I am John Moon [of] Brookline, Massachusetts. I am an Emeritus Professor of History, whose specialty is the history of chemical and biological weapons.
I am centering my argument against the placement and operation of surveillance cameras in a national context. The impact of 9/11 and subsequent actions taken by the federal government to confront an existing threat cannot be isolated from actions taken or proposed throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
After 9/11, speculation was rife in government circles that this horrible event was the first wave of a succession of attacks that would inevitably culminate in chemical, biological, radiological or even nuclear strikes against our country. This fear was understandable at the time of the event and in the early months that followed. However, the persistence of this deep fear led to an overreaction, close to panic: to warrantless surveillance, to enhanced interrogation techniques.
Let us recall that the surveillance cameras, which are now being promoted as crime preventing, crime solving measures, were initially justified as a means to help evacuations in response to a catastrophic event.
Since 9/11, countless communities have carried out exercises so that their first responders will be better prepared to deal with a terrorist strike. In no case, as far as I am aware, have these tests carried out evacuations beyond the local area. In the case of a biological attack, for example, evacuations would be counter productive and cameras would not help. They cannot detect invisible weapons.
Let us recall that the gift giver of these cameras is the Department of Homeland Security, an agency not especially sensitive to privacy rights. It is this agency, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, that is fostering the fusion centers spread throughout the nation. On 16 October 2006, Michael Chertoff, former head of the Department of Homeland Security, defined the purpose of these fusion centers as a way to create “a national network of intelligence fusion…to support state and local decision makers, chiefs of police, and state and local intelligence officials.”
Today, more than forty fusion centers are spread throughout the nation, fifteen more are planned. One of these fusion centers is located in Maynard, Massachusetts. In the goals cited on its website, there is no mention of the need to protect privacy while strengthening security.
And will these cameras make us safer? Last year, my wife and I spent two months in London while I did research in the U.K. National Archives.
Great Britain has an extensive surveillance network: London alone has 200,000 cameras, and more than 4 million cameras have been deployed throughout the country. It is estimated that there is one camera for every 14 people and the average Briton is seen by 300 cameras per day.
On the first day that we arrived in London, I was pick-pocketed in the center of the city. In spite of the many cameras the thief was not caught.
This world of surveillance is being put in place at a time when our national laws have not caught up with a technological revolution that is accelerating. Knowledge is power. There are those who have sought to create Total Information Awareness systems for the use of the national government. As Lord Acton reminds us: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
What is now in place will be surpassed in the near future.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Do we want a surveillance society?
On the evening of June 2, the Brookline Town Meeting voted by a large margin to reject the town’s Department of Homeland Security-funded surveillance cameras. The vote was the culmination of a vigorous grassroots campaign, with the ACLU of Massachusetts joining Brookline residents to raise public consciousness about the privacy implications of the cameras. Below, Brookline resident John Moon explains why he opposes the camera installation in remarks directed to Town Meeting members.
Good news: Boston School Committee votes to wait on rezoning
As media outlets including WBUR reported today, the Boston School Committee voted last night to delay a plan that would have limited busing and school choice.
It's an issue the ACLU of Massachusetts has been working on. Here's what Amy Reichbach, our Racial Justice Fellow, has to say about it:
It's an issue the ACLU of Massachusetts has been working on. Here's what Amy Reichbach, our Racial Justice Fellow, has to say about it:
Boston Public Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson announced some months ago that she would be proposing that the School Committee adopt a plan that would change the way students are assigned to their schools. The ACLU of Massachusetts was approached by community activists concerned about this plan. With the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of the Boston Bar Association, we developed a set of recommendations that we sent to Superintendent Johnson and the School Committee in advance of last night’s School Committee meeting, where Johnson was scheduled to present her proposal. Our general conclusion regarding the “Five-Zone Plan” is that the plan, which is designed around cost-cutting rather than ensuring access to quality schools for all Boston Public School children, will exacerbate existing racial and socioeconomic inequities within BPS.
Our analysis of the plan and our recommendations appear online.
Executive Summary:
http://www.aclum.org/pdf/rezoning_proposal_20090602.pdf
Full Report:
http://www.aclum.org/pdf/rezoning_executive_summary_20090602.pdf
At the School Committee meeting last night, Superintendent Johnson and the School Committee agreed to postpone the School Committee’s vote on Johnson’s proposal, which had been scheduled to take place on June 24th, in order to permit her to make some revisions responsive to concerns raised by community members and advocates. We were pleased to see that she intends to consider many of objections raised both by us and by parent and educator activists to the Five-Zone Plan as she goes forward, Of course, it will take ongoing involvement to ensure that any plan she introduces ensures access to quality and innovate schools for families living in several of Boston’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods; ensures access to the most successful model of educating English Language Learners; employs racial and socioeconomic data technologies that could be used for rezoning, school reform and resource allocation purposes; and continues to provide transportation to students to the extent that transportation is required for choice to be meaningful. We are hopeful that our recommendations will help to guide future discussion of the plan.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Brookline Town Meeting votes against surveillance cameras
NEWS RELEASE
Brookline Rejects Homeland Security Surveillance Cameras
ACLU worked with Brookline PAX, local residents on risks of increased government surveillance
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 3, 2009
CONTACT:
Sarah Wunsch, Staff Attorney, 617-482-3170, x323, swunsch@aclum.org
Christopher Ott, Communications Director, 617-482-3170 x322, cott@aclum.org
BROOKLINE -- The Brookline Town Meeting voted late last night to adopt a resolution against the use of police surveillance cameras provided by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The resolution calls on the Board of Selectmen to halt a one-year trial use of the cameras and to take them down.
This is the first time that a town meeting -- an institution of local New England democratic government, with more than two hundred members -- has debated and rejected government surveillance cameras in a town’s public spaces. Brookline now joins Cambridge, where the City Council voted 9-0 in February to oppose the installation of eight surveillance cameras obtained with the same DHS grant.
“We are grateful to town meeting members in Brookline who understood that a message needed to be sent, that America should not be a place where the government is watching us as we go about our activities in public,” said Sarah Wunsch, a Brookline resident and staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. The ACLU worked with Brookline PAX and concerned residents to educate the community about the increasing government surveillance of lawful activities and the creation of government databases on vast numbers of Americans.
State Representative Frank Smizik of Brookline spoke in favor of the resolution at Town Meeting, saying that “Brookline has always been a leader” and that this was a time when that leadership was needed to protect our values as a free society.
The Town Meeting vote followed months of public hearings and debates, with many residents objecting to the town’s acceptance of the Bush administration’s offer of millions of dollars for digital interlinked cameras to watch our public places. Although the cameras were justified by town officials as “free” and as needed to help with evacuations, prevent crime or terrorism, or aid in prosecutions, studies provide no evidence that the cameras are effective. Rather, improved lighting and community policing have been shown effective in preventing and solving crime.
The cameras were intended to form part of a network funded with a $4.6 million Department of Homeland Security grant linking nine Greater Boston communities.
Brookline Rejects Homeland Security Surveillance Cameras
ACLU worked with Brookline PAX, local residents on risks of increased government surveillance
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 3, 2009
CONTACT:
Sarah Wunsch, Staff Attorney, 617-482-3170, x323, swunsch@aclum.org
Christopher Ott, Communications Director, 617-482-3170 x322, cott@aclum.org
BROOKLINE -- The Brookline Town Meeting voted late last night to adopt a resolution against the use of police surveillance cameras provided by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The resolution calls on the Board of Selectmen to halt a one-year trial use of the cameras and to take them down.
This is the first time that a town meeting -- an institution of local New England democratic government, with more than two hundred members -- has debated and rejected government surveillance cameras in a town’s public spaces. Brookline now joins Cambridge, where the City Council voted 9-0 in February to oppose the installation of eight surveillance cameras obtained with the same DHS grant.
“We are grateful to town meeting members in Brookline who understood that a message needed to be sent, that America should not be a place where the government is watching us as we go about our activities in public,” said Sarah Wunsch, a Brookline resident and staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. The ACLU worked with Brookline PAX and concerned residents to educate the community about the increasing government surveillance of lawful activities and the creation of government databases on vast numbers of Americans.
State Representative Frank Smizik of Brookline spoke in favor of the resolution at Town Meeting, saying that “Brookline has always been a leader” and that this was a time when that leadership was needed to protect our values as a free society.
The Town Meeting vote followed months of public hearings and debates, with many residents objecting to the town’s acceptance of the Bush administration’s offer of millions of dollars for digital interlinked cameras to watch our public places. Although the cameras were justified by town officials as “free” and as needed to help with evacuations, prevent crime or terrorism, or aid in prosecutions, studies provide no evidence that the cameras are effective. Rather, improved lighting and community policing have been shown effective in preventing and solving crime.
The cameras were intended to form part of a network funded with a $4.6 million Department of Homeland Security grant linking nine Greater Boston communities.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Brookline Tab opposes surveillance cameras
The Brookline Tab opposes Department of Homeland Security video cameras. We agree.
Monday, June 1, 2009
"Time Will Justify Our Strength"
Katrina vanden Heuvel, the keynote speaker at our 28th annual Bill of Rights Dinner last week, posted the text of her remarks "Time Will Justify Our Strength" on her blog at The Nation.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
ACLU Goes to Court in Case of South African Scholar Banned from U.S.
Professor Adam Habib Among Many Writers And Scholars Denied Entry On Basis Of Political Views
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 27, 2009
CONTACT:
Rachel Myers, (212) 549-2689 or 2666; media@aclu.org
Christopher Ott, 617-482-3170 x322, cott@aclum.org
BOSTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union is in federal court today to present arguments in the case of a prominent South African scholar who was denied a visa and is barred from attending speaking engagements in the U.S. The government has denied Professor Habib a visa on unspecified national security grounds.
According to the ACLU, the government denied Professor Adam Habib a visa not because of his actions but because of his vocal criticism of U.S. foreign policy, and his exclusion violates the First Amendment rights of organizations that have invited him to speak at conferences in the United States.
"The government can't censor the ideas U.S. citizens get to hear and stifle debate with foreign thinkers by shouting 'national security' without a shred of evidence to back it up," said Melissa Goodman, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Professor Habib's exclusion is motivated by his political views and associations, not his actions, and we're asking the court to immediately end this unconstitutional ban on his entry to the country."
Habib is a renowned scholar, sought-after political analyst, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Innovation and Advancement at the University of Johannesburg. He is also a Muslim who has been a vocal critic of the war in Iraq and some U.S. terrorism-related policies. In October 2006, the government revoked Professor Habib's visa without explanation. The revocation prevented him from attending a series of meetings with representatives from the National Institutes for Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Bank, Columbia University and the Gates Foundation. In October 2007, the State Department denied Professor Habib's application for a new visa. The State Department claimed that Habib is barred because he has "engaged in terrorist activities," but refused to explain the basis for this accusation or provide any evidence to support it.
In December 2008, Judge George A. O'Toole, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the court had the power to review Professor Habib's exclusion and that the government must justify its actions. Thus far, the government has refused to do so.
The ACLU and the ACLU of Massachusetts filed the lawsuit in 2007 on behalf of organizations that have invited Professor Habib to speak in the U.S., including the American Sociological Association, the American Association of University Professors, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights. The lawsuit charges that the government's exclusion of Professor Habib amounts to censorship at the border because it prevents U.S. citizens and residents from hearing speech that is protected by the First Amendment.
"The ideological exclusion of scholars like Adam Habib violates the First Amendment rights of those who seek to meet with foreign scholars," said Larry Schwartztol, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Ideological exclusion is a form of censorship and it should not be tolerated in a country committed to free expression and democratic values."
The U.S. denial of a visa to Professor Habib is part of a larger pattern of "ideological exclusion." Over the past few years, numerous foreign scholars, human rights activists and writers -- all vocal critics of U.S. policy -- have been barred from the U.S. without explanation or on vague national security grounds.
In March, dozens of the nation's leading academic, free speech and civil rights organizations sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano urging them to put an end to the practice of ideological exclusion. The letter was signed by groups including the ACLU, the National Education Association and the Rutherford Institute.
In addition to Goodman and Schwartztol, attorneys in the Habib case are Jameel Jaffer and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU and Sarah Wunsch and John Reinstein of the ACLU of Massachusetts.
The full text of the letter to Attorney General Holder and Secretaries Clinton and Napolitano is available online at:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/39050leg20090318.html
More information about the ACLU's work to end ideological exclusions is available online at:
http://www.aclu.org/exclusion
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 27, 2009
CONTACT:
Rachel Myers, (212) 549-2689 or 2666; media@aclu.org
Christopher Ott, 617-482-3170 x322, cott@aclum.org
BOSTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union is in federal court today to present arguments in the case of a prominent South African scholar who was denied a visa and is barred from attending speaking engagements in the U.S. The government has denied Professor Habib a visa on unspecified national security grounds.
According to the ACLU, the government denied Professor Adam Habib a visa not because of his actions but because of his vocal criticism of U.S. foreign policy, and his exclusion violates the First Amendment rights of organizations that have invited him to speak at conferences in the United States.
"The government can't censor the ideas U.S. citizens get to hear and stifle debate with foreign thinkers by shouting 'national security' without a shred of evidence to back it up," said Melissa Goodman, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Professor Habib's exclusion is motivated by his political views and associations, not his actions, and we're asking the court to immediately end this unconstitutional ban on his entry to the country."
Habib is a renowned scholar, sought-after political analyst, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Innovation and Advancement at the University of Johannesburg. He is also a Muslim who has been a vocal critic of the war in Iraq and some U.S. terrorism-related policies. In October 2006, the government revoked Professor Habib's visa without explanation. The revocation prevented him from attending a series of meetings with representatives from the National Institutes for Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Bank, Columbia University and the Gates Foundation. In October 2007, the State Department denied Professor Habib's application for a new visa. The State Department claimed that Habib is barred because he has "engaged in terrorist activities," but refused to explain the basis for this accusation or provide any evidence to support it.
In December 2008, Judge George A. O'Toole, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the court had the power to review Professor Habib's exclusion and that the government must justify its actions. Thus far, the government has refused to do so.
The ACLU and the ACLU of Massachusetts filed the lawsuit in 2007 on behalf of organizations that have invited Professor Habib to speak in the U.S., including the American Sociological Association, the American Association of University Professors, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights. The lawsuit charges that the government's exclusion of Professor Habib amounts to censorship at the border because it prevents U.S. citizens and residents from hearing speech that is protected by the First Amendment.
"The ideological exclusion of scholars like Adam Habib violates the First Amendment rights of those who seek to meet with foreign scholars," said Larry Schwartztol, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Ideological exclusion is a form of censorship and it should not be tolerated in a country committed to free expression and democratic values."
The U.S. denial of a visa to Professor Habib is part of a larger pattern of "ideological exclusion." Over the past few years, numerous foreign scholars, human rights activists and writers -- all vocal critics of U.S. policy -- have been barred from the U.S. without explanation or on vague national security grounds.
In March, dozens of the nation's leading academic, free speech and civil rights organizations sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano urging them to put an end to the practice of ideological exclusion. The letter was signed by groups including the ACLU, the National Education Association and the Rutherford Institute.
In addition to Goodman and Schwartztol, attorneys in the Habib case are Jameel Jaffer and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU and Sarah Wunsch and John Reinstein of the ACLU of Massachusetts.
The full text of the letter to Attorney General Holder and Secretaries Clinton and Napolitano is available online at:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/39050leg20090318.html
More information about the ACLU's work to end ideological exclusions is available online at:
http://www.aclu.org/exclusion
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Obama's first 100 days
We wanted to share this scorecard from the ACLU of Massachusetts on President Obama's decisions so far on civil liberties, during his first 100 days:
www.aclum.org/scorecard
The tally we've come up with so far is -1.5
The problem is not that the Obama administration has not immediately repaired all the damage done to civil liberties in recent years -- that would be a tall order.
Instead, we are looking at the decisions the administration is making that could help to restore the rule of law, and evaluated whether or not that decision was a step in the wrong direction or a step in the right direction.
www.aclum.org/scorecard
www.aclum.org/scorecard
The tally we've come up with so far is -1.5
The problem is not that the Obama administration has not immediately repaired all the damage done to civil liberties in recent years -- that would be a tall order.
Instead, we are looking at the decisions the administration is making that could help to restore the rule of law, and evaluated whether or not that decision was a step in the wrong direction or a step in the right direction.
www.aclum.org/scorecard
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