The Gorgon Stare Comes Home: No Spy Planes in San Francisco

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The Gorgon Stare Comes Home: No Spy Planes Over San Francisco

The U.S. Capitol Police, the security agency for the U.S. Congress and the Capitol Region, recently announced a post-January 6th expansion of the agency which included setting up field offices in Florida and California. The California office will be based in the city of San Francisco.

Shortly afterwards, the use of 8 PSSG-M aeriel high definition surveillance systems from Persistent Surveillance Systems were approved by the Department of Defense for use by the Capitol Police.

These systems, known casually as spy planes, provide dragnet visual surveillance over most of a metropolitan area, recording the movements of everyone in public space and allowing the use of street level surveillance to focus on any particular data point.

Their use in the City of Baltimore by the Baltimore Police Department, which was subsidized by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and has since ceased, was the subject of a legal battle in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. An en banc order issued on June 24, 2021 stated:

"The AIR program records the movements of a city. With analysis, it can reveal where individuals come and go over an extended period. Because the AIR program enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements, we hold that accessing its data is a search, and its warrantless operation violates the Fourth Amendment."

Prior to its use in Baltimore, wide angle visual surveillance had been used by the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, usually tethered to blimps or drones (UAV). Persistent Surveillance System units, then dubbed "Project Angelfire" were used for U.S Marines operations in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Later monikers included the Gorgon Stare, named for the mythological protectresses with snakes for hair whose glance turns a human into a stone, and the Eye in the Sky.

Military grade surveillance has no place on our streets, which are not a battlefield.

Tell the Capitol Police, House Administration Committee Chair Rep. Zoe Lofgren, and SF Mayor London Breed that we don't want the Eye in the Sky here and the Capitol Police will have to leave their Gorgon Stare at home.

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Zoe Lofgren, Chair House Committee on Administration, U.S. Capitol Police Public Information Office, Office of the Inspector General, London Breed, Mayor of San Francisco

Subject: No Unconstitutional Spy Planes Over San Francisco

Message:

To the Capitol Police, Honorable Zoe Lofgren, Chair of the House Committee on Government Administration, SF Mayor London Breed, and the Office of the Inspector General I write to you today with grave concern regarding the expansion of the Capitol Police to a field office in San Francisco and the equipment they will deploy. The aerial surveillance equipment produced by Persistent Surveillance Systems, specifically the 8 PSSG-M systems that, according to the press, will be loaned by the United States Department of Defense and maintained by the Capitol Police, have been found by an en banc of the 4th Circuit of the U.S, Federal Court to be unconstitutional and to violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Carpenter v. United States. The high definition video created by the PSSG-M units provides an overview of much of an entire metroplis and combined with street-level surveillance tools like security cameras, outdoor microphones, and automated license plate readers, can pinpoint the location and activities of any resident whenever they leave their home. As Chief Justice Gregory stated: "The AIR program records the movements of a city. With analysis, it can reveal where individuals come and go over an extended period. Because the AIR program enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements, we hold that accessing its data is a search, and its warrantless operation violates the Fourth Amendment." And again: "The AIR program is like a 21st century general search, enabling the police to collect all movements, both innocent and suspected, without any burden to “articulate an adequate reason to search for specific items related to specific crimes.” See Messerschmidt, 565 U.S. at 560. Because that collection enables Defendants to deduce information from the whole of individuals’ movements, this case is not “far from Carpenter”; indeed, it is controlled by it." I do not want this equipment used over the City of San Francisco or its surrounding metropolitan area by the Capitol Police or any affiliated agency or partner. Bay Area residents have made clear, by way of multiple local ordinances, that they expect surveillance activities to be constitutional, to respect civil rights and privacy, and to have only targeted public safety uses and utilize the appropriate warrants. None of this is to say that the events of January 6th weren't unsettling and scary. But using this event to acquire, implement and use equipment that tracks the movements of law-abiding residents is a repeat of the mistakes made after the equally unsettling events of September 11, 2001. It has taken us 20 years to unwind the abuses unleashed by the Patriot Act. Our declaration of independence states that the government rules with the consent of the governed. I do not consent to aerial high definition surveillance by the U.S. Capitol Police of the San Francisco Bay Area.

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