Carol Rose is the executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

As the nation reckons with the terrible cost of this pandemic—the loss of loved ones and unprecedented economic hardship—we must ensure that our democracy itself does not suffer irreparable harm. Given expert warnings that cases of COVID-19 will persist or even spike in the fall, and given the likelihood that physical distancing will need to continue, Congress and state governments should act swiftly to pass legislation that will safeguard our elections and make it possible for all eligible voters to cast their ballots without undermining public health.

The recent elections in Wisconsin serve as a cautionary tale to other states: Nobody should be forced to choose between their health and basic rights.

Thankfully, Massachusetts legislators are working to make sure voters do not have to face that impossible choice here. Already there are several proposals—including bills by Senator Cynthia Creem, Senator Rebecca Rausch, and Representative Adrian Madaro—that would make it easier to vote safely in the September primaries and November general election. And last week, Representatives John Lawn and Michael Moran filed a bill, sponsored in the Senate by Eric Lesser and Adam Hinds, that would enable widespread voting by mail, expand early voting, and ensure that people can safely vote in person. Together, these steps would allow as many people as possible to stay home and cast their ballots remotely, while protecting those for whom in-person voting is still the most viable option.

Expanded access to mail-in voting is a common-sense solution to protect democracy and people’s well-being during this public health crisis. Secretary of State William Galvin has already said that anyone affected by COVID-19 should be entitled to an absentee ballot; the proposed legislation would affirm that any Bay State voter can vote absentee in the fall as a precautionary measure. Importantly, the bill would also require the Secretary of State to mail every registered voter an absentee ballot for the general election. Absentee ballots would be mailed at least 19 days before the election, with return postage pre-paid and in several languages. Voters shouldn’t have to go to extraordinary lengths or put themselves or others in danger to cast their ballots.

But we can’t rely solely on absentee ballots—something the ACLU of Massachusetts made clear in a recent letter to state leaders. The Commonwealth must preserve in-person voting, in part to account for obstacles faced disproportionately by communities of color, people living with disabilities, and the elderly. Some voters, for example, live where mail delivery is not reliable or may temporarily relocate to a place in order to self-quarantine and therefore may not receive mail in a timely way. Data shows that these groups have been hardest hit by the public health crisis. We cannot make matters worse and allow vulnerable voters to be disenfranchised. We must allow for safe, accessible in-person voting.

To make in-person voting as safe as possible, we need public health protections at the polls, including plans for physical distancing and resources such as cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment. But we also need to support physical distancing by spreading out voting over time. The bill filed by Representatives Lawn and Moran would expand early voting—for two weeks before the September primary and three weeks before the general election in November. This will allow voters to visit polling stations in smaller numbers on any given day and thus enable more effective implementation of physical distancing guidelines.

The ACLU is proud to work with other voting rights organizations and several legislative champions to put these issues front and center. Now, the full legislature must act quickly. We are only a few months away from Election Day, and the government is already approaching crucial deadlines to set the wheels of the electoral system in motion. Time is of the essence, and when voting rights are at stake, we should not delay.

Massachusetts has already demonstrated the capacity to lead in this crisis. The Commonwealth is home to some of the finest research and public health institutions in the country, and they have done remarkable work to curb the spread of this disease. We can and should muster that same spirit of excellence and civic commitment in order to safeguard something equally as important—our democracy itself. This year, more than ever, we cannot afford to fail.

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By Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project at the ACLU of Massachusetts

What if we were just one software update away from dystopia? What if suddenly, without any public debate, the government flipped the switch on a network of super-charged surveillance cameras that could create watchlists of people’s faces and track them automatically as they move through public spaces?

It’s a scenario that some elected officials in Boston are working right now to prevent. Last Wednesday, Boston City Councilors Michelle Wu and Ricardo Arroyo introduced two key surveillance oversight ordinances: one that would establish democratic control over new surveillance technologies acquired by the municipal government, and another that would ban face surveillance technology outright.

The reason for urgency? This week, a key government contract is up for renewal, and the details may have profound implications for the future of privacy in Boston and beyond.

Like most cities, Boston has a network of hundreds of municipal surveillance cameras, which are linked and administered by software that can analyze both live video feeds and historical footage. The cameras themselves don’t have to be all that complex—they just need to record clear video—but the cloud-based software can grow more powerful with each subsequent update, allowing for improved video analysis without the need for corresponding hardware upgrades. In other words, a camera could gain terrifying new features—like face surveillance—without looking any different to passersby.

That’s exactly what could happen to Boston’s municipal cameras—as soon as this week—if the city council doesn’t act quickly. According to records obtained by the ACLU of Massachusetts, the City of Boston has been using software called BriefCam to manage its surveillance camera network; last year, the city renewed its contract and upgraded from BriefCam version 4.2 to version 4.3. This contract—facilitated by a third-party vendor called LAN-TEL Communications—is due to expire tomorrow, May 14, and it’s likely that BriefCam will push the City to upgrade to the latest version, which includes some truly scary capabilities.

How scary? See for yourself in this promotional video that the company posted on YouTube.

Since version 5.3, released in 2018, BriefCam has allowed users not just to identify faces, but to create literal “watchlists,” setting up a system whereby anybody moving through a public space can be tracked automatically, without their knowledge. Add to that the ridiculous claims that other face surveillance companies are making for their technology and its supposed predictive capabilities, and we’re not far from a Minority Report world in which people are automatically flagged by computers as suspicious or even criminal. And this is all assuming that face surveillance is reliable or accurate when the opposite has been shown to be true. Face surveillance is dangerous when it works and—as is more often the case—when it doesn’t.

City officials might argue that they have no intention of using these new features or even updating to the new software version, but there are two crucial problems with that response. First, as the ACLU’s own investigations have shown, private tech companies are ruthless and unscrupulous in promoting their products, and unwitting public institutions can fall prey to these tactics. Clearview AI, the extremely shady company that scrapes the web for photos of ordinary people, notoriously gave out free trials of its face surveillance product to schools and police departments. In many cases—including in Massachusetts—curious employees ran face searches without their superiors knowing about it. And given the level of technical detail, city officials likely wouldn’t think twice about a simple software upgrade, especially if the company pressured them by threatening to phase out support for older versions. (BriefCam just announced version 5.6.)

Second, even if we trusted government officials not to use powerful and dangerous features newly at their fingertips, there is no oversight, and no way to hold bad actors accountable. Save for a growing number of cities and towns across the Commonwealth and in places like San Francisco that have banned face surveillance outright, there are virtually no laws or regulations anywhere in the country that provide oversight of government use of face surveillance technology. What makes Boston’s situation so concerning is not just that the technology is dystopian, but that it could be adopted so easily, with no public debate and no laws to establish even the most basic safeguards of our civil rights and civil liberties.

That’s why the ACLU is proud to work with the Boston City Council to pass these much-needed ordinances, so that we can ban face surveillance and Bostonians can assume democratic control over the city’s rapidly expanding surveillance apparatus. At a time when public trust is essential but tenuous, the last thing we need is to emulate authoritarian regimes like that of Moscow.

Privacy can’t protect itself. Take action and tell the City Council to ban face surveillance!

TAKE ACTION

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