Spot the Surveillance

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Kurt Opsahl with show you how to identify surveillance technologies that law enforcement may use at protests and other public gathering to spying on people exercising their fundamental rights. Learn how to spot the surveillance so you can advocate effectively for the policies necessary to protect your rights and bring transparency to the police surveillance.

If you attend a protest, demonstration or any mass gathering in a public space, the police are probably surveilling you. Whether it’s sophisticated facial recognition, ubiquitous video recording, or the instant analysis of our biometric data, law enforcement agencies are following closely behind their counterparts in the military and intelligence services in acquiring privacy-invasive technologies, from automated license plate readers to body-worn cameras to drones and more. In this talk, Kurt Opsahl with show you how to identify surveillance technologies in use: • Where to look for these devices • How these technologies look • How these technologies function • How they are used by police • What kind of data they collect • Where to learn more about them Knowledge is power. Knowing what technologies are in use can help you understand the threats to your privacy and security, as well as tools to advocate for limits on police use of surveillance that may chill people’s rights to express themselves on public issues. Just as analog surveillance historically has been used as a tool for oppression, policymakers and the public must understand the threat posed by emerging technologies to successfully defend human rights in the digital age.