Multimodal Redesign

In re-evaluating Modern Historical Processes, I have revisited my sources and hope to elaborate on them further; with the addition of Neil Richards’ submission to Harvard Law Review. By diving deeper into these examples of modern surveillance, I have sought out a greater connection to the historical processes that predicated them, and the inherent ramifications of that surveillance within communities of color.

In 1918, at Munich University, Max Weber delivered his seminal lecture “Politics as a Vocation”; in which he sought to define the political 'state'. Weber immediately concludes that the paramount discernment of state-dom is “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (Weber 1918:1). He continues to explain that, “The state is considered the sole source of the 'right' to use violence. Hence, 'politics' for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state” (Weber 1918:2). Thus, politicians become the keepers of violence, distributing its means to a select few orders as a way of maintaining the state as “men dominating other men….If the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be” (Weber 1918:2). Finally, speaking to those who wish to exact communal change, he leaves parting wisdom:

“He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence” (Weber 1918:28).

According to Derrick Johnson of the NAACP, “the origins of modern policing can be traced back to the ‘Slave Patrol’” (Johnson 2021). He explains that in the early 1700s, North and South Carolina established the first formal Slave Patrols to “pursue, apprehend, and return runaway slaves to their owners” (Johnson 2021), and that their tactics included the use of excessive force. The original Slave Patrol Oath of North Carolina read:

“I [patroller's name], do swear, that I will as searcher for guns, swords, and other weapons among the slaves in my district, faithfully, and as privately as I can, discharge the trust reposed in me as the law directs, to the best of my power. So help me, God” (Johnson 2021).

(fig. 1)

Shown here (fig. 1) is an 1851 poster, cautioning Boston-area African-Americans against trusting police and watchmen; as they were known kidnappers, and slave-catchers and -keepers. These official Slave Patrols continued until the Civil War, when the 13th Amendment was passed; and replaced with sanctioned Militia Groups, tasked with enforcing Black Codes: “Strict local and state laws that regulated and restricted access to labor, wages, voting rights, and general freedoms for formerly enslaved people” (Johnson 2021). 1868 saw the ratification of the 14th Amendment, and technical equality for African-Americans with the end of Black Codes; “Jim Crow laws and state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation swiftly took their place” (Johnson 2021). By the 1900s, regional Police Precincts had been established to enforce Jim Crow laws, which did not see their official demise until the 1960s.

(fig. 2)

In her 2019 novel, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Ruha Benjamin explains that despite their abolishment in the 60s, the evidence of Jim Crow laws’ perseverance can be observed within the New Jim Code: “The employment of new technologies that reflect and reproduce existing inequities but that are promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the discriminatory systems of a previous era” (Benjamin 2019:3). Explaining the importance of the conceptual New Jim Code, Benjamin wrote,

“The animating force of the New Jim Code is that tech designers encode judgments into technical systems but claim that the racist results of their designs are entirely exterior to the encoding process” (Benjamin 2019:6).

In this way, the segregational foundations of past-eras are revitalized through the production of the privileged, and standardized as above-reproach. Quoting Margaret Atwood, Benjamin concludes: “Better never means better for everyone…it always means worse, for some” (Benjamin 2019:44).

In Neil Richards’ 2013 contribution to the Harvard Law Review, “The Dangers of Surveillance”, he begins by articulating when surveillance is particularly dangerous. The first example he raises is that of intellectual surveillance.

“Surveillance is harmful because it can chill the exercise of our civil liberties.…Consider surveillance of people when they are thinking, reading, or communicating with others in order to make up their mind about political and social issues. Such intellectual surveillance is especially dangerous because it can cause people not to experiment with new, controversial, or deviant ideas” (Richards 2013:1935).

He elaborates that both ‘secret’ surveillance and ‘total’ surveillance are illegitimate, and that surveillance “menaces intellectual privacy and increases the risk of blackmail, coercion, and discrimination” (Johnson 2013:1935). He continues to elaborate that “the same digital technologies that have revolutionized our daily lives over the past three decades have also created ever more detailed records about those lives” (Richards 2013:1936), and that the level of surveillance we are exposed to is entirely unprecedented throughout human history. Despite autocratic governments being the metaphorical face of domestic surveillance, democratic governments have begun taking up this mantle under the guise of anti-terrorism; but the list of ‘reasons-to-surveille’ seems to be ever-lengthening. Additionally, “government and nongovernment surveillance support each other in a complex manner that is often impossible to disentangle” (Richards 2013:1940). He details that Disney Corporation has been developing Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) with the intent of selling it to the US Military; and that, under that blanket-guise of anti-terrorism, the US government has been purchasing, subpoenaing, and otherwise acquiring private surveillance data; and reportedly selling it back to insurance companies (Richards 2013:1941).

Lindsey Holden of The Sacramento Bee (published through Government Technology) reports that Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-CA) authored a bill intended to regulate the use of FRT by police; the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), however, is pushing for an outright ban. When Ting authored his original bill, he “arranged for a demonstration of technology that incorrectly identified 26 members of the Legislature–including himself–as criminals when it compared their photos to a database of mugshots” (Holden 2023). Disenchanted with the technology, Ting lamented, “Instead of a tool that is really supposed to build bridges, it now becomes a tool of surveillance.” Instead of penning a bill that would disallow its use by law enforcement, Ting elected to heavily regulate FRT’s place among precincts instead. Assembly Bill 642 (AB-642) requires law enforcement agencies to author Facial Recognition use policies, and to have those policies posted publicly online; to “provide certain information to any individual FRT is used to identify” (Ting 2023); to provide annual data to a state auditor; to be held to certain state-appointed standards; and to destroy records and data outside of certain specifications and time-parameters.

The ACLU California Action’s director of government affairs, Carmen Cox, however, said the bill is “not better than nothing, just as drinking bleach is not better than no Covid vaccine” (Holden 2023).

Her coworker, Carlos Marquez, elaborated that any sanctioned use of FRT by law enforcement serves as an invitation for its expanded use.

According to Chris Gelardi of The Intercept, in 2022 a trove of 250 GB of leaked emails were published online, revealing a massive surveillance operation underway in Washington DC. “Launched in a rush on September 11, 2001, it was the MPD’s first ‘war on terror’-era infrastructure upgrade. Since then, the command center has served as a template for area police’s massively expanded domestic surveillance apparatus” (Gelardi 2022). Dubbed the Joint Operations Command Center (JOCC), a wall of twenty monitors alight with live video feeds from all over the city; officers frequently check in, delivering intel and receiving orders. Their main focus: Monitoring, tracking, and otherwise surveilling the city’s protesters. A leaked email thread shows details of the police chatter, with one officer notifying his coworkers,

“Just a heads up, the protesters are dispersing a pamphlet of rights” (Gelardi 2014).

Increasing the scope of the JOCC is the number of jurisdictions it falls within; not only are the live feeds accessed by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), but by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and other regional police intelligence hubs (Gelardi 2022). The ICE out of DC Coalition published a pamphlet detailing their concerns about local surveillance sold in bulk to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. They detail that the MPD is currently utilizing a piece of Microsoft software called the AWARE console: Artificial Intelligence (AI) designed to correlate the JOCC’s live feeds to the city’s intelligence on suspected gang members and territories, people of interest, social media posts, automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), and thousands more live feeds from within the private sector across the city. The Intercept, among other news outlets, found that the JOCC’s gang-database was

“riddled with errors and used to justify aggressive policing of Black communities” (Gelardi 2022).

In Chula Vista, a California border-town seven miles north of the US-Mexico border, investigative reporter Amina Sharma of KPBS reports residents are living with one of the highest levels of surveillance in the nation. In addition to the day-to-day surveillance most American inhabitants are subjected to, as a border-town Chula Vista bears the brunt of federal surveillance, as well. Rigged with drones; ALPRs; FRT; surveillance towers (fig. 3) equipped with cameras, radar, sonar, and infrared; and even surveillance blimps (fig. 4), residents are geo-tagged and tracked from the moment they step out their front door.

(fig. 3)

(fig. 4)

In this video, Sharma addresses the concerns of many local residents: Primarily, the inability to know what information of theirs has been logged or captured by these surveillance technologies, and how it will be used in the future.

As drones are deployed across the city, residents worry that local authorities may not be as transparent as they purport. Additionally, residents have voiced concerns as to the capabilities of the technology–which law enforcement is adamant they have not, and will not use. Despite a California law restricting local authorities from assisting in federal Border Patrol investigations, Chula Vista law enforcement has been found to be selling its data to ICE.

Throughout these examples of policing and surveillance, we readily see Weber’s political theory at work. The political state is founded on violence, suppression, oppression; and the authorized allocation of the rights to perpetrate them. This is most apparent within our system of policing: Birthed from the ‘need’ to control and recapture slaves, technological innovations have only furthered the enticement of a “monopoly on legitimate use of force” (Weber 1918:1). As weapons progressed, so, too, did surveillance technologies; and with every innovation shrouded in ‘progress’, less affluent communities and in particular communities of color were increasingly targeted. The original Carolinian Slave Patrols became federally sanctioned militias, which became police precincts; arguably with the same mission as their predecessors: Confiscation within Black communities. As surveillance technologies progress, they are systematically aimed at Black communities: Increased drones, FRT, ALPRs, cameras, and police presence create an atmosphere of distrust in which the motto ‘serve and protect’ brings a bitterly laughable echo of “whom?” To residents of these communities, the answer is apparent: “To serve them…and to protect them, from you.”

Richards raises the impeccable point of intellectual surveillance: The Orwellian danger of having our very thoughts monitored such that we are no longer free to hold or voice our opinions. Yet, within many Black communities this danger has become an opaque reality: Surrounded by technologies they are promised are only used for their safety; when promises from law enforcement ring hollow for most. Just as the residents of Chula Vista worry that the technical abilities of local surveillance technology far outstrip their legal jurisdiction, residents of Black communities have little reason to trust that cameras are only recording crimes, that gun-shot monitors are not eavesdropping, that FRT data will be reasonably expunged, or that police-patrols are for their benefit. Statistical data proves that their concerns are valid: FRT data is routinely not removed when properly ordained; FRT routinely misidentifies its targets at an alarming rate; the databases to which FRT is connected to are erroneous; and despite all of this being meticulously documented, its prevalence only amplifies. When it comes to the police use of surveillance technology, I am of the same mind as the ACLU: Sanctioned use is increased use. Until proper legislation is introduced to limit the private sector’s contributions to public surveillance, it has no place among state- and federally-run entities.

Historic processes make the present possible. As Slave Patrols evolved into Police Precincts, hands-on surveillance was replaced with more technologically advanced practices; their targets remained consistent. Regulated use of surveillance technologies by law enforcement is interpreted as sanctioned use, which leaves little room for behavioral improvements within the agencies. Without holding precincts accountable for their problematic nature, we allow their practices to continue unfettered, unchecked, and unrefined. With the current system in place, we must hinder the progression of surveillance technologies into the hands of law-enforcement.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Ruha. Race after Technology : Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Polity Press, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2171/lib/wsu/detail.action?docID=5820427.

Holden, Lindsey. “Divisions Grow Over Use of Facial Recognition Technology in California.” Government Technology, The Sacramento Bee, dist. by Tribune Content Agency, LLC, 18 Apr. 2023, https://www.govtech.com/policy/divisions-grow-over-use-of-facial-recognition-in-california?fbclid=IwAR1u2NMLmrimpG3VRghpksqLYV6Xgu5xP4DnzKWZrA32ssxLFxUaRn4RJIs.

Johnson, Derrick. “The Origins of Modern Day Policing.” NAACP, Mar. 2021, https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/origins-modern-day-policing?fbclid=IwAR0bqc5sNMeZtfZDRYm_0rv6zu28fXaXPAA5gF2xIULPbQO0FC3q3RN8jJs#:~:text=The%20origins%20of%20modern%2Dday,runaway%20slaves%20to%20their%20owners.

Gelardi, Chris. “Inside DC Police’s Sprawling Network of Surveillance.” The Intercept, Jun. 18, 2022, https://theintercept.com/2022/06/18/dc-police-surveillance-network-protests/.

Sharma, Amita. “How Chula Vista became one of the most surveilled cities in the country.” KPBS, Dec. 9, 2021, https://www.kpbs.org/news/local/2021/12/09/chula-vista-became-most-surveilled-cities-country.

Weber, Max. Trans. H.H. Gerth, ed. C. Wright Mills. “Politics as a Vocation.” Essays in Sociology, pp. 77-­128, New York: Oxford University Press, 1946, WikiSource, Mar. 2, 2010. http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/class%20readings/weber/politicsasavocation.pdf.

Richards, Neil M. “The Dangers of Surveillance.” Harvard Law Review, vol. 126, no. 7, 2013, pp. 1934–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23415062.

EFF. “Close-up shot of Tactical Aerostat in Nogales, AZ, viewed from the ground (1).jpg” CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Close-up_shot_of_Tactical_Aerostat_in_Nogales,_AZ,_viewed_from_the_ground_(1).jpg.

“Fugitive Slave Law Warning Poster.” NPGallery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fugitive_Slave_Law_warning_poster,_Boston_African_American_National_Historic_Site,_1851._(e9414990d8d040e9b4242985516987e1).jpg.

“RE: Plan.” DocumentCloud, Chris Gelardi, 24 Nov. 2014, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22036001-141124-re-plan.

Ting, Phil. “Assembly Bill 642.” Bill Text - AB-642 Law Enforcement Agencies: Facial Recognition Technology., 2 Mar. 2023, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB642.

Sharma, Amita. Part 2: How Chula Vista Became One of the Most Surveilled Cities in the Country. YouTube, KPBS Public Media, 13 Dec. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6CLsVWefqA.

Kemp, Ellen. “DC Law Enforcement Surveillance Technology.” Flipsnack, Ice Out of DC Coalition, June 2022, https://www.flipsnack.com/justfutures/dc-law-enforcement-surveillance-technology/full-view.html.

EFF. “A close-up of the cameras and sensors of a Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) in Nogales, AZ.” CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_close-up_of_the_cameras_and_sensors_of_a_Remote_Video_Surveillance_System_(RVSS)_in_Nogales,_AZ.jpg.