Street Level Surveillance

[Electronic Frontier Foundation]

"Welcome to the Field Guide to Police Surveillance.

EFF’s Street-Level Surveillance project shines a light on the surveillance technologies that law enforcement agencies routinely deploy in our communities. These resources are designed for advocacy organizations, journalists, defense attorneys, policymakers, and members of the public who often are not getting the straight story from police representatives or the vendors marketing this equipment.

Whether it’s phone-based location tracking, ubiquitous video recording, biometric data collection, or police access to people’s smart devices, law enforcement agencies follow closely behind their counterparts in the military and intelligence services in acquiring privacy-invasive technologies and getting access to consumer data. Just as analog surveillance historically has been used as a tool for oppression, we must understand the threat posed by emerging technologies to successfully defend civil liberties and civil rights in the digital age.

The threats to privacy of these surveillance technologies are enormous, as law enforcement agencies at all levels of government use surveillance technologies to compile vast databases filled with our personal information or gain access to devices that can lay bare the intricacies of our daily lives. Use of these surveillance technologies can infringe on our constitutional rights, including to speak and associate freely under the First Amendment or be free from unlawful search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Law enforcement also tends to deploy surveillance technologies disproportionately against marginalized communities. These technologies are prone to abuse by rogue officers, and can be subject to error or vulnerability, causing damaging repercussions for those who interact with the criminal justice system.

The resources contained in this hub bring together years of research, litigation, and advocacy by EFF staff and our allies, and will continue to grow as we obtain more information.."
Street Level Surveillance 

Programs to Collect Data on Law Enforcement Activities: Overview and Issues

"The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN,while he was in the custody of law enforcement, and several other recent high-profile deaths of African Americans at the hands of police, have generated interest in legislation to reform policing practices. Two major pieces of legislation that contain police reform proposals are before Congress: H.R. 7120, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020—passed by the House on June 25, 2020—and S. 3985, the Just and Unifying Solutions to Invigorate Communities Everywhere (JUSTICE) Act.

Each bill would establish programs to collect data on a variety of policing activities, such as the use of force, racial profiling, the use of no-knock warrants, and in-custody deaths. In some cases, state and local law enforcement agencies would report these data directly to the Department of Justice (DOJ). In other instances, states would be required to establish systems for collecting required data and reporting them to DOJ. Both pieces of legislation would provide incentives for state and local governments to report data by attaching conditions to the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) or the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) programs.

DOJ currently operates programs to collect and report data on the use of force by police officers and in-custody deaths. For instance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) collects data on use-of-force incidents that result in the death or serious bodily injury of a person, as well as when a police officer discharges a firearm at or in the direction of a person. DOJ also collects data on deaths of people who are temporarily detained, under arrest, in the process of being arrested, en route to be incarcerated, or incarcerated at a municipal or county jail, a state prison, a state-run boot camp prison, a boot camp prison that is contracted out by the state, any state or local contract facility, or any other local or state correctional facility (including juvenile facilities), per the requirement of the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (P.L. 113-242)..."
Data on law enforcement activities

Offenses Known To Law Enforcement In Large Cities, 2018

"The tables published in Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Large Cities, 2018, enable users to access FBI reported crime data for large cities of 250,000 population or more. These same data are published by the FBI in the Crime in the United States publication and can be found in tables associated with the state in which the agency is located. Tables published here by BJS provide those large city crime data in a singular set of tabulations. In addition, the FBI make these data available at the agency level through the Crime Data Explorer, and BJS and the FBI make these data available through the online UCR Data Tool. BJS has provided these tables for easier access to the public.
Full report (PDF 1.1M).." 
Offenses know to law enforcement

2018 NIBRS Crime Data

"The FBI today released details on nearly 6.6 million criminal offenses reported to its National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in 2018.

Last year, 7,283 law enforcement agencies reported their crime data through NIBRS, which is scheduled to become the national vehicle for crime reporting in 2021.

The FBI has been tracking voluntarily reported crime statistics through its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for nearly 90 years. But the FBI is now transitioning from the traditional Summary Reporting System to the more comprehensive data collection..."
NIBRS

Immigration, Citizenship, and the Federal Justice System, 1998-2018

"This report highlights trends in federal arrests and prosecutions by the country of citizenship of persons processed through the federal criminal justice system. It shows changes from 1998 through 2018. The report provides statistics on law enforcement and prosecutions along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as in non-border areas. It shows the number of suspects arrested and prosecuted for both immigration and non-immigration offenses, including by their citizenship status. It details activities for all 94 federal judicial districts, while also separately detailing activities for the 5 districts along the U.S.-Mexico border. (See map on page 6.)

The statistical findings in this report are based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP). The FJSP receives administrative data from six federal justice agencies: the U.S. Marshals Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, U.S. Sentencing Commission, and Federal Bureau of Prisons. BJS links and standardizes this information to maximize comparability and to facilitate analysis across and within agencies over time."
Imigration and citizenship

Justice Department Outlines Plan to Enable Nationwide Collection of Use of Force Data

"Today, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced several steps by the Department of Justice to enable the nationwide collection of data on law enforcement interactions with civilians, including data related to the use of force by law enforcement officers. 

“Accurate and comprehensive data on the use of force by law enforcement is essential to an informed and productive discussion about community-police relations,” said Attorney General Lynch.  “The initiatives we are announcing today are vital efforts toward increasing transparency and building trust between law enforcement and the communities we serve.  In the days ahead, the Department of Justice will continue to work alongside our local, state, tribal and federal partners to ensure that we put in place a system to collect data that is comprehensive, useful and responsive to the needs of the communities we serve.”   

The President’s Task Force on 21^st Century Policing called on law enforcement to “collect, maintain and report data . . .  on all officer involved shootings, whether fatal or nonfatal, as well as any in-custody death,” and the department is committed to heeding this call..."
Law Enforcement Force data

Guidance on Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence

"Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced today a new guidance from the Justice Department designed to help law enforcement agencies prevent gender bias in their response to sexual assault and domestic violence, highlighting the need for clear policies, robust training and responsive accountability systems.

“Gender bias, whether explicit or implicit, can severely undermine law enforcement’s ability to protect survivors of sexual and domestic violence and hold offenders accountable,” said Attorney General Lynch.  “This guidance – developed in collaboration with law enforcement leaders and advocates from across the country – is designed to help state, local, and tribal authorities more fairly and effectively address allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault.  In the days and months ahead, the Department of Justice will continue to work with our law enforcement partners nationwide to ensure that they have the tools and resources they need to prevent, investigate, and prosecute these horrendous crimes.”

Today’s guidance – which reflects input from a wide array of stakeholders, including police leaders, victim advocates and civil rights advocates – aims to enhance the Justice Department’s partnership with law enforcement officers who work tirelessly to protect their communities, advance bias-free policing and uphold the civil rights of the people they serve.  The Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), the Civil Rights Division and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) collaborated to produce the guidance...."
Identifying & preventing gender bias

Law Enforcement and Race: Continuing the Conversation

 
"The sometimes uneasy relationship between members of law enforcement and the diverse communities they serve can be a difficult topic to discuss, but FBI Director James B. Comey today encouraged the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) to continue that conversation—and he again called for better reporting of incidents where force is used by police and against them.

During a speech to the NOBLE group in Atlanta, Georgia, Comey noted that the organization’s members were “uniquely qualified as law enforcement leaders who are leaders of color” to drive this conversation forward, and he pledged that the FBI would strive to be a more diverse organization to reflect the nation it serves..."
Law enforcement and race

Hard Truths: Law Enforcement and Race

"FBI Director James B. Comey called on the nation’s law enforcement personnel and the citizens they serve to participate in a frank and open conversation about the disconnect that exists in places like New York City and Ferguson, Missouri—and many communities across the country—between police agencies and many citizens, particularly in communities of color..."
Law enforcement & race

Racial Profiling: Legal and Constitutional Issues

"Racial profiling is the practice of targeting individuals for police or security detention base on their race or ethnicity in the belief that certain minority groups are more likely to engage in unlawful behavior. Examples of racial profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies are illustrated in legal settlements and data collected by governmental agencies and private groups, suggesting that minorities are disproportionately the subject of routine traffic stops and other security-related practices. The issue has periodically attracted congressional interest, particularly with regard to existing and proposed legislative safeguards, which include the proposed End Racial Profiling Act of 2011 (H.R. 3618/S.1670) in the 112th Congress. Several courts have considered the constitutional ramifications of the practice as an "unreasonable search and seizure" under the Fourth Amendment and, more recently, as a denial of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee.
A variety of federal and state statutes provide potential relief to individuals who claim that their rights are violated by race-base law enforcement practices and policies..."