Who Watches the Watchers? The Threat to Privacy in the United States

The Walpole Peace and Justice Group is sponsoring a talk on June 5, 2012 at 7:30 PM at the Walpole Public Library by Kade Crockford on ‘Who Watches the Watchers? The Threat to Privacy in the United States.’ The closing decades of the 20th century brought something new: the potential for mass surveillance made possible by the evolution of computer technology. Since 9/11, the government has dramatically expanded its powers of surveillance on all people, not just those suspected of wrongdoing. Our international phone calls, our emails, our financial records, our travel itineraries, and our images captured on digital cameras now swell a mountain of data that is being collected in the name of mining for suspicious patterns and associations.

But while the government has gained more and more power to watch us, it has largely kept us in the dark about what it is doing, building a new architecture of domestic surveillance, about which we know very little. Kade will speak about the growing threat to our privacy and liberty posed by the militarization of the police, developments in surveillance technology without attendant legal reforms, and the prosecutorial and legislative attacks on the Bill of Rights.

Kade Crockford is Principle Investigator and Manager of the Technology and Liberty Project at the ACLU of Massachusetts. Her work at the ACLU includes mobilizing an integrated advocacy team comprised of litigators, lobbyists, educators and field organizers to develop and implement strategies for fighting the growing surveillance state in Massachusetts and nationwide. Kade developed and maintains the website privacysos.org, and has spoken out on privacy issues on local and national media outlets, including CBS radio, Fox News, and WBUR.

The talk will be in the Community Room at the Walpole Public Library, 143 School Street, Walpole, MA. Refreshments will be served.