S.T.O.P. Welcomes Poll Showing Declining American Support For Surveillance

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View this email in your browser For Immediate Release S.T.O.P. Welcomes Poll Showing Declining American Support For Surveillance (New York, NY, 9/7/2021) - Today, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), a New York-based privacy group, welcomes a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs showing declining American support for bulk surveillance methods compared to a decade ago. Sentiment on some surveillance tactics has inverted since prior polling. Now, 46% of Americans oppose bulk interception of international emails, with only 27% supporting it. In 2011, 47% were in support and 30% opposed. The poll showed declining support for nearly every form of surveillance, including monitoring of calls, search histories, and random airport searches. SEE: AP – Americans warier of US government surveillance: AP-NORC poll https://apnews.com/article/technology-afghanistan-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-government-surveillance-d365f3a818bb9d096e8e3b5713f9f856 “After 9/11, we were promised that surveillance would bring us safety, but that was a lie," said Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn. “More and more Americans are recognizing that the endless surveillance comes at an untenable price, but provides no benefits. These systems fail to actually stop the sorts of attacks that were used to justify their installation in the first place. Meanwhile, we continue to see the surveillance state creep into areas of our lives where tracking was once unthinkable. Most alarmingly, many of today’s most invasive surveillance tools didn’t even exist a decade ago. We’ve seen systems designed for battlefields abroad increasingly installed at the state and local level." Last month, the civil rights group welcomed Google’s agreement to begin reporting the number of geofence warrants it receives each quarter. First used in 2018, geofence warrants allow police to track everyone in a specified area using a single court order. Google’s data showed an alarming increase, with police submitting thousands of geofence warrants each month, accounting for a quarter of all court orders. SEE: Release - Google Agrees To Civil Rights Groups’ Demand For Geofence Warrants Report https://www.stopspying.org/latest-news/2021/8/19/google-agrees-to-civil-rights-groups-demand-for-geofence-warrants-report Cahn continued, “this data is damning, but it would be even worse if Americans were asked about some of the most destructive tracking tools now being used. Warrantless email searches are problematic, but new tools like facial recognition, social media monitoring, and geofence warrants are far worse.” The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project is a non-profit advocacy organization and legal services provider. S.T.O.P. litigates and advocates for privacy, fighting excessive local and state-level surveillance. Our work highlights the discriminatory impact of surveillance on Muslim Americans, immigrants, and communities of color.   CONTACT: S.T.O.P. Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn; Copyright © 2019 Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.