BeatTheChip · @BeatTheChip
23rd Mar 2015 from TwitLonger
Take it or leave it: Occam's razor & the case for #collusion nullification
Secret surveillance contracts may be null & void...now.
By Sheila Dean - Special for Sunshine Week
If you never received public notice of a mass surveillance bid, you may be able to nullify public surveillance contracts on grounds of a colluded agreement.
For years, high powered and expensive lawyering firms in Washington DC, local ACLU reps, the EFF and other activists have been slogging it out in the mud with 3-letter agencies over the right to privacy vs. mass surveillance. Year after year the surveillance gets worse. What possible recourse do we have in the overwhelming face of such trundling secrecy?
What if I told you that you could rip up the surveillance contracts with the Harris Corporation and the Chertoff firm right now? If John Q. Public was not invited to any of the secret bidding, filing and/or application for public contracts, those contracts might be considered null & void, due to an illegal commerce agreement called collusion.
Just absorb exactly how much “secretive” mass surveillance has been placed in urban centers: IMSI/Stingray, drones, shot spotters, A/V surveillance in mass transit, near border-drive-thru-biometric grabs, databases, red light cameras, automated license plate readers [ALPR], CCTV or fusion center data surveillance cleansing & storage.
Have you ever been invited, ever, to inspect CCTV equipment or review the bids and competitors for the ALPR going up in your neighborhood? Ever been asked to look over an independent audit report of a Fusion Center’s security breach plan? What about those first-gen flying Stingrays designed by the CIA called DRTboxes, used by the local PD? No? Never invited for public input?
It could be nullified.
According to Wikipedia, contracts conducted in the space of secrecy against the interest of an affected 3rd party may be nullified. Please consider The Public as a 3rd party.
“Collusion is an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage. It is an agreement among firms or individuals to divide a market, set prices, limit production or limit opportunities.[1] It can involve "wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between the colluding parties".[2] In legal terms, all acts effected by collusion are considered void.[3]”
Just imagine phoning your local City attorney’s office to ask for a nullification hearing concerning mass surveillance on grounds of the City’s collusion. Imagine what that might be like since you are aware of how uninformed you were of the process, bids, fiscal reporting and public impact assessments made on all of the surveillance equipment you are expected to live with right now. You might find yourself making a few phone calls after reading this, to gather your expected right-of-notice grounds to claim collusion. You may also consider that one friend you know at the City who can help you ask for a nullification hearing on grounds of collusion.
I wouldn’t let them talk you out of it either, for good cause. Of all the things you have learned about public surveillance recently is you were informed after the deal was finished. Those making these decisions for you didn’t include you in those secret meetings.
It also means that the City, the local police and any mad scientist selling mass surveillance can be compelled to rip up their contract. They may have to refund the tax money and uninstall the mass surveillance technology making us lose our marbles.
Imagine. Urban mass surveillance could be over as fast as you could say, “collusion”.
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Sheila Dean is the author of the forthcoming book “Rebalance Your Privacy: Removing personal barriers to digital privacy & data reclamation”.
Sheila is an active voice for more technical privacy provisions to improve the digital user experience. She also hopes to help optimize the new modern social discipline necessary to be more private. What started as a dedicated practice tour of the human rights and digital policy lansdcape has landed on the edge of a technical self-leadership approach to reclaiming ownership of personal data.