The Atlas of Surveillance: An Interesting First Attempt
July 22, 2020
Here is an interesting resource. The digital privacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation has published an “Atlas of Surveillance: Documenting Police Tech in Our Communities.” Here one can find information on law-enforcement tech across the US, like drones, body cameras, automated license place readers, and facial recognition tools. Compiled by over 500 students and volunteers, the project incorporates datasets from public and non-profit sources. The Methodology page specifies:
“The data contained in the Atlas of Surveillance is open-source intelligence, or OSINT. This is a term used to describe gathering information that already exists online—from news stories, social media posts, press releases, or documents buried in government websites, often turned up through using advanced search engine techniques.”
Specifically, they use a combination of crowdsourcing and data aggregation. To crowdsource, the team built a software tool that auto-distributes short (20-30 minute) research assignments to students and volunteers, who then report their findings. Many of these assignments are derived from GovSpend’s database of government procurement records. The project’s data aggregation component brings in public datasets from journalists, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and even surveillance vendors. They admit their atlas is not perfect:
“First, the information is only as good as the source: sometimes government agencies withhold information and sometimes journalists misinterpret information. It’s possible that while there is information about a technology being adopted, the technology was later abandoned, and no reporters wrote about it. With thousands of data points to go through, it is impossible to exhaustively fact-check each one, despite the multiple reviews by students and staff. In particular, documenting the use of face recognition has proven challenging because of the changing policy landscape that has resulted in local governments abruptly freezing or abolishing the use of biometric identification software. The Atlas should not be interpreted as an inventory of every technology in use. It only represents what our team documented after a year and a half of research.”
With that caveat, the collection of data does give a broad overview of the surveillance technology now available to law enforcement agencies. Anyone who has not been keeping up is in for a startling surprise.
Cynthia Murrell, July 22, 2020
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