The ACLU is Arming Lawyers to Expose State Surveillance Secrets
"Fnord666" writes:
Liberties Union of Massachusetts says it's releasing an online toolkit this week for criminal defense attorneys designed to uncover whether police used surveillance technologies -facial recognition, automatic license plate readers, gunshot detection systems, and more-to build the cases against their clients in secret.
The toolkit, which the group describes as the first of its kind, is built around handcrafted legal motions that, when granted by a judge, will force prosecutors to reveal whether surveillance technology was used against a defendant. It covers an array of technologies, from "stingray" phone trackers and location data sold by commercial brokers to AI-drafted police reports and forensic tools that crack phones and siphon data from car infotainment systems.
It also includes preservation motions-demands that surveillance data be saved before it is deleted automatically-aimed at government agencies and private vendors alike. The filings rest on a bedrock rule of American criminal law, established in 1963, that prosecutors are required to turn over all evidence that could help the defense. The motions will be distributed through a password-protected library, the ACLU of Massachusetts says, available only to verified defense attorneys.
The group is fighting a war against unregulated surveillance tools on two fronts, says Jennifer Herrmann, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts and one of the toolkit's authors. One front is pressuring cities to drop tools like Flock , the license plate reader network, and ShotSpotter , the gunshot detection system, outright. The other is arming defense lawyers to expose the surveillance in court.
"The amount of time that it can take for that initial use of technology and investigation to actually get to a court and constitutional challenge is long," Herrmann says-so the motions give attorneys a way to "challenge what has already happened in the past," building a record that carries over to whatever tool comes next.
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