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Safety Not Surveillance

Minnesota Coalition Advocating for Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology
and Military Equipment

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   * Community Control Over Police Surveillance
   * Facial Recognition
   * Clearview AI
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   * List of Resources
   * Cities with Similar Legislation
   * Military Equipment
   * Surveillance Technology
 * Get Involved
 * TAKE ACTION: Ban Facial Recognition


THE POSTME COALITION IS NOW THE SAFETY NOT SURVEILLANCE (SNS) COALITION.

What do we fight for?



Police are increasingly using surveillance technology and military equipment to
further entrench racial bias into the criminal justice system, secretly invade
civilian privacy, and wrongfully arrest innocent people.



The city of Minneapolis is considering a measure called Public Oversight of
Surveillance Technology and Military Equipment to hold police accountable for
proper use of surveillance technologies.

Our coalition is a local measure within the ACLU’s nationwide Community Control
Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) effort. The CCOPS model bill has been
successfully adopted in 13 major American cities and counting. Minneapolis could
be the next city to join the movement.

What it entails:

The POSTME measure offers a framework for acquiring new surveillance
technologies and using existing ones. The measure promotes four guiding
principles:

Transparency

Oversight

Accountability

Equity

First, the police would need to generate a public-impact report of surveillance
tech. Next, express city council approval would be required in order for the
technology to be acquired and used. City council approval would come with clear
rules and policies for surveillance in the community, as well as clear and
enforceable consequences for when the technology is misused or abused.

Equity is central throughout this process. By requiring equity-impact reports
and correcting the over-policing enabled by previous surveillance tech, POSTME
would help restore the balance of power between police and community, protect
protesters, and take a step toward ending racial discrimination.

Why it matters:

Surveillance technology is powerful.

It was powerful enough to wrongfully land Robert Williams, a resident of
Farmington Hills, Mich., in a holding cell for 30 hours in January 2020. The
Michigan State Police had run blurry surveillance footage of a theft through a
computer facial-recognition system, incorrectly matching it to Williams’s face
and resulting in the warrant for arrest that tore him from his two young
daughters, ages 2 and 5, suddenly and inexplicably.

Surveillance technology has a long history of misuse and abuse, especially when
it comes to racial bias. Federal studies have revealed that surveillance tech
misidentifies Black and Asian people up to 100 times more frequently than it
does white people. Furthermore, police misuse of surveillance tech creates a
stigmatizing, oppressive environment and is a barrier to transparency with the
public.

Local communities should play a significant, meaningful role in deciding if and
how surveillance technologies are funded, acquired, or used.

What difference it might make in Minneapolis:

In Minneapolis, growing demands for police accountability following the brutal
police murder of George Floyd and the recent passage of the Data Privacy
Principles Act in February 2020 serve as momentum to push local government to
protect our privacy. Protecting our city from misuse of surveillance
technologies is just one way of reforming abusive and
discriminatory police practices, providing a solid foundation for larger social
change.


ABOUT US

 * About The Coalition
 * Get Involved
 * Mission, Vision, and Values
 * SNS in the News
 * Calendar
 * 2020 Oct 22 Town Hall
 * 2021 Jan 29 Feedback Session


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