Cops Play Hide and Seek About Using Spy Tech to Avoid Scrutiny and Bad PR
Police departments across the United States are actively concealing their use of surveillance tools — including license plate readers, cell-site simulators, and facial recognition — by instructing officers to omit these technologies from reports and structuring records to evade public disclosure requests.
Why this matters: When police hide what tools they are using, oversight stops working. Public records laws exist so communities can see what is being done in their name. Deliberately routing around those laws is not just a transparency problem. It is departments deciding they should not have to answer for their own conduct. If an agency tells officers not to mention a surveillance tool during a traffic stop, that is a choice to keep the public in the dark about how they are being watched. That choice belongs to the public, not the police.
Who should care: Lawyers · Privacy officers · Compliance · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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