For those of you who do not have access to Facebook, here is the text of the letter that Wendy Harris sent to the city council and the mayor several days ago regarding this grant.

“Dear City Council and Mayor:

I appreciate the city being sensitive to the controversial nature of the grant request for Department of Justice Beware software and ballistic armor plates. Thank you for setting this matter for public hearing. I also appreciate the need to keep our first responders safe while doing the dangerous job of protecting public safety.
What concerns me is that part of the justification for this grant involves fighting terrorism. It is noteworthy that this grant is being made to the U.S. Department of Justice. This is not an agency that addresses ordinary first responder concerns. This software provides “information from billions of commercial and public records and thousands of web hits about people, places, and properties.” The potential for abuse is clear.
How do we avoid abuse for peaceful protests while protecting against armed insurrection? Increasingly, the government is failing to make a distinction between the two. Domestic terrorist concerns are being increasingly redefined to justify spying on local nonviolent activists.
As an animal rights supporter, I became aware of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). This is a federal law that criminalizes a broad range of organizing and protest activity, and brands it as ‘terrorism’. The law is intended to muzzle animal rights advocates who threaten the profits of animal enterprises through exercise of legal first amendment rights. However, it is written broadly enough that it could be used against virtually anyone who uses the internet to research or provide information about an issue, or who organizes a protest or boycott.
AETA denies equal protection to social justice activists and restricts our freedom of speech and assembly. It unfairly brands as terrorism any activities that cross a state line and interferes with the operation of an animal enterprise or of any entity that deals with one. Such activities may include website posts, peaceful vigils, nonviolent civil disobedience, undercover investigations, and whistle-blowing.
Concerns are being raised that this law could be used to prosecute anti-fracking activists, and obviously, there are more specific local implications with the looming GPT application at Cherry Point.
I previously did not hold concerns about government abuse, and in fact, never commented on the issue of red light cameras. But in recent years, the government’s actions that have been exposed, the continuation of the Patriot Act, and evidence that the government is authoring studies regarding civil unrest likely to result from natural resource shortages, have left me concerned, and frankly, frightened. It is not inconceivable that the mere act of sending you this letter could land me on a “to watch” list.
Please think carefully before approving this grant application, ask many questions and obtain guidelines and restrictions for public protection if this moves forward. As of right now, without hearing a very good argument for need, I recommend declining to submit this application.

Wendy Harris”

As if to second the motion on my article, I found this today in the British newspaper, The Guardian - “Predicting crime, LAPD-style”  I doubt if the Herald will pick up the story.  http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jun/25/predicting-crime-lapd-los-angeles-police-data-analysis-algorithm-minority-report

Excerpt:  “Widespread data collection efforts have faced scrutiny in recent years, especially since information about the surveillance tactics of the US National Security Agency was leaked by Edward Snowden last June. And though much of that data collection focuses on digital communications, a growing amount of information is being gathered in the physical world.

Police departments across the US are considering using drones to assist in policing and surveillance. The LAPD has access to more than 1,000 closed-circuit security cameras. Number-plate readers have been installed on police cars in a number of cities, including Los Angeles. The LA County Sheriff’s Department recently tested out an airplane-mounted system that recorded real-time activity in the entire city of Compton. And by this summer, the FBI plans to have a fully operational face recognition system that will eventually contain upwards of 52 million records.

According to documents released by the FBI as a result of a lawsuit filed by civil liberties organisation the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the database will include not only criminal mugshots but also millions of photos taken for non-criminal reasons such as employment background checks. That lawsuit was filed by Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney at the EFF, who says that the FBI’s facial recognition database is hardly the only one. Law enforcement agencies in San Diego County and in Maricopa County, Arizona, have contracts with private firms to build their own local facial recognition databases, while the New York Police Department has partnered with Microsoft to create a “Domain Awareness System” capable of accessing more than 3,000 surveillance cameras as well as a trove of crime data, 911 calls, number-plate readers and even radiation detectors.”

Have you ever considered the carbon footprint of the average police officer? It is not just his/her salary and benefits. It is not just the energy involved in manufacturing weapons and ammunition. It is not just the recurrent training required by law. It is not just the energy it takes to make the tank-like cruisers and the gas to drive around all the time. It is not just the energy needed to make their fortresses and maintain them. It is not just the “frozen kilocalories” lying about in the emergency response vehicles and equipment that is used only on rare occurences. It is not just the energy cost of the rare earths and other materials in their communication devices. It is also the waste incurred in the research and development of the software made by corporations that then overcharge for a product that is often buggy at best and nonfunctional at worst. There is a high energy cost to this “new” software, as well as a high financial cost. There is also a tremendous amount of waste.

On another note, here is a chilling article on local police departments getting leftover equipment from US wars abroad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html?comments#permid=11985740

Walter, thanks.  I had not thought about this from that perspective.  As for the leftover military equipment, I touched on this issue in a previous article on NWCitizen that you can read at this link.  http://www.nwcitizen.com/entry/the-bellingham-riot-lets-expand-the-conversation?search=&category;=&author=22

Alternet also carried this article yesterday: “Officer Friendly Is the Policeman of the Past—Now They Look Like Navy Seals”  http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/hightower-officer-friendly-policeman-past-now-they-look-navy-seals

I love this picture of Intrado’s THOR:
http://www.timescall.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=4622163