{"id":55023,"date":"2020-09-13T14:07:26","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T19:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55023"},"modified":"2020-09-13T14:07:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T19:07:26","slug":"operation-legend-is-bringing-surveillance-tech-to-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55023","title":{"rendered":"Operation Legend is Bringing Surveillance Tech to Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Police watch while people gather for a labor march on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. April 4, 2018 in Memphis.<\/span>\u00a0Photo: Brendan Smialowski\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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OPERATION LEGEND IS BRINGING SURVEILLANCE TECH TO CITIES<\/a><\/h3>\n
Using federal grants, cities are contracting with companies that hack smartphones and detect gunshots.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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IN AUGUST,<\/u>\u00a040 federal agents arrived in Memphis. Some were already on the ground by the time U.S. Attorney Michael Dunavant announced the onset of Operation Legend and the city became, along with St. Louis, the seventh to be targeted by the Justice Department\u2019s heavy-handed initiative to reduce violent crime. Many of the agents are on temporary assignment, working in collaboration with police; nearly half will relocate by November. But they will leave behind a city flush with grant money for local police \u2014 and heightened surveillance capabilities.<\/p>\n

In Memphis, organizers have long battled police surveillance. The fight came to a head in 2017, when a lawsuit against the city of Memphis revealed years of close surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists and union organizers. \u201cWe knew we were being watched and monitored and surveilled,\u201d said Hunter Demster, an activist who was tracked on social media by MPD. The suit was successful, and in 2018, a federal judge ordered an independent monitor to oversee policing in the city. Now, activists there say that Operation Legend is a serious blow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Operation Legend and its December precursor, Operation Relentless Pursuit, are both funding surveillance technology in cities across the country. Through Operation Legend, Memphis and four other cities received grants for gunshot detection technology, which lines cities with sensors to detect gunfire, despite longstanding concerns about its efficacy. Other more opaque grants from the Justice Department, like a $1.4 million grant to Shelby County, which surrounds Memphis, in April and a $1 million grant in July to the city of Cleveland, are to be used in part for \u201ctechnological solutions\u201d or \u201csupport\u201d for investigations.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police watch while people gather for a labor march on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. April 4, 2018 in Memphis.\u00a0Photo: Brendan Smialowski\/AFP via Getty Images OPERATION LEGEND IS BRINGING SURVEILLANCE TECH TO CITIES Using federal grants, cities are contracting with companies that hack smartphones and detect gunshots. IN AUGUST,\u00a040 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30308,5570,30309,5567,3672],"class_list":["post-55023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-katya-schwenk","tag-mass-surveillance","tag-operation-legend","tag-the-intercept","tag-us-justice-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55024,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55023\/revisions\/55024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}