News & Commentary

"We are a nation living with two sets of laws, one public...guided by the Constitution and a second, invisible text that exists between the lines of that document." To William Arkin, an internationally known security and military expert and lead speaker in the ACLU-VT's Surveillance Conference Oct. 30, the first is the familiar "ABC" government. The second is the "XYZ" government, "the charter of another realm, one beyond the reach of Congress, the courts, and the people...."

A city and a school district decided this week that surveillance cameras are friend, not foe, and that we better get used to being watched.

On Wednesday night, the Harwood Union High School Board will take up the issue of whether students should be watched by video cameras as they attend school. This isn't just about after-hour break-ins at the school, which Harwood has recently experienced, though. It's about watching students as they go about the business of walking to class, heading for lunch in the cafeteria, or running outside for phys ed. It's surveillance, and it's the sort of thing that habituates us to the idea that we're becoming a surveillance society.

In an important ruling for government transparency and accountability, the Vermont Supreme Court said Friday that the public has the right to see internal investigations of police officers suspected of misconduct. Shame and embarrassment aren't grounds to deny the public access to records that can shine a light on oversight and management of public employees, the court said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy has written the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asking for clarification of plans by the Border Patrol to build permanent internal checkpoints along major north-south Interstate highways in New England, including I-91 and I-89 in Vermont, according to the Valley News. The checkpoints would be miles from any international boundary -- but within the 100-mile zone the Border Patrol claims as its jurisdiction to stop motorists for no specific reason.

More information released by Edward Snowden and reported over the weekend by The New York Times shows that the NSA is tapping into "material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data." That information is added to our e-mails and phone call "metadata." From all these sources, the Times reports, is created a "portrait of an individual, one that is perhaps more complete and predictive of behavior than could be obtained by listening to phone conversations or reading e-mails, experts say."

In 2012, the ACLU of Vermont made a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to federal agencies, asking for details about Border Patrol checkpoints on Vermont highways. Whan we reviewed the information we received, two things stood out. First, the U.S. government has prepared a detailed study of possible sites on which to build eight-acre, permanent Border Patrol checkpoints as many as 100 miles from the Canadian border along north-south Interstate highways in New England. Second, we found that most of the interdiction done at the temporary White River Junction (Hartford) Border Patrol checkpoint on I-91 is seizure of drugs, most of that marijuana, and most of that small amounts of marijuana. Securing the border against terrorists -- the justification for a greater Homeland Security presence in the state -- seems of minor importance, based on federal reports.

At a press conference on Constitution Day, Sept. 17, the ACLU-VT released a new report titled Surveillance on the Northern Border. The report details surveillance methods and technologies that are, or could soon, be used in Vermont and the rest of the country. Read it to learn how Vermonters' privacy is eroding -- often without our knowledge.

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