confiscation are under Federal purview, yet here we are with plausible Presidential candidates making them part of their campaign.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chromal ( 56550 )
        The US Constitution can't grant such rights because they are natural and inalienable, or universal, birthrights of humanity. The US Constitution was a great step forward 200+ years ago, but now we along with the rest of the world have a higher law: The UN's declaration of Universal Human Rights supersedes and makes, well, universal to all humanity the same sort of protections of human rights that the US Constitution, in its early fashion, first made sacrosanct.

      • The Tenth Amendment

        The Tenth Amendment has the opposite effect that you claim. A literal reading prohibits the federal government from interfering in state and local collection of data.

        Roe v. Wade was based on a "right to privacy". Yet constitutional literalists argue that the ruling is a violation of the Tenth Amendment because abortion is not an enumerated responsibility of the federal government.

        If you want a right to privacy, and you want it to apply to all levels of government, then a constitutional amendment is the wa

        • the right to privacy in Roe v Wade is not the "secretive" meaning, it's the philosophical meaning... something that adhere's necessarily to one person. For example, the right to decide who you like. I think of it as the "prih-vacy" rather than "pry-vacy" meaning.

          Dictionary.com shows it as the (3) definition for "Brittish Dictionary Definitions for 'Privacy'"

          "the condition of being necessarily restricted to a single person"

          I think this has confused a lot of people b/c they think that abortion was made from

      • In other words, we're not limited to the rights listed in the Constitution. We have every right under the sun that we can think of, unless the Constitution explicitly says the government is allowed to transgress that right.

        The main thing the Tenth Amendment does is grant the states the bulk of the governing powers, which is why most laws you are required to obey day to day are state laws that, if violated, are prosecuted in state courts and argued by state lawyers who passed the state bar. The exceptions t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chromal ( 56550 )
      Public recording of the coming and goings and activities of the public by the state is an unreasonable search and an indefensible abuse of power, full stop. If you want to monitor someone, get a warrant, and if the judicial branch signs off on it, then you can do your monitoring. But by no means are facial recognition, automated license plate scanners, cellular network stingrays, and deep Internet packet inspections permissible, tolerable, acceptable, or ethical.
  • There was a time the ACLU cared about free speech, etc. Now the ACLU is just a bunch of lefty lawyers who sue government for every crazy lefty cause with no regard for anything except making money.

    There was a time when I was a member of the ACLU until they joined the crazy left.

    Just my 2 cents ;)

    • Your two cents are textbook ad hominem.

    • The ACLU is.. OK. They do go overboard but the fact that many on the left wing rant and rave about them and hate them as much as many on the right is probably a sign they aren't too crazy, or at least their crazy runs both ways.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chromal ( 56550 )
      Self-loathing much? You: "Gah, these people who are protecting me from tyranny and degradation are a bunch of jerks." Well, dude, you may not give a flying goddamn about your liberty and equality, but that makes your opinion crazy and kooky and a bit seditious against our very way of life and founding political philosophy. You might be happier in a place that oppresses you, if you have such low regard for the people who fight selflessly on your behalf.

    • who they defended, but after which they said, maybe not, you can't trust inherently violent ideologies.

      Maybe the ACLU would appeal to you more if there were any conservative lawyers anywhere that wanted to actually protect everyone's free speech, as opposed to just the right to say "Jews will not replace us".

    • If ACLU is a joke it's because they cherrypick the bill of rights, and they justify said cherrypicking with some lie that plain English doesn't mean what it says.

      The idea behind the ACLU is awesome, the implementation often leaves some to be desired.

  • Thou shalt not quarter any government troops in our data or metadata, or let artificial "persons" like corporations steal from us.

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