Connecting the Dots... Surveillance in Our Society

Since September 11th, 2001, surveillance in our society has increased at an alarming rate.  There has been a rapid expansion of surveillance powers, a severe reduction in judicial, congressional, and public oversight of law enforcement activities, and billions of dollars allocated to the Department of Homeland Security for the development and deployment of a new and far more intrusive surveillance infrastructure.

When you talk on the phone, open your mail, walk down the street, travel, attend a demonstration, or search for information or purchase a product online, the government wants to know and they are increasingly getting the technological tools to do so. 

The government is also busy accessing the treasure trove of personal information being meticulously collected by companies hoping to profit from selling targeted advertising and products. From telephone companies and internet service providers to social networking sites and online retailers, when the government asks for information, most companies hand it right over.

Local, state, and federal governments claim such systems are necessary to “connect the dots” and keep us safer from terrorism. But, these systems are being increasingly used to track and monitor innocent people throughout our country, with no evidence that any of it is actually making us any safer.

Now, it’s up to us to “connect the dots” ourselves -  on government surveillance – to educate ourselves and others, to see the big picture of parallel developments in the worlds of technology, law, politics, and business, and shed light on the overall danger of far-reaching government surveillance.

• Listening to Our Phone Calls
  
• Tracking Our Travel:  No Fly Lists and ATS
  
• Opening Our Mail
  
• Monitoring Our Money
  
• Forcing Us to Carry National ID Cards
  
• Putting Computer Chips in IDs
  
• Watching Political Activity
  
• Monitoring Where We Go and What We Do

  Listening to Our Phone Calls.  In violation of federal and state laws, the National Security Agency is monitoring the calling records of every American and then listening to telephone calls without a warrant.   

LEARN MORE:
ACLU v. AT&T and Verizon
ACLU v. NSA

 
 Tracking Our Travel: No Fly Lists and ATS. Since 9/11, the number of travel watch lists has mushroomed, all with very little criteria for placing names on the list, and with no effective means to remove them. 
 
LEARN MORE:
ACLU's September 5, 2007 Comments to DHS
ACLU's Automated Targeting System Page
ACLU's Airline Security Page

 
 Opening Our Mail. President Bush quietly issued a signing statement earlier this year  in which he asserts his right to open mail without a warrant. Historically, signing statements have been used by presidents to explain how they intend to enforce the laws passed by Congress; Bush has used them to quietly assert his right to ignore those laws.

LEARN MORE:
ACLU and CNSS Seek Records on Warrantless Mail Surveillance

 Monitoring Our  Money. The CIA is secretly sifting through the records of the financial records flowing through the global financial cooperative SWIFT, without Congressional authorization or judicial oversight. 

LEARN MORE:
ACLU Condemns House Resolution Approving SWIFT Program

 
 Forcing Us to Carry National ID Cards.  The Real ID Act creates a national ID card and enables the government to routinely track the location and activities of individuals by forcing states to standardize their drivers’ licenses, link to databases shared with every federal, state and local government agency, and storing our personal information in a uniform format that can be easily scanned by readers around the nation. 

LEARN MORE:
www.realnightmare.org

 Putting Computer Chips in IDs. Since 9/11, the government has been increasingly interested in embedding tiny computer chips called RFID tags in our identity documents.   The use of these tiny computer chips, which can be programmed with any information and then read at a distance by a reader without alerting the holder of the tag, will endanger privacy, personal and public safety, and financial security.  

LEARN MORE:
Don't Chip Our Rights Away!
ACLU's Global Identity Cards Page

 Watching Political Activity. The government is monitoring peaceful groups engaged in constitutional activity, including students at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, the Quakers and, of course, the ACLU. 

LEARN MORE:
The State of Surveillance

 
 Monitoring Where We Go and What We Do. Intrusive and ineffective public surveillance cameras are going up in cities across California and the nation. The cameras installed today will likely become even more intrusive in the years to come, as they are paired with other new developments, such as facial recognition, iris scanning, and RFID-embedded identification documents, giving law enforcement the ability to develop dossiers about our personal lives.

LEARN MORE:
Say No to Video Surveillance