Is Big Brother Coming to St. Louis?

In a country with more people in prison than any other in the world, in a city ravaged by decades of racist policies and police abuse, “persistent surveillance” is the last thing we need.
Over the last few months, city officials have considered allowing spyplanes to conduct mass surveillance in the city of St. Louis. These planes were developed for the Air Force in Iraq, and are equipped to take pictures of the entire city, every second of the day. Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS), the company behind this military-grade technology, claims it as a revolutionary tool for police departments to “make our families and our neighborhoods safe places to live and work.” While PSS uses language of public safety to market their products, they’re attempting to introduce the most extreme level of surveillance technology St. Louis has ever seen. What’s more, the city won’t even have to pay for the technology, because wealthy donors from Texas have offered to front the cost themselves.
Regardless of criminal engagement, every person, organization, vehicle, and city block would be monitored by planes taking photos 24/7 overhead. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) would then have the autonomy to use the pictures collected to zoom in on any individual or vehicle they label suspect. Can the people of St. Louis really trust a partnership between the SLMPD, outside “philanthropists”, and a surveillance company to put our interests first?
Can the people of St. Louis really trust a partnership between the St. Louis Police Department, outside “philanthropists”, and a surveillance company to put our interests first?
In 2016, six Baltimore police officers killed Freddie Gray with abusive and negligent behavior which blatantly disregarded even their most basic existing safety standards. At the same time, PSS was operating secretly across the city, collecting and sending the very same police force mass surveillance data. After their presence was leaked, public outcry forced PSS to end all operations. Even still, a survey conducted by the National Police Foundation itself could not determine that the technology or the data PSS collected was even remotely effective in solving or decreasing crimes in Baltimore. Since being kicked out by the people of Baltimore, this corporation has set its sights on St. Louis, looking to the city’s high crime rate as an opportunity to guinea pig our communities and then sell the model on to other cities across America.
Perhaps the most alarming feature of this scandal is our politician’s clandestine collusion with this surveillance corporation. According to a whistleblower, the city recently changed its privacy guidelines in a secret meeting to explicitly allow PSS to share their surveillance data with federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It should be obvious that when St. Louis is increasingly becoming home to a diverse population of immigrants, refugees, and international students, that we would seek to welcome them and protect their rights. Instead, city leaders hope to literally sell their information to agencies explicitly working to target and detain non-citizens. Even more shocking, they would allow third-party companies to buy surveillance data tracking patterns of movement. How could corporations possibly use this information for good?
According to a whistleblower, the city recently changed its privacy guidelines in a secret meeting to explicitly allow PSS to share their surveillance data with federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On September 16th, one of our team members attended a public focus group in Maryland Heights where PSS’s founder specifically described ways the company could circumvent transparency standards. In a free society, our communities — not companies operating in secret — should determine the balance between security and privacy, and democratically elected representatives should be responsive to our needs and concerns. St. Louis residents do not deserve to have our privacy violated simply because we’ve made this city home. It’s unacceptable that a coalition of city leaders are working behind closed doors with an outside corporation to sell out our civil liberties. Though it shouldn’t come to this, we must all strongly condemn the use of this technology and mobilize our voices and votes against this decision.
PSS claims their technology won’t discriminate against communities of color already disproportionately targeted by police, but their founder openly embraced racist dog whistles at the focus group event just a month ago. We know that surveillance technologies are a well-documented part of smear campaigns launched against activists, from the Black Power & Civil Rights Movements of the 60s; queer liberation, anti-AIDS, and environmental activism of the 80s; and continuing well into the present with Ferguson Uprising & Black Lives Matter organizers, Abolish Ice protestors, and Muslim-Americans post 9/11. Given the extreme levels of xenophobia, homophobia, and white nationalism in America, the potential harms of placing unlimited surveillance data in the hands of police departments already riddled with abuse is almost unimaginable. Picture planes tracking the movement of anyone police decide to investigate: those who use public housing, visit loved ones in prison, worship at a Mosque, rely on our state’s sole abortion provider, or participate in a protest.
The potential harms of placing unlimited surveillance data in the hands of police departments already riddled with abuse is almost unimaginable.
Gun violence, interpersonal violence, and high crime rates are undoubtedly a problem in St. Louis. But to move forward, we must address the root causes of crime and stop taking more from communities already worn down by decades of victimization and police terrorization. Long-standing policies which encourage an arrest-and-incarcerate model of policing and fuel mass incarceration have failed. Violating people’s privacy with weapons used to track down military targets will never bring us justice. We need elected officials who agree, from City Hall to Washington, D.C.
Cori Bush became an activist to fight back against abusive police power, and she won’t stand for this surveillance in St. Louis, or anywhere in America. That’s why she co-authored a candidate’s pledge to end police violence. As a lifelong nurse, Cori knows that we need to treat violence as a public health crisis, investing in our communities and supporting our neighbors instead of handing police departments more military weapons. She supports programs like Cure Violence, which are activist-approved, community-based initiatives to prevent and de-escalate violence with proven results. Cities like Baltimore and Chicago which also suffer from high violent crime rates have seen over 30% reductions in homicide since implementing the program.
Violating people’s privacy with weapons used to track down military targets will never bring us justice. We need elected officials who agree, from City Hall to Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, Lacy Clay has represented our city in Congress for 18 years, and his ineffective leadership has done next to nothing to protect our communities. In 2014, Clay voted against an amendment which would end the transfer of military weapons to the police. Two months later, after the killing of Mike Brown, Cori Bush faced a militarized police force herself in the Ferguson uprising. In 2015, locals were hopeful that Clay’s proposed bill to provide oversight and restrictions on police militarization would make meaningful change. The bill died with nothing to show for it.
For too long, our local and national leaders have ignored our needs; and now, they’re doing everything they can to hang on to failed policies which shore up their own power. We need a leader who understands the dangers of secret surveillance and police militarization, because she’s experienced it. We need a leader who will fight for us, because she is one of us. We have access to just, fair, and evidence-based programs which offer opportunities to heal from the violent crime that has torn apart so many lives. Now is the time to stop investing in failed oppressive ideas and begin to truly invest in our communities.
We need a leader who will fight for us, because she is one of us.
Written by members of the team working to elect Cori Bush for Congress in 2020
Contributing editors: Mihir Vohra & Jessie Thornton
