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TexasTowelie

(111,288 posts)
Wed Aug 24, 2016, 11:57 PM Aug 2016

Report of secret aerial surveillance by Baltimore police prompts questions, outrage

The revelation that a private company has been conducting secret aerial surveillance on behalf of the Baltimore Police Department — collecting and storing footage from city neighborhoods in the process — caused confusion, concern and outrage Wednesday among elected officials and civil liberties advocates.

Some demanded an immediate stop to the program pending a full, public accounting of its capabilities and its use in the city to date, including in the prosecution of criminal defendants. Some called it "astounding" in its ability to intrude on individual privacy rights, and legally questionable in terms of constitutional law.

Others did not fault the program but said it should have been disclosed publicly before it began in January.

The program — in which Ohio-based Persistent Surveillance Systems has for months been testing sophisticated surveillance cameras aboard a small Cessna airplane flying high above the city — was first disclosed Tuesday in an article in Bloomberg Businessweek. The publication was given exclusive access to the company's testing.

Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-secret-surveillance-20160824-story.html



Use of local foundation allowed Baltimore police surveillance project to remain secret


The Baltimore Police Department was able to keep secret the funding for a surveillance plane that monitored wide swaths of the city by routing project funds through a private foundation — whose director says he was not aware of the purpose of the spending.

A Texas-based private donor supplied $120,000 intended for the city surveillance project but delivered to the nonprofit Baltimore Community Foundation, which manages at least two charitable funds for police.

Thomas E. Wilcox, president of the Baltimore Community Foundation, said in an interview Wednesday that foundation officials did not know what the money was for.

"We did not know anything about a surveillance program," Wilcox said. "We do 3,000 grants a year. Someone asks us to give a grant to an organization, whether it's Wounded Warrior or the YMCA, we make the grant."

Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-community-foundation-20160824-story.html

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