Solidarity over Surveillance

"The surveillance state is everywhere. It’s growing and insatiable … and only getting worse.

With the assistance of private tech companies and brokers that harvest our data, agencies like the Department of Homeland Security are deploying surveillance tools to target protest movements and identify and deport immigrants.

Communities across the country are pushing back. Local groups are joining together to ban license-plate-reader companies like Flock from their towns. States are passing laws to prevent the federal government and law enforcement from buying our data from private parties. And activists are educating their communities on how to protect themselves from rampant surveillance.

The time is now to rein in the surveillance state. That’s why we launched Solidarity Over Surveillance (#SOS) — a multistate effort to protect our basic privacy and civil liberties."

– solidarityoversurveillance.com

Timely! The kickoff event is on Wednesday, June 3, with luminaries including Safiya Noble of UCLA & the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice, Memo Torres of LA Taco, and Chad Marlow of the ACLU, discussing the urgency of fighting the surveillance state. Register here!

It really is true that communities across the country are pushing back. Resistance to Flock cameras and police surveillance is exploding and DeFlock is organizing a national week of action against ALPRs for August 16-22. Victories against data centers lead to ripple effects and organizers are sharing knowledge. A majority of Americans support a ban on surveillance pricing. The list goes on ...

Here in Washington state, Edmonds just joined the steadily-growing list of cities that have canceled their Flock contracts, organizers are working with city council members on a one-year data center moratorium in Seattle, Mayor Katie Wilson is facing a backlash over surveillance cameras, Stop Surveillance City is hosting a surveillance protest parade on Saturday June 13th ... and once again, the list goes on.

What's really exciting is that a lot of the organizing and activism is driven by the grassroots, not just the usual suspects, and spans the political spectrum. Solidarity Over Surveillance's describes itself as "a hub for individuals, communities and organizations to learn about and join the fights against corporate and government-sponsored surveillance," so it's a valuable complement to all the other things that are happening.

Here's a quick look at Solidarity Over Surveillance's goals – and how they relate to what's happening here in Washington state.

• Stop data brokers from selling our most sensitive information to law enforcement. Washington's Driver Privacy Act (SB 6002) includes a small step in this direction, requiring a warrant for law enforcement access to third-party ALPR data, but there's a lot more to be done – including supporting FISA reform amendments to close the data broker loophole and a state-level Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.
• Protect dissent, privacy and anonymity in an age of AI-powered surveillance. As the broad focus of organizations like WA People's Privacy and Stop Surveillance City highlights, Flock and other ALPRs are only one small piece of the web of surveillance that needs to be dismantled.
• Empower people to use open-records requests to expose their local and state governments’ surveillance partnerships. Washington has a very strong public records law, and RANGE Media has done great work on this front – including a public records request guide; so has University of Washington's Human Rights Center, where public records requests have been instrumental in their reports like Roadside Assist: Washington State’s Continued Sharing of Drivers’ Information with Federal Immigration Enforcement highlighting ongoing abuses. While the Driver Privacy Act exempted ALPR data from public records requests, there's still a lot more information to explore.
• Challenge the government’s weaponization of domestic-terrorism powers. With law enforcement warning about ‘anti-tech extremism’ and a counter-terrorism strategy that Sumayya Waheed of Muslim Advocates describes as a sweeping attack on domestic dissent, this is directly relevant to every organizer and activist reading this newsletter!

Fight the “AI arms race” and its acceleration of extraction. As well as data center moratoriums, Washington cities and counties have opportunities to pass local ordinances – a few years ago, for example, King County and Bellingham banned governmental use of facial recognition. And attempts to regulate AI in this year's state legislative session didn't make anywhere near as much progress as we had hoped, so now is a good time to be starting to organize for next session.

It's still early days, so there isn't a lot of detail on the web site yet, but Free Press and the Disinfo Defense League are working on this project with partners include Fight for the Future, Muslim Advocates, Ultraviolet Action, NAACP, the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, America's Voice, Unidos US, and the UCLA Center on Digital Resilience and Justice (as well as the Nexus of Privacy) ... so expect to see a lot more content and events in the upcoming months.

So check out the kickoff event, and stay tuned!