A small startup that has been around for less than a year has created a free mobile app aimed at helping Americans and people all over the world resist the police state.  The app, called Cell 411 (or Cell 112 in Europe), is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Romanian, and it helps activists and people from all political shades resist government abuse with decentralized GPS-based alerts and live video features. Whether you are a gun-rights activist, an anti-Trump protester, concerned with police brutality or simply a muslim woman concerned for her safety, this app can help you build decentralized groups, or “cells” of trusted connections which you can then use to dispatch when you need help.

Because this app has been so revolutionary in its approach to building a new way to handle emergencies and the police state, it has been selected by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to be featured in the “Future of Design” exhibit in 2018.

Think of this app as an “UBER for emergencies” or a “911 on steroids” except it doesn’t involve government, police or people  you don’t trust.  The app was created by a small group of passionate engineers, activists and people concerned with the growth of police state all over the world.  It can be used by anyone with an Android or iOS smartphone and it has tens of thousands of users all over the world.

Here is how it works: users can freely download the app and signup for an account using their e-mail address of Facebook account. Once signed up, a user can join existing public “cells” or groups in their areas, or can create their own cells.  Joining a cell allows you to send and receive emergency alerts from the members of that cell.  Let’s say you want to create a cell in your town called, “Denver Mutual Aid.”  Al users in the Denver area will be notified when this cell was created and can join the cell in order to offer each other help when the members request the help.  There are thousands of cells all over the world used by users for many reasons, such as immigration help, neighborhood watching, etc.

You can also create private cells which are only visible to you an not other users, and you can add your friends to your private cells.

The app allows you to send emergency alerts about medical problems, police abuse, vehicle problems, crime, and other issues; the alerts are tagged with your exact GPS coordinates and your friends can get turn-by-turn directions to your location, should they decide to come and offer you help.  You can stream live video to your cells and friends, and the video cannot be erased by a malicious user who may gain access to your phone.  The video can also be streamed to YouTube and Facebook and is distributed instantly to all your friends, making it nearly impossible to be destroyed.

The app was specifically designed to be resistant to censorship and government surveillance and has been used successfully all over the world to save lives and keep users safe from criminals, police abuse and many other malicious actors.

The company also created a “panic button” which is a bluetooth device that pairs with the mobile app and allows users to issue alerts instantly without having to unlock the phone or spend precious time navigating an app. Recently a “ride sharing” feature was also added to the app to allow users to offer rides to each other when they need help and accept payments for cash, Bitcoin, silver and even bartering.

You can download Cell 411 for Android and Apple devices from http://getcell411.com/download

You can also watch a quick walk-trough of the main features of this app below:

Vigilant Solutions, one of the country’s largest brokers of vehicle surveillance technology, is offering a hell of a deal to law enforcement agencies in Texas: a whole suite of automated license plate reader (ALPR) equipment and access to the company’s massive databases and analytical tools—and it won’t cost the agency a dime.

Even though the technology is marketed as budget neutral, that doesn’t mean no one has to pay. Instead, Texas police fund it by gouging people who have outstanding court fines and handing Vigilant all of the data they gather on drivers for nearly unlimited commercial use.

ALPR refers to high-speed camera networks that capture license plate images, convert the plate numbers into machine-readable text, geotag and time-stamp the information, and store it all in database systems. EFF has long been concerned with this technology, because ALPRs typically capture sensitive location information on all drivers—not just criminal suspects—and, in aggregate, the information can reveal personal information, such as where you go to church, what doctors you visit, and where you sleep at night.

Vigilant is leveraging H.B. 121, a new Texas law passed in 2015 that allows officers to install credit and debit card readers in their patrol vehicles to take payment on the spot for unpaid court fines, also known as capias warrants. When the law passed, Texas legislators argued that not only would it help local government with their budgets, it would also benefit the public and police. As the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Allen Fletcher, wrote in his official statement of intent:

[T]he option of making such a payment at the time of arrest could avoid contributing to already crowded jails, save time for arresting officers, and relieve minor offenders suddenly informed of an uncollected payment when pulled over for a routine moving violation from the burden of dealing with an impounded vehicle and the potential inconvenience of finding someone to supervise a child because of an unexpected arrest.

The bill was supported by criminal justice reform groups such as the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, but it also raised concerns by respected criminal justice blogger Scott Henson ofGrits For Breakfast, who theorized that the law, combined with ALPR technology, could allow police officers to “cherry pick drivers with outstanding warrants instead of looking for current, real-time traffic violations.”

He further asked:

Are there enough departments deploying license plate readers to cause concern? Will they use them in such a fashion? How will anyone know? Is it possible to monitor—or better, measure—any shift in on-the-ground police priorities resulting from the new economic incentives created by the bill?

As it turns out, contracts between between Vigilant and Guadalupe County and the City of Kylein Texas reveal that Henson was right to worry.

The “warrant redemption” program works like this. The agency is given no-cost license plate readers as well as free access to LEARN-NVLS, the ALPR data system Vigilant says contains more than 2.8-billion plate scans and is growing by more than 70-million scans a month. This also includes a wide variety of analytical and predictive software tools. Also, the agency is merely licensing the technology; Vigilant can take it back at any time.

The government agency in turn gives Vigilant access to information about all its outstanding court fees, which the company then turns into a hot list to feed into the free ALPR systems. As police cars patrol the city, they ping on license plates associated with the fees. The officer then pulls the driver over and offers them a devil’s bargain: get arrested, or pay the original fine with an extra 25% processing fee tacked on, all of which goes to Vigilant.1 In other words, the driver is paying Vigilant to provide the local police with the technology used to identify and then detain the driver. If the ALPR pings on a parked car, the officer can get out and leave a note to visit Vigilant’s payment website.

But Vigilant isn’t just compensated with motorists’ cash. The law enforcement agencies are also using the privacy of everyday drivers as currency.

From Vigilant Solutions contract with City of Kyle

Buried in the fine print of the contract with Vigilant is a clause that says the company also get to keep a copy of all the license-plate data collected by the agency, even after the contract ends. According the company’s usage and privacy policy, Vigilant “retains LPR data as long as it has commercial value.” Vigilant can sell or license that information to other law enforcement bodies and potentially to private companies such as insurance firms and repossession agencies.

In early December 2015, Vigilant issued a press release bragging that Guadalupe County had used the systems to collect on more than 4,500 warrants between April and December 2015. In January 2016, the City of Kyle signed an identical deal with Vigilant. Soon after, Guadalupe County upgraded the contract to allow Vigilant to dispatch its own contractors to collect on capias warrants.

Update: Buzzfeed has published an in-depth report on how police in Port Arthur, Texas also use Vigilant Solutions ALPR technology to collect fines. 

Alarmingly, in December, Vigilant also quietly issued an apology on its website for a major error:

During the second week of December, as part of its Warrant Redemption Program, Vigilant Solutions sent several warrant notices – on behalf of our law enforcement partners – in error to citizens across the state of Texas. A technical error caused us to send warrant notices to the wrong recipients.

These types of mistakes are not acceptable and we deeply apologize to those who received the warrant correspondence in error and to our law enforcement customers.

Vigilant is right: this is not acceptable. Yet, the company has not disclosed the extent of the error, how many people were affected, how much money was collected that shouldn’t have been, and what it’s doing to inform and make it up to the people affected. Instead, the company simply stated that it had “conducted a thorough review of the incident and have implemented several internal policies.”

We’re unlikely to get answers from the government agencies who signed these contracts. To access Vigilant’s powerful online data systems, agencies agree not to disparage the company or even to talk to the press without the company’s permission:

From Vigilant Solutions LEARN-NVLS User Agreement

You shall not create, publish, distribute, or permit any written, electronically transmitted or other form of publicity material that makes reference to the LEARN LPR Database Server or this Agreement without first submitting the material to Vigilant and receiving written consent from Vigilant thereto…

You agree not to use proprietary materials or information in any manner that is disparaging. This prohibition is specifically intended to preclude you from cooperating or otherwise agreeing to allow photographs or screenshots to be taken by any member of the media without the express consent of LEARN-NVLS. You also agree not to voluntarily provide ANY information, including interviews, related to LEARN products or its services to any member of the media without the express written consent of LEARN-NVLS.

You might very well ask at this point about the legality of this scheme. Vigilant anticipated that and provided the City of Kyle with a slide titled “Can I Really Do This?” which cited a law that they believe allows for the 25% surcharge.

The law states that a county or municipality “may only charge a fee for the access or service if the fee is designed to recover the costs directly and reasonably incurred in providing the access or service.”

We believe that a 25% fee is not reasonable and doesn’t recover just the direct costs, since the fee is actually paying for the whole ALPR system, including surveillance capabilities unrelated to warrant redemption, such as access to the giant LEARN-NVLS database and software suite.

Beyond that, the system raises a whole host of problems:

• It turns police into debt collectors, who have to keep swiping credit cards to keep the free equipment.
• It turns police into data miners, who use the privacy of local drivers as currency.
• It not-so-subtly shifts police priorities from responding to calls and traffic violations to responding to a computer’s instructions.
• Policy makers and the public are unable to effectively evaluate the technology since the contract prohibits police from speaking honestly and openly about the program.
• The model relies on debt: there’s no incentive for criminal justice leaders to work with the community to reduce the number of capias warrants, since that could result in losing the equipment.
• People who have committed no crimes whatsoever have their driving patterns uploaded into a private system and no opportunity to control or watchdog how that data is disseminated.

There was a time where companies like Vigilant marketed ALPR technology as a way to save kidnapped children, recover stolen cars, and catch violent criminals. But as we’ve long warned, ALPRs in fact are being deployed for far more questionable practices.

The Texas public should be outraged at the terrible deals their representatives are signing with this particular surveillance contractor, and the legislature should reexamine the unintended consequences of the law they passed last year.

• 1.The contracts are inconsistent on how this fee breaks down. For example, the City of Kyle contract lists 5% of “credit card processing,” 5% for “credit card handling,” and 15% for a “vendor transaction fee.”

Published by https://www.eff.org/

Screen capture from the film The Lives of Others, based on the lives of citizens monitored by the Stasi in Communist East Germany.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to pour time and taxpayer money into convincing the American people that there’s an epidemic of sex trafficking here. So bad is this alleged epidemic that ordinary crime-control measures won’t work, hence the deparment is recruiting truck drivers and hotel workers to be its eyes and ears on the ground. Ugh.

Despite federal fearmongering, there’s no concrete evidence to suggest that sex trafficking is even prevalent in America, let alone on the rise. But you would never know that from listening to lawmakers, federal officials, and their local-media mouthpieces talk. And while some of this propaganda stems from good intentions, it also provides good fodder for all manner of civil-liberties abuses, from seizing sex-business assets to expanding police wiretapping power. Now it’s providing law enforcement with cover to convince citizens to spy on each other and report one another to police for perfectly normal activity.

“We would rather have you call anybody and report it to somebody,” a DHS spokeswoman told 9News Colorado, “even if it turns out to be nothing, than miss one of those victims that’s suffering.”

That’s why, as part of the “Safe Action Project,” DHS staff will train hotel and hospitality workers on how to spot the so-called signs of sex trafficking. Alleged “red flags” include:

• garbage cans containing many used condoms
• frequent use of “Do Not Disturb” sign on room door
• excessive foot traffic in and out of a room
• “excessive sex paraphernalia” in room
• an “overly smelly room” that reeks of “cigarette, marijuana, sweat, bodily fluids, and musk”
• a guest who “averts eyes or does not make eye contact”
• individuals “dressed inappropriate for age” or with “lower quality clothing than companions”
• guests with “suspicious tattoos”
• the presence of multiple computers, cell phones, pagers, credit card swipes, or other technology
• the presence of photography equipment
• minibar in need of frequent restocking
• guests with too many personal hygiene products, especially “lubrication, douches”
• guests with too few personal possessions
• rooms paid for with cash or a rechargeable credit card
• “individuals loitering and soliciting male customers”
• “claims of being an adult though appearance suggests adolescent features”
• refusal of room cleaning services for multiple days

Take heed, lovers on romantic getaways, photographers on assignment, beauty-product junkies, tech workers, cash carriers, alcoholics, late sleepers, slobs, immodest dressers, people on the autism spectrum, people with body-odor problems, single patrons seeking hotel-bar hookups, light packers, and those with a youthful appearance: DHS is onto you!

Meanwhile, in California, the Attorney General’s office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, and an organization called Truckers Against Trafficking have been teaming up to train truck drivers on how to identify and report suspected sex traffickers. The program essentially urges truckers to report people offering prostitution at truck stops, making sure to include “actionable information” such as a physical descriptions of the individual, car make and model, license plate number, etc.

“Given the cross-jurisdictional nature of the crime of human trafficking and the use of major thoroughfares by traffickers, truck drivers are particularly well-positioned to aid law enforcement,” states a press release from California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris. The training “will also feature The Freedom Drivers Project, a first-of-its-kind 48-foot mobile exhibit that includes artifacts from trafficking cases, portraits of Truckers Against Trafficking members, and ways members of the public can join the fight against human trafficking.”

Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a staff editor at Reason.com.

Green Bay Police Officer Matt Secor stands guard outside Washington Middle School, Nov. 19, 2009.

“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning. From metal detectors to drug tests, from increased policing to all-seeing electronic surveillance, the public schools of the twenty-first century reflect a society that has become fixated on crime, security and violence.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes

In the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.).

Indeed, at a time when we are all viewed as suspects, there are so many ways in which a person can be branded a criminal for violating any number of laws, regulations or policies. Even if you haven’t knowingly violated any laws, there is still a myriad of ways in which you can run afoul of the police state and end up on the wrong side of a jail cell.

Unfortunately, when you’re a child in the American police state, life is that much worse.

Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools contain almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”

From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment she graduates, she will be exposed to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

If your child is fortunate enough to survive his encounter with the public schools, you should count yourself fortunate.

Most students are not so lucky.

By the time the average young person in America finishes their public school education, nearly one out of every three of them will have been arrested.

More than 3 million students are suspended or expelled from schools every year, often for minor misbehavior, such as “disruptive behavior” or “insubordination.” Black students are three times more likely than white students to face suspension and expulsion.

For instance, a Virginia sixth grader, the son of two school teachers and a member of the school’s gifted program, was suspended for a year after school officials found a leaf (likely a maple leaf) in his backpack that they suspected was marijuana. Despite the fact that the leaf in question was not marijuana (a fact that officials knew almost immediately), the 11-year-old was still kicked out of school, charged with marijuana possession in juvenile court, enrolled in an alternative school away from his friends, subjected to twice-daily searches for drugs, and forced to be evaluated for substance abuse problems.

Active shooter drill in a Government school.

As the Washington Post warns: “It doesn’t matter if your son or daughter brings a real pot leaf to school, or if he brings something that looks like a pot leaf—okra, tomato, maple, buckeye, etc. If your kid calls it marijuana as a joke, or if another kid thinks it might be marijuana, that’s grounds for expulsion.”

Many state laws require that schools notify law enforcement whenever a student is found with an “imitation controlled substance,” basically anything that look likes a drug but isn’t actually illegal. As a result, students have been suspended for bringing to school household spices such asoregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.

It’s not just look-alike drugs that can get a student in trouble under school zero tolerance policies. Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in detention.

Acts of kindness, concern or basic manners can also result in suspensions. One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

Unfortunately, while these may appear to be isolated incidents, they are indicative of a nationwide phenomenon in which children are treated like suspects and criminals, especially within the public schools.

The schools have become a microcosm of the American police state, right down to the host of surveillance technologies, including video cameras, finger and palm scanners, iris scanners, as well as RFID and GPS tracking devices, employed to keep constant watch over their student bodies.

Making matters worse are the police.

Students accused of being disorderly or noncompliant have a difficult enough time navigating the bureaucracy of school boards, but when you bring the police into the picture, after-school detention and visits to the principal’s office are transformed into punishments such as misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.

Government schools often undergo student training to instill obedience and authoritarian police tactics into the children

In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking—sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting (nearly 20,000 by 2003). Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers (SROs) have become de facto wardens in the elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepperspray, batons and brute force.

The horror stories are legion.

One SRO is accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting the cafeteria line. That same cop put another student in a chokehold a week later, allegedly knocking the student unconscious and causing a brain injury. In Pennsylvania, a student was tased after ignoring an order to put his cell phone away.

Defending the use of handcuffs and pepper spray to subdue students, one Alabama police department reasoned that if they can employ such tactics on young people away from school, they should also be permitted to do so on campus.

Now advocates for such harsh police tactics and weaponry will tell you that school safety should be our first priority lest we find ourselves with another Sandy Hook. What they will not tell you is that such shootings are rare. As one congressional report found, the schools are, generally speaking, safe places for children.

In their zeal to crack down on guns and lock down the schools, these cheerleaders for police state tactics in the schools might also fail to mention the lucrative, multi-million dollar deals being cut with military contractors such as Taser International to equip these school cops with tasers, tanks, rifles and $100,000 shooting detection systems.

Indeed, the transformation of hometown police departments into extensions of the military has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police have been gifted with high-powered M16 rifles, MRAP armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member SWAT team.

According to one law review article on the school-to-prison pipeline, “Many school districts have formed their own police departments, some so large they rival the forces of major United States cities in size. For example, the safety division in New York City’s public schools is so large that if it were a local police department, it would be the fifth-largest police force in the country.”

The ramifications are far-reaching.

The term “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to a phenomenon in which children who are suspended or expelled from school have a greater likelihood of ending up in jail. One study found that “being suspended or expelled made a student nearly three times more likely to come into contact with the juvenile justice system within the next year.”

Not content to add police to their employee rosters, the schools have also come to resemble prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, drug-sniffing dogs, random locker searches and active shooter drills. The Detroit public schools boast a “‘$5.6 million 23,000-sq ft. state of the art Command Center’ and ‘$41.7 million district-wide security initiative’ including metal detectors and ID system where visitors’ names are checked against the sex offender registry.”

As if it weren’t bad enough that the nation’s schools have come to resemble prisons, the government is also contracting with private prisons to lock up our young people for behavior that once would have merited a stern lecture. Nearly 40 percent of those young people who are arrested will serve time in a private prison, where the emphasis is on making profits for large megacorporations above all else.

Private prisons, the largest among them being GEO and the Corrections Corporation of America, profit by taking over a state’s prison population for a fee. Many states, under contract with these private prisons, agree to keep the prisons full, which in turn results in more Americans being arrested, found guilty and jailed for nonviolent “crimes” such as holding Bible studies in their back yard. As the Washington Post points out, “With the growing influence of the prison lobby, the nation is, in effect, commoditizing human bodies for an industry in militant pursuit of profit… The influence of private prisons creates a system that trades money for human freedom, often at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable populations: children, immigrants and the poor.”

This profit-driven system of incarceration has also given rise to a growth in juvenile prisons and financial incentives for jailing young people. Indeed, young people have become easy targets for the private prison industry, which profits from criminalizing childish behavior and jailing young people. For instance, two Pennsylvania judges made headlines when it was revealed that they had been conspiring with two businessmen in a $2.6 million “kids for cash” scandal that resulted in more than 2500 children being found guilty and jailed in for-profit private prisons.

It has been said that America’s schools are the training ground for future generations. Instead of raising up a generation of freedom fighters, however, we seem to be busy churning out newly minted citizens of the American police state who are being taught the hard way what it means to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, with every school police raid and overzealous punishment that is carried out in the name of school safety, the lesson being imparted is that Americans—especially young people—have no rights at all against the state or the police.

I’ll conclude with one hopeful anecdote about a Philadelphia school dubbed the “Jones Jail” because of its bad reputation for violence among the student body. Situated in a desperately poor and dangerous part of the city, the John Paul Jones Middle School’s student body had grown up among drug users, drug peddlers, prostitutes and gun violence. “By middle school,” reports The Atlantic, most of these students “have witnessed more violence than most Americans who didn’t serve in a war ever will.”

According to investigative reporters Jeff Deeney, “School police officers patrolled the building at John Paul Jones, and children were routinely submitted to scans with metal detecting wands. All the windows were covered in metal grating and one room that held computers even had thick iron prison bars on its exterior… Every day… [police] would set up a perimeter of police officers on the blocks around the school, and those police were there to protect neighbors from the children, not to protect the children from the neighborhood.”

In other words, John Paul Jones, one of the city’s most dangerous schools, was a perfect example of the school-to-prison, police state apparatus at work among the nation’s youngest and most impressionable citizens.

When management of John Paul Jones was taken over by a charter school that opted to de-escalate the police state presence, stripping away the metal detectors and barred windows, local police protested. In fact, they showed up wearing Kevlar vests. Nevertheless, school officials remained determined to do away with institutional control and surveillance, as well as aggressive security guards, and focus on noncoercive, nonviolent conflict resolution with an emphasis on student empowerment, relationship building and anger management.

The result: a 90% drop in serious incidents—drug sales, weapons, assaults, rapes—in one year alone. As one fifth-grader remarked on the changes, “There are no more fights. There are no more police. That’s better for the community.”

The lesson for the rest of us is this: you not only get what you pay for, but you reap what you sow.

If you want a nation of criminals, treat the citizenry like criminals.

If you want young people who grow up seeing themselves as prisoners, run the schools like prisons.

But if you want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters, who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, then run the schools like freedom forums. Remove the metal detectors and surveillance cameras, re-assign the cops elsewhere, and start treating our nation’s young people like citizens of a republic and not inmates in a police state.

This post was written by: John W. Whitehead

A woman faces a line of Baltimore police officers in riot gear during protests following the funeral of Freddie Gray on April 27, 2015, in Baltimore.

They are right when they decry the militarization of local police. They are right to point out that the DOD 1033 program has transferred over $5 billion worth of military equipment from the Defense Department to local police forces. They are right to oppose more federal laws and mandates relating to local police. They are right to oppose a federal police “czar” like the Congressional Black Caucus has called for. They are right to oppose nationalizing the local police. They are right to point out that the Constitution only provides for the federal government to punish the crimes of treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. They are right to decry all the federal police in the alphabet soup of federal agencies. They are right to oppose making the police like a branch of the U.S. armed forces. They are right to oppose federal funding of local law enforcement. They are right to oppose federal control over local law enforcement.

But does this mean that Americans should always support their local police? To the contrary, most of the problems with local police have nothing to do with the federal government.

Here are twenty-five questions to consider before making a blanket statement like “Support your local police.”

1. Should we support our local police when they issue tickets to motorists for not wearing seatbelts?

2. Should we support our local police when they forcibly extract DNA, urine, and blood from suspects?

3. Should we support our local police when they pull over more motorists in order to meet their monthly ticket quotas?

4. Should we support our local police when they shoot people who try to defend themselves from police brutality?

5. Should we support our local police when they go online and pretend to be crack whores trying to pimp out their teenage daughters?

6. Should we support our local police when they equip themselves with weapons powerful enough to conquer a small country?

7. Should we support our local police when they drive around in vans equipped with X-ray scanners to secretly search vehicles?

8. Should we support our local police when they conduct undercover sting operations to entrap people?

9. Should we support our local police when they tase people who are offering no resistance?

10. Should we support our local police when they conduct “non knock” raids in the middle of the night?

11. Should we support our local police when they arrest people for victimless crimes like prostitution and gambling?

12. Should we support our local police when they dress up as prostitutes and try to entice people to solicit them?

13. Should we support our local police when SWAT teams are deployed in situations where a search warrant is being executed to just look for drugs?

14. Should we support our local police when they drive around in unmarked older vehicles in order to ensnare unsuspecting motorists?

15. Should we support our local police when the enrich themselves by seizing property and cash from people who have not even been charged with a crime?

16. Should we support our local police when they assert that someone might have a weapon as a pretense to search someone without any warrant, probable cause, or reasonable suspicion?

17. Should we support our local police when they plant evidence like weapons and drugs?

18. Should we support our local police when they strip-search people who have been arrested even if there is no reason to suspect that the individual is carrying “contraband”?

19. Should we support our local police when they lock people in cages for possessing substances that the government doesn’t approve of?

20. Should we support our local police when they hide at the bottom of a hill, off the side of the road, or just after a speed limit change in order to collect revenue under the guise of enforcing traffic laws?

21. Should we support our local police when they dismiss charges of police abuse as alleged and charges of police brutality as greatly exaggerated, and most of the time never investigate any of these charges?

22. Should we support our local police when they enter homes without search warrants?

23. Should we support our local police they go undercover and lie so as to beguile people to commit some crime?

24. Should we support our local police when they major in ticketing and tasering instead of protecting and serving?

25. Should we support our local police when they buy up all the fresh coffee and donuts at Dunkin’ Donuts?

Do all local police in American cities and counties do all of these things? Of course not. Do most local police in American cities and counties do most of these things? Perhaps not. Do many local police in American cities and counties do many of these things? Probably so. Do some local police American cities and counties do some of these things? Certainly so. And way too many.

The first reply is that the local police are just doing their jobs. Sure they are—just likeguards at concentration camps were just doing their jobs.

How quickly will those who say that the local police are just doing their jobs change their tune when one of their disgruntled neighbors gives the local police they support an anonymous tip that they might have illegal drugs in their house and the local police they support break down their front door in the middle of the night, shoot their dogs, and tase them and their family for the non-crime of asking what all this is about?

– By Jordan Freshour

“Hi, buddy! I’m your friendly neighborhood police officer! Would you like a glass of water?”

Recently, I talked to one of those “good” police officers. You know, the kind that doesn’t shoot your dog for fun, or take lewd pictures of little girls. One of the things in which he prided himself was “staying humble” on the job; for example: not citing a driver for speeding if (s)he has a good attitude and good excuse – like running late for work. Although this is far better than a psychopathic, rage-filled racist shooting a man in the head for no front license plate, this hardly qualifies a law enforcement officer (LEO) as “good.”

I won’t spend too much time explaining the fundamental problem with modern policing. Many who will read this know cops are not all bad because of individual intentions, but because the nature of their job. Each cop has extra rights to incarcerate your body and confiscate your property. Every police officer must protect the interests of the state before the interests of the public. All LEOs are paid with stolen tax money. These reasons and many more are why all cops are bad.

But those reasons are merely descriptions of the justice system, right? They don’t speak to the intentions or desires of all cops, right? There are some who want a better way, right? Well, let’s look at the example of Mr. Humble Police Officer above. Let’s call him Officer Squiggly.

This is Officer Piggly, not Officer Squiggly.

“Do you have any idea how much overtime you are paying me this week?”

The Guardian reports:

Thirteen-year old Maria Calvillo bursts into tears as she tells the story of the day in November when Oakland Swat team officers barged into her family’s home, pointed a rifle at her, and searched her family, including her three-month-old sister who was wrapped in a baby blanket.

“The police had a tank in front of our house, an actual tank. I thought I was in a movie … It made me angry that they were searching my baby sister,” said Calvillo who shared her story at the Stop Urban Shield Coalition protest in downtown Oakland, California, on Friday.

She was part of more than 150 protesters in front of the Alameda County sheriff’s office calling for an end to the Urban Shield Expo and Conference, a controversial law enforcement training and weapons expo held in Alameda County every year since 2008, where companies that make military-style weaponry market their products to local police and fire departments.

The expo and conference, which started on Friday – the 14th anniversary of 9/11 – at the Alameda County Fairgrounds and runs for four days, has also become well known for extensive Swat team trainings.

Organizers say that Urban Shield is the largest tactical exercise in the world and brings together more than 50 local, national and international law enforcement agencies. Hands-on trainings in fire, bomb squad, emergency medical services, and anti-terrorism scenarios are planned for 58 sites in five northern California counties.

Most Bay Area law enforcement agencies are attending Urban Shield along with some from other states including Texas and Florida. This year a team from South Korea is taking part in the exercises, and teams from 10 countries including Jordan, Uruguay, Colombia, Thailand and China are observing the trainings.

In previous years, Urban Shield was held in Oakland but after a series of protests and continued lobbying by activists, the expo was moved to Pleasanton, a city about 30 miles east of Oakland. Mohamed Shehk, spokesperson for the Stop Urban Shield Coalition, a group of 15 Bay Area and national organizations working to pressure the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to stop holding the Urban Shield Expo and Conference, says the goal for the coalition is to stop Urban Shield altogether.

“We were not kicked out of Oakland. It was just that the Marriott told us that they didn’t have room for us this year,” said JD Nelson, spokesperson for the Alameda County sheriff’s department and Urban Shield.

Nelson, who has been with the sheriff’s office since 1986, says he remembers when local police or sheriff officers didn’t wear bulletproof vests, but that times are different now.

“It is a shame that it’s come to this, but you need proper equipment in this day and age,” said Nelson.

He says that Urban Shield trainings have proven to be helpful in real situations.

“The Boston Police commissioner has said that their teams who were trained at Urban shield trainings were instrumental in quickly responding to the Boston Marathon terrorist attacks,” said Nelson referring to the April 2013 attacks where three people were killed and more than 260 others were injured.

But opponents of the Urban Shield conference say the environment there pushes the thinking that police are always under attack and that the latest military-style training and weaponry will keep them safe.

Shehk says that Urban Shield is marketed as a public safety and emergency preparedness training program for disasters and terrorist scenarios, but that the weaponry being sold to local police forces and the trainings in new “militarized” methods only creates bigger divisions between the public and local police forces. “Especially in black and brown communities like Oakland,” he said.

Inside the Urban Shield expo, representatives of companies like FLIR Systems are selling their latest models of thermal and night vision cameras and rifle scopes. The devices let users see in pitch black environments and detect body heat.

Guy Blocker, a manager for FLIR’s law enforcement sales division says their products are getting the attention of police departments and that the S135 night vision scope, which mounts onto sniper rifles, semi-automatic guns or other types of weapons is the most popular with law enforcement right now.

Blocker’s table was one of the busiest at the expo. He says the S135 sells for $12,000 and they have sold “several thousand” to law enforcement.

“Any information we can get helps us in our operations like the one that detects motion through the wall,” said Edward Rodgers, a police officer from Jacksonville, Florida. He is referring to a radar device which is placed on the outside wall of a building and can detect the layout of the room, whether people are inside and their locations.

Rodgers says that the radar device and others he has seen at the expo would help him and his other Swat team colleagues do their jobs better and stay safe in the process.

Vendors selling armored vehicles, drones, and aerial surveillance technologies were also at the Urban Shield expo. One drone maker, AirCover Integrated Solutions, now offers local law enforcement agencies a package for $65,000 that includes a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) registered drone, training for the agency’s drone operator and assistance to get the operator licensed with the FAA.

“If the tools are used properly and public safety officials don’t abuse them, then it benefits everyone,” said Garry Bowling, a representative for AirCover.

Urban Shield is funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI), a $587m program designed to enhance regional preparedness and capabilities in 28 of the highest-risk, highest-threat, highest-density urban areas in the US.

According to Alameda County records, the county is on track to receive $6.3m from UASI between November 2014 and February 2016, and at least $1.7m must be used for Urban Shield.

Ali Issa, a field organizer for the New York-based anti-war advocacy group War Resisters League, says that Bay Area law enforcement agencies should be using the Urban Shield funds to create stronger ties with their communities.

“If these trainings are important to the law enforcement agencies then they should use local funds, which need to be approved by city councils, to prioritize and pay for them,” said Issa.

He says using DHS funds allows the law enforcement agencies to sidestep local processes that may scrutinize the content of the trainings and the companies who take part in the events.

“There is private interest involved in shaping the content of the trainings because the trainings are tied to products using the latest military technologies,” said Issa.

He says that the increasing use of Swat teams, military grade weaponry and tanks for everyday policing of communities is backfiring and creating more resentment and anger towards law enforcement.

Calvillo, who lives in West Oakland with pockets of poor African American and Hispanic communities and high crime, expressed fear of police when talking about the Swat raid at her house.

Oakland police spokeswoman Johnna Watson says officers understand that law enforcement activities have an impact on children like Calvillo and that tactical teams “do everything they can to not point a gun at a child”.

But Issa questioned: “If the ultimate goal is to always protect themselves than what is police’s role in society? There is a clear disconnect between what people are facing socially and the response by the police.”

By Halima Kazem in Alameda County

It was a beautiful mid-April day in Baltimore, Maryland. With Cherry Blossoms blooming and a slight breeze blowing, tensions were on the rise across the city. Exactly one week prior, an event occurred which would place the entire United States on the brink of mass civil unrest. Issues of race and liberty dominated the headlines five days later on April 18^th, as blacks, the local police, and state militia would soon clash with one another. The next day, the 19^th, events unfolded which would quickly evolve into all-out war.

If that sounds to you like the aftermath of the Freddie Gray murder in the midst of a police state, you would be mistaken. This is the story of the Baltimore Riot of 1861.

The American Civil War officially began on April 12^th, 1861 when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter without casualty. Anxiety in Baltimore was especially high at this time because it desired to stay neutral in the ensuing conflict. Most Baltimoreans were anti-War, yet simultaneously sympathetic to Southern business interests. Confusing the matter further were the 25,000 freed slaves which lived in the city, often at odds with one-third of the local population still supportive of slavery.

The Commonwealth of Virginia seceded from the union on the 17^th, and the next day all of Baltimore wondered about the effects on the local economy and politics. After a scuffle erupted that afternoon between opposing militias crossing each other in town, the passion of the city’s people were lit. On the evening of the 19^th, a mob of Southern supporters met a brigade of Northern soldiers en route to Washington as the brigade traveled between train stations along Pratt Street. Chaos ensued, and the first blood of the Civil War was spilled. Local police intervened as mediators, but 16 people were killed and dozens more wounded. History was set in motion, and no longer could Baltimore or the rest of the country ignore the reality of war and its cost of human life.

Then-Mayor of Baltimore, George Brown would later opine that the Pratt Street Riot was the last element needed to create full-scale war, saying,

“Because then was shed the first blood in a conflict between the North and the South; then a step was taken which made compromise or retreat almost impossible.”

With riots in Baltimore once again a national story nearly two centuries later, and civil disobedience on the rise across the country, could this mean the start of the next Civil War? Is retreat impossible from the violence of law enforcement everywhere?

This is what makes Freddie Gray different than every police brutality story to come before it. Passions are once more lit, and the fuse is burning. The tension between those who want freedom and those who take it away are higher than they have ever been. Peaceful protests are still the norm, but for how long? What happens when that first shot is fired in an agry crowd of thousands? How long can Humvees and tanks roam public streets without inviting a total assault? Will it matter then if you’re a pacifist, feminist, or socialist? If you’re black, white, or purple? Is non-violent resistance the only option anymore? Will we spiral into barbaric fighting like 150 years ago, or can the police state be ended without the Second Civil War?

By Jordan Freshour, contributor for TruthVoice

Journalists and transparency activists across the country have done a phenomenal job of shining light on how local law enforcement agencies use emerging technologies to surveil everyday people on a massive scale.  It’s often like playing Whac-A-Mole and Go Fish at the same time. One day, the question may be whether police are using drones. The next, automatic license plate readers.  After that, facial recognition or IMSI catchers (i.e. Stingrays) or Rapid DNA analyzers.

So many technical terms, so many acronyms. Unfortunately, we need to put yet another one your radar: Automated Vehicle Occupancy Detection, also known as Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection or Automated Vehicle Occupancy Verification.

For years, government agencies have chased technologies that would make it easier to ensure that vehicles in carpool lanes are actually carrying multiple passengers. Perhaps the only reason these systems haven’t garnered much attention is that they haven’t been particularly effective or accurate, as UC Berkeley researchers noted in a 2011 report.

Now, an agency in San Diego, Calif. believes it may have found the answer: the Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection system developed by Xerox.

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), a government umbrella group that develops transportation and public safety initiatives across the San Diego County region, estimates that 15% of drivers in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes aren’t supposed to be there. After coming up short with earlier experimental projects, the agency is now testing a brand new technology to crack down on carpool-lane scofflaws on the I-15 freeway.

Documents obtained by CBS 8 reporter David Gotfredson show that Xerox’s system uses two cameras to capture the front and side views of a car’s interior. Then “video analytics” and “geometric algorithms” are used to detect whether the seats are occupied.

When the detection system’s computer determines a driver is improperly traveling in the carpool lane, the cameras instantly send photos of the car’s interior and its license plate to the California Highway Patrol.

In short: the technology is looking at your image, the image of the people you’re with, your location, and your license plate. (SANDAG told CBS the systems will not be storing license plate data during the trial phase and the system will, at least for now, automatically redact images of drivers and passengers. Xerox’s software, however, allows police the option of using a weaker form of redaction that can be reversed on request.)

Xerox’s Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection systems can be mounted in permanent locations, such as freeway gantries, or attached to mobile trailers that “can be moved around, in order to keep potential violators honest.“

Xerox claims that the systems have a 95-99% accuracy rate, even with vehicles traveling as quickly as 100 mph. That represents a significant leap in capabilities compared to the 14-20% accuracy recorded by similar technology tested by SANDAG four years earlier.

So far, Xerox’s technology has only had one other trial run: a 2013 test on the Mackay Bridge in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the detection system captured 250,000 images of drivers in just under two weeks. Xerox claims the technology successfully determined front seat passengers 98.9% of the time and rear seat passengers 96.2% of the time.

That success rate may seem impressive, but it still means that, in aggregate, thousands of people could have been affected by machine error. Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection systems also raises the usual questions and concerns about privacy and mass surveillance, particularly without rules yet in place defining the limits of how this technology collects data and how that data will be stored, accessed, and destroyed.

If this trial is successful, it may only be a matter of time before Xerox begins marketing this new technology to other jurisdictions. As Xerox told its investors in November, its Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection system is “aimed at revolutionizing the movement of people and goods worldwide.”

Whether you’re a local journalist or citizen watchdog, add Automated Vehicle Occupancy/Passenger Detection to your vocabulary. In the coming months and years, look for it in procurement documents and committee agendas. Ask for related documents in your routine public records requests. As with all street-level surveillance technology, citizens have more power to influence policy when they discover the tech in its infancy, rather than fighting to dial back its use after it has been integrated into everyday police operations.