Our guest today is Albert Fox Chan who is the founder and Executive Director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). The organization fights to end discriminatory surveillance by the New York Police Department and police departments across the country.

According to Chan STOP was set up as an abolition focused organization because they don’t believe domestic police departments have earned the right to be allowed to use the wide ranging surveillance technologies. Domestic policing in American has a long history of inappropriately using force against minority communities and according to Chan these same agencies regularly use these surveillance technologies against the same communities even through they were never approved for use against those communities. Chan provides on riveting example where the NYPD used one of these technologies to surveil and map the movements of the homeless in New York City that were not suspected of committing any crimes. There is little doubt that police agencies throughout urban areas in America have a long history of using state of the art surveillance technologies against the most vulnerable communities. As with force you rarely see the use access use of surveillance technologies used against rich white communities according to Chan.

In our discussion with Chan we delve deep  in to a variety of different surveillance technologies that are being used by the NYPD and I would bet most other large urban police departments throughout the country including stingrays, x-ray vans, and the domain awareness system. The unregulated use of these technologies should scare people interested in making sure that minority communities throughout our urban centers are free from mass surveillance.

Also on the show today we take a look at a couple recent articles in the Sun-Times that are all about a rumored no confidence vote in the leadership of Superintendent David Brown. For more context on Superintendent David Brown make sure to read our report on his hidden suspension for lying multiple times in an internal misconduct investigation while in Dallas and his suspension for his lies.