For Immediate Release: December 2, 2020
Rutherford Institute Challenges Baltimore’s Use of City-Wide, Daytime Aerial Surveillance to Spy On and Track Citizens
RICHMOND, Va. — Pushing back against efforts to extend the government’s spying powers, The Rutherford Institute has asked a federal appeals court to end Baltimore’s use of aerial surveillance to continuously track and monitor the activities of citizens throughout the city.
In an amicus brief filed in partnership with Electronic Freedom Foundation, National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Brennan Center for Justice, Rutherford Institute attorneys have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to rule that the city’s Aerial Investigative Research program, which uses plane-based cameras to record ground movements and is integrated with other city surveillance systems, violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. The brief in Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, which asks the Appeals Court to reconsider and reverse its earlier ruling upholding the program, argues that the comprehensive collection of data and tracking of over a half million people every day is a severe infringement on privacy rights and chills the exercise of the rights of speech and assembly protected by the First Amendment.
“We’re on the losing end of a technological revolution that has already taken hostage our computers, our phones, our finances, our entertainment, our shopping, our appliances, and now, it’s focused its sights on us from the air,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “By subjecting Americans to surveillance without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the data for later use, the government has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, there is no such thing as ‘innocent until proven guilty.’”
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