Who Watches the Watchers? EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance

Screenshot of the website. Click to visit site to use. Credit: EFF

​The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an indispensable pioneer of surveillance accountability, has just released a powerful new version of its Atlas of Surveillance that gives Americans insight into the myriad surveillance technologies that are being used by more than 5,500 law enforcement agencies, across all levels of government, to watch Americans in all 50 states.
 
EFF is a notable leader in watching the watchers. In September, PPSA examined EFF’s helpful highlighting of marketing slides about the potential for Fog Technology to track people to their homes.
 
This Atlas of Surveillance, begun with the help of journalism students at the University of Nevada, Reno, recently hit a threshold of 10,000 data points, making it a robust – though not yet complete – survey of which surveillance technologies are being used in which communities.
 
We entered results for the District of Columbia to give it a try.

• The D.C. Metropolitan Police has automated license plate readers, maintains a registry of private and personal surveillance cameras, has a gunshot detection system, uses “video analytics” that can identify people in crowds, and since 2003 has owned cell-site simulator technology (stingrays) that can spoof cell towers and trick cellphones into divulging data.

 

• Choosing a small city at random – San Angelo, Texas – we find that the San Angelo Police Department has one drone, body cameras, and a partnership with Amazon’s Ring camera home surveillance, allowing it to ask for surveillance video from customers on the service’s Neighbors app.

 
John Stuart Mill, quoting the Roman satirist Juvenal, asked: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The Atlas of Surveillance gives us confidence that we can at least begin to watch the watchers.
 
University of Nevada, Reno, interns did a professional job of integrating public documents, crowdsourced information, and news articles to compile this atlas. Kudos to EFF and to their UNR student partners. Be sure and check the Atlas to see how you’re being watched in your community.