The Oregon Department of Justice’s Illegal Surveillance Shows It Lives Inside a Bubble of Bias
This blog originally appeared on the ACLU of Oregon .
The state of Oregon last week finally released the long awaited on its Department of Justice’s surveillance of people using the Black Lives Matter hashtag among others. The report and the , the work of an independent investigator, is disturbing and reveals a range of deeply troubling issues about the Justice Department’s Criminal Justice Division, so much so, that we decided we needed to tackle it in separate posts.
I want to take a moment to explore what we learned about the implications of law enforcement’s echo chamber of prejudice and shallow cultural knowledge.
You may have already seen the media delight in the fact that DOJ analysts mistook Public Enemy’s logo as a sign of an imminent threat to law enforcement. (Public Enemy was a hip-hop group popular in the late ’80s and ’90s whose music infused commentary about the political and social experience of Black Americans. “Fear of a Black Planet” still stands as one of my top 10 hip hop albums of all time.)
As DOJ was illegally examining the Twitter feed of one of their own employees ensnared in DOJ’s electronic surveillance of people who used the Black Lives Matter hashtag in Salem, Oregon, a DOJ agent saw the Public Enemy logo with words from one of their live albums: “Consider Yourselves Warned!!!” Apparently this image stood out along with a range of other satirical, political cartoons and images even though these images are easily found on social media sites belonging to hundreds of thousands of reasonably politicized people of color. The next thing that happened was a threat assessment report was written and went all the way to the desk of Oregon’s attorney general.
Wait! What?
This situation may lead some to joke about how DOJ’s Criminal Justice Division needs training on basic hip hop history, but the DOJ report shows a very disturbing pattern. The Criminal Justice Division is in charge of identifying and assessing threats to the public and law enforcement, but their lack of diversity and cultural competency has them utterly disconnected to reality.
The report shows that DOJ analysts and supervisors have no clue how to recognize run-of-the-mill political cartoons and commentary from things that should actually concern them. For instance, a satirical cartoon showing a police officer shooting at a monument of MLK elicited the following response from an analyst: The cartoon “makes it appear that law enforcement hate everything that Martin Luther King stood for” and other posts were “making all white people seem racist.”
Can I get just a little bit of self-reflection from the Criminal Justice Division at DOJ? It is no mystery that America’s criminal justice system is damaged by shameful and severe racial disparity, and we live in a country where instances of law enforcement being held accountable for misconduct are few and far between. It should be relatively clear why and how the level of trust between law enforcement and communities of color has been so damaged. Apparently graphic satire can’t be used as humor or a coping mechanism by people of color dealing with institutional racism without it being considered a threat.
But the report also shows a larger national problem. Analysts repeatedly reference hearing or seeing reports from other law enforcement agencies that perpetuate deeply biased thinking, framing Black Lives Matter activists as threats. (We’re for their release, too.) We see a self-reinforcing bubble of bias among law enforcement agencies with absolutely no counter balance or reality check. In other words, law enforcement agencies are talking to themselves with little cultural knowledge outside of the white mainstream.
They have little training on implicit bias, cultural competency, or profiling, and whatever training they do get is clearly inadequate. So narratives like, "Black Lives Matter activists are threats to law enforcement," never get challenged or questioned. Rather they get propagated. In this climate, racial profiling is a logical outcome.
And yet they are supposed to be protecting us.
This post is part of a series exploring what we have learned about the DOJ surveillance of Black Lives Matter in Oregon. to see all of our posts on this topic.
Learn More About the Issues on This Page
-
Press ReleaseDec 2024
Racial Justice
ACLU Statement on House AI Task Force ReportACLU Statement on House AI Task Force Report
WASHINGTON — Today, the House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) issued its final report, marking an important step in recognizing the serious risks of discrimination and bias posed by AI systems — particularly in law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology. The report recognizes that discrimination and bias may arise in AI systems due to their design, training data, or failures by end users. The report also investigates the complex considerations around deepfakes, open AI systems, and free speech, and urges Congress to pass narrow legislation to address concrete harms. In response to the House AI Task Force final report, Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, issued the following statement: “The ACLU commends the Task Force for recognizing that AI systems are harming people right now through discriminatory outcomes and supercharged surveillance. Curbing those abuses of AI is not a partisan issue, and more concrete action is needed to protect civil rights, while maintaining states’ authority to build on those protections. The Task Force is appropriately cautious when wrestling with issues around deepfakes, open-source AI, digital identity, and other issues, recognizing that legislators should consider a wide array of tailored tools to address real, not speculative, harms while respecting civil rights and civil liberties.” The House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence report can be found here. -
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Racial Justice
Human Rights
Why the Fight for Racial Justice is a Human Rights IssueWhy the Fight for Racial Justice is a Human Rights Issue
On International Human Rights Day, the ACLU is advocating for a long-sought after reparatory justice to end the continued abuses against Black and brown communities. -
Press ReleaseOct 2024
National Security
+2 Issues
ACLU Warns that Biden-Harris Administration Rules on AI in National Security Lack Key ProtectionsACLU Warns that Biden-Harris Administration Rules on AI in National Security Lack Key Protections
WASHINGTON — The Biden-Harris administration today released its National Security Memorandum on Artificial Intelligence (AI), establishing guidelines for how the U.S. government uses AI in national security programs, such as counterterrorism, intelligence, homeland security, and defense. The use of AI to automate and expand national security activities poses some of the greatest dangers to people’s lives and civil liberties. Agencies are increasingly exploring the use of AI in decisions about who to surveil, who to stop and search at the airport, who to add to government watchlists, and even who is a military target. While the government’s policy includes some important steps forward — such as requiring national security agencies to better track and assess their AI systems for risks and prohibiting a subset of dangerous AI uses — it falls far short in other critical areas, leaving glaring gaps with respect to independent oversight, transparency, notice, and redress. The policy imposes few substantive safeguards on a wide range of AI-driven activities, by and large allowing agencies to decide for themselves how to mitigate the risks posed by national security systems that have immense consequences for people’s lives and rights. As we have repeatedly seen before, this is a recipe for dangerous technologies to proliferate in secret. “Despite acknowledging the considerable risks of AI, this policy does not go nearly far enough to protect us from dangerous and unaccountable AI systems. National security agencies must not be left to police themselves as they increasingly subject people in the United States to powerful new technologies,” said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “If developing national security AI systems is an urgent priority for the country, then adopting critical rights and privacy safeguards is just as urgent. Without transparency, independent oversight, and built-in mechanisms for individuals to obtain accountability when AI systems err or fail, the policy’s safeguards are inadequate and place our civil rights and civil liberties at risk.” For years, the American Civil Liberties Union has been urging far stronger safeguards and transparency about the AI tools that national security agencies are deploying, the rules constraining their use, and the dangers these systems pose to fairness, privacy, and due process. -
Press ReleaseOct 2024
Racial Justice
ACLU Comment on the Department of Labor’s AI Guidelines for Employers and VendorsACLU Comment on the Department of Labor’s AI Guidelines for Employers and Vendors
WASHINGTON — Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released a roadmap for artificial intelligence (AI) best practices, designed to ensure that emerging technologies such as AI enhance job quality, benefit workers, and comply with existing employment laws when they are used in the workplace. The best practices, pursuant to President Biden’s executive order on the development and use of AI, include recommendations for AI system developers and employers that prioritize workers’ experiences and empowerment throughout the entire AI lifecycle – from design to use and oversight. These practices also call on employers and developers to create standards and processes to identify and mitigate risks from AI systems, such as threats to health and safety, civil rights, privacy, fair labor rights, and labor organizing prior to a developer marketing them or an employer deploying them, and recommend turning to different systems when sufficient mitigation is not possible. “We applaud DOL for issuing best practices for use of AI that center workers’ empowerment, civil rights, privacy, and safety protections and call on developers and employers to adopt critical guardrails in developing, procuring and using AI systems. Employers and developers should take note, as many have been burying their heads in the sand on their risk of legal liability with respect to AI tools,” said Olga Akselrod, senior staff attorney of the ACLU Racial Justice Program. “Following these best practices for AI can help employers and developers ensure that they do not violate existing civil rights and other employment laws that protect workers.” The best practices also recommend transparency measures through conducting and publishing impact assessments, notice and recourse for impacted workers, and measures to minimize worker displacement. The DOL also stated that employers should minimize electronic monitoring and avoid unnecessary collection or retention of worker data.