ALPR NEG
**Off Case**
Forfeiture DA
1NC Shell
Asset forfeiture is disrupting drug trafficking now
ONDCP 2015 (Office of National Drug Control Policy, “International Money Laundering and Asset
Forfeiture,” Date is date accessed, July 17, https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/international-moneylaundering-and-asset-forfeiture)
In FY 2010, DEA maintained 21 money laundering investigative groups to support its Financial Attack Strategy. Through several
national initiatives focused on targeting the bulk cash derived from drug proceeds, DEA seized $736.7 million in FY 2010. Further,
DEA denied total revenue of nearly $3 billion from drug trafficking and money laundering organizations through asset and drug
seizures in FY 2010.
The Department of Homeland Security has also intensified its efforts to combat the flow of illicit proceeds across the border with
Mexico. In March 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reestablished an Outbound Enforcement Program in order to
increase outbound enforcement activities and obstruct illegal currency and weapons being smuggled from the United States into
Mexico. Results include a dramatic increase in outbound currency and inbound drug seizures. For FY 2010, the CBP Office of Field
Operations seized a total of $28.9 million in currency at land border ports of entry at the Southern border. In addition, the U.S.
Border Patrol seized $7.9 million in currency at the Southern border.
With regard to financial investigations, ICE’s Cornerstone Initiative focuses on coordination and cooperation with other domestic and
foreign law enforcement agencies and the private sector to eliminate vulnerabilities in U.S. financial systems and disrupt and
dismantle alternative illicit financing mechanisms. ICE’s Trade Transparency Unit (TTU) and Money Laundering Coordination Center
(MLCC) provide the analytical infrastructure to support financial and trade investigations. The TTU has the unique ability to not only
analyze domestic trade and financial data, but also trade and financial data of foreign cooperating partners. ICE also conducts
specialized investigative training focused on bulk cash smuggling for state and local police officers and Assistant U.S. Attorneys.
The Foreign Narcotic Kingpin Designation Act provides a statutory framework for the President to institute economic sanctions
against foreign drug kingpins in order to deny their front organizations access to the U.S. financial system and benefits from U.S.
trade. Once locked out of American trade, criminal organizations have difficulty participating in open commerce. The Treasury
Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blocks all assets and payments belonging to these kingpins and their
associated entities.
DEA license plate monitoring is key to asset forfeiture
NEWSWEEK 2015 (“Asset Forfeiture Drives Justice Department's License Plate Tracking,” Jan 27,
http://www.newsweek.com/asset-forfeiture-drives-justice-departments-license-plate-tracking-302621)
The Justice Department is building a national database that tracks vehicles’ movements around the U.S. in real time using
information obtained from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) license plate scanning program, The Wall Street Journal reported
on Monday. The program not only tracks car, driver and passenger locations via high-tech cameras along highways, but uses data
mining “to identify travel patterns.”
According to the newly uncovered documents, the primary goal of the program is to seize assets, such as cars and cash, to combat
drug trafficking. But former and current officials told the Journal that the database’s use has expanded to hunt for automobiles
associated with a slew of other crimes.
Asset forfeiture has been widely covered in the news in recent months after a Washington Post investigation showed that police
have seized almost $2.5 billion in cash from drivers without search warrants or indictments since September 11, 2001. In April 2013,
for example, two professional poker players had $100,000 seized by Iowa state troopers at a traffic stop on their drive home to
California. The troopers had no warrant but suspected the men may be involved in drug trafficking.
Asset forfeitures often go toward paying for salaries, equipment and perks in many jurisdictions. The American Civil Liberties Union
contends that, “when salaries and perks are on the line, officers have a strong incentive to increase the seizures, as evidenced by
an increase in the regularity and size of such seizures in recent years.” Federally, it provides a stream of revenue.
Though Attorney General Eric Holder’s new policy to limit the practice was met with praise earlier this month, further analysis of the
policy’s language shows the limits will only apply to a small number of cases, meaning the database can continue to be used for
warrantless asset forfeitures.
When the program began in 2008, little information was shared with the public. Information did trickle out over the years, but a 2013
ACLU report called You Are Being Tracked found that license plate reader technology was being widely adopted by local and state
law enforcement agencies.
New documents obtained by the ACLU confirm that these agencies contribute data to the program, as do federal agencies such as
Customs and Border Patrol, which collects “nearly 100 percent of land border traffic,” or more than 793.5 million license plates
between May 2009 and May 2013.
The DEA also shares the information it collects with other agencies of all stripes, which are allowed to conduct searches in the
database.
Asset forfeiture is a key law enforcement tool—it deters, disrupts, and punishes
crime and is just because it compensates victims and punishes criminals
CASSELLA 2004 (Stefan, Dept. Chief of Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section of the DoJ
and JD from Georgetown, “Overview of Asset Forfeiture Law in the United States,” January,
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=stefan_cassella)
Asset forfeiture is an integral part of federal criminal law enforcement in the United States. This brief introduction to federal forfeiture
law attempts to answer three questions: 1) Why is asset forfeiture important to law enforcement? 2) What types of property are
subject to forfeiture, and in what circumstances? and 3) How is forfeiture accomplished?
Why do forfeiture?
There are many reasons to include the forfeiture of assets as part of a criminal case. First, law enforcement agents and prosecutors
want not only to arrest wrongdoers and put them in jail for some period of time, but also to remove the tools of the crime from
circulation so they cannot he used again, either by the wrongdoers themselves once they have gained their release, or by members
of their organisations. Thus, law enforcement wants to seize and forfeit the guns. the airplanes, and the cars with concealed
compartments that are used for drug smuggling: it wants to take the computers, printers, and other electronic devices used in child
pornography, counterfeiting, and identification fraud cases: and it wants to shut down the crack house’ where drugs are distributed
to children on their way to school, to confiscate the farm used for the marijuana-growing operation, and to close down the business
used to commit insurance fraud, telemarketing fraud or to run a Ponzi scheme. In this sense, asset forfeiture is a form of
incapacitation.
Secondly. in any case where the crime involves innocent victims, such as property offences and fraud, asset forfeiture turns out to
be the most effective means of recovering property that may used to compensate the victims. Indeed, restoration of property to
victims in white-collar cases is the first priority of law enforcement when it comes to disbursing forfeited property. 2 and much time
and effort is expended in such cases to ensure that the wrongdoer’s assets are preserved pending trial so that they remain available
to he used for this purpose once the case is over.
Thirdly. asset forfeiture takes the profit out of the crime. Obviously, there is an element of simple justice in ensuring that wrongdoers
are deprived of the fruits of their illegal acts. But there is also an element of general deterrence as well. Surely the incentive to
engage in economic crime is diminished if persons contemplating such activity understand that there is high likelihood that they will
not be allowed to retain any profits that might flow from their temporary success. Conversely, convicting defendants hut leaving
them in possession of the riches of wrongdoing gives others the impression that a life of crime is worth the risk.
There is also the matter of the message that is sent to the community of law-abiding citizens when a notorious gangster or fraud
artist is stripped of the trappings of what may have appeared to he an enviable lifestyle. Criminals typically spend their spoils on
expensive homes, airplanes. electronic goods and other toys’ that everyone else wishes that they had the resources to acquire.
Taking the criminals’ toys away, as law enforcement agents typically put it, not only ensures that criminals’ enterprises are deprived
of their economic resources, and that funds are available for restitution to the victims~it also sends a signal to the community that
the benefits of a life of crime are illusory and temporary at best.
Law enforcement professionals would much prefer that persons passing an expensive cliffside mansion on the Pacific Coast say,
‘Remember Mr Big that used to control the syndicate here? There is the house he used to own. The government has it now.’ and not
‘There is Mr Big’s house. What a place! And he still owns it too!’
Finally, asset forfeiture constitutes a form of punishment. While taking the instrumentalities of crime out of circulation, obtaining
funds for restitution, taking the profit out of crime and achieving some measure of deterrence all constitute remedial aspects of
forfeiture, it cannot he denied that depriving wrongdoers of the accoutrements of an expensive lifestyle, or the items that gave them
the leverage, prestige or wherewithal to commit criminal acts, is a form of punishment or retrihution exacted by the criminal justice
system. Forfeiture, in other words. gives criminals their just deserts.
Forfeiture DA Links
License plate tracking is a key measure in asset forfeiture
PURSELL 2015 (Robert, “License Plate Scans Allow Government, Companies To Track Where You
Go, What You Do,” Daily Caller, Jan 27, http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/27/reports-license-plate-scansallow-government-companies-to-track-where-you-go/)
Every day across the country, high-speed license plate cameras are being used by both law enforcement officials and private
companies to track the movement and activity of citizens across the country.
That information is being stored in massive governmental and private databases, where it is subsequently sold to third-party
companies for commercial usage or used by law enforcement officials to assists in arrests and seizures. And, for the most part,
there is no oversight on the practice.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, and through information obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a
Freedom of Information Act request, the government program is a function of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and its stated
goal is to aid law officers in combating drug trafficking.
The practice was originally started around the Mexican border in areas where the drug trade is rampant, but in the years since has
expanded nationwide, and is currently employed by law enforcement officials to aid in the investigation and prosecution of crimes
beyond the realm of narcotics.
A main goal of the program is the pursuit of asset forfeiture, a practice through which law-enforcement agencies seize property and
cash from suspected criminals.
Asset forfeiture has come under intense criticism for its lack of regulation and how alarmingly difficult it is for ultimately law-abiding
and innocent citizens whose property has been wrongly seized to recover their assets.
Forfeiture Solves Drugs
DEA asset forfeiture is key to combat drug trafficking
DEA 2015 (Drug Enforcement Administration, “DEA Programs: Asset Forfeiture,”
http://www.dea.gov/ops/af.shtml)
DEA is the premier drug enforcement organization in the world and is responsible for conducting national and international
investigations targeting global drug trafficking networks and drug-related terrorism involved in the illegal growing, manufacture, or
distribution of controlled substances appearing in or destined for illicit traffic in the United States. A component of DEA’s strategic
mission is the use of the Asset Forfeiture Program. Working with other local, state, national, and international law enforcement
agencies, DEA has seized records amounts of cash, assets, and other drug-related proceeds. By attacking the financial
infrastructure of drug trafficking organizations world-wide, DEA has disrupted and dismantled major drug trafficking organizations
and their supply chains, thereby improving national security and increasing the quality of life for the American public.
Forfeiture is key to disrupt drug trafficking and organized crime
DOJ 2008 (U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Audit Division, ASSETS
FORFEITURE FUND AND SEIZED ASSET DEPOSIT FUND ANNUAL FINANCIAL STATEMENT
FISCAL YEAR 2007, March,
http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/afp/legacy/2009/03/10/fy2007_afs_report.pdf)
The primary mission of the Department of Justice (DOJ or the Department) Asset Forfeiture Program (AFP or the Program) is to
prevent and reduce crime by disrupting, damaging, and dismantling criminal organizations through the use of the forfeiture sanction.
This is accomplished by means of depriving drug traffickers, racketeers, and other criminal syndicates of their ill-gotten proceeds
and instrumentalities of their trade. Components responsible for the administration and financial management of the AFP are
charged with lawfully, effectively and efficiently supporting law enforcement authorities in the application of specified forfeiture
statutes. The Assets Forfeiture Fund (AFF or the Fund) and Seized Asset Deposit Fund (SADF) together comprise a single financial
reporting entity of the DOJ, which includes the specified funds, property seized for forfeiture, and the transactions and program
activities of DOJ forfeiture program components and other participating agencies as described more fully herein.
Forfeiture is important in the War on Drugs
McDowell 96 – Chief, Asset Forfeiture & Money Laundering Section, Dept. of Justice Washington (Gerald E. “Why Prosecutors
Choose Civil Forfeiture,” The New York Times, July 5th, 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/05/opinion/l-why-prosecutorschoose-civil-forfeiture-063487.html)BC
Prosecutors choose civil forfeiture not because of the standard of proof, but because it is often the only way
to confiscate the instrumentalities of crime. The alternative, criminal forfeiture, requires a criminal trial and a
conviction. Without civil forfeiture, we could not confiscate the assets of drug cartels whose leaders
remain beyond the reach of United States extradition laws and who cannot be brought to trial.
Moreover, criminal
forfeiture reaches only a defendant's own property. Without civil forfeiture, an
airplane used to smuggle drugs could not be seized, even if the pilot was arrested, because the pilot invariably is not the
owner of the plane.
Nor could law enforcement agencies confiscate cash carried by a drug courier who doesn't own it,
or a building turned into a "crack house" by tenants with the knowing approval of the landlord.
By a vote of 8 to 1, the Supreme Court has rightly reaffirmed its historic approval of civil forfeiture as a
way to take the profit out of crime and to take the instrumentalities of crime out of circulation. What
we must focus on is not whether civil forfeiture is a proper tool of law enforcement but on making sure that the forfeiture procedures
operate fairly.
The Justice Department has proposed legislation that would enhance the due process rights of property owners by creating a
uniform "innocent owner" defense and placing the burden of proof on the Government in civil forfeiture cases.
In this way, we can improve the forfeiture laws while keeping them intact to seize the profits of drug
traffickers, money launderers and swindlers.
Forfeiture is key to fight drug trafficking – specifically the Mexican cartels
Jany 14 – Minneapolis reporter (8/26/2014, Libor, Star Tribune, “Drug war asset forfeitures draw scrutiny”,
http://www.startribune.com/drug-war-asset-forfeitures-draw-scrutiny/272760391/ // SM)
In a separate operation earli-er this month, the
task force arrested four people with suspected ties to Mexican
drug cartels and seized $10,000 in cash and 7 pounds of crystal methamphetamine with a street
value of about $75,000, said Sgt. Jim Gabriel, of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office. The cases are
wending their way through federal court. If the four are convicted, their assets will be sold and the proceeds
turned over to authorities, said Gabriel, the task force’s recently appointed commander. “Forfeiture funding is a
big part of our operation here,” Gabriel said. The task force con-sists of 15 full-time agents and one part-tim-er,
coming from every department in Dakota County. Scott County’s lone representative in the unit is from the Savage Police
Department. Most of the proceeds from the forfeitures from those op-er-ations wind up in the task
force’s bank account. The coun­ty attorney’s office also gets a cut, about 20 percent, while the state receives 10 percent.
Asset forfeiture is an indispensable tool
in the war on drugs , authorities say. Not only does it discourage criminal activity, it also makes it
harder for criminals to continue their illegal activities by stripping them of the equipment they
use and the proceeds of their crimes. “The forfeitures are a byproduct of a drug trade. And the
whole thought proc­ess is ... how can we positively impact the drug trade?” said Dakota County
Sheriff Dave Bellows. “How can we stop it? How can we make it painful for the drug deal­er? And
forfeitures are part of that.” Bellows said many law enforcement agencies rely on forfeiture
money — from the sale of confiscated cars, jewelry and houses — to supplement their dwindling budgets.
Taxpayers benefit, too, he said. While most police departments in Dakota and Scott counties have received
mon­ey from forfeiture, the drug task force has received the lion’s share. In 2013, seizure mon­ey
accounted for about 33 percent of the task force’s budg­et. Most went toward “gang officer reimbursement,”
“contracted services” and “other expenses,” records show. This year, that ratio rose to 47 percent.
And police watchdogs are calling for great-er transparency in the proc-ess.
Forfeiture Solves Crime (General)
Asset forfeiture is critical to solve crime and there’s oversight to protect suspects
Thompson 14 – Interim executive director of the National Sheriffs' Association (John W., “Asset forfeiture deters criminals:
Opposing view,” USA Today, November 19th, 2014, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/19/asset-forfeiture-nationalsheriffs-association-editorials-debates/19299825/)BC
a powerful
deterrent and lesson .
Asset forfeiture is a truly effective lever for tackling sophisticated, well-funded drug traffickers,
organized crime and ordinary street thugs. It makes communities safer by enhancing critical law enforcement efforts
Asset forfeiture is a strong tool that strikes at the economic foundation of criminal activity, acting as both
and supporting regional law enforcement task forces. Using a criminal's illegal profits allows law enforcement to target crimes that
might otherwise strain taxpayers.
OUR VIEW: When police play bounty hunter
Drug crimes are often a focus, but other crimes are also addressed, removing a criminal's financial incentives and making his
activity a lose/lose. It turns assets into a weapon against crime, making it a win /win for crime prevention and taxpayers.
Most important, many criticisms of asset forfeiture were addressed and corrected in the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000.
And the Justice Department is acting on issues raised in a 2012 Government Accountability Office report on equitable sharing to
improve federal policy and practice.
Constant oversight and review of asset forfeiture programs helps ensure that property owners are protected and receive
due process.
Sheriffs and police chiefs across the country have developed asset forfeiture programs that promote fairness, protect
property owners' rights, meet legal requirements and successfully target criminal activities.
Sheriffs and chiefs often stress seizing drugs over assets, as removing illegal drugs from American
streets is the critical priority.
Enforcing laws in a democratic society can create opportunities for misuse and abuse. Unfortunate cases of misguided execution
should be swiftly addressed. Thus, the National Sheriffs' Association and the Major County Sheriffs' Association support
examination of best practices, judicial review, local legislative oversight and scrutiny from the press and voters.
But addressing misapplication or abuse by the few should not ignore the vast body of lawful, fair and
appropriate use, or overlook the many benefits of asset forfeiture as a law enforcement tool.
Money Laundering Key
Money laundering is the key support for international drug trafficking
ONDCP 2015 (Office of National Drug Control Policy, “International Money Laundering and Asset
Forfeiture,” Date is date accessed, July 17, https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/international-moneylaundering-and-asset-forfeiture)
The United States engages in international and domestic efforts to disrupt the flow of illicit capital, track criminal sources of funds,
forfeit ill-gained assets, and prosecute offenders. Money laundering plays an integral role in the illicit narcotics industry, in that it
enables the organizations that supply drugs to finance their ongoing operations and conceal their enormous profits from the reach of
law enforcement.
Terrorism Impact
Asset forfeiture fosters cooperation between federal, state, and local law
enforcement
Hartman 1 – J.D., C.P.A, Former Forfeiture coordinator for the FBI in Houston (Victor E., “Implementing an Asset Forfeiture
Program,” Pop Center, 2001, http://www.popcenter.org/Responses/asset_forfeiture/PDFs/Hartman2001.pdf)BC
Asset forfeiture laws at the federal level, and in most states, allow law enforcement to use proceeds of certain seizures for
equipment and other needs, especially when the seized property is drug related and there are no victims to compensate. Since the
inception of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) asset forfeiture fund in the mid-1980s, almost $2.5 billion have been
shared
with state and local agencies. Further, asset forfeiture fosters cooperation among federal, state, and local law enforcement
agencies through the use of adoption and equitable sharing. When the federal agency agrees to process the seizure under federal
forfeiture provisions and remits the proceeds back to the originating agency, this process constitutes equitable sharing. In on
statutory requirement for sharing, the U.S. Attorney General must assure that the sharing will encourage further cooperation
between the department seizing the assets and the sponsoring federal law enforcement agency
Law enforcement cooperation is crucial to prevent terror attacks
DHS 15 – The Department of Homeland Security (“Law Enforcement Partnerships,” Last Published February 26 th, 2015,
http://www.dhs.gov/topic/law-enforcement-partnerships)BC
Our law enforcement partners at the federal, state, local, tribal and territorial levels are the
backbone of our nation’s domestic defense against terrorist attacks . They are this country’s eyes
and ears on the ground, and the first line of detection and prevention. They are a vital partner in
ensuring public safety, in every American community.
To support these partners and carry out our missions, almost 90 percent of DHS employees are stationed outside Washington,
D.C., in communities across the country.
Building Partnership
Homeland security begins with hometown security. As part of its commitment to hometown
security, DHS has worked to get tools, information, and resources out of Washington, D.C. and into the
hands of our federal, state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement partners.
It is vital that DHS law enforcement partners have a clear understanding of the tactics, behaviors,
and other indicators that could point to terrorist activity. The Department works to:
Improve how it communicates and shares information
Enhance the kind of federal resources and support it provides through grants, training, and other means
Strengthen its analytic capabilities to achieve better awareness of new and emerging threats
Partnership Successes
DHS has made progress in improving its domestic capabilities to detect and prevent terrorist
attacks against America’s people, communities, and critical infrastructure.
We have brought resources and expertise to our law enforcement partners and built new mechanisms to share information. This
includes investments in training for local law enforcement and first responders of all types in order to increase expertise and
capacity at the local level.
Information sharing between law enforcement solves terrorism
ISE no date – Information Sharing Environment (“Law Enforcement Information Sharing,” http://www.ise.gov/law-enforcementinformation-sharing)BC
Law Enforcement Information Sharing
Law enforcement information sharing has expanded significantly across all levels of government, improving law
enforcement's ability to detect, prevent, and respond to acts of terrorism . The sharing of law
enforcement information is not a single integrated process. Rather, it cuts across business processes in
multiple communities and at all levels of government. But these seemingly unrelated efforts share many
features in common. A fundamental component of effective enterprise-wide information sharing, for example, is the use of
information systems that regularly capture relevant data and make it broadly available to authorized users in a timely and
secure manner. Although the focus of the ISE is terrorism-related information, many of the techniques used to improve
sharing of terrorism information are also applicable to other types of crimes and vice vers a.
Criminal history records, law enforcement incident reports, records of judicial actions and decisions,
and watch lists of known and suspected terrorists are all essential sources of vital data that provide
accurate, timely, and complete information to law enforcement officers across the country.
A2: Forfeiture Unjust
CAFRA solves abuses of forfeiture
DUNN 2014 (Kyla, “Reining in forfeiture: common sense reform in the war on drugs,”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/forfeiture.html)
This bleak picture began to change in April of this year, however, when the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act was finally signed into
federal law. The success caps a nearly decade-long crusade, and is the result of cooperation between some truly unlikely allies
who, only by working together, could overpower Congress' fear of looking "soft on crime". Henry Hyde, a conservative Republican
from Illinois and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was joined by the House Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat,
John Conyers of Michigan, to spearhead the effort--which united politicians as diverse as outspoken conservative Bob Barr of
Georgia with Democratic liberal Barney Frank of Massachusetts. An equally impressive coalition formed in the Senate around the
issue.
Joining in support were organizations as wide-ranging as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Rifle Association, the
American Bankers Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the United States Chamber of Commerce,
the Americans for Tax Reform, and organizations representing groups like pilots, boaters and hotel owners.
The new law requires the government to have much stronger evidence of wrongdoing before it can seize a person's property-raising the burden of proof from "probable cause" to "a preponderance of the evidence" that the property is linked to a crime. What's
more, it shifts the burden of proof to the federal government, meaning that the government must now prove in court that the property
was involved in crime...instead of the property owner needing to prove the opposite.
Equally important for people like Rudy Ramirez, the new law removes many of the onerous financial hurdles involved in contesting a
forfeiture. It refunds lawyers' fees to property owners who successfully challenge a seizure in court, and in some cases provides
government-paid lawyers to the indigent. Furthermore, it eliminates the requirement that property owners post a sometimes hefty
bond before they can fight to get their property back.
A2: Militarization
Alt cause – federal grants
Jany 14 – Minneapolis reporter (8/26/2014, Libor, Star Tribune, “Drug war asset forfeitures draw scrutiny”,
http://www.startribune.com/drug-war-asset-forfeitures-draw-scrutiny/272760391/ // SM)
most of the military gear is being acquired with federal grant money, rather than
proceeds of forfeitures . Without the military-transfer program, many departments couldn’t
otherwise afford the crime-fighting equipment required of policing in the 21st century, they say. “I
wish the public wouldn’t be scared or intimidated by this equipment but under­stand that they’re
necessary tools we need to do our jobs safely and to help protect both the police and the
community,” Gabriel said.
Authorities argue that
A2: WOD Immoral
All of their turns assume previous enforcement mechanisms—Obama strategy
shift solves
Bridy 14- Alan G. Shepard Professor of Law, University of Idaho College of Law (Annemarie, “CARPE OMNIA: Civil Forfeiture
in the War on Drugs and the War on Piracy”, Arizona State Law Journal, http://arizonastatelawjournal.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/01/Bridy_Final.pdf)//WK
The 2008 presidential election precipitated a significant policy shift in the war on drugs. In 2009,
Obama drug czar Gil Kerlikowske told a journalist that the “war on drugs” was an unproductive metaphor because
it translates inevitably in the public imagination into a “war on people.”164 In May of 2010, Kerlikowske formally announced
an end to the executive branch’s forty-year focus on enforcement, committing the administration
to a new drug control strategy oriented toward prevention and treatment. 165 Instead of viewing
drug addiction primarily as a criminal justice issue, Kerlikowske said, the ONDCP would approach it
going forward as a public health and public safety issue.166 The new strategy telegraphed a
conclusion about drug control policy that had become obvious over the decades following Nixon’s declaration of war
on drugs: interdiction and expansive criminalization have proven ineffective.167 Displaced from the realm of drug
control policy, the criminal justice approach to eliminating black markets has found a new home
in the war on IP crime. In the waning days of the Bush presidency, Congress enacted the Prioritizing Resources and
Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act of 2008, which provided for “enhancements” to civil and criminal intellectual
property laws, including civil and criminal forfeiture of property tainted by IP crime.168 The PRO-IP Act was
intended to leverage and focus the resources of the federal criminal justice system to decrease the supply of infringing goods and to
impose harsh sanctions on those who produce and distribute them.169 By expanding the penalties for civil and
criminal infringement and creating a federal bureaucracy for coordinating criminal IP
enforcement, Congress delivered a major public subsidy to corporate IP owners and greatly
increased their access to the government’s coercive power.170 The PRO-IP Act required appointment of the IP
czar, known officially as the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), to oversee the coordination of law enforcement
efforts across a wide range of federal agencies.171 To fulfill her mandate, the first IPEC, Victoria Espinel, created the National
Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center).172 The IPR Center is a multi-agency task force that runs criminal
investigations and enforcement operations from within the Department of Homeland Security.173 The IPR Center self-identifies as
an entity focused on interdiction, with a supply-side focus borrowed from a bygone era in the war on drugs.174 Operation In Our
Sites (IOS), which began in June of 2010, was among its first high-profile enforcement initiatives.
A2: AF Fails
Their evidence cherrypicks flawed examples—data shows asset forfeiture has a
net positive effect on deterring crime
Miceli and Johnson 15- *Department of Economics, University of Connecticut, **Lecturer in Residence, Department of
Economics (Thomas and Derek, “ASSET FORFEITURE AS A LAW ENFORCEMENT TOOL”, Contemporary Economic Policy,
Wiley Online Library)//WK
Government seizure of capital assets used in the commission of an illegal act has a long his-tory in Anglo-American
law, but it has received renewed attention due to its revived use, especially in the war on drugs . This
paper has examined the impact of asset seizure on deterrence by incorporating it into the
standard economic model of crime. In the model, certain crimes require criminals to use a capital asset as an input,
which they rent from unsuspecting capital owners. If and when the crime is detected, the asset may be seized,
in whole or part, from the owner in conjunction with the overall enforcement policy. The question
is whether this threat, even though directed at someone other than the offender, can enhance deterrence.15. In
contrast, the forfeiture rate is maximal in this case because an increase in q yields a dollar-for-dollar increase in
revenue, but only reduces crime in proportion to θ < 1. Thus, expected revenue is increasing in q, all else equal. The answer
turns out to be a qualified “yes,” though the optimal extent of the seizure depends on the type of
sanction with which it is paired and the motivation of the enforcer. In particular, we showed that when seizure is
paired with a fine, the socially optimal fine should be maximal but the optimal seizure rate should
generally be partial. This is true because, while raising a fine is costless, increasing the extent of seizure imposes a
deadweight loss on the capital market. Thus, it should only be used up to the point where the marginal
deterrence benefit equals the marginal welfare loss. In contrast, when seizure is paired with prison, it may be
socially optimal to seize the complete value of the asset. This is true because raising either the prison term or the seizure rate is
costly, so whichever is less costly to increase should be maximal.
Our data set includes impacts on third-parties
Miceli and Johnson 15- *Department of Economics, University of Connecticut, **Lecturer in Residence, Department of
Economics (Thomas and Derek, “ASSET FORFEITURE AS A LAW ENFORCEMENT TOOL”, Contemporary Economic Policy,
Wiley Online Library)//WK
The analysis is related to economic models of law enforcement in which, in addition to facing criminal
punishment, offenders must surrender (or disgorge) their ill-gotten gains upon capture(Bowles, Faure, and Garoupa 2000; Tabbach
2009 )
Our model differs from this literature in that it focuses on the deterrent effects of forfeiture
of assets used in the commission of a crime when those assets are owned by someone other than
the offender. For example, if a drug dealer operates out of his apartment or his parent’s home, the
government may seize the building in addition to punishing the offender . Our analysis also relates to
the paper by Baumann and Friehe (2014), which shows that deterrence of crime can be enhanced by
regulation of an inherently harmless activity if that activity is complementary to crime . The
difference is that we focus on an essential input into the “production” of crime that can also be
used for legal purposes. The threat of seizure therefore potentially distorts the market for that
input in a socially undesirable way, which, as we will show, limits the usefulness of the strategy. Finally, our
analysis is related to the papers by Mungan (2011) and Kaplow (2011) which show that erroneously imposed
criminal sanctions can have the effect of chilling otherwise beneficial activities. Optimal
procedural rules in judicial proceedings should therefore reflect that cost, which the authors
argue helps to explain the high standard of proof for criminal convictions.
A2: DEA not Key
ICE collection of plate information was cancelled – the link isn’t inevitbale
Nakashima and Hicks 14 – national security reporter for The Washington Post focusing on issues relating to intelligence,
technology and civil liberties AND covers Maryland politics and government for The Washington Post (Ellen* AND Josh**,
“Department of Homeland Security cancels national license-plate tracking plan,” The Washington Post, February 19th, 2014,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dhs-cancels-national-license-plate-tracking-plan/2014/02/19/a4c3ef2e99b4-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html)BC
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of a plan by the Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agency to develop a national license-plate tracking system after privacy
advocates raised concern about the initiative.
The order came just days after ICE solicited proposals from companies to compile a database of
license-plate information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers. Officials said the database was
intended to help apprehend fugitive illegal immigrants, but the plan raised concerns that the
movements of ordinary citizens under no criminal suspicion could be scrutinized.
The data would have been drawn from readers that scan the tags of every vehicle crossing their paths, and would have been
accessed only for “ongoing criminal investigations or to locate wanted individuals,” officials told The Washington Post this week.
“The solicitation, which was posted without the awareness of ICE leadership, has been cancelled,” ICE spokeswoman
Gillian Christensen said in a statement. “While we continue to support a range of technologies to help meet our law enforcement
mission, this solicitation will be reviewed to ensure the path forward appropriately meets our operational needs.”
States CP
1NC Shell
Counterplan text: The fifty U.S. states and relevant territories should uniformly
curtail automatic license place recognition technology and refuse to cooperate
with the Drug Enforcement Administration regarding the use of said technology.
State action is necessary in order to curb federal violations of privacy – uniform
ban is key.
Crockford 12 [Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project, “What We Know About
License Plate Tracking, What We Don't, And Our Plan to Find Out More,” July 30, 2012, https://www.aclu.org/blog/what-we-knowabout-license-plate-tracking-what-we-dont-and-our-plan-find-out-more]//JIH
The Drug Enforcement Administration is planning to install a network of plate readers on major
highway systems nationwide. The Department of Homeland Security clocks every car that enters the country. Local
and state police departments operate many thousands of ALPR systems nationwide —how many and
to what extent, we aren’t sure. Together these programs form a network of data points that can tell the
government a lot about our lives.
• Only two states in the nation have statutes on the books to regulate ALPR use, New Hampshire
and Maine. The former’s legislature all but banned ALPR; as in Maine, no private deployment is
allowed, but in NH the government can use it only to monitor critical infrastructure like bridges.
Maine’s statute requires that police delete data after 21 days, allowing investigators access to information that
could help solve murders or robberies after the fact while aiming to prevent the kind of society-wide tracking we
privacy advocates warn against.
• New Jersey has implemented statewide guidelines, but they do not go nearly far enough to protect
the privacy of motorists in the state, allowing police departments to retain data for up to five years—well beyond what’s reasonable
and required in order to make good use of the tool.
• Various state and regional surveillance centers are pooling the collected ALPR data from
various cities or counties into mega-databases, allowing local, state and federal law enforcement
to track ordinary motorists’ movements without any kind of judicial oversight —all with the click of a
button.
• The
federal government is giving out big money to state and local police to buy the technology,
but local communities are rarely consulted about what commonsense privacy protections should
be implemented, if they are notified about introduction of the new surveillance tool at all.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that in ten years there will be ALPRs just about everywhere, making detailed records of every driver’s
every movement, and storing it for who knows how long. In some cases, we know that the worst-case scenario—vast databases
with records of movements of massive numbers of people—is already happening.
To avoid this fate we need to convince the nation and our lawmakers to take action on this serious threat to our liberty. And to make
a convincing case, we need to know a lot more about the problem as it stands.
Last year, most people didn’t know why we should call our mobiles “trackers” instead of phones; there was very little public
information on how police departments were using our phones to track our location. The ACLU stepped in and spearheaded a
massive public records project, bringing together affiliates from every part of the country, obtaining documents that showed how
police nationwide were getting access to our intimate information without judicial oversight. This led to a press storm, spurring
Congressman Ed Markey’s inquiry to cell providers and leading to a truly astonishing New York Times headline earlier this month.
We haven’t yet witnessed the passage of the GPS Act, but we are closer because of that work, and awareness of the issue is now
widespread.
Now we are tackling location tracking via ALPR. Today, ACLU affiliates in 38 states are filing public
records requests to their state and local law enforcement agencies to find out how widespread
ALPR deployment is and whether there are commonsense privacy protections in place . We are also
filing federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and
Department of Transportation to learn about how these agencies are funding ALPR expansion nationwide, how they are using the
technologies themselves, and how they are accessing state, regional and local databases.
Stay tuned for more information on how license plate trackers are being deployed in your state, and for concrete actions you
can take at the state and local level to ensure that police don’t go too far with ALPR.
1NC Papworth NB
The affirmatives acceptance of federal centralization prevents social movements
by discouraging individual action—the result is extinction and obliteration of
morality and democracy
Papworth 01 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Peace Through Social Empowerment,
"Primary Causes," http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp14.html)
It is simply this; that our
primary problem is not war, or the environment, or population pressures, nor the
squandering of the planet's finite resources, nor the alienation from life of many millions of people; THE
PRIMARY PROBLEM IS THAT OF SIZE, size developed on such a scale as to disempower people and
which makes their moral judgements irrelevant to the passage of events. If we ignore that and
simply focus our energies on particular abuses then, however commendable our objectives and our
efforts, we are dealing with the effects of the abuses of power and ignoring their causes. It was
Einstein who remarked 'You cannot solve a problem with the mindframe that has created it'. In saying as much he was pointing to
the core of our problem; a 19th century mindframe
which accepts, without question or challenge, giant centralised
states and economic entrepreneurship global in its scope, which together have created a
doomsday scenario for the human race . No body can be healthier than the cells of which it is comprised. If the
cells of small-scale community life are debilitated or non-existent in the body politic then what we are
confronted with is a form of social and political leukaemia, a destroyed immune system which cannot prevent
multitudinous forms of life-threatening malignancy, such as monster global wars, from
flourishing. We are not going to solve the problems of the 21st century with the mind-frame of the
19th. Social empowerment, involving the deliberate creation of an organic, multi-cellular structure and process of our
political and economic institutions, is today the only realistic path to enduring peace and to any genuine social progress.
2NC Solvency
The DEA needs state approval in order to enact ALPV – means state ban is key to
check expansion.
Deseret News 12 [Deseret News editorial, “In our opinion: DEA plan to scan license plates raises concerns,” May 25 2012,
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765578492/Editorial-Bad-DEA-plan.html?pg=all]//JIH
The DEA argues that its license plate scanning capabilities are already in use along the Mexican
border in four states. But monitoring activities around an international border is different than
monitoring the millions of motorists who use an interstate freeway.
For the proposal to fly, the DEA needs the permission of the Utah Legislature . Some legislators
have already expressed concerns over intrusion of privacy.
Should the proposal come to the point of full legislative deliberation, we hope our elected leaders will carefully balance
the value such an apparatus may have in fighting the scourge of drug trafficking, against the
prospect of opening yet another door for agencies to gather more information about citizens who
are simply going about their daily business.
State ban of ALPR has occurred and can in the future regardless of attempts at
federal oversight.
MacDonald 15 [Steve MacDonald, blogger and editor at GraniteGrok.com, “New Hampshire is the only state to ban
automatic license plate readers, for now,” February 6, 2015, http://watchdog.org/198315/new-hampshire-automatic-license-platereaders/]//JIH
In the first session after toll plazas sprouted surveillance equipment, the NH House submitted HB1738
prohibiting the use of video surveillance on highways without court order or by statute.
A year later HB1731 prohibited the use of transponder-readers used for EZ Pass at any location
but plazas quipped for electronic tolling.
SB41 clarified the approved methods by which law enforcement could obtain vehicle registration
data. It also banned outright the use of Automated License plate readers anywhere in the state.
Eight years later, New Hampshire is still the first and only state to ban ALPRs outright, but that has not
squelched interest them. Federal money is available for mass public surveillance projects. The current
administration in DC has actively spied on its allies, citizens, and free press with little or no
consequence. And a majority of Americans go about their day with still and video image
capturing capability in their pockets.
Who could blame local law enforcement, always looking to make more arrests, from wanting to get in on action that included the
fiscal windfalls thanks to asset forfeiture law?
In 2013, after another failed attempt to legalize license plate readers in the state, New Hampshire
congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter proposed federal legislation that would legalize the use of
ALPR’s in all 50 states. Her bill added a provision that any data collected that was not part of an ongoing investigation had
to be dumped after 30 days. Without doing the digging, I’m willing to bet that most states claim to do something similar with data,
making this legislation with but one purpose: to make ALPRs legal in New Hampshire.
When it became clear that federal overreach wasn’t going to do the job of legalizing license plate
readers fast enough, HB675 was resurrected.
Originally tabled in the early part of 2013, insiders have suggested that this bill was always meant to be enabling
legislation. ALPRs had been used somewhere in the state in violation of the law. The entity or
entities stopped use when notified–claiming ignorance of the law–but wanted to resume. House Bill 675 would
give them cover and open the state to legal use.
Maine has enacted limits on ALPR use that restricts federal programs such as
that of the DEA.
ACLU 15 [ACLU of Maine, “Massive DEA Tracking System Raises Major Concerns,” January 27, 2015,
http://www.aclumaine.org/new-massive-dea-tracking-system-raises-major-civil-liberties-concerns]//JIH
Here in Maine we are pretty lucky: we are one of two states with laws limiting ALPR use (the other is New
Hampshire). The ACLU of Maine led efforts to limit the use of ALPRs here, and now the data they
collect may only be used to protect public safety and transportation infrastructure, in commercial
motor vehicle screening and inspection, or for active criminal investigations based on probable
cause. Additionally, almost all the data collected may only be stored for 21 days.
While we can be proud that Maine is a national leader on privacy, news of the DEA’s new program is a scary reminder
that, as a nation, there is still much work to be done. As technology evolves rapidly, so too must our privacy
policies.
States have the capability and desire to establish privacy laws and check federal
expansion – it is only a question of mandate.
Bohm 14 [Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU, “Interactive Map: Privacy in the States on Four Key Issues,” June
30, 2014, https://www.aclu.org/blog/interactive-map-privacy-states-four-key-issues]//JIH
In the last few years, we’ve seen an unprecedented number of privacy battles being waged in state
legislatures. Today we’re launching an interactive web map that shows the privacy laws in place across the
country on four of those issues:
law enforcement access to electronic communications content
location tracking
automatic license plate readers
domestic surveillance drones
If we can address these four key issue areas, we’ll go a long way toward protecting privacy in the
digital age.
Fully 24 states have laws on the books (or binding court decisions) providing at least some
privacy protections in at least one of these categories. That’s up from only two states (Maine and New
Hampshire) in 2012.
Of course, the devil is in the details of these laws, and some are more protective than others. At the largely inadequate
end of the spectrum, there’s Texas’s drones law, which I’ve written about here. That law gets it backwards and
provides insufficient protections against government abuse of drones while prohibiting private use in ways
that likely violate the First Amendment. Just as bad is Tennessee’s location tracking law, which fails to protect
cell phone location information obtained from the phone company (which is the vast majority of cell phone
location information obtained by the government), as well as anyone who has “checked-in” on a social networking site in the 24
hours before his or her location was sought by law enforcement. Legislators in these and some other states rightly
recognized the need to address privacy in the digital age, but their solutions came up short.
States and localities solve—federal data banks rely on data collection from the
state-level
Gutierrez-Alm 15- Winthrop & Weinstine, Associate Attorney (Jessica, “The Privacies of Life: Automatic License Plate
Recognition is Unconstitutional Under the Mosaic Theory of Fourth Amendment Privacy Law”, Hamline Law Review: Vol. 38: Iss. 1,
Article 5, http://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=hlr)//WK
When used as described above, the ALPR technology enhances police capabilities. It records and checks more license plates
against hotlists than a police officer could manually, and permits lawful traffic stops of suspected offenders based on probable
cause. However, one feature of the ALPR system is that it compiles and stores the license plate locations it
encounters, at least until the data is erased. Each license plate number, along with the date, time, and exact global
positioning system (GPS) coordinates where the plate was scanned are recorded in the ALPR’s computer database. As one city
police chief explained, the “real value” of the ALPR “comes from the long-term investigative uses of being able to track vehicles—
where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing.” There is currently no legal standard or guideline regulating
how long this data can be stored; instead, each law enforcement agency uses its discretion. Some
agencies do not keep the data on file for long. The Minnesota State Patrol, for example, retains ALPR data for only 48 hours, while
the Saint Paul Police Department erases its data after 14 days. Others, the Washington State Police and California
Highway Patrol for example, keep the data on file for up to sixty days. The Minneapolis Police Department,
Tennessee Highway Patrol, and Maryland State Police Department retain their ALPR data for a full year. The
New York State Police Department is currently one of few law enforcement agencies without a limit on its
ALPR data retention; they keep the data indefinitely . Retaining the logs of license plate numbers, times, and
locations permits police to use the technology retroactively. Police can sort through data that is months or years
old to locate vehicles on a certain date at a certain location, or, arguably more concerning, to track the
long-term movements of a particular individual. Additionally, the data from multiple jurisdictions
and states is being combined by federal agencies and third-party companies into massive
national databases . One company based in California operates what it calls the National Vehicle Location
Service: a
private database, currently with over 550 million license plate entries collected by the company and
submitted by public entities. The database is available for use by law enforcement investigators at no cost. Such an
expansive bank of ALPR data permits agencies to broadly track an individual’s movements across the country.
New York bill A5233 solves all ALPR use while the aff ensures state and private
circumvention
Boldin 2/19 – the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center (2015, Michael, 10th Amendment Center, “New York Bill Would
Limit ALPRs, Help Block National License Plate Tracking Program”, http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2015/02/new-york-billwould-limit-alprs-help-block-national-license-plate-tracking-program/ // SM)
ALBANY, NY (Feb. 19, 2015) – A bill introduced in the New York General Assembly would put strict
limitations on the use of automated license plate reader systems (ALPRs) by the state, and in doing
so, would
have a major impact on federal efforts to tap in to state and local systems to track
millions of people for the crime of driving. Introduced by Asm. Jeffrey Dinowitz, Assembly Bill 5233 (A5233)
would ban law enforcement in the state from using ALPRs as a general location-tracking tool of
millions of drivers, and would ban the sharing of legitimately-obtained license plate data with outside
sources. It would also prohibit their use by non-law enforcement agencies as well. It reads, in part: It
shall be unlawful for any business, individual, partnership, corporation, association, or state or local government non-law
enforcement entity to use an automatic license plate reader system. The prohibition on data sharing in A5233 would
help block a nationwide, federal license-plate tracking program. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the
federal government, via the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), has been tracking the location of millions of
cars for nearly eight years, all without a warrant, or even public notice of the policy. The secret domestic intelligence-gathering
program “scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists.”
Most of these tracking systems are
operated by state and local law enforcement agencies , but are paid for by federal grant money. The DEA then
taps into the local database and is able to track the whereabouts of millions of people – for the simple act of driving –
without having to operate a huge network itself. In those few situations where ALPRs are operated
by federal agencies, they’re generally done so with express approval of the legislature, and operational
assistance from state or local law enforcement. Since a majority of federal license plate tracking
data comes from state and local law enforcement, passage of HB344 would be a big step towards
blocking that program from continuing in Montana. “ No sharing of ALPR data means no federal license
plate tracking program ,” said Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center. “More importantly,
this limits government power and advances liberty on both the state and national level.” The ALPRs
also known to capture photographs of vehicle occupants. An internal DEA memo obtained by the ACLU “stated clearly that the
license plate program can provide ‘the requester’ with images that ‘may include vehicle license plate numbers (front and/or rear),
photos of visible vehicle occupants [redacted] and a front and rear overall view of the vehicle.’” With the FBI rolling out facial a
nationwide recognition program last fall, and the federal government building biometric databases, the fact that the feds can
potentially access stored photographs of drivers and passengers, along with detailed location data, magnifies the privacy concerns
surrounding ALPRs. The bill would allow ALPRs to be used for some situations, such as identifying vehicles with outstanding
parking violations or a failure to register. But, even that data couldn’t be shared with outside sources, such as the DEA, for its
location-tracking program. Passage would represent a significant step towards ending the tracking of
millions of people whose only crime is driving.
2NC Solvency--AT: Circumvention
States can solve, won’t be circumvented – Montana proves
Tuccille 2/17 – managing editor of Reason.com (2015, J.D., Reason.com, “Ban on Government License Plate Cameras
Nears in Montana”, http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/17/ban-on-government-license-plate-cameras // SM)
Cops in Big Sky Country aren't happy about it, but Montana
lawmakers look ready to ban the use of license
plate cameras by government agencies to track motorists' movements. The legislative move comes after a
stream of revelations of local, state, and federal tracking and databasing of Americans'
movements by car, without cause or warrant. A year ago, the Department of Homeland Security killed a solicitation
for bids to establish and maintain "a National License Plate Recognition (NLPR) database service" after a chorus of public outrage.
The DHS plan may actually have been duplication of effort, since the DEA already has a national license plate scanning system
maintained with the cooperation of local police. If passed, the Montana measure couldn't block such efforts from D.C., but it
would prevent agencies within the state from contributing to those schemes. Approved by the
House Judiciary Committee on February 13, HB 344 states "an agency or employee of the state or
any subdivision of the state may not use, either directly or indirectly, a license plate scanner on
any public highway," with limited exceptions. Those exceptions include weigh stations for commercial trucks, city planning so
long as driver and vehicle anonymity was maintained, parking control, and tracking government vehicles. Interestingly, in a move
clearly aimed at preventing technological end runs by police agencies , the bill defines "license
plate scanners" broadly.
2NC Papworth NB—Turns Case
Central government action discourages individual movements to solve the
problem because they posit problems as “out of our control”
Papworth 02 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, “Cut the Cackle," Fourth World Review,
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/fwr118.pdf)
Over half a century ago an Austrian professor of economics asserted, ‘If anything is wrong it is because it is too
big.’ Perhaps an oversweeping statement, but all experience since simply confirms it. Too big. Just that. So
government is too big, banks, shops, farms, industries and fisheries are too big, and even more imposingly unthinkable,
nations are too big. Why? Because giantism has made them unmanageable in keeping the peace or in
ensuring economic justice and stability; the forces dominating them are out of control and
producing effects we are powerless to prevent or to alleviate. This despite the ballot box and freedom of
speech. Too big is the problem of the modern world and the challenge confronting us all is to
reduce the size and scale of things so as to enable us to control them. Nobody would want a pair of shoes
which was too large, so why do we tolerate far more important matters which suffer the same defect? We need to challenge
that deep-rooted assumption in our minds that making things bigger makes them better when we
are living in a crisis which howls with evidence indicating the contrary; evidence indicating that
the small is generally better, far more stable, responsive, beneficial, controllable, peaceful and
prosperous.
2NC Papworth NB—Demo Impact
Central action is too big and diminishes the value of each individual, rather
interest groups wield enormous clout which prevents democratic politics
Papworth 1 – Senior Editor of the Ecologist and Founder of Fourth World Review (John, Peace Through Social
Empowerment, “Introduction” http://www.cesc.net/radicalweb/scholars/papworth/jp11.html )
As any political (or other) unit grows in size, the significance of the individual proportionately
declines. If you are a member of a 500 strong community, in the governance of its affairs your
membership and your morality matter simply because your membership is both morally and
statistically significant. They will matter even more if you are deeply concerned, since a large number of people in any
community are generally, because of age or disposition, unable or unwilling to care. But if your political unit numbers
500 million your significance is reduced from 1/500th to 1/500 millionth! Yet despite this shrinking
of your significance to proportions so minute as to be infinitesimal, the power of the unit itself has
increased to quite staggering proportions: Where then is that power located? It is of course at the centre. The
price of your diminished power is the tribute you pay to the swollen octopus of power at the
centre . In terms of democracy, never forgetting for a moment that it is a moral attribute, this development means that
democracy is also proportionately diminished. Why? Because since morality is a function of human
relationships the nature of those relationships has been transformed, so that instead of the citizen
being in a moral relationship with others he is now in another type of relationship with the central
controlling mechanism, for in such giant societies the moral and statistical significance of the individual inevitably
plummets; what was a moral relationship with his fellows has become a power relationship with a
political or administrative machine. It is obvious that any considerable increase in the size of a political unit results in the elected
representatives becoming more remote from those who elect them. But this isolation from the electorate does not mean they
thereby enjoy unfettered freedom to legislate as they may wish; it simply means that the power of the electorate to
influence proceedings is replaced by other forms of power, forms which operate in the same
remote , highly centralised manner and which, since they invariably control industrial,
commercial, financial and, not least, media operations, often on a global scale, are able to wield
decisive degrees of clout in regard to the political process. Inevitably there arises here a clash of
interest s. Market forces are concerned with stock market values, with current share prices and short-term
budget projections and expectations, whereas the citizen and the general polity is concerned with the longterm, generational effects of current decision-making; on the effects on the health of the land, on the climate, on
the broad drift of affairs as they may be affected by stripping the world of its forest cover, of over-fishing, of the excessive use of
anti-biotics (the word itself means 'against life'!), of global warming, of genetic engineering and so on, to name but a few of the major
problems now pressing on human destiny and calling for wisdom rather than just expertise, knowledge or information. This is not to
say that morality, (involving of course such questions as war and peace), ceases to matter; it is rather that whereas in a small
community questions relating to the use of its power are subordinate to the moral values and
judgements of the citizenry through the strength of their relationships , in the mass form of
society it is morality which becomes subordinated to the play of power politics .
Localization is a pre-requisite to solving democracy
Papworth 01 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Peace Through Social Empowerment,
"Primary Causes," http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp14.html)
Our prospects of countering the evil forces promoting the global crisis and of making any
significant progress are bleak indeed if we do not grasp that if people have no real power to enable
their moral judgements to be reflected in the general life processes of their own communities , if
they do not themselves control their social structures, their schools, post office, bank, police, hospital, transport
and their welfare services; if they have no local power to determine these matters, if they do not have their own locally elected representatives to sit, with
others similarly elected, on boards which govern matters of wider import, including public utilities such as water, gas, electricity and not least, governing the content of radio and
they have no effective power at all. The very structures disempower them and it is a mere
abuse of language to describe any such process as democratic. Democracy, we should never
cease to hold, does not mean government of the people, nor government for the people, both are
television,
essentially totalitarian concepts, it means government by the people. All else is claptrap and
delusio n.
Localized efforts are key to solve war and democracy
Papworth 02 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, “Cut the Cackle," Fourth World Review,
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/fwr118.pdf)
what we need is thousands of new locally-based
independent political parties up and down the country! And in the world at large millions of them. The
pressing need of the moment is for a political and economic programme they could adopt which
affirms at every level the imperative need for the human scale as a prerequisite for the effective
working of democracy. And the programmes? Each local neighbourhood party will decide its own as a
matter of course, which does not mean they would not promote a common series of principles which
serve their common interests. Such principles would relate at the national level to fundamental
provisions for liberty, freedom and independence, involving of course a complete rejection of any association with the European
To talk of the need for a new party is the old fashioned giantist approach;
Community. But cut the cackle all along the line; currently discussion is non-stop about what government policy should be on a host of matters which have been removed from
millions of new parties will assume as a matter of right the power to establish their own
elected regional bodies to run services where such co-operation with other communities may be
needed such as specialist hospitals, colleges, police, radio and TV, transport, utilities, banking
and investment. This is a programme of liberation, a programme to get government off people’s
backs and into their own hands. Such a political structure would at last enable people’s wishes to
prevail on the issues of war, ecological sanity and economic justice . Across the world people would insist on the most
rigorous controls on armaments production, where it was permitted at all, and of associated scientific research. At last the questions of war and peace
would not be matters of power-brokering and diplomacy in the hands of giant states but moral
questions of right and wrong in the hands of people.
local control. Our
2NC Papworth NB—A2 “Perm”
No net benefit—because the CP solves 100%
Federal action coopts local movements
Papworth 01 (John, Editor @ Ecologist + editor of Fourth World Review, Bringing Up the Local Issues, The Ecologist, June,
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp3.html)
We now have 'national' schemes and ministries for health, education, welfare and other
essentially local matters. The evidence abounds and grows that these bodies are increasingly
wasteful and inefficient, where they are not indeed riddled with the maggot of corruption, and not least of course
they operate on organisational parameters which make a mockery of democratic principle . Somehow
the illusion has been fostered, for example, that people who have devoted their lives to clambering to the top of the greasy pole are
better qualified to ordain how children should be educated than are the parents and their local committees. So our public
prints are loaded with otiose speculation about 'national' examination standards and results, and
about the content of 'national' educational curricula; meanwhile, in rural areas, large numbers of
children are bussed to giant 'comprehensive' schools where they learn about computers and
nothing about how to grow food. Local government, instead of being a power in its own right but working in
tandem, where necessary, with national government, is now the pawn of the latter, which is making
a mess of the whole works. It is time to cry halt to the assault on freedom involved in all this centralisation; time to
restore the power and the spirit of local power, responsibility and commitment of genuine local
government as a precondition of a healthy democratic way of life.
Centralization and individualism are zero-sum
Papworth 01 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Peace Through Social Empowerment,
"Introduction," http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp11.html)
As any political (or other) unit grows in size, the significance of the individual proportionately declines.
If you are a member of a 500 strong community, in the governance of its affairs your membership
and your morality matter simply because your membership is both morally and statistically
significant. They will matter even more if you are deeply concerned, since a large number of people in any community are
generally, because of age or disposition, unable or unwilling to care. But if your political unit numbers 500 million
your significance is reduced from 1/500th to 1/500 millionth! Yet despite this shrinking of your
significance to proportions so minute as to be infinitesimal, the power of the unit itself has increased to quite
staggering proportions: Where then is that power located? It is of course at the centre. The price of your
diminished power is the tribute you pay to the swollen octopus of power at the centre .
Non-Delegation CP
1NC Nondelegation
Text – The United States Supreme Court should issue a narrow ruling that Drug
Enforcement Administration rulemaking, specifically the use of Automatic
License Plate Recognition technology, constitutes a violation of Article I of the
United States Constitution.
The United States Congress should curtail the use of Automatic License Plate
Recognition in the United States.
Congress should request all necessary and relevant assistance from the Drug
Enforcement Administration in the drafting and implementation process. All
actors should default to the mandates of the counterplan.
Competition – The Affirmative plan is done by an agency while the CP is done
through legislation; these two are different modes of policymaking
David Epstein, Department of Political Science and Stanford Graduate School of Business, Columbia and Stanford University
&
Sharyn O'Halloran, Department of Political Science and the School of Internationaland Public Affairs and Hoover Institution,
Columbia and Stanford University, [20 Cardozo L. Rev. 947] 1999
Our institutional analysis begins with the observation that there are two alternative modes for specifying the
details of public policy. Policy can be made through the typical legislative process , in which a
committee considers a bill and reports it to the floor of the chamber, and then a majority of the floor members must agree on a policy
to enact. Alternatively, Congress can pass a law that delegates authority to regulatory agencies,
allowing them to fill in some or all of the details of policy. The key is that, given a fixed amount of
policy details to be specified, these two modes of policymaking are substitutes for each other. To
the degree that one is used more, the other will perforce be used less.
Solvency – The CP solves the case better – Congress is quicker and more
efficient
Taylor, Director, Natural Resource Studies, the CATO Institute, 9/12/96
Congress could achieve the public purposes that it now pursues through delegation in far less
time than agencies take to make laws and in less time than delegation takes Congress in the
long run. Acting by itself, Congress would not have to go through the same laborious processes
that it requires of agencies. Congress currently accompanies delegation with detailed instructions
on substance and procedure that constrain agency discretion. Writing such instructions would be
unnecessary if Congress made the rules. Congress could, however, ask for an agency's help in
drafting law. For instance, it could require the agency to propose statutory language, prepare
supporting analyses, and hold hearings on proposals. The agency's analysis undoubtedly would
make use of the kind of information that now is considered in administrative rulemaking . The New
Deal's leading theoretician of the administrative process, James Landis, advocated exactly this approach. He wanted agencies to
propose laws, but not promulgate them. Landis wrote that agencies would have a better chance of breaking the
stalemates that often prevent them from protecting the public if they could act as "the technical
agent[s] in the initiation of rules of conduct, yet at the same time ... have [the elected lawmakers]
share in the responsibility for their adoption." As Landis recognized, since controversy often
paralyses the administrative process, "it is an act of political wisdom to put back upon the
shoulders of the Congress" responsibility for controversial choices.
Net Benefit –
Delegation does violence to democratic accountability--crushes liberty and the
constitution – link turns the aff
David Schoenbrod, prof of law NY law school and Jerry Taylor, Director of Natural Resource Studies CATO, 2001
http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb107/hb107-8.pdf
delegation does violence ,
not only to the ideal construct of a free society, but also to the day-to-day practice of democracy
itself. Ironically, delegation does not help to secure ‘‘ good government’’ ; it helps to destroy it .
Delegation Breeds Political Irresponsibility. Congress delegates power for much the same reason that Congress ran
The concern over congressional delegation of power is not simply theoretical and abstract, for
budget deficits for decades. With deficit spending, members of Congress can claim credit for the benefits of their expenditures yet
escape blame for the costs. The public must pay ultimately, of course, but through taxes levied at some future time by some other
officials. Likewise, delegation allows legislators to claim credit for the benefits that a regulatory statute
airily promises yet escape the blame for the burdens it will impose, because they do not issue the
laws needed to achieve those high-sounding benefits. The public inevitably must suffer regulatory
costs to realize regulatory benefits, but the laws will come from an agency that legislators can then criticize for imposing
excessive burdens on their constituents. Just as deficit spending allows legislators to appear to deliver money to some people
without taking it from others, delegation allows them to appear to deliver regulatory benefits without imposing regulatory costs. It
provides, in the words of former Environmental Protection Agency deputy administrator John Quarles, ‘‘ a handy set of mirrors— so
useful in Washington— by which politicians can appear to kiss both sides of the apple.’’
Delegation Is a Political Steroid
for Organized Special Interests. As Stanford law professor John Hart Ely has noted, ‘‘ One reason we have
broadly based representative assemblies is to await something approaching a consensus before
government intervenes.’’ The Constitution was intentionally designed to curb the ‘‘ facility and
excess of law-making’’ (in the words of James Madison) by requiring that statutes go through a
bicameral legislature and the president. Differences in the size and nature of the constituencies of
representatives, senators, and the president— and the different lengths of their terms in office—
increase the probability that the actions of each will reflect a different balance of interests. That
diversity of viewpoint, plus the greater difficulty of prevailing in three forums rather than one,
makes it far more difficult for special-interest groups or baremajorities to impose their will on the
totality of the American people. Hence, the original design effectively required a supermajority to make law as a means of
discouraging the selfish exercise of power by well-organized but narrow interests. Delegation shifts the power to make
law from a Congress of all interests to subgovernments typically representative of only a small
subset of all interests. The obstacles intentionally placed in the path of lawmaking disappear, and the power of organized
interests is magnified. That is largely because diffuse interests typically find it even more difficult to press their case before an
agency than before a legislature. They often have no direct representation in the administrative process, and effective
representation typically requires special legal counsel, expert witnesses, and the capacity to reward or to punish top officials through
political organization, press coverage, and close working relationships with members of the appropriate congressional
subcommittee. As a result, the general public rarely qualifies as a ‘‘ stakeholder’’ in agency proceedings
and is largely locked out of the decisionmaking process. Madison’s desired check on the ‘‘
facility and excess of law-making’’ is thus smashed . Delegation Breeds the Leviathan State.
Perhaps the ultimate check on the growth of government rests in the fact that there is only so much time in a day. No matter
how many laws Congress would like to pass, there are only so many hours in a session to do so.
Delegation, however, dramatically expands the realm of the possible by effectively ‘‘ deputizing’’
tens of thousands of bureaucrats, often with broad and imprecise missions to ‘‘ go forth and
legislate.’’ Thus, as columnist Jacob Weisberg has noted in the New Republic: ‘‘ As a laborsaving device, delegation did for
legislators what the washing machine did for the 1950s housewife. Government could now penetrate every nook
and cranny of American life in a way that was simply impossible before .’’
Democracy is critical to survival and must be upheld
Peter Montague, co-director Environmental Research Foundation and publisher of Rachael’s Environment and Health News, 14
October 1998 http://www.greenleft.org.au/1998/337/20135
The environmental movement is treading water and slowly drowning. There is abundant evidence that our efforts -- and they have
been formidable, even heroic -- have largely failed. After 30 years of exceedingly hard work and tremendous sacrifice, we have
failed to stem the tide of environmental deterioration. Make no mistake: our efforts have had a beneficial effect. Things would be
much worse today if our work of the past 30 years had never occurred. However, the question is, Have our efforts been adequate?
Have we succeeded? Have we even come close to stemming the tide of destruction? Has our vision been commensurate with the
scale and scope of the problems we set out to solve? To those questions, if we are honest with ourselves, we must answer No.
What, then, are we to do? This article is intended to provoke thought and debate, and certainly is not offered as the last word on
anything. Openness. Open,
democratic decision-making will be an essential component of any
successful strategy. After the Berlin wall fell, we got a glimpse of what had happened to the
environment and the people under the Soviet dictatorship . The Soviets had some of the world's strictest
environmental laws on the books, but without the ability for citizens to participate in decisions, or blow the
whistle on egregious violations, those laws meant nothing. For the same reason that science cannot find reliable answers
without open peer review, bureaucracies (whether public or private) cannot achieve beneficial results without
active citizen participation in decisions and strong protection for whistle-blowers. Errors remain
uncorrected, narrow perspectives and selfish motives are rewarded, and the general welfare will
not usually be promoted. The fundamental importance of democratic decision-making means that
our strategies must not focus on legislative battles. Clearly, we must contend for the full power of
government to be harnessed toward achieving our goals, but this is quite different from focusing our efforts on
lobbying campaigns to convince legislators to do the right thing from time to time.
Lobbying can mobilise people for the short term, but mobilising is
not the same as organising. During the past 30 years, the environmental movement has had some notable successes mobilising people, but few successes building long-term
organisations that people can live their lives around and within (the way many families in the '30s, '40s and '50s lived their lives around and within their unions' struggles). The
focus of our strategies must be on building organisations that involve people and, in that process, finding new allies. The power to govern would naturally flow from those efforts.
This question of democracy is not trivial. It is deep. And it deeply divides the environmental movement, or rather movements. Many members of the mainstream environmental
movement tend to view ordinary people as the enemy (for example, they love to say, “We have met the enemy and he is us”.). They fundamentally don't trust people to make
good decisions, so they prefer to leave ordinary people out of the equation. Instead, they scheme with lawyers and experts behind closed doors, then announce their “solution”.
Then they lobby Congress in hopes that Congress will impose this latest “solution” on us all. Naturally, such people don't develop a big following, and their “solutions” -- even
Experts. In the modern era, open
democratic decision-making is essential to survival . Only by informing people, and trusting their
decisions, can we survive as a human society. Our technologies are now too complex and too
powerful to be left solely in the hands of a few experts. If they are allowed to make decisions
behind closed doors, small groups of experts can make fatal errors . One thinks of the old Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC) justifying above-ground nuclear weapons testing. In the early 1950s, their
atomic fallout was showering the population with strontium-90, a highly radioactive element that
masquerades as calcium when it is taken into the body. Once in the body, strontium-90 moves into the bones, where it irradiates the
when Congress has been willing to impose them -- have often proven to be expensive, burdensome and ultimately unsuccessful.
bone marrow, causing cancer. The AEC's best and brightest studied this problem in detail and argued in secret memos that the only way strontium-90 could get into humans
would be through cattle grazing on contaminated grass. They calculated the strontium-90 intake of the cows, and the amount that would end up in the cows' bones. On that
basis, the AEC reported to Congress in 1953, “The only potential hazard to human beings would be the ingestion of bone splinters which might be intermingled with muscle
tissue in butchering and cutting of the meat. An insignificant amount would enter the body in this fashion.” Thus, they concluded, strontium-90 was not endangering people. The
following year, Congress declassified many of the AEC's deliberations. As soon as these memos became public, scientists and citizens began asking, “What about the cows'
milk?” The AEC scientists had no response. They had neglected to ask whether strontium-90, mimicking calcium, would contaminate cows' milk, which of course it did.
Secrecy in government and corporate decision-making continues to threaten the well-being of
everyone on the planet as new technologies are deployed at an accelerating pace after
inadequate consideration of their effects. Open, democratic decision-making is no longer a luxury.
In the modern world, it is a necessity for human survival .
2NC Nondelegation
<<see the Delegation CP file for 2NC extensions>>
The DEA is uniquely undemocratic – congress must ban it
Drug Policy Alliance 06/03/2015“Congress Passes Three Amendments to Stop DEA from Undermining State
Marijuana Laws” http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2015/06/congress-passes-three-amendments-stop-dea-undermining-statemarijuana-laws
The DEA
has existed for more than 40 years, but little attention has been given to the role the agency has
played in fueling mass incarceration, racial disparities and other problems exacerbated by the
drug war. Congress has rarely scrutinized the agency, its actions or its budget, instead deferring
to DEA administrators on how best to deal with drug-related issues. That all has changed recently after a
The amendments are part of a growing bipartisan effort to hold the DEA more accountable and reform U.S. drug policy.
series of scandals that sparked several hearings in the House and Senate and forced the resignation of the DEA’s beleaguered
head, Administrator Michele Leonhart.¶ The Drug Policy Alliance recently released a new report, The Scandal-Ridden DEA:
Everything You Need to Know, and placed a mock “we’re hiring” ad in Roll Call criticizing the DEA and their leadership. The report
and a comprehensive set of background resources about the campaign to rein in the DEA are available at:
www.drugpolicy.org/DEA.¶ “The DEA is a large, expensive, scandal-prone bureaucracy that has failed to
reduce drug-related problems,” said Piper. “There's a bipartisan consensus that drug use should be treated as a health
issue instead of a criminal justice issue; with
states legalizing marijuana and adopting other drug policy reforms it is
time to ask if the agency is even needed anymore.”
Oversight CP
Solvency
Oversight solves best—solves privacy violations while ensuring effective and
accountable law enforcement
Hartle et al. 14- Department of Education and Social Science at Robert Morris University (Frank, “The Digital Case File:
The Future Of Fighting Crime With Big Data”, Issues in Information Systems Volume 15, Issue I, pp. 257-266, 2014,
ResearchGate)//WK
Villasenor, 2011 opined that in the near future, it will be possible and cost effective for the government to
record everything anyone says or does. A scary thought considering the potential for misuse and
abuse. However, in the right hands and under strict oversight, systems that were outlined above
could be utilized to keep society safer from criminals and terrorist , provide a first person account
of any situation including police use-of-force and to streamline the criminal justice system [10]. An
intriguing scenario can be imagined when big data and the appropriate systems are in place. One
could conceive a robbery taking place in an urban area. Predictive analysis has necessitated that
more officers have been assigned to the area. As officer move towards the location a description
is broadcast. At the same time the autonomous criminal justice systems begin their work. The systems automatically
cull all license plate information from the Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR) in the area
within the last hour and search it against known robbery suspects , it also looks for similar plates
that have been through the area in the last week and correlates the information to see if any
matching suspects may have been casing the business. At the same time the automated system request and
gather video from local private and public CCTV systems including the business that was robbed. Using this video, the system
begins to run facial recognition programs for people in the area of the robbery at the time. A suspect is identified through
facial recognition and correlated with the ALPR. Rooftop drones are launched and track the suspect as he runs
from the scene. Police arrive on the scene but have been notified enroute, by the automated system, that the suspect is known to
resist arrest. After a brief scuffle the suspect is arrested and a weapon is recovered. At court the scene is
very different than we are used to. Verbal reconstruction of the defense and prosecution is replaced by a time line video
presentation of the crime with all the digital evidence resented beside the video. Witnesses are located using video and
social media filters to identify first hand witnesses. Their posts are presented as evidence as they
happen alongside the video. Police officer, witness and victim statements are played from the
scene where they recorded. Physical evidence is presented but merely accents the real evidence
as the jury watches the suspect commit the crime and follows as he is tracked and views his
apprehension. The suspect claims that excessive force was used the police. The DA and internal
affairs use the vehicle, drone, body worn cameras video and physiological monitors
unsubstantiated the claim . The future of big data infused into the criminal justice system is
exciting and a bit chilling. Appropriate oversight and fourth amendment protections must be part
of any complete and functional system. This article looked at current and emerging technologies and
envisions a future where big data transforms the criminal justice system. The emergence of
wearable technologies, new surveillance vehicles, and automated systems coupled with the
power of large data warehousing creates an interesting view into the future of crime fighting and
prosecution. This content analysis provides a rich collection of the evolution of information management supporting law
enforcement over several decades and numerous information technology (IT) advancements. Through this content analysis, an
opportunity to pursue research in the law enforcement utilizing cutting edge IT capabilities and
data warehousing techniques is revealed. A specific research opportunity purported is a
quantitative study of the impacts of the information process (collection, processing, analysis and
dissemination) supporting law enforcement cases by comparing the utilization of big data strategies,
data warehouse implementation and data mart utilization . Another research opportunity is a qualitative study –
phenomenology – focused on the study of a phenomenological impact of implementing a big data strategy within a specific law
enforcement agency.
Reform CP
Solvency
Privacy reforms solve while maintaining ALPR use – complete elimination links to
the net benefit
Gierlack 14 – Keith Gierlack is a project associate at the RAND Corporation whose research topics have included illicit
financing, nuclear smuggling, China, Lebanon, law enforcement recruiting, and opportunities and obstacles to the use of License
Plate Reader (LPR) technology in law enforcement. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization that develops
solutions to public policy challenges (7/2/2014, RAND Corporation, “License Plate Readers Are an Important Police Tool, but
Hurdles Remain to Reach Full Potential”, http://www.rand.org/news/press/2014/07/02.html // SM)
Systems that automatically read automobile license plates have the potential to save police investigative time and
increase safety, but law enforcement officials must address issues related to staffing, compatibility and
privacy before the technology can reach its full potential , according to a new RAND Corporation report. As part
of efforts to promote innovation in law enforcement, many of the first generation license plate reader systems were purchased with
federal and state grants. As these funding streams can be inconsistent, law enforcement agencies are — or will be — forced to
make tough decisions about how to maintain the systems. Making those decisions will require a clear understanding of the current
and potential value of the systems to criminal justice agencies, according to RAND researchers. “License plate readers are
a relatively new technology that can be used to help investigate almost any type of crime,” said Keith Gierlack, the
study's lead author and a researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “But there are
important issues, particularly about privacy, that must be addressed before this tool can reach its
full potential.” Because the systems retain information about every license plate read, privacy
advocates say law enforcement agencies could use license plate information to track movement
of individuals, even if they are not suspects in a crime. Key privacy issues facing local
departments also include establishing standards about how long to keep information collected by
license plate scanners, who in a department has access to the information and the types of
investigations where the scanner information should be used , Gierlack said. Some jurisdictions
have adopted policies to retain data for set periods , such as six or 12 months. Legislation was introduced in
California to regulate use of the license plate readers and legal decisions in New Hampshire, Maine and Virginia have restricted the
technology. But
no broadly accepted privacy guidelines have emerged to help guide police agencies
that adopt the technology. License plate readers are fixed or mobile cameras that capture an image of a passing vehicle,
compare its license plate against official “hotlists” and alert authorities whether it may be of interest. Surveys have found that as
many as 70 percent of local police agencies may be using the technology.
ALPR reform solves privacy concerns while keeping the technology in place
Manger et al. 3/9 – J. Thomas Manger Chief of Police, Montgomery County Police Department President, Major Cities
Chiefs Police Association, Chief Richard Beary President, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Mike Sena Director,
Northern California Regional Intelligence Center President, National Fusion Center Association, Ronald C. Sloan Director, Colorado
Bureau of Investigation President, Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, Sheriff Donny Youngblood President, Major
County Sheriffs’ Association, Bob Bushman President, National Narcotic Officers’ Associations’ Coalition, Jonathan Thompson
Executive Director, National Sheriffs’ Association, William Johnson Executive Director, National Association of Police Organizations,
Mike Moore President, National District Attorneys Association, Andrews Matthews Chairman, National Troopers Coalition (2015, J.
Thomas Manger, other authors listed in qualifications section of cite, ALPR Letter to Congress from Police Chiefs,
http://www.theiacp.org/Portals/0/documents/pdfs/LawEnforcementLPRLettertoCongressMarch2015.pdf // SM)
strong measures can be taken to
ensure citizens’ privacy while enabling law enforcement investigators to take advantage of the
technology. Strict data access controls, mandatory auditing of all use of ALPR systems, and
regular reporting on the use of the technology and data prevent misuse of the capability while
enabling law enforcement to make productive use of it. Adoption and enforcement of strong policies on the use of ALPR
We call on Congress to foster a reasonable and transparent discussion about ALPR. We believe
and other technologies by individual law enforcement agencies would also help. We strongly urge members of the House and Senate to understand
and recognize the substantial daily benefits of this technology to protect the public and investigate dangerous criminals. We urge opposition to any bill
or amendment that would restrict the use of ALPR without full consideration of the issue.
Freedom of Movement K
1NC Shell
The aff’s claim that the “freedom of movement” is a fundamental human right
relies on ableist metaphors to incite the norm of ‘able-bodiesness’ and exclude
those who do not fit their ableist paradigm
May and Ferri, 5 (Vivian M., Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies. Research and Teaching Interests at
Syracuse University, Beth A. Ph.D. Associate Professor School of Education at Syracuse University, April-August 2005, “FIXATED
ON ABILITY Questioning Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Theories of Resistance, Prose Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1&2, pp. 120-140)
In addition to the use of explicitly ableist metaphors, it is equally important to think about how ableism plays out in more implicit
ways. In this vein, we wonder about many of the metaphors of movement being used in contemporary discourse.
Consider this query posed to incite innovative action toward a more positive future: “What ... if we were to tap
into the lifeforce that confers upon us the right to live and work toward possibility as opposed to remaining paralyzed and
dissatisfied...?” (Cervenak et al. 354). A life of possibility, and even the lifeforce itself, is constructed here in
opposition to “paralysis” and dissatisfaction : in other words, being moved to act and live in fulfilling
ways requires a form of movement that is understood in ableist term s. This example is not unique, however.
References to roving subjects, boundary crossers, and migrating subjects abound: is the movement
invoked to signal freedom conceptualized in ways that account for or include disabilit y? Our suspicion
is that it is not. Are contemporary theorists imagining rolling down the road to freedom—or is there an assumption
of marching as the authoritative sign of collective group action? What notions of motility are at use in the idea of
crossing borders, leaving home, or exile? What of the ideas of unrestrained movement at work in the many references
to untethered subjectivities or “figures of hybridity and excess [such as the cyborg]” (Thomson, Integrating 9)? Just as
whiteness frequently operates as an unstated/unmarked racial norm (in, for example, analogies between homophobia and racism
(Carbado 291)), able-bodiedness continues to operate as the unstated/unnoticed bodily norm both in
analogies to disability and in metaphors for freedom and agency. This dynamic obscures the fact that
able-bodied people are, in fact, embodied and that disabled persons are disenabled by systems of
power. Additionally, it denies the myriad forms of unearned able-bodied privilege accorded to non-disabled
persons. The able-bodied or “ambulist” (Keith) notions of mobility and movement used to define and imagine
liberation, resistance, and transformation require an unstated, but understood, notion of stasis as their
figurative, disabled doppelganger. Here, we turn again to our own writing to further illustrate our point. In our discussion of the
character Nichole in Atom Egoyan’s film adaption of the novel, The Sweet Hereafter, we analyze Nichole’s newfound agency, which
rests on her astute uses of ableism to refuse sexual exploitation by her father. Yet in our article, we problematically celebrate the
scene at the close of the film when she wheels herself away from the deposition table. Ironically, in analyzing the interdependent
nature of ableism and sexism, we privileged autonomy and a narrow notion of motility as signifiers of
freedom and agency (May and Ferri, 145). The motility that is imagined, in our example and in many others, as signaling
freedom, political action or movement, or agency often (directly or indirectly) constructs disability as a
state of being that is dependent, relational, “stuck,” broken, and/or in need of a cure— in contrast, of
course, to the critical or postmodern subject who seems unfettered, on the move, independent, and whole. Such a framework
replicates a troubling figure/ground dichotomy and stymies our ability to rethink diverse modes of
motility, movement, agency, freedom, and subjectivity. Our insights here build on Biddy Martin’s critique of
theories that imagine queer subjectivity and liberation in opposition to the duped and stuck femme character/body. 132 PROSE
STUDIESMartin warns against projecting fixity as a means of imagining liberation (79). She is interested in questioning the binaries
of mobility versus stagnation, fluidity versus entrapment, and we think that these concerns are equally relevant to a feminist
disability politics. In addition, she worries about the lure of an existence without limit, without bodies, and without psyches and asks
if this imagined and seemingly seductive existence is politically, ethically, and socially desirable (70). We, too, would like to ask if
feminist scholars really want to be seduced into a future without bodies or a future that continues to malign the body, or particular
bodies, as a “drag” on agency or freedom. After all, should feminist scholars swallow wholesale “the liberal ideology of
autonomy and independence” (Thomson, Extraordinary 26)? As Iris Marion Young states, “normatively privileging
independence ...and making it a primary virtue of citizenship, implies judging a huge number of
people in liberal societies as less than full citizens.” Moreover, “Holding independence as a norm not only renders
dependent people and their caretakers second-class citizens, but it also tends to make them invisible .... [,] defined
outside public social relations, marginalized to a private realm beyond the interaction of free and full citizens
with one another” (125). Finally, this set of norms characterizes only certain kinds of relations as dependent and prevents us
from starting from holding interdependence as a norm and virtue of citizenship.
Connecting mobility to cultural values of “rights” and “freedom” reinforces
hegemonic notions of ablebodiness
Imrie, 2k (Rob, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2000, “Disability and discourses of mobility
and movement” Environment and Planning”, volume 32, pages 1641-1656)
The inequities of mobility
and movement are connected to sociocultural values and practices which prioritise
mobile bodies or those characterised by societally defined norms of health, fitness, and independence of bodily movements. Such bodies
are, as Ellis (2000, page 5) notes, ``naturalised as a biological given'' and projected as ``the legitimate basis
of order in a humanist world''. Illustrative of this are the plethora of metaphors of mobility and movement which
are infused with conceptions of bodily completeness and independence, of the (normal) body far removed from those with
physical and mental impairments. Such representations counterpoise the mobile body to the immobile, the
capacitated to the incapacitated, the abled to the disabled, and the normal to the abnormal. These
binary divides reinforce what Oliver (1990) refers to as a ``legacy of negativism'', or values which mark out disabled people
as ``problems because they are seen to deviate from the dominant culture's view of what is desirable, normal, socially acceptable, and safe'' (Corker,
assumptions of unrestricted
movement and mobility in contemporary Western societies are hegemonic in prioritising specific bodies and
modes of mobility and movement.(2) In particular, mobility and movement are defined through discourses which serve to alienate
1999, page 20; in addition, see Abberley, 1987; Paterson and Hughes, 1999). In this paper, I argue that
impaired bodies and to prioritise the movement of what one might term `the mobile body'. In exploring such ideas, the paper is divided into three parts.
The first part is a discussion of the hegemonic discourses of the body in relation to mobility and movement. This is followed by an empirical exploration,
through self-testimonies, of disabled people's e.xperiences of movement and mobility. I conclude by exploring some of the practical and political
possibilities for challenging the hegemonic discourses of the body, mobility, and movement. Most of us expect to be able to move around the built
environment with ease of access and entry into buildings. For Blomley (1994, page 413), ``rights
and entitlement attached to
mobility have long had a hallowed place within the liberal pantheon and, as such, mobility is part
of the democratic revolution''. For instance, in the United States and Canada, mobility rights are formally enshrined in
legislation and mobility is considered as fundamental to the liberty of the human body . As Hobbes (1996, page 57) has
argued, ``liberty or freedom, signifieth, properly, the absence of opposition; by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion''. This,
then, suggests that movement and mobility are intrinsically `good things '; practices which ought to be
propagated as ends in themselves. Others see mobility as a means to an end and a mechanism for opening up opportunities. For
instance, Maat and Louw (1999, page 160) assume that ``mobility gives people the opportunity to develop themselves socially and economically'' and
Marshall (1999, page 4), who says that ``to
be going places is to be getting on'', clearly considers mobility to be
a valued commodity.(3)
Reject their speech act – Ableism must be challenged at the level of rhetoric
Cherney, 11 (James L, Wayne State University, Department of Communications, Assistant Professor 2011, Disability Studies
Quarterly, “The Rhetoric of Ableism”, Vol 31, No 3, http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1665/1606)
In this essay I analyze ableism as a rhetorical problem for three reasons.
First, ableist culture
sustains and perpetuates itself via rhetoric; the ways of interpreting disability and assumptions
about bodies that produce ableism are learned. The previous generation teaches it to the next and cultures spread it
to each other through modes of intercultural exchange. Adopting a rhetorical perspective to the problem of ableism thus exposes the
social systems that keep it alive. This informs my second reason for viewing ableism as rhetoric, as revealing how it
thrives suggests ways of curtailing its growth and promoting its demise. Many of the strategies already adopted by
disability rights activists to confront ableism explicitly or implicitly address it as rhetoric. Public demonstrations, countercultural
performances, autobiography, transformative histories of disability and disabling practices, and critiques of ableist films and novels
all apply rhetorical solutions to the problem. Identifying ableism as rhetoric and exploring its systems
dynamic reveals how these corrective practices work. We can use such information to refine the
successful techniques, reinvent those that fail, and realize new tactics. Third, I contend that any means of
challenging ableism must eventually encounter its rhetorical power. As I explain below, ableism is that
most insidious form of rhetoric that has become reified and so widely accepted as common sense
that it denies its own rhetoricity—it "goes without saying." To fully address it we must name its
presence, for cultural assumptions accepted uncritically adopt the mantle of "simple truth" and
become extremely difficult to rebut. As the neologism "ableism" itself testifies, we need new words to reveal the places
it resides and new language to describe how it feeds. Without doing so, ableist ways of thinking and
interpreting will operate as the context for making sense of any acts challenging discrimination,
which undermines their impact, reduces their symbolic potential, and can even transform them
into superficial measures that give the appearance of change yet elide a recalcitrant ableist
system.
Politics DA
Links
The police lobby hates the plan
Farivar 15 – Senior Business Editor for ArsTechnica (3/15/2015, Cyrus, ArsTechnica, “Cops are freaked out that Congress
may impose license plate reader limits”, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/cops-are-freaked-out-that-congress-mayimpose-license-plate-reader-limits/ // SM)
Despite the fact that no federal license plate legislation has been proposed, the International
Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has sent a pre-emptive letter to top Congressional
lawmakers, warning them against any future restrictions of automated license plate readers. The
IACP claims to be the "world's oldest and largest association of law enforcement executives." As
the letter, which was published last week, states: We are deeply concerned about efforts to portray automated
license plate recognition (ALPR) technology as a national real-time tracking capability for law
enforcement. The fact is that this technology and the data it generates is not used to track people
in real time. ALPR is used every day to generate investigative leads that help law enforcement
solve murders, rapes, and serial property crimes, recover abducted children, detect drug and human trafficking rings, find stolen
vehicles, apprehend violent criminal alien fugitives, and support terrorism investigations. Sarah Guy, a spokeswoman for the
IACP, told Ars that current state and local restrictions have made the police lobby group
concerned at the federal level . "Last year during the appropriations process there was an amendment that would have prohibited fed
funds to purchase LPRs or any camera that collects or stores license plate numbers," she said. "That didn't pass but we think that something like this
could be tried again."
The police lobby has immense political sway over Congress
Rucke 14 – Katie Rucke is a MintPress staff writer and investigative report specializing in the war on drugs, criminal justice,
marijuana legislation, education and watchdog investigations as well as whistle-blowers. (5/29/2014, Katie, MintPress News, “The
Law Enforcement Lobby’s Heavy Hand In American Policy”, http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-law-enforcement-lobbys-heavyhand-in-american-policy/191557/ // SM)
The influence wielded in the U.S. political arena by the National Rifle Association, Monsanto and
Koch brothers-controlled organizations is familiar to many Americans. But the average voter is likely
unaware of a lesser-known lobby with a strong say in U.S. policy: law enforcement. Although police
officers may lead the public to believe they don’t create the laws, they just enforce them, Lt. Commander Diane Goldstein (Ret.), a
member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, says if this were truly the case, law enforcement officers wouldn’t arrive
at meetings with politicians while in uniform . “Capitalism is alive and well in politics,” Goldstein said while
talking to MintPress about the “incredibly powerful lobby” law enforcement has created over the
years. The problem with lobbying, she says, is that it’s all about furthering self-interests. Tim Lynch, director of the Project on
Criminal Justice at the CATO Institute, agreed with Goldstein, noting that the spokesmen and spokeswomen for police departments
often distance themselves from their influence on the law when legal issues or controversies arise, “as if they are disinterested or
indifferent to” what law the legislature is writing. While some of the issues taken up by the lobby are related to public safety,
collective-bargaining packages for officers and other special legal protections as outlined under the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of
Rights, one of the largest political issues law enforcement attempts to influence is related to drug reform — specifically, marijuana
legalization. Exactly how much money police lobbies spend on legislative efforts isn’t the easiest figure to decipher, since there are
more than 18,000 different police departments in the United States. Of the total, some lobby, while others simply focus on keeping
the people in their communities safe. To make things even more complicated, there is a difference in the types of records that are
required for lobbyists that are public unions compared to organizations, and the rules vary by state, as well. But according to
Dan Auble, senior researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics, law enforcement spent
roughly $2.5 million lobbying lawmakers in Washington last year. Auble says this amount seems
relatively “paltry” when compared to what other groups spend on influencing the government, but the actual influence
of law enforcement is likely much higher. He says this is because reported financial figures don’t
include the other ways law enforcement influences policies such as when lawmakers reach out for
an “expert opinion.” Law enforcement lobbies may not be as influential in Washington as the financial and pharmaceutical
companies, but Auble says that especially when it comes to issues of particular concern to law enforcement, including drug policy,
human trafficking, immigration and their own pension and retirement issues, “they are surely a well-respected voice in the halls of
Congress.”
Congress has empirically supported the War on Drugs although past measures
have caused fights
Newman and Smith 11 – Director Media Relations at the Drug Policy Alliance AND Policy Manager at the Drug Policy Alliance
(Tony* AND Grant**, “Congress Set to Escalate War on Drugs, Despite Decades of Failure and Unaffordable Price Tag,” Drug
Policy Alliance, December 7th, 2011, http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2011/12/congress-set-escalate-war-drugs-despite-decadesfailure-and-unaffordable-price-tag)BC
Legislation Would Criminalize New Drugs Like Spice/K2 and "Bath Salts," Impeding Scientific Research and Potential
Medical Breakthroughs
Other Legislation Would Make It a Crime to Plan to Engage in Legal Public Health Interventions in Another Country if the Policy is
Different than U.S. Drug Policy
The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on two bills that would escalate the war on drugs . One
bill scheduled to be voted on today would criminalize possession and sales of chemical compounds found in
products such as "K2," "Spice," and "bath salts." A second bill which is expected to be voted on next week would make it
a federal crime to plan to engage in an activity in another country that would violate U.S. drug
laws if actually committed in the U.S. - even if the activity is actually legal in the other country.
Both bills are expected to pass and would subject more Americans to lengthy federal prison
terms while increasing prison expenses that taxpayers have to pay, at a time when members of
Congress are cutting drug education, treatment and prevention citing the need to reduce federal
expenses.
"Since the war on drugs was declared 40 years ago, the U.S. has spent more than one trillion dollars and
arrested tens of millions of Americans for drug law violations, yet drugs are readily available in every
community and the problems associated with them continue to mount," s aid Bill Piper, director of national affairs
for the Drug Policy Alliance. "When you're in a hole, you shouldn't just keep digging."
Despite the fact that at least 40 states have already passed laws criminalizing Spice and other
synthetic drugs, federal lawmakers have advanced a bill that would place more than three dozen
chemical compounds found in synthetic drugs under Schedule I , which is the most restrictive schedule
reserved for drugs deemed to have no medical value. Chemicals found in synthetic drugs can have scientific
and medical uses beyond the purpose of imitating illegal drugs, but Schedule I drugs are difficult to access for
research purposes. Scientists have warned Congress that placing synthetic drugs under Schedule
I will have a chilling effect on research intended to explore treatments for a range of diseases and disorders.
The bill could subject young people and other Americans to federal prosecution and lengthy
prison terms of up to 20 years or more for distribution of small quantities of a synthetic drug - at enormous cost to
taxpayers. Although this legislation initially encountered little resistance as it moved through the U.S. House of
Representatives, House Judiciary Committee members engaged in an intense debate last month on
the adverse implications this bill will have on scientific research, its excessive cost to taxpayers, and the need for a national
drug policy that is grounded in science rather than politics.
A second bill under consideration in Congress would
authorize federal criminal prosecution of
anyone in the U.S. suspected of conspiring with one or more persons, or aiding or abetting one or more
persons, to commit at any place outside the United States an act that would constitute a violation of
the U.S. Controlled Substances Act if committed within the United States. These penalties apply even if the
controlled substance is legal or semi-legal under some circumstances in the other country. Americans who
could face arrest include treatment providers working with doctors in England, Denmark, Germany, or Switzerland to provide heroinassisted treatment, harm reduction workers volunteering at one of the approximately 65 supervised injection facilities operating in
foreign cities, and anyone assisting legal medical marijuana programs in Canada, Israel, or other countries.
"Facing massive budget deficits, policymakers from both parties should be searching for
alternatives to prison for nonviolent drug law offenders, because locking them up is only making us poorer, not
safer," said Piper. "The U.S. can't incarcerate its way out of its drug problems and should stop trying. The only
way out of the drug war mess is to start treating drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue."
"By rushing to criminalize synthetic drugs, Congress is condemning more Americans to years in
prison and ignoring warnings from the scientific community that this bill will hurt medical
research," said Grant Smith, federal policy coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance. "Outright criminalization compromises both
public health and safety by shifting demand for synthetic drugs into the criminal market. It would be more effective for Congress to
pursue comprehensive drug education and create a regulatory framework to reduce youth access to synthetic drugs. This approach
is working for tobacco, which has contributed to more deaths than alcohol and illicit drugs combined."
**Case**
Alt Cause – Data Storage
Invasive surveillance technologies persist even absent ALPR
Rossetti and Baker ND (Manuel D. Rossetti, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas.
Jeff Baker is a Communications Officer at the US Navy. "Applications and Evaluation of Automated License
Plate Reading Systems."cavern.uark.edu/~rossetti/_Media/its2000paperr2.pdf)
ALPR ALTERNATIVES Transfomation Systems, Inc. (Transfo) works jointly with Computer
Recognition Systems, Inc. (CRS) to provide Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and services
to the North American transportation industry. Together they installed the first license plate reader in 1979. (s)
Examples of recently completed or current systems include: a border crossing traveler
information system, an automated real-time traveler information system, video detectors to
control intersections, travel time studies, license plate based surveys, and a commercial vehicle license plate study.
Transfo and CRS's main systems include the Traffic Analysis System (TAS2), the Image Capture System (ICS), and the
Numberplate Reading System (NRS2). Transfo is the leader in this industry. With CRS, they developed the first license plate
reading system in 1979. CRS conducted the first traffic surveys using machine vision in 1991 to
determine vehicle travel times and origin/destinations. CRS also developed one of the first open highway
electronic toll systems in the world during 1993 in Singapore. (9) Perceptics' license plate readers have been applied to many
functions. They monitor border crossings, do electronic toll collections, commercial vehicle
operations, registration enforcement, revenue collection, access control and security, and
emissions testing. (L)) AlpaTech, founded in 1979, can provide a number of ALPR systems. (fl) They currently have systems
in Illinois, New York City, Phoenix, Denver, Korea, South Carolina, Coleman Bridge, VA, and Maryland. AlphaTech boasts that it can
read a full range of license plate design variations, with vehicle speeds up to 100 miles per hour. Racal's Talon system, as it is
called, currently is applied to five applications. These are security, car parking, enforcement, traffic surveys, and road tolling. (L) The
enforcement application is most relevant to weigh in motion systems . The Talon system provides "rapid and
accurate identification of vehicles, 24 hours a day" for these types of applications. (I2) Racal's
Plate Recognition Unit (PRU) is a highly modular device with a power supply, hard and floppy disk drives,
and five slots for recogniser modules. A recogniser module is a single board with a camera multiplexer, a frame grabber, a PC
interface and a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Unit. The DSPs run the algorithms which identify the license plates. Extra
recognizer modules can be added to work with a greater number of cameras.
The storage of the data is a bigger problem than its collection
Cushing 14 (Tim Cushing is a writer for techdirt. Feb 18, 2014 - "The DHS Sends Out The Call For A National License Plate
Database,"https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140217/07452226248/dhs-sends-out-call-national-license-plate-database.shtml)
A nationwide database, with records accessible by law enforcement and investigative agencies
with few restrictions is obviously a concern. Tracking vehicles as they move around the country
generates a ton of location data that can reveal a great deal about a person. It's always argued
that what you do in public carries no expectation of privacy, but that statement is somewhat
meaningless when you consider the number of plates ALPRs scan and store. Most states with
ALPRs have gathered millions of records, which are held for as long as 5 years, with little in the
way of minimization procedures. ELSAG, another ALPR vendor, brags in its own promotional Powerpoint presentation
that it has collected 50 million records in New York City alone, without a single mention of minimization processes or the disposal of
non-hit data.
For the government to actively call for a nationwide database is troubling. Since this is a solicitation for
bids, there's no discussion on what, if anything, will be required from the winning contractor in terms of storage, minimization or
disposal. Given the track records of the largest vendors, it's likely these issues will be of lesser concern than other aspects, like
scanning speed and database accessibility.
The call for bids may have something to do with Vigilant's recent efforts, both on the PR front and in the courtroom.
First off, Vigilant (along with Digital Recognition Network) is suing the state of Utah for, believe it or not, violating its First
Amendment rights.
It posits that a new Utah law which bans license plate collection by private companies, effectively put it out of business in the state.
The law was intended to keep data from falling into police hands without oversight, and is among the first by surveillance technology
firms to argue against privacy laws invoking the First Amendment.
The Texas company fired back, arguing that collecting license plate numbers is free speech. The lawsuit draws upon a recent major
Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v. FEC, which overturned a law curbing corporate and union donations to political campaigns.
In effect, the Court ruled that money is speech.
“The Texas company says it’s not a police agency – law enforcement already is exempt from the ban under Utah’s new law — nor
can it access in bulk federally protected driver data that personally identifies the letters and numbers it collects from license plates in
public,” the Associated Press reported Thursday. “The company said it only wants to find cars that have been
stolen or repossessed, not to cull large swaths of data and incriminate people from their travel habits.”
DRN's press release goes into a little more detail on this rationale.
“Taking and distributing a photograph is an act that is fully protected by the first Amendment,” said DRN / Vigilant Outside Counsel
Michael Carvin. “The state of Utah cannot claim that photographing a license plate violates privacy. License plates are public by
nature and contain no sensitive or private information. Any citizen of Utah can walk outside and photograph anything they please,
including a license plate.”
This is an interesting approach. It's a bit disingenuous to compare scanning license plates at a rate of hundreds per hour to
someone walking around taking pictures of license plates (not the least of which is the fact that a private photographer most likely
wouldn't have a searchable database), but underneath it all, the point remains: these are photographs of publicly-available items. It
will be tough for a court to find a "bright line" that separates these two without weakening First Amendment protection. Then again,
as the ACLU has noted, it's not really the photography that's a problem, it's the handling of the non-hit
data, something that won't be addressed in this suit. That's Utah's problem and if it loses this case, then it needs to
push for heavy restrictions on how the data is accessed and used, as well as rules on data
disposal.
Collection can be useful but indefinite storage times are a bigger internal link to
Musgrave 13 (Shawn Musgrave is a globe correspondent for boston.com. "Big brother or better police work? New technology
automatically runs license plates ... of everyone," 4.9.13 www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/04/08/big-brother-betterpolice-work-new-technology-automatically-runs-license-plates-everyone/jpEEIHEY9StG44NWqOurbO/story.html)
These high-tech license readers, now mounted on 87 police cruisers statewide, scan literally millions of license plates in
Massachusetts each year, checking not only the car and owner’s legal history, but also creating a precise record of where each
vehicle was at a given moment.
The records can be enormously helpful in solving crimes — for example, Fitchburg police used the technology to catch a serial
flasher — but they increasingly make privacy advocates uneasy.
Use of the technology is outstripping creation of rules to prevent abuses such as tracking the movements
of private citizens, or monitoring who visits sensitive places such as strip clubs, union halls, or abortion clinics.
A survey of police departments that use automated license readers found that fewer than a third
— just 17 out of 53 — have written policies, leaving the rest with no formal standards for who can
see the records or how long they will be preserved.
“The worst-case scenario — vast databases with records of movements of massive numbers of
people — is already happening,” warns Kade Crockford of the American Civil Liberties Union of
Massachusetts, which is pushing for a state law to regulate use of license plate scanners and limit
the time departments can routinely keep the electronic records to 48 hours.
But police fear that zeal to protect privacy could stifle the use of a promising law enforcement tool, especially if they are prevented
from preserving and pooling license plate scans for use in detective work. Currently, all of the police departments keep
their plate scans longer than two days, with data storage ranging from 14 days in Somerville and Brookline to 90 days
in Boston and up to a year in Leicester, Malden, Pittsfield, and Worcester.
Sergeant Griffin, whose own department has no written policy, agrees that there should be rules to prevent abuse, but thinks that
these should be set by local departments rather than at the State House. He said that rather than restrict use of the scanners, the
Legislature should “trust law enforcement to do the right thing.”
The usefulness of the automated license plate reader as an investigative tool springs from the astounding number of license plates
the units can scan and record. With an array of high-speed cameras mounted on police cruisers snapping pictures, these systems
are designed to capture up to 1,800 plates per minute, even at high speeds and in difficult driving conditions.
“I’ve had my [license plater reader] correctly scan plates on cars parked bumper-to-bumper when
I’m driving full speed,” said Griffin, who caught three scofflaws owing a combined $1,900 in
parking tickets from the 786 license plates his reader checked on a recent one-hour patrol. The
devices misidentify plates often enough that scans have to be confirmed by an officer on the scene before writing a ticket. In this
case, after confirming the parking tickets, and the money owed, police initiated the collection process. Griffin called headquarters to
confirm that the vehicles still had unpaid tickets, and then arranged for them to be towed.
Boston’s four scanner-equipped cars do 3,500 scans a day and more than 1 million per year, according to police data. Even smaller
departments such as Fitchburg scan 30,000 plates per month with just one license-reading system, easily 10 times more than an
officer could manually check.
Most of the departments that deploy license plate readers use them primarily for traffic
enforcement. But the scanners — sometimes called by the acronym ALPR — are also used for
missing persons, AMBER alerts, active warrants, and open cases.
“Every once in a while our detectives will use the ALPR database for retrospective searches,” said
Griffin, adding that the technology has proved useful to scan vehicles in neighborhoods surrounding crime scenes.
Indefinite storage is a massive alt cause to privacy issues
Lynch 13 (Jennifer Lynch is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Electronic Frontier Foundation:
"Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy," May 6, 2013. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/alpr)
Photographing a single license plate one time on a public city street may not seem problematic,
but when that data is put into a database, combined with other scans of that same plate on other
city streets, and stored forever, it can become very revealing. Information about your location
over time can show not only where you live and work, but your political and religious beliefs, your
social and sexual habits, your visits to the doctor, and your associations with others. And, according
to recent research reported in Nature, it’s possible to identify 95% of individuals with as few as four randomly selected geospatial
datapoints (location + time), making location data the ultimate biometric identifier.
To better gauge the real threat to privacy posed by ALPR, EFF and the ACLU of Southern California asked LAPD and LASD for
information on their systems, including their policies on retaining and sharing information and all the license plate data each
department collected over the course of a single week in 2012. After both agencies refused to release most of the records we asked
for, we sued. We hope to get access to this data, both to show just how much data the agencies are collecting and how revealing it
can be.
ALPRs are often touted as an easy way to find stolen cars — the system checks a scanned plate against a database of stolen or
wanted cars and can instantly identify a hit, allowing officers to set up a sting to recover the car and catch the thief. But even
when there’s no match in the database and no reason to think a car is stolen or involved in a
crime, police keep the data. According to the LA Weekly, LAPD and LASD together already have collected more than 160
million “data points” (license plates plus time, date, and exact location) in the greater LA area—that’s more than 20 hits for each of
the more than 7 million vehicles registered in L.A. County. That’s a ton of data, but it’s not all — law enforcement
officers also have access to private databases containing hundreds of millions of plates and their
coordinates collected by “repo” men.
ALPR Monitor Inside Police CarLaw enforcement agencies claim that ALPR systems are no different from an officer recording
license plate, time and location information by hand. They also argue the data doesn’t warrant any privacy protections because we
drive our cars around in public. However, as five justices of the Supreme Court recognized last year in US v. Jones, a case involving
GPS tracking, the ease of data collection and the low cost of data storage make technological surveillance solutions such as GPS or
ALPR very different from techniques used in the past.
Police are open about their desire to record the movements of every car in case it might one day prove valuable. In 2008, LAPD
Police Chief Charlie Beck (then the agency’s chief of detectives) told GovTech Magazine that ALPRs have “unlimited potential” as
an investigative tool. “It’s always going to be great for the black-and-white to be driving down the street and find stolen cars rolling
around . . . . But the real value comes from the long-term investigative uses of being able to track vehicles—where they’ve been and
what they've been doing—and tie that to crimes that have occurred or that will occur.” But amassing data on the
movements of law-abiding residents poses a real threat to privacy, while the benefit to public safety is
speculative, at best.
In light of privacy concerns, states including Maine, New Jersey, and Virginia have limited the use of ALPRs, and New Hampshire
has banned them outright. Even the International Association of Chiefs of Police has issued a report recognizing that “recording
driving habits” could raise First Amendment concerns because cameras could record “vehicles parked at addiction-counseling
meetings, doctors' offices, health clinics, or even staging areas for political protests.”
But even if ALPRs are permitted, there are still common-sense limits that can allow the public safety
benefits of ALPRs while preventing the wholesale tracking of every resident’s movements. Police
can and should treat location information from ALPRs like other sensitive information — they
should retain it no longer than necessary to determine if it might be relevant to a crime, and
should get a warrant to keep it any longer. They should limit who can access it and who they can share it with. And
they should put oversight in place to ensure these limits are followed.
Crime Turn
ALPR technology key to check sex offenders and find missing people
Gutierrez-Alm 15- Winthrop & Weinstine, Associate Attorney (Jessica, “The Privacies of Life: Automatic License Plate
Recognition is Unconstitutional Under the Mosaic Theory of Fourth Amendment Privacy Law”, Hamline Law Review: Vol. 38: Iss. 1,
Article 5, http://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=hlr)//WK
ALPR systems use specialized digital cameras to automatically capture images of nearby license
plates on moving or parked vehicles. When a license plate passes through the camera’s field of view, the camera
captures several digital pictures, reading the license plate numbers from the images . The system
automatically compares the resulting plate numbers to “hotlists”: lists of license plate numbers related
to stolen vehicle reports, active arrest warrants, AMBER alerts, parolees, and known sex
offenders . If the system registers a match between a hotlist license plate and an image captured,
an alert is sent to officers. The ALPR camera systems may be either mobile or stationary. Mobile systems are
mounted to the outside of police cruisers and capture images of license plates they pass on the road.
Stationary ALPR systems have additional capabilities. They can be used to set up zones or “geofences” where sex offenders, parolees, probationers, or others are not permitted to enter or leave.
When the stationary cameras register the license plate of a prohibited individual crossing such a
restricted boundary, officers are alerted. The technology was developed in Britain in 1976 and was first used in the
1990s as a defense against Irish Republican Army attacks. Today, ALPR systems are used by numerous law enforcement agencies
across the United States, as well as in various countries. In Minnesota, the systems are currently used by the cities of Minneapolis,
St. Paul, Bloomington, Lakeville, Maplewood, Washington County, and by the State Patrol. Some stationary systems are even being
used in the private sector. Police use of the systems has been widely successful . The most advanced systems
are capable of reading 3,600 license plates per minute, and are capable of reading plates correctly at a “differential speed” of up to
160 miles per hour. Before implementation of ALPR technology, police officers could only check
license plates against hotlists by manually typing the numbers into a computer database. While a
typical police officer can manually check 50 to 100 license plates during a shift, an ALPR system has the capability of processing at
least 5000 license plates in the same amount of time.
Safety outweighs their vague privacy concerns – statistics
Lord 4/5 – Reporter on the project team at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, focused on data, privacy and security.
(2015, Rich,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Recording license plates can help solve crimes. But what becomes of all that data?”, http://www.postgazette.com/local/region/2015/04/05/license-plate-recognition-homeland-security-privacy-data/stories/201504030307 // SM)
Technology enthusiasts in local law enforcement counter that the safety improvements enabled
by plate data outweigh vague privacy concerns. “If you’ve got a plate [number], and a robbery, or
God forbid a child abduction , wouldn’t it be useful to have that information?” asked Washington
County District Attorney Eugene Vittone. Officer Wybranowski said that Washington County departments
used the database to nab a dog thief. The victims “were able to get a partial plate,” he said. “They described it as a
green Jeep.” The department ran it through the plate read database. “OK, here’s a green jeep that matched. We were able to, at
that point, figure out that this is the person who owns [the Jeep].” Crime solved, dog returned. Castle Shannon’s small department
leased a plate camera and later bought a used one. Two of its vehicles carry roof racks with infrared cameras pointing from all four
corners, feeding photos and plate data into the North Strabane database, said police Chief Kenneth M. Truver. As he demonstrated
it one morning, one vehicle’s plate cameras logged 569 plate numbers — none of which were associated with any violations — in
under 90 minutes. “There’s rarely a shift that goes by that those don’t activate for a suspended, stolen
or expired” plate or license, Chief Truver said. In 2013, he said, his officers initiated around 100
stops based on the plate cameras, and that number roughly doubled last year. “ If you’re not a
criminal ,” he said, “ then you have nothing to fear.”
The crime-fighting benefits of license plate monitoring outweighs the minimal
privacy loss
Shaw 1/27 – Weekend Editor at Hot Air (2015, Jazz, Hot Air, “There’s no need to freak out over a ‘national car-tracking
database’”, http://hotair.com/archives/2015/01/27/theres-no-need-to-freak-out-over-a-national-car-tracking-database/ // SM)
There are clearly limits as to what sorts of information about us the government (at any level) should be
collecting and keeping. We don’t want a national registry of gun owners and we don’t want every phone call and email
collected and scrutinized. But those areas involve matters of private ownership, the things we do in the
privacy of our homes and citizens having the knowledge that they are “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,”
as some wise person once wrote. But we should also remember that privacy has limits. One of the most
common is the fact that your right to privacy essentially drops to zero once you leave your home
and go out in the public square. Surely our roads are about as public a space as one could imagine.
And the government already keeps a database of who owns which vehicle, which is why there are
license plates in the first place. What is it that is so private about driving your vehicle on the
taxpayer funded roadways that we don’t want that information recorded? (At least assuming you aren’t
doing something illegal.) Your movements out of doors are already tracked by numerous security
cameras, ATMs and stop light monitors . That information is useful in numerous situations where
police are trying to apprehend criminals, though it is somewhat different when the cameras belong to private
businesses and citizens. In those cases the government must (and should) obtain a warrant to get hold of the footage. But if the
In terms of managing crime
across the nation, the benefits of such a system seem to outweigh any of the privacy concerns I’m
seeing. When a little girl is snatched up by a stranger and dumped into a van, you can bet I want the
police to be able to access a description and license number for that vehicle as rapidly as
possible and put some officers out there looking for it. When a criminal is in flight and crossing
state lines, the police may have no clue what direction they are heading if they escape the
immediate scene of the crime. This is an excellent tool to quickly identify where they are going.
Honestly, I just can’t get upset over a database which tracks license plates for ninety days. And frankly
government owns the cameras, that barrier would seem to evaporate. Is this a bad thing?
I’m not sure I really want a court standing in the way of the cops accessing that information while they wait for a warrant.
Opponents will raise the cry regarding those willing to sacrifice liberty for security, but what
liberty are you really giving up by allowing the authorities to know where your car is? And the
security you obtain in trade for that looks pretty valuable to me.
ALPR technology’s used to solve a litany of unethical crimes, not to track people
in real time – status quo protections solve data misuse
Manger et al. 3/9 – J. Thomas Manger Chief of Police, Montgomery County Police Department President, Major Cities
Chiefs Police Association, Chief Richard Beary President, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Mike Sena Director,
Northern California Regional Intelligence Center President, National Fusion Center Association, Ronald C. Sloan Director, Colorado
Bureau of Investigation President, Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, Sheriff Donny Youngblood President, Major
County Sheriffs’ Association, Bob Bushman President, National Narcotic Officers’ Associations’ Coalition, Jonathan Thompson
Executive Director, National Sheriffs’ Association, William Johnson Executive Director, National Association of Police Organizations,
Mike Moore President, National District Attorneys Association, Andrews Matthews Chairman, National Troopers Coalition (2015, J.
Thomas Manger, other authors listed in qualifications section of cite, ALPR Letter to Congress from Police Chiefs,
http://www.theiacp.org/Portals/0/documents/pdfs/LawEnforcementLPRLettertoCongressMarch2015.pdf // SM)
We are deeply concerned about efforts to portray automated license plate recognition (ALPR)
technology as a national real-time tracking capability for law enforcement. The fact is that this
technology and the data it generates is not used to track people in real time . ALPR is used every
day to generate investigative leads that help law enforcement solve murders , rapes , and serial
property crimes , recover abducted children , detect drug and human trafficking rings , find stolen
vehicles, apprehend violent criminal alien fugitives, and support terrorism investigations. There is
a misconception of continuous government tracking of individuals using ALPR information. This
has led to attempts to curtail law enforcement’s use of the technology without a proper and fair effort to truly understand the
anonymous nature of the data, how it is used, and how it is protected. We are seeing harmful proposals – appropriations
amendments and legislation – to restrict or completely ban law enforcement’s use of ALPR technology and data without any effort to
truly understand the issue. Yet, any
review would make clear that the value of this technology is beyond
question, and that protections against misuse of the data by law enforcement are already in place .
That is one of the reasons why critics are hard-pressed to identify any actual instances of
misuse. If legislative efforts to curtail ALPR use are successful, federal, state, and local law
enforcement’s ability to investigate crimes will be significantly impacted given the extensive use
of the technology today.
License plate data’s key to solve stolen vehicles and burglaries – statistics prove
Heaton 13 – Contributor to Governing. Writes for a variety of e.Republic publications, including Government Technology,
Governing, Emergency Management and Public CIO. (11/19/2013, Brian, Governing, “Cops Like What They See with License Plate
Readers”, http://www.governing.com/news/headlines/gov-license-plate-readers-privacy-concerns.html // SM)
Iowa jumped on the license plate reader bandwagon in 2011. Police in Des Moines mounted the devices on patrol cars and uses
them primarily in high-crime areas to identify those wanted by the authorities. Last year, Piedmont, Calif., approved the
purchase of 39 license plate cameras at a cost of $679,000, for the same reason. Police Chief Rikki Goede
believed putting the readers on 30 roads leading into and out of the city might help bring down the
50 percent increase in burglaries the city experienced between 2011 and 2012 , according to Ars Technica,
a technology media website. Piedmont, a wealthy Bay Area suburb with a population of approximately 11,000, is largely residential
and surrounded by the city of Oakland. Automated license plate readers can vary in cost from $20,000 to $30,000 depending on the
vendor. But many
law enforcement agencies are seeing a dramatic increase in efficiency and
effectiveness. For example, Arizona first tested automated license plate readers in 2006, primarily to
help cut the high rate of stolen vehicles in the state. The state’s Department of Public Safety discovered after a
few months that the devices were capable of reading 1,500 plates each during an eight-hour shift. By comparison, officers manually
ran approximately 40 during the same period. Back in 2008, when the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) had
readers installed on only 12 vehicles, Charlie Beck, now chief of police, said license plate readers helped
recover “four to five times” the number of stolen vehicles an officer would be able to locate
without the technology. Pennsylvania faced a similar issue. I n 1996, runaway auto thefts tallied
53,000. But after installing automated license plate readers on 13 squad cars, that number
dropped to 28,000 in 2007.
Circumvention
Info sharing makes circumvention inevitable
Gilbert 1-30-15 – Executive Director of ACLU Vermont (Allen, “Asset Forfeiture Bill Hits Senate Floor This Week,” ACLU Vermont,
January 30th, 2015, https://acluvt.org/blog/2015/01/30/dea-using-alprs-to-track-drivers/)BC
The DEA is also inviting federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies around the country to
contribute location information to the database. For example, the documents show that local and regional
law enforcement systems in Southern California’s San Diego and Imperial Counties and New Jersey all provide data to the
DEA. The program was “officially opened” to these partners in May 2009. Other agencies are surely
partnering with the DEA to share information, but these agreements are still secret, leaving the
public unable to know who has their location information and how it is being used.
Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is one of the federal agencies that has shared information with the DEA. An
undated Memorandum of Understanding explains that the agencies will, “at regular intervals,” provide each
other license plate reader data. It also authorizes the two agencies to further share each other’s data
with other federal, state, and local law enforcement and prosecutors as well as to “intelligence,
operations, and fusion centers.” This is a lot of location points. CBP collects “nearly 100 percent of land
border traffic,” which amounts to over 793.5 million license plates between May 2009 and May 2013, according to
CBP’s response to our FOIA request.
Additionally, any federal, state, or
local law enforcement agent vetted by the DEA’s El Paso
Intelligence Center can conduct queries of the database, located in Merrifield, Va.
Private companies fill-in for the aff
Kopstein 2/12 – a cyberculture journalist and researcher from New York City. His work focuses on Internet law and
disorder, surveillance and government secrecy. (2015, Joshua, Al-Jazeera America, “Your location data is your life, and police want
it all”, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/2/your-location-data-is-your-life-and-police-want-it-all.html // SM)
Private companies are helping fill in the gaps, offering law enforcement agencies access to their
massive license plate databases under strict nondisclosure agreements. The largest, held by California-based
Vigilant Solutions, boasts more than 2 billion vehicle movement records. According to a Vigilant press
release from December, its database uses facial recognition to identify drivers and passengers who
appear in license plate photos. That data feeds into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s
nationwide facial recognition database, which sometime this year is expected to amass as many
as 52 million face images.
Private sector circumvention turns case – no public sector accountability
Lord 4/5 – Reporter on the project team at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, focused on data, privacy and security. (2015, Rich,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Recording license plates can help solve crimes. But what becomes of all that data?”, http://www.postgazette.com/local/region/2015/04/05/license-plate-recognition-homeland-security-privacy-data/stories/201504030307 // SM)
The plate camera industry is now eyeing the private sector. License plate
recognition “is definitely a growth market,” said Jean-Pierre Picard, product marketing manager at
Montreal-based Genetec Inc., a maker of the cameras. Malls can use them to get educated guesses about the
geographic spread of their shoppers. Casinos can detect the vehicles of self-identified problem gamblers. The problem with
that, according to the ACLU’s Mr. Stanley, is that private data troves aren’t subject to public sector
accountability, but are ultimately within the government’s grasp. “ When private companies build
up big databases of personal information, the government can demand or buy that information ,”
Private plate data
he said.
State and local governments will circumvent federal license plate reforms
Boehm 14 – a reporter for Watchdog.org and former bureau chief for Pennsylvania Independent (6/18/2014, Eric,
Watchdog.org, “Automatic license plate scanners ‘just like’ NSA surveillance, congressman says”,
http://watchdog.org/155127/license-plate-scanner-ban/ // SM)
Fleming, a Republican congressman from Louisiana, might not be able to do much about the NSA,
but he’s championing an effort to ban police departments from using federal grants to buy license
plate scanners. An amendment added this week to an omnibus transportation bill working its way through Congress would also
ban the use of federal money to help kick-start red light camera programs, speed enforcement cameras and other forms of
municipal-level electronic surveillance. Speaking on the floor of the House, Fleming compared the scanners used by many police
departments to the so-called “meta-data” — data consisting of phone numbers called and the duration of calls but not the actual
voice content — collected by the NSA. “Just like phone meta-data, this geo-location data with time stamps can be used to
reconstruct intimate details of our lives, who we visit, where we worship, from whom we seek counseling, and how we might legally
and legitimately protest the actions of our own government,” Fleming said. Fleming’s fears are not unfounded: The ACLU found that
state police in Virginia tracked the license plates of people who attended political rallies for Barack Obama and Sarah Palin in 2009.
On a more personal level, Watchdog.org’s Katie Watson discovered in April that police in Alexandria, Va., captured and saved 16
photos of her license plate over the previous six months. Police say the scanners help officers more quickly assess the potential
danger of pulling someone over: Were they simply speeding or do they have a history of violent behavior, too? Law enforcement
agencies argue that maintaining records from license plate scanners can help solve crimes more quickly, regardless of potential
constitutional violations needed to achieve that goal. Stricter rules are needed to tell police how long they can keep data obtained
from scanners, said John Bowman, spokesman for the National Motorists Association, which opposes the use of scanners because
of privacy violations. “If the information isn’t immediately relevant to a crime, then there is no reason to keep it and it should be
immediately deleted,” Bowman said. Fleming said many states don’t have rules for how long license plate data
can be kept, and he wants to start a debate about the proper role for such technology. States and local governments
may still buy license plate scanning technology on their own , but the federal government should
not use tax dollars to subsidize those costs, Fleming said.
Lack of transparency and general secrecy mean attempts at reform will be
circumvented
Farivar 15 – Senior Business Editor for ArsTechnica (3/15/2015, Cyrus, ArsTechnica, “Cops are freaked out that Congress
may impose license plate reader limits”, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/cops-are-freaked-out-that-congress-mayimpose-license-plate-reader-limits/ // SM)
"Worse still, the officials represent to Congress that there are no examples of license plate tracking
abuse. That's factually incorrect. But again this claim obscures the real problem: We would likely
know of many more cases of police abuse of this data if legislators ensured the systems were
appropriately audited, and if there was necessary transparency around how the systems are used
and abused. A cloak of secrecy largely surrounds law enforcement use of plate tracking
databases. In the context of this secrecy, these claims about a supposed lack of evidence of
abuse are particularly difficult to swallow."
Circumvention (Congress/Oversight Plan)
The aff gets circumvented – the DEA uses local prosecutors to circumvent federal
oversight and judicial review.
Shackford 6/3 (Scott Shackford, Associate editor at Reason with a Bachelor’s in
Communications/Journalism from Webster University, “The DEA Bypasses Federal
Oversight to Better Snoop on Us All,” Reason, 3 June 2015,
http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/03/the-dea-bypasses-federal-oversight-to-be)
It seems as though the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has reversed this dynamic, all in the name of more easily snooping
on people. USA Today has determined that the DEA has drastically increased its use of electronic
surveillance over the past decade by deliberately bypassing its own federal oversight and turning
to local prosecutors . The Department of Justice (DOJ) has tougher requirements to permit eavesdropping than states and
local judges:
The DEA conducted 11,681 electronic intercepts in the fiscal year that ended in September. Ten years earlier, the drug agency
conducted 3,394.
Most of that ramped-up surveillance was never reviewed by federal judges or Justice Department
lawyers, who typically are responsible for examining federal agents' eavesdropping requests.
Instead, DEA agents now take 60% of those requests directly to local prosecutors and judges
from New York to California, who current and former officials say often approve them more
quickly and easily.
Drug investigations account for the vast majority of U.S. wiretaps, and much of that surveillance
is carried out by the DEA. Privacy advocates expressed concern that the drug agency had
expanded its surveillance without going through internal Justice Department reviews , which often
are more demanding than federal law requires.
Wiretaps — which allow the police to listen in on phone calls and other electronic communications — are considered so sensitive
that federal law requires approval from a senior Justice Department official before agents can even ask a federal court for
permission to conduct one. The law imposes no such restriction on state court wiretaps, even when they are sought by federal
agents.
A DEA spokesperson insisted their agents weren’t trying to bypass oversight, but rather the states and local prosecutors have
gotten more willing to participate in wiretap investigations and bring in local police to assist. Also, DEA agents still have to follow
federal safeguards for wiretapping, even if they don’t go through the DOJ or federal judges for approval.
It occurs to me to go back to my initial comparison to federal asset forfeiture rules. By bringing in local police to assist,
whatever these cases are must almost certainly then become joint operations, which means the
police can then use the federal program to try to seize and keep more of whatever they find in
these investigations.
The USA Today piece does not attempt to look at or correlate these investigations with participation in the federal Equitable Sharing
Program, but there has been a similar increase in law enforcement agencies turning to the federal program for civil asset forfeiture.
The story notes increases in turning to local courts for wiretap approval in Southern California, a doubling in Riverside. In April, the
Drug Policy Alliance released a report showing that revenue California cities have seen from participating in the federal asset
forfeiture reform has tripled over the same time frame covered as this USA Today report, while revenue from state asset forfeiture
has remained the same. No doubt local prosecutors and law enforcement agencies are thrilled to help
the DEA with their wiretapping. There’s quite the financial incentive involved.
The DEA circumvents laws and undercuts democracy.
O’Hehir 13 (Andrew O’Hehir, Staff writer at Salon.com with an M.A. in Humanities from
John Hopkins, “The NSA-DEA police state tango,” Salon, 10 August 2013,
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_nsa_dea_police_state_tango/)
On the other hand, this is a genuinely sinister turn of events with a whiff of science-fiction nightmare, one that has sounded loud
alarm bells for many people in the mainstream legal world. Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law professor who spent 18
years as a federal judge and cannot be accused of being a radical, told Reuters she finds the DEA story more
troubling than anything in Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks. It’s the first clear evidence that the
“special rules” and disregard for constitutional law that have characterized the hunt for so-called
terrorists have crept into the domestic criminal justice system on a significant scale. “It sounds like
they are phonying up investigations,” she said. Maybe this is how a police state comes to America : Not
with a bang, but with a parallel construction.
At this point, there are a lot more questions than answers about what Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Hanni Fakhoury has
dubbed the DEA’s “intelligence laundering” operation. Here are three big ones: How far does all this go? Where does it stop? And
why doesn’t the general public seem to give a damn? That last question partly reflects the fact that the NSA has evidently been
tracking everybody’s cell phone calls and emails, and that sounds scary. It’s easy for many middle-class Americans
to convince themselves that they have nothing to fear from the DEA, even if it has morphed into a
dark secret-police force we’re barely aware of. As revolutionary and noted hypocrite Thomas Jefferson once
observed, the spread of tyranny only requires our silence.
Millions of people have been sent to prison on drug-war convictions over the last 20 years. Most
of those people have been poor and black. We will never know how many of those cases resulted from secret
evidence collected by spy agencies, but it might not be a small number. One of the Reuters articles that broke this story quotes DEA
officials as saying that the “parallel construction” tactic had been used by the agency “virtually every day since the 1990s.” Legal
scholar Michelle Alexander, author of the recent bestseller “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,”
sent me an email from her family vacation to say that these revelations “certainly lead one reasonably to wonder how many people
— especially poor people of color, who have been the primary targets in the drug war — have been
spied on by the DEA in the name of national security.”
From the outset, there have been moral, philosophical and technological connections between the war
on drugs and the war on terror. Both campaigns involve the unprecedented expansion of executive power and the use of
high-tech paramilitary policing. Both involve “adjusting” our supposedly cherished constitutional rights and privileges in the name of
protecting us from evil. Both involve targets that are easy to demonize and marginalize, and both embody troubling questions about
race, class and power. Most important of all, both conflicts are immensely expensive and shockingly self-
destructive. If these parallel wars had been designed to fail – designed to create a state of
permanent crisis , empower and enrich a caste of warrior-bureaucrats and undercut
constitutional democracy – they could hardly have been designed more perfectly.
The DEA circumvents federal courts by using local prosecutors.
Heath 6/3 (Brad Heath, Investigative reporter for USA TODAY with a J.D. in Law from
the Georgetown University Law Center, “DEA eavesdropping tripled, bypassed federal
courts,” USA TODAY, 3 June 2015,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/06/02/dea-wiretap-surveillance-tripled-instate-courts/28330503/)
WASHINGTON — The
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration more than tripled its use of wiretaps and
other types of electronic eavesdropping over the past decade, largely bypassing federal courts
and Justice Department lawyers in the process, newly obtained records show.
The DEA conducted 11,681 electronic intercepts in the fiscal year that ended in September. Ten years earlier, the drug agency
conducted 3,394.
Most of that ramped-up surveillance was never reviewed by federal judges or Justice Department
lawyers, who typically are responsible for examining federal agents' eavesdropping requests.
Instead, DEA agents now take 60% of those requests directly to local prosecutors and judges
from New York to California, who current and former officials say often approve them more
quickly and easily.
Drug investigations account for the vast majority of U.S. wiretaps, and much of that surveillance is carried out by the DEA.
Privacy advocates expressed concern that the drug agency had expanded its surveillance without
going through internal Justice Department reviews, which often are more demanding than federal
law requires.
Wiretaps — which allow the police to listen in on phone calls and other electronic communications — are considered so sensitive
that federal law requires approval from a senior Justice Department official before agents can even ask a federal court for
permission to conduct one. The law imposes no such restriction on state court wiretaps, even when they
are sought by federal agents.
Courts Don’t Solve
Supreme Court decision fails – doesn’t solve physical placement of tracking
devices
Kopstein 2/12 – a cyberculture journalist and researcher from New York City. His work focuses on Internet law and
disorder, surveillance and government secrecy. (2015, Joshua, Al-Jazeera America, “Your location data is your life, and police want
it all”, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/2/your-location-data-is-your-life-and-police-want-it-all.html // SM)
In 2012, the same year ALPRs first made major headlines, the Supreme Court ruled that police must
obtain a warrant before monitoring a suspect’s vehicle with a GPS tracking device. Many saw this
as a victory against the normalization of unwarranted police tracking, but in practice it was hardly
a deterrent. That’s because at issue was not the tracking itself but the physical placement of a
tracking device on the suspect’s car, which the court ruled constituted trespass under the Fourth Amendment.
Privacy Not Absolute
Privacy can be violated for the common good—our disads show a balancing act
where individual rights can be outweighed by broader societal harm
McFARLAND 2012 (Michael McFarland, S.J., a computer scientist with extensive liberal arts
teaching experience and a special interest in the intersection of technology and ethics, served as the 31st
president of the College of the Holy Cross., “Why We Care about Privacy,” June,
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/technology/internet/privacy/why-care-about-privacy.html)
But...Privacy is not Absolute
When we speak of privacy, particularly as a right, we focus on the individual. The individual must be shielded from the prying
curiosity of others and from prejudice and discrimination. The individual's autonomy and control over his or her person must be
preserved. The individual must be protected from intimidation and coercion by government.
These are important considerations; but not the whole story. For the human person does not exist purely as an individual. People
live their lives as members of society. In fact they are members of many societies, which may include families, circles of friends,
work organizations, churches, voluntary associations, civic organizations, city, state and nation. 33 These associations are not
merely preferences or matters of convenience. To be human is to be in relationship. Therefore social obligations, that is, all that is
required to maintain the complex Web of relationships in which each person lives, are fundamental human obligations. Moreover
each individual has an obligation to contribute to the good of society, the so-called "common good."
These obligations include the sharing of personal information, which is a necessary part of any meaningful relationship, whether it is
personal, community, political or bureaucratic. Friendship necessarily requires self-revelation, as do family relationships on an even
more intimate level. Belonging to a voluntary association entails sharing something of one's history, one's ideas and aspirations, and
one's current circumstances. And government requires a certain amount of information on its citizens in order to govern efficiently,
provide for their security and distribute benefits and obligations fairly. The same in general can be said of employers and their
employees.
The obligation to share information for the common good does not always take precedence over the right to privacy. Rather the two
must be held in balance, for both are necessary for a fully human life. According to John B. Young, in his book on privacy,
The right to privacy is inherent in the right to liberty, but the life of the individual in all societies has to strike a balance between
freedom and discipline. Insufficient freedom will subdue the spirit of enterprise and resolution on which so much of civilized progress
depends, whereas unbridled freedom will clash inexorably with the way of life of others. It is inevitable therefore that there must be
some measure of restraint on the activities of members of a community, and in order to control people in a modern and complex
society information about them and their behavior is indispensable. The concomitant price which the individual must pay can be
measured in terms of loss of privacy. 34
Even Alan Westin, the great privacy advocate acknowledges,
The individual's desire for privacy is never absolute, since participation in society is an equally powerful desire. Thus each individual
is continually engaged in a personal adjustment process in which he balances the desire for privacy with the desire for disclosure
and communication of himself to others, in light of the environmental conditions and social norms set by the society in which he
lives. 35
These considerations lead to the following principle on information privacy: Just as the human person pursues personal freedom
and self-realization in the context of relationship, with all the obligations, constraints and tensions that that entails, so the right to
privacy coexists with, and is circumscribed by, the obligation to serve the common good.
privacy is dead – Americans don’t care about violations of privacy
Kelly 13 [Heather, "Some shurt at NSA snooping: Privacy's already dead", CNN, 6/10/13,
www.cnn.com/2013/06/07/tech/web/nsa-internet-privacy/] // SKY
News of a secret U.S. government surveillance program has outraged digital-privacy advocates, but some users are unfazed. A
series of revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs sparked outrage among many this week, including
the expected privacy activists and civil libertarians. But there seems to be a gap between the roiling anger online
and the attitudes of other people, especially younger ones, who think it's just not that big a deal.
It's the rare issue that crosses party lines in terms of outrage, apathy and even ignorance. When
interviewing people about the topic in downtown San Francisco, we found a number of people of all ages who had not
heard the news, and more than one who asked what the NSA was. The rest had various reasons
for not being terribly concerned. Official: Damage assessment over U.S. intelligence-gathering leaks Privacy is
already dead When the news broke on Wednesday, a number of people responded online by saying an
extensive government surveillance program wasn't surprising and just confirmed what they
already knew. The lack of shock wasn't limited to savvy technologists who have been following
reports from organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, that cover possible monitoring
going back to 2007. Many people already assumed that information online was easily accessible by
corporations and the government. A survey conducted by the Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor just days
before the NSA news broke found that 85% of Americans already believed their phone calls, e-mails and
online activity were being monitored. Allen Trember from San Luis Obispo, California, said he
knew when he started using the Internet that his information wasn't going to be private, but still
lamented that privacy no longer exists. "I don't like it, but what can I do about it?" he said. "I'm
just glad that we have as much freedom as we do." Internet laughs about being spied on OK sacrificing privacy for
security A national joint survey conducted in April by CNN, Time and ORC International found that 40% of respondents
were willing to give up some of their civil liberties for increased security. That survey was conducted after
the Boston Marathon bombing and before news of the NSA programs was public. "Out of sight, out of mind," is how Will,
28, responded to the news. The Nevada resident said he would rather not know about the program, and thought
its being public would make it easier for criminals to circumvent the government's security
programs. A Twitter account @_nothingtohide quickly sprung up and started retweeting one of the more common reactions:
People aren't worried about the NSA monitoring their calls or online activity because they believe
they have no crimes or information to hide from the government. "If the government wants to look
at my phone records to keep me safe ... so be it. I don't have anything to hide ," tweeted Cayla Marie.
"Terror war only fought by intelligence gathering. We criticize those entrusted to keep us safe & scream when they fail to do so,"
reads a tweet from Lucy Rose. Nearly half of Americans say the government would never abuse such an extensive trove of data.
The Heartland Monitor poll found that 48% of Americans trust the government "some" or a "great deal" with
their private data. Leslie Harris, president of the civil liberties group Center for Democracy and Technology, thinks the all or
nothing view is flawed. "In a constitutional democracy like the United States, the goal is to find the balance between security and
liberty, not to sacrifice liberty for security," she said. "I think that simply giving up on our privacy throws off the balance in a
democracy between a government and its citizens." How does it affect me? Nothing I can do Recent surveys have shown that
Americans in their teens and twenties share more of their lives online and are less concerned
about digital privacy than older Web users. For people who are not worried about the government
seeing their personal communications, the revelations lack an immediate impact on their lives and
there's no urgent push to take action. "I think that at the moment, people may not feel the impact, but the fact that we
have a secret agency that can access most of our digital lives -- I think that the loss will be felt over time," Harris said. Even people
who disagree with the program might not think they can do anything about it. Users still don't know how the government is getting
the information and what role the major Internet companies played in the snooping. There have been vehement, similar denials from
the CEOs of Facebook and Google. These companies rightfully fear the accusations could damage their businesses, as people
move to other Web services that might be more secure. Harris recommended people who are concerned start by contacting their
representatives in Congress. "We are citizens in a democracy," she said. "We can demand from our elected officials greater
transparency."
Security outweighs privacy – the risk to survival’s just more important
Himma 13 – Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University (6/7/2013, Kenneth Einar Himma, p. 921-22,
“Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”,
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=732088024087095085112077092120102089026050064018017000018000120126008
092069004105120099022017062023057007119020117020087080088051090012016041007116073112118116008068012087073
001080122024122082067030005005030099009010029105030077014123069071073100&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2 // SM)
The point here is that the idea that privacy and the common good or social order must be balanced does not
involve denying the thesis of this essay—namely that, other things being equal, security trumps privacy.
It might be true that social order might sometimes yield to privacy, but the threats to the social
order that rise to the level of threats to security always win in conflicts with privacy interests that
are of comparable importance relative to the spectrum of privacy interests. When we are talking about saving
innocent human lives, the most private facts about innocent persons are just not that important ;
if it is true—and this is not true as often as conservative politicians believe—that disclosure of such facts will save
those lives, then it seems clearly justified to infringe privacy interests —as long as people are protected
from any adverse consequences of those disclosures. In any event, it is clear that even on Etzioni’s more moderate conception
of commutarianism, privacy interests are not absolute and do not necessarily trump other interests.
Privacy must sometimes, even on the narrowest interpretation, yield to social order or the common good.
But once the relationship between the concepts of security, social order, and common good are made clear, it seems
reasonable to think that threats to security will win in conflicts with threats to privacy interests that
are of relatively comparable importance. Our interests in those matters essential to physical survival and
well-being, which are the subjects of our security interests, seem to be presumptively more
important, as a general matter, than our interests in informational privacy. Informational privacy might
sometimes defeat considerations that promote the common good or social order, but not
considerations that promote or protect what is absolutely essential to physical survival and wellbeing.
Security trumps privacy in terms of general well-being and utilitarianism
Himma 13 – Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University (6/7/2013, Kenneth Einar Himma, p. 921-22,
“Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”,
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=732088024087095085112077092120102089026050064018017000018000120126008
092069004105120099022017062023057007119020117020087080088051090012016041007116073112118116008068012087073
001080122024122082067030005005030099009010029105030077014123069071073100&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2 // SM)
Even so, it seems clear that privacy interests will generally receive lesser protection than security interests under such a theory. If
utility is defined subjectively, then it seems clear that this will be the case; many people in the former Soviet Union who are better off
in terms of liberty, and possibly even income, have expressed preferences to return to the totalitarian regime precisely because they
felt more secure under the protection of a police force that seemed to be everywhere. This, of course, is not an obviously irrational
preference if the intuitions I described at the beginning of this essay are correct. I would prefer physical security over just
about any other right—with the possible exception of a certain affluent standard of living. Indeed, despite all the hysteria
in the United States about the violation of privacy rights by laws such as the USA PATRIOT Act, most
people seem to be as happy, on any subjective measure, as always. If, on the other hand, utility is defined
objectively in terms of wellbeing, it seems clear that security is more important than privacy. It
seems very difficult to make the case that , as an objective matter, people are better off in terms
of well-being if they sacrifice security , other things being equal, for privacy. While privacy interests
seem important in cultures like ours to well-being as an objective matter, it seems absolutely clear that security
from death or grievous bodily injury is more important than privacy interests and will trump those interests
in the event of a direct conflict, as I have defined that idea. According to utilitarian theories of state
legitimacy, then, it is reasonable to conclude that privacy interests or rights are not absolute .
Again, the claim is not that any increase in security, no matter how small, is likely to offset any sacrifice
in privacy, no matter how extensive. Doubts about the efficacy of a law in protecting security at the
expense of privacy might have the effect of making people very unhappy even when these doubts
are incorrect. But, other things being equal, people will regard the most important security interests they
have as being morally more important than the most important privacy interests they have,
suggesting that security is more important than privacy on a subjective conception of utility; and,
on an objective conception of flourishing and well-being, that seems straightforwardly correct. Whether
the utilitarian standard is defined in terms of subjective conceptions of happiness or pleasure, or whether it is defined in terms of
objective conceptions of well-being and flourishing, a utilitarian theory of legitimacy seems clearly to afford
more protection, other things being equal, to security interests than to privacy interests. As I have put this idea
elsewhere, security trumps privacy.
The state is morally obligated to prioritize security over privacy – security has
more widespread value and privacy’s not absolute
Himma 13 – Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University (6/7/2013, Kenneth Einar Himma, p. 921-22,
“Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”,
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=732088024087095085112077092120102089026050064018017000018000120126008
092069004105120099022017062023057007119020117020087080088051090012016041007116073112118116008068012087073
001080122024122082067030005005030099009010029105030077014123069071073100&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2 // SM)
As is true of classical social contract theory, the primary motivation for every rational being to move from a presocial
state of nature to a society with a central authority is to achieve more security than is otherwise possible—even though
Nozick’s conception of the state of nature is somewhat more benign than that of the classical theories. Moreover, the minimal
state is subject to the constraints of the Lockean conception of morality, which takes the primary
purpose of the state to protect property—presumably because property is necessary to the survival
of each person and is hence the most likely motivation for persons to threaten the security—and
hence rights to life of others. To prevent such conflicts, the state must be especially concerned
with protecting the right to property, and hence, derivatively, the right to life. Although it is true that some
privacy interests either fall within the ambit of liberty interests or are prerequisites for the meaningful exercise of liberty
requirements—I am less likely to freely express my right to speech on the Internet if I feel that my movements and anonymity are
tracked and compromised—it is crucial to note that Nozick’s theory of the legitimate minimal state, as is true of
every other theory we have considered, does not expressly name privacy as an interest or right
that the minimal state is morally required to protect as a precondition of its legitimacy. This
suggests that, for Nozick’s theory as for each other theory we have considered, security is the
most important value. Although there is no talk of a “right” to security, security provides the morally legitimate
motive for making the various transitions that move each rational person from a presocial state of
nature to life under a society with a coercive and centralized state authority. This entails that security is
the ultimate value that the state is morally obligated to protect and that when legitimate security
interests directly conflict with legitimate privacy interests of comparable importance, the former
trump the latter. Thus, for Nozick, as with every other theorist we have considered, if there is a privacy right, it is
far from being absolute.
Privacy’s not absolute and security trumps it, classical social contract theory
proves – prefer evidence contextualized to the state’s obligation
Himma 13 – Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University (6/7/2013, Kenneth Einar Himma, p. 921-22,
“Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”,
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=732088024087095085112077092120102089026050064018017000018000120126008
092069004105120099022017062023057007119020117020087080088051090012016041007116073112118116008068012087073
001080122024122082067030005005030099009010029105030077014123069071073100&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2 // SM)
Accordingly, the state’s most important obligation is to protect property, on Locke’s view, precisely
because the protection of property will ensure the public peace and minimize threats to physical
security. Protection of property, though first among the state’s priorities, is a means to the ultimate end of
protecting security by ending the war of all against all that occurs in the state of nature. For classical social contract theorists,
then, the most important value that submission to state authority is intended to pursue is security.
It follows, of course, that whatever the rest of the hierarchy of values might look like, the value of
privacy is less, according to classical social contract theories, than the value of security. The rights to life and
freedom from intentionally inflicted grievous physical injury trump the right to privacy, if such there
be, when the latter comes into direct conflict with the former. Of course, Locke would rank the right of property
alongside the other rights or interests mentioned above as constituting the right or interest in security because he believes
protection of property is so important to protection of security. But classical social contract theories all converge
in
implying (1) that the right or interest in privacy is not absolute ; and (2) that the right or interest in
security trumps the right or interest in privacy when the two come into direct conflict — though neither
theory tells us much about how or when these interests might directly conflict.
Privacy has no inherent value and is only valuable as a means of protecting
security interests – thus, security outweighs
Himma 13 – Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University (6/7/2013, Kenneth Einar Himma, p. 921-22,
“Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”,
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=732088024087095085112077092120102089026050064018017000018000120126008
092069004105120099022017062023057007119020117020087080088051090012016041007116073112118116008068012087073
001080122024122082067030005005030099009010029105030077014123069071073100&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2 // SM)
Informational
privacy is valuable only as a means to an end. If certain pieces of information about me were not
likely to be used in ways that have damaging consequences to my well-being, I would not care one
bit whether they were widely known. My hair is dirty blond, something I take no pains to hide
because the risk that someone will use this information to discriminate against me in some way
that significantly diminishes my well-being is virtually nil. In contrast, I care about personal information about
The same also seems to be true of the right to informational privacy and the right to, or interest in, security.
my health because my being at high genetic risk for a particular disease, if this turns out to be true, might lead a potential employer
not to hire me. There is no piece of personal information about myself that I value keeping private as
an end in itself; privacy is all about avoiding embarrassing and otherwise damaging social
consequences. Security, on the other hand, is something I value instrumentally because it is a precondition for
living a meaningful, enjoyable human life, but it is also something I value intrinsically. Continued sentient
existence, bodily integrity—for example, having four limbs that I can move by volition—and financial security are
ends in themselves and hence intrinsically valuable. Indeed, in many cases, I value privacy of
information as a means to protecting security interests that I value intrinsically. Insofar as this is
true, it seems reasonable to conclude that security is a more important value than privacy from
the vantage point of individual and political morality.
Security and the right to life intuitively outweighs the right to privacy – privacy is
not absolute
Himma 13 – Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University (6/7/2013, Kenneth Einar Himma, p. 921-22,
“Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”,
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=732088024087095085112077092120102089026050064018017000018000120126008
092069004105120099022017062023057007119020117020087080088051090012016041007116073112118116008068012087073
001080122024122082067030005005030099009010029105030077014123069071073100&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2 // SM)
V. THE ARGUMENT FROM INTUITIVE CASE JUDGMENTS
From an intuitive standpoint, the idea that the right to privacy is an absolute right seems utterly
implausible. Intuitively, it seems clear that there are other rights that are so much more important that they
easily trump privacy rights in the event of a conflict. For example, if a psychologist knows that a patient is highly
likely to commit a murder, then it is, at the very least, morally permissible to disclose that information about the patient in order to
prevent the crime—regardless of whether such information would otherwise be protected by privacy rights. Intuitively, it
seems clear that life is more important from the standpoint of morality than any of the interests
protected by a moral right to privacy. Still one often hears—primarily from academics in information schools and
library schools, especially in connection with the controversy regarding the USA PATRIOT Act—the claim that privacy
should never be sacrificed for security, implicitly denying what I take to be the underlying rationale for the PATRIOT
Act. This also seems counterintuitive because it does not seem unreasonable to believe we have a
moral right to security that includes the right to life. Although this right to security is broader
than the right to life, the fact that security interests include our interests in our lives implies that
the right to privacy trumps even the right to life—something that seems quite implausible from an
intuitive point of view. If I have to give up the most private piece of information about myself to
save my life or protect myself from either grievous bodily injury or financial ruin, I would gladly do so without
hesitation. There are many things I do not want you to know about me, but should you make a credible threat to my life, bodily
integrity, financial security, or health, and then hook me up to a lie detector machine, I will truthfully answer any question you ask
about me. I value my privacy a lot, but I value my life, bodily integrity, and financial security much more than
any of the interests protected by the right to privacy.
Security’s a pre-requisite to meaningful privacy rights and should be viewed as
morally prior
Himma 13 – Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University (6/7/2013, Kenneth Einar Himma, p. 921-22,
“Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”,
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=732088024087095085112077092120102089026050064018017000018000120126008
092069004105120099022017062023057007119020117020087080088051090012016041007116073112118116008068012087073
001080122024122082067030005005030099009010029105030077014123069071073100&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2 // SM)
XIII. SECURITY AS A PREREQUISITE FOR THE MEANINGFUL EXERCISE OF PRIVACY RIGHTS
The last argument I wish to make in this essay will be brief because it is extremely well known and has been made in a variety of
no right not involving security can be
meaningfully exercised in the absence of efficacious protection of security. The right to property
means nothing if the law fails to protect against threats to life and bodily security. Likewise, the right
to privacy has little value if one feels constrained to remain in one’s home because it is so unsafe
to venture away that one significantly risks death or grievous bodily injury. This is not merely a matter of
describing common subjective preferences; this is rather an objective fact about privacy and security interests. If security
interests are not adequately protected, citizens will simply not have much by way of privacy
interests to protect. While it is true, of course, that people have privacy interests in what goes on inside the confines of
their home, they also have legitimate privacy interests in a variety of public contexts that cannot be
meaningfully exercised if one is afraid to venture out into those contexts because of significant
academic and nonacademic contexts. The basic point here is that
threats to individual and collective security—such as would be the case if terrorist attacks became highly
probable in those contexts. It is true, of course, that to say that X is a prerequisite for exercising a
particular right Y does not obviously entail that X is morally more important than Y, but this is a
reasonable conclusion to draw. If it is true that Y is meaningless in the absence of X, then it seems
clear that X deserves, as a moral matter, more stringent protection than Y does. Since privacy
interests lack significance in the absence of adequate protection of security interests, it seems
reasonable to infer that security interests deserve, as a moral matter, more stringent protection
than privacy interests.
Privacy rights are not absolute – the right to life can outweigh
Himma 13 – Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University (6/7/2013, Kenneth Einar Himma, p. 921-22,
“Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”,
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=732088024087095085112077092120102089026050064018017000018000120126008
092069004105120099022017062023057007119020117020087080088051090012016041007116073112118116008068012087073
001080122024122082067030005005030099009010029105030077014123069071073100&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2 // SM)
But this conceptual truth about rights does not imply rights are , by nature, absolute. The claim that
rights trump consequences implies only that some stronger consideration than the desirable
consequences of infringing a right can justify doing so. This latter claim leaves open the
possibility that there is some such consideration that would justify infringing some rights. One
such candidate, of course, is the existence of other more important rights. It is commonly thought that at least
some rights are commensurable and can be ranked in a hierarchy that expresses the relative weight each right in the hierarchy has
with respect to other rights. For example, one might think that
the right to life is at the top of the hierarchy of
commensurable rights , and that property rights are in this hierarchy also. This would explain the common intuition that one
may use deadly force when necessary to defend innocent lives from culpable attack, but not when
necessary only to defend property rights from violation. If, as seems clear from this example, it is possible
for two rights to conflict and for one to outweigh the other, it follows that rights are not, by nature,
absolute. What may explain the mistaken view that rights are necessarily absolute is confusion about the relationship of various
terms that flesh out the status, origin, and contours of moral rights and obligations. For example, rights are frequently
described as “inviolable,” meaning that a right can never be justifiably violated. This, of course, is a conceptual truth; to say
that a right is violated is to say that its infringement is without justification. But this does not imply that rights can
never be justifiably infringed ; a person’s right to life can be justifiably infringed if he culpably
shoots at an innocent person and there is no other way to save that person’s life except through
use of lethal force in defense of his life. Rights are also thought, by nature, to be supreme, relative to some system of
norms—moral, social, or legal—in the sense that they cannot be defeated by other kinds of protections; moral rights are thought to
be supreme over all other kinds of considerations, including social and legal rights. But this does not imply that rights are absolute
because it says nothing about the relative importance of one right to another; it simply asserts that, by nature, rights outweigh all
other relevant considerations. Supremacy and inviolability are part of the very nature of a right, but these properties do not entail
that rights are, by nature, absolute. Of course, the negation of the claim that all rights are absolute does not imply that no rights are
absolute. The possibility of conflicts between any two rights does not preclude there being one right that wins every conflict because
it is absolute, and hence, without exception. A moral pacifist, for example, takes this view of the moral right to life and holds that
intentional killing of a human being is always wrong. Moreover, if there are two rights that do not come into conflict with each other
and win in conflicts with all other rights, those two rights might be absolute. One might think, for example, that the rights to privacy
I am somewhat skeptical that any right is absolute in this
strong sense, but if there are any, it will not be privacy. As we will see in more detail, privacy is
commensurable with other rights, like the right to life, which figures into the right to security. It
seems clear that privacy rights and the right to life can come into conflict. For example, a
psychologist might be justified in protecting a patient’s privacy interests even though doing so
includes information that might prevent that person from committing a minor property crime of
some kind, but she would not be justified in protecting that information if the psychologist knows its
disclosure is necessary to prevent a murder. In any event, I will discuss these kinds of examples in more detail
and life can never conflict and that both are absolute.
below.
Privacy Violations Inevitable
privacy is dead – the aff can’t solve that
Morgan 14 [Jacob, "Privacy Is Completely And Utterly Dead, And We Killed It", Forbes, 8/19/2014,
www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/08/19/privacy-is-completely-and-utterly-dead-and-we-killed-it/] // SKY
Privacy…everyone keeps talking about it and apparently everyone is concerned with it, but going forward does it even matter? I
recently watched the documentary, “Terms and Conditions may Apply,” which provides a fascinating look at how organizations such
as Facebook, Google GOOGL +1.42%, Apple AAPL -4.84%, and others have changed the way they look at and approach privacy.
After watching the movie it had me wondering, “does privacy even matter anymore?”
Most of use Facebook, have iPhones, use Twitter TWTR -1.41%, search on Google, and use the hundreds of other tools and
platforms that companies have so graciously given us access to. We subscribe to newsletters, buy things online, take quizzes, allow
our apps to access third party websites, enter contests, and register for conferences. Simply loading a webpage of any
kind tracks some kind of information about you.
All of these companies have “terms and conditions” documents that pretty much none of us read.
In effect everyone that
uses these technologies has signed away their privacy yet we still see people saying that they
want more privacy. What gives? I think we’ve clearly reached a point in today’s world where
privacy is pretty much a lost cause. Our information is already out there and regardless of how
hard we scream that we want it back or want it to be secure, it’s not going to happen…ever. If
anything we are seeing a shift towards more openness, more transparency, and less privacy.
Most people don’t event know what information they are giving up or to whom. For example, in their
recent Privacy Index, EMC EMC +4.00% found that 51% of respondents were not willing to give up their
personal information for a better experience (27% were), however, how many of these people realize that they are
already doing this multiple times over every single day? In fact it’s safe to say that if you want privacy then you
probably shouldn’t be using the internet or own a cell phone. Privacy is even going to become
more futile with the internet of things as every device with an on an off switch will be connected to
the web. In the next few years appliance and device connectivity is going to come standard with
toothbrushes, cars, coffee makers, alarm clocks, watches, headphones, and anything else you
can think of. We will have to pay a premium for NON connected devices.
It doesn’t appear that businesses or governments are going to protect us either, if anything there is a lack of education
and no desire to educate the masses on these issues. I’m not quite sure how we got to this point, one minute I
was filling out my profile to join Facebook and the next minute some company I’ve never heard of has hundreds of data points on
me, and on you!
Are we too far over the line to head back to the other side? Is it even possible to do so?
I’ve just talked about social media data above but what about your health records, browsing habits, purchases, financial data, or
employment information? Although some of these forms of data might be considered to be more secure than others many social
media users are actually publicly sharing this information online on their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Instagram photos,
Foursquare check-ins, Linkedin profiles, or anywhere else you can think of. So it’s not just the fact that companies
have information about us that we don’t know they are collecting it’s about the fact that we are
opting in to this lack of privacy and in many case go above that by actually purposefully sharing
private information.
It seems like going forward we have two choices. We can either accept that privacy is dead and that we now
live in an open world or we can challenge this notion and continue to fight for privacy. The second
option seems to be a bit of a paradox though. We want more security and more privacy but at the
same time we want:
our corporations to be more open and transparent
to use social technologies without we don’t want being able to see our information
to be able to buy and use free products and services without giving up anything in return
to opt into using things like Google and iTunes without reading the terms and conditions agreements, assuming that they have our
best interest in mind
What’s scary is that we’ve gotten to a point where many of the things we do and the tools we use
are such a big part of our lives that we HAVE to use them today. Are you really going to delete
your Facebook account, stop using Google, no longer buy products online, or ditch your iPhone?
No, you’re not because everyone else that you know on this planet is using those same things as
well.
A large part of the issue isn’t just around the “is privacy dead?” discussion but it also centers around the fact that even if the
majority of the world’s population decided that it was time to do something about privacy where
would we even start and how effective would a “solution” be?
So is privacy dead? It sure seems that way, and we are the ones who killed it without even
knowing it.
Shift Turn
Banning license plate surveillance leads to more intrusive surveillance—turns the
aff
Janowski et al. 14- researcher working now at KT AGH (AGH University of Science and Technology, Department of
Telecommunication) in Poland (Lucjan, “Quality assessment for a visual and automatic license plate recognition”, Multimedia Tools
and Applications January 2014, Volume 68, Issue 1, pp 23-40, Springer)//WK
The transmission of video is often used for various applications outside of the entertainment
sector, and generally this class of video is used to perform specific tasks . Examples of these
applications are security, public safety, remote command and control, and sign language .
Monitoring of public urban areas (traffic, intersections, mass events, stations, airports, etc.) for safety threats
using transmission of video content has became increasingly important because of a general
increase in crime and acts of terrorism (e.g. attacks on the World Trade Center and the public transportation systems
in London and Madrid). Nevertheless, video surveillance is also viewed with concern by numerous civil
right organizations, which see foremost the need for the protection of citizens against Orwellianlike “permanent surveillance”. Among these, we should mention the Liberty Group (dedicated to human rights), an Open
Europe organization, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Ethics Board of the FP7-SEC INDECT (INDECT is intelligent
information system supporting the observation, search and detection of suspicious or criminal activity in order to protect the security
of citizens in an urban environment) [9]. This matter was also one of the main themes (“Citizens Security Needs Versus Citizens
Integrity”) of the Fourth Security Research Conference organized by the European Commission (September 2009) [11]. Despite this,
many studies suggest that public opinion about CCTV is becoming more favorable [14]. This trend intensified after
September 11, 2001. Furthermore, methods do exist that partially protect privacy. They are based
on the selective monitoring of privacy information like faces or license plates . Than automatic
erasing of faces/license plates not related to the investigation is possible. One of possible
technique to achieve privacy protection is private part of image hiding using digital watermarking.
Protecting privacy is important aspect of CCTV systems but we need a working system i.e. system which makes it possible, for
authorized person, to access the full signal. Unfortunately in some cases the signal produced by a camera is “protected” from seeing
by anyone. Such situation is caused by artefacts. Anyone who has experienced artefacts or freezing play while watching an action
movie on TV or at a live sporting event, knows the frustration accompanying sudden quality degradation at a key moment.
However, for practitioners in the field of public safety the usage of video services with blurred
images can result in much more severe consequences. The above-mentioned facts convince us
that it is necessary to ensure adequate quality of the video. The term “adequate” quality means
quality good enough to recognize objects such as faces or cars.
Status Quo Solves
Status quo accountability measures solve privacy concerns
Lord 4/5 – Reporter on the project team at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, focused on data, privacy and security.
(2015, Rich,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Recording license plates can help solve crimes. But what becomes of all that data?”, http://www.postgazette.com/local/region/2015/04/05/license-plate-recognition-homeland-security-privacy-data/stories/201504030307 // SM)
Ms. Catron of Homeland Security said safeguards were in place in potential government use of
data. “Among other protections designed to guard against potential misuse, access would be
strictly limited to those ICE employees properly trained and authorized to use the database and
will include internal controls, like an audit trail, to ensure the database is only used for official,
sanctioned, law enforcement activity. Accountability, including potential disciplinary measures,
will also exist for personnel who abuse or violate the rules associated with access to license plate
reader data. These restrictions will provide essential privacy and civil liberty protections , while
enhancing our agents’ and officers’ ability to locate and apprehend suspects who could pose a threat
to national security and public safety.”
The proposal has been scaled back by more than half to avoid infringing on
privacy – but the program is still necessary to solve fugitives and crime – this ev
postdates and assumes all their ev
Sternstein 5/4/2015 (Aliya, reports on cybersecurity and homeland security systems, “DHS SCALES BACK LICENSE
PLATE-TRACKING SURVEILLANCE” May 4th 2015 http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2015/05/dhs-scales-back-license-platetracking-surveillance/111808/, mmv)
The Department of Homeland Security has scaled back the scope of contractor requirements for
what would have been a nationwide license plate-scanning effort, amid continued uproar over the on-againoff-again project. The new system, announced last month, will compile license plate records from "at least 25
states" instead of all states, DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said in a May 1 modification of the
contract requirements. Officials later told Nextgov relaxing the requirements would allow more companies to compete for the job.
More than a year ago, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson cancelled a similar plate-tracking project after concerns were raised that plate
data-searching tools essentially amounted to location-tracking technology. ICE officials say the service is intended to help
apprehend immigrant fugitives, along with individuals suspected of child pornography, illegal
arms exports and other illegal activity. Under the revised plan, the number of records supplied monthly
by the contract would also decrease. The modified contract says the vendor must supply at least
6 million records per month, replacing April specifications that at least 30 million records be
available. The number of metro areas under surveillance also will be somewhat restricted. Rather
than compiling plate data from 30 metro areas, the vendor will aggregate data from 24 metro
areas. License-plate recognition companies index images of plates from surveillance cameras at
toll roads, parking lots and other locations across the country, in part, to help authorities track the
movements of suspects. The ICE service will scour for "known license plate numbers associated
with the aliens who are immigration enforcement priorities” and track “where and when the
vehicle has traveled within a specified period of time,” government officials say. Homeland Security
maintains the service will not create a repository of license plate data, but instead create a mechanism to
search separate databases maintained by private companies and government agencies. "ICE is neither seeking to build
nor contribute to any public or private" database, officials said in a solicitation for vendors issued April 17. The
purpose of the contract is to provide authorities round-the-clock access to "a commercially
available, query-based" license plate database for ICE law enforcement personnel . Early in April,
indications surfaced that last year’s nixed project was making a comeback, with the publication of a privacy impact assessment
describing how ICE "intends to procure the services of a commercial vendor of [license plate reader] information." The American
Civil Liberties Union and other public advocacy groups still view the service as akin to having Big Brother in the passenger seat.
"It's appropriate to use license plate scanners to check for wanted vehicles, but the technology
should never be used to store up databases of the movements of vehicles that are not on any hot
lists," ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley and ACLU legal assistant Bennett Stein wrote in an April 6 blog entry. "It violates
the longstanding tenet that the government not monitor citizens unless it has individualized suspicion of involvement in wrongdoing."
Status quo solves – states have begun banning license plate readers and drones
Electronic Privacy Information Center 7/2/2015 (epic.org, non-profit research center on surveillance,
“States Adopt Privacy Laws for Student Data, Breach Notification, License Plate Readers, and Drones”, July 2 2015,
https://epic.org/2015/07/states-adopt-privacy-laws-for-.html, mmv)
Several states have recently enacted new privacy laws. New Hampshire and Oregon passed student privacy
legislation modeled after California's Student Online Personal Information Protection Act. Rhode Island and Connecticut
enacted new consumer privacy and data breach notification laws. A new Minnesota law limits the
data police may capture using automated license plate readers and requires the deletion of all
data not relevant to an investigation. And the Freedom from Unwanted Surveillance Act, a law in
Florida regulating the commercial use of drones, went into force this week. EPIC's State Policy Project is
monitoring privacy bills nationwide.
Their ev is all hype – one city is monitoring license plates and only at 10 locations
Fremont Bulletin 7/16/2015 (Fremont Bulletin staff writers, news agency, “Fremont to install license plate reading
cameras”, July 16 2015, http://www.paradisepost.com/general-news/20150716/fremont-to-install-license-plate-reading-cameras/1,
mmv)
As part of a Fremont Police Department strategy to reduce crime, the city is moving ahead with
the installation of video surveillance and license plate reading cameras at major roadway exit
locations. On Tuesday night, Fremont City Council unanimously approved the nearly $300,000 purchase of equipment and
implementation of services from Modesto-based QPCS LLC. There were no speakers from the public on the matter. However, more
than 330 responses have been posted in the past year on the city's Open City Hall website to the question, "Do you think
community-based video surveillance cameras would enhance public safety and make our community safer?" Council
members approved the appropriation from the general fund to the Capital Improvement Program
for police community-based cameras in June 2014. Under the proposal, the police department will position high
definition cameras at specific exit points to capture the front of the vehicle and potentially the occupants, and install license plate
reading cameras to capture the rear license plate. "The proposed community-based video camera project is
intended to work in conjunction with, and to enhance, privately-owned systems to assist in
identifying and apprehending suspects involved in crimes committed in the city," according to city staff
reports. QPCS' plan includes 3M automated license plate readers, or LPR, cameras, high definition
cameras, associated secondary equipment and installation services for 10 exit locations. Among the
police department's crime prevention strategies are a focus on serious and habitual offenders, increased two-way communication
with the community, and encouraging the use of home and commercial video surveillance technology. " Many of those
responsible for serious crimes, such as robbery and burglary, do not commit an isolated offense;
they may be responsible for a series of offenses. Beginning in 2012, the Fremont Police Department
instituted a strategy of concentrating its efforts and resources on arresting suspects indicated to
be responsible for habitually committing burglaries. The police department believes that this
strategy is one reason for the drop in the city's burglary rate ," the city said. According to the city, statistical
samples indicate the majority of offenders who commit some form of crime in the city are not Fremont residents. For example, out of
the 46 suspects convicted of burglary in Fremont from Nov. 1, 2012 through April 30, 2013, 39, or 85 percent, were non-Fremont
residents. "In almost all of these cases, suspects used a vehicle when fleeing the crime scene . Using
this information, the initial emphasis for the camera project is to focus on the city's exit points,
thereby affording the greatest likelihood of capturing images of suspects, their vehicles, and their
license plates," the city said. Video recordings will be stored on a secure server at the Fremont Police
Department and will be saved for 30 days before being purged, according to the city. Video will only be
saved for longer than 30 days if it is evidence in a specific crime.