Are Vermonters living in a surveillance state? The American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont believes we’re fast approaching it — and the organization now has the facts to support that disturbing conclusion. The promise of an actual drone demonstration drew a crowd to a Tuesday morning press conference in Montpelier, where Allen Gilbert, executive director of the ACLU of Vermont, unveiled a new report, “Surveillance on the Northern Border.”
Several years in the making, the 22-page, locally produced report offers a chilling view of the methods used by state and local authorities to gather, compile and sift through digital data that pertains to the activities and movements of ordinary Vermonters. “We are being watched,” the report states. “Today, Vermonters can barely go anywhere without creating a trail of digital information that pinpoints a person’s whereabouts at nearly any time, day after day.”
The ACLU-VT report pieces together all that is known, and not known, about surveillance technologies currently being used to track Vermonters’ location and activities, including their credit card, internet and cellphone usage, and driving habits.
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Ken, could you (or any of us) file a freedom of information request with a government agency to see how many times they’ve photo’d your car, with times and places? I assume this record exists somewhere.
Awesome work right here, thank you for highlighting this.