The Baltimore Police Department and “Persistent Surveillance,” an Ohio-based company, signed a deal together to spy on the residents of Baltimore, Maryland with drones. In Nazi Germany, fascism was characterized by the fusion between corporate and government power.
This shady company was under fire almost 4 years ago in 2016, for doing surveillance with the Baltimore Police Department and violating their own 45-day data retention policy.
Give an inch, they take a mile. Their client, the BPD was able to violate their official policy with impunity.
“All media will be stored in a secure area with access restricted to authorized persons,” states the official policy of Persistent Surveillance Systems.
“Recordings not otherwise needed for criminal evidence or for official reasons are retained for a period of 45 days and then destroyed.”
The company used drones to collect over 300 hours of aerial surveillance footage over Baltimore throughout 8 months in 2016.
This was directly after nationwide scrutiny came to the department in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray, which sparked nationwide protests.
City officials approved the new deal on April 1, and then the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department about a week and a half later on April 9.
The drones will be equipped with high-resolution cameras, capable of posing a real threat to the security of anyone deemed a “criminal.”
The ACLU emphasized that this crosses a massive line, explaining that the plan places every resident of Baltimore “under constant aerial surveillance.”
“It is equivalent to having a police officer follow us, each of us, outside all the time in case we might commit a crime,” senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Maryland, David Rocah said. “If that happened in real life, everyone would clearly understand the privacy and First Amendment implications, and it would never be tolerated.”
The high definition surveillance drones can reportedly cover around 90% of the City of Baltimore’s land area at any particular moment.
Common sense tells us that if one American city is under totalitarian drone surveillance, more will follow.
The ACLU recognized that possibility as well. A staff attorney with the ACLU stated that they are concerned if the drones are deployed in Baltimore, police across America will try to use police drones.
This month, in April 2020 the drones are set to launch, and this “trial period” of their use will last 180 days. A decision will be made by April 24, regarding the ACLU lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department.
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