Hunting for \u27Paper Gangsters\u27: An Institutional Analysis of Intelligence-led Policing in a Canadian Context

Contemporary police departments are facing immense pressure to preserve public safety while also remaining fiscally accountable. As a response to economic pressures, police services are turning to intelligence led policing (ILP). ILP promises ‘smarter’ and more efficient policing with the use of advanced technologies and data analysis for decision-making. The present study examines ILP implementation in one urban Canadian police department. Through in-depth interviews with fifteen patrol and middle-management members, fifty-five hours of observation, and an analysis of organizational documents, I examine how ILP reform has been understood and enacted by patrol officers on the ground. From this analysis, I uncover how officers’ perceptions and practices are loosely coupled from organizational claims surrounding ILP. I argue that this loose coupling allows the organization to acquire social legitimation while allowing patrol work to remain largely unchanged. Further, I argue that patrol officers’ perceptions and practices of ILP can perpetuate the policing of usual suspects and raise a number of concerns about implications of ‘intelligence’ practices involving citizens

The Constitution in the National Surveillance State

Late in 2005, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration had ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on telephone conversations by persons in the United States in order to obtain information that might help combat terrorist attacks. The secret NSA program operated outside of the restrictions on government surveillance imposed by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FlSA) and is thought to be only one of several such programs. In 2007, Congress temporarily amended FISA to increase the President\u27s power to listen in on conversations where at least one party is reasonably believed to be outside the United States. In June 2008, Congress passed a new set of amendments to FISA, which allow the President to engage in a broad range of electronic surveillance without seeking warrants against particular individual targets of surveillance. At the same time, Congress effectively immunized telecommunications companies that had participated in the secret NSA program

We the People, Constitutional Accountability, and Outsourcing Government

The ubiquitous outsourcing of federal functions to private contractors, although benign in the main, raises the most fundamental of constitutional questions: What institutions and actors comprise the federal government itself? From Abu Ghraib to Blackwater, a string of scandals has heightened public awareness that highly sensitive federal powers and responsibilities are routinely entrusted to government contractors. At the same time, the American populace seems vaguely aware that, when it comes to ensuring accountability for errors and abuses of power, contractors occupy a special space. The fact is that myriad structural and procedural means for holding traditionally government actors accountable do not apply to private contractors exercising identical powers. This accountability vacuum is not remedied by prevailing constitutional doctrine, which ignores the realities of modern government by drawing an artificial line between the public and private spheres. I have thus argued previously that all private contractors should be viewed as anatomically related to other quasi-government entities such as independent agencies, residing along a single continuum of constitutional accountability. This Article builds on that premise by positing that private-public relationships be structured to ensure accountability as a matter of constitutional law

Public Privacy: Camera Surveillance of Public Places and the Right to Anonymity

Government-sponsored camera surveillance of public streets and other public places is pervasive in the United Kingdom and is increasingly popular in American urban centers, especially in the wake of 9/11. Yet legal regulation of this surveillance is virtually non-existent, in part because the Supreme Court has signalled that we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. This article, written for a symposium on the intersection of the Fourth Amendment and technology, contests that stance, at the same time it questions whether the traditional, probable-cause-forever view of Fourth Amendment protections makes sense in this technological age. Based on an analysis of the panoptic effects of government camera surveillance among them anticipatory conformity, fear that private facts will be exposed, and possible decreased loyalty to a surveillance-driven government this article first argues that the courts should recognize a constitutional right to anonymity in public places. Although courts have rejected constitutional challenges to public camera surveillance, they have yet to address the constitutionality of overt camera *systems*, with zoom and nightvision capacity and the storage and dissemination advantages that digitization brings. Such camera surveillance can chill speech and association, infringe on the rights to movement and repose, and undermine the general right to privacy. It also infringes the Fourth Amendment interest in avoiding unregulated government intrusions. To bolster the latter point, the article reports a study I conducted to ascertain the relative intrusiveness of overt, systematic camera surveillance in the eyes of the public. The results of a survey of almost 200 prospective jurors indicate that camera surveillance is viewed as more intrusive, to a statistically significant degree, than a number of investigative techniques the Supreme Court has found to implicate the Fourth Amendment, including roadblocks. Building on this latter finding, the article relies heavily on the Court\u27s roadblock jurisprudence in constructing a framework for regulating public camera surveillance. The Court\u27s recent decision in Edmond v. Indianopolis held that a brief seizure at a roadblock set up with the primary purpose of detecting crime may not take place in the absence of individualized suspicion, a significant, difficult-to-detect crime problem (such as illegal immigration), or a crime problem that immediately threatens life and limb (such as drunk driving). The article argues that this caselaw should be read to limit camera systems to areas where a significant crime problem exists, and to require individualized suspicion for targeted camera surveillance. Based on Fourth Amendment and related constitutional jurisprudence, it also contends that the camera location decision must be made by politically accountable officials with public input, that rules governing notice of the surveillance and maintenance and disclosure of surveillance results are mandatory, and that accountability requires direct sanctions on those who violate these rules and periodic dissemination of information about surveillance practices. The article concludes with the suggestion that the traditional Fourth Amendment model requiring probable cause, backed by the exclusion remedy serves neither societal or individual interests well. Surveillance of large numbers of people cannot be justified at the probable cause level, and should not have to be. Nor is the suppression remedy an effective deterrent in this context, since at best it benefits an infinitesimally small number of people subjected to illegal surveillance, and in any event is a poor remedial fit with the types of violations that public surveillance is likely to involve. The dissonance between public surveillance and the individualized suspicion/exclusionary rule model suggests a need for rethinking both the type of justification and the manner of implementation the Fourth Amendment requires

Ethics and the Settlement of Mass Torts: When the Rules Meet the Road

The settlement of mass torts through the class action device presents some difficult and troubling issues, including important questions of due process, fairness, justice, efficiency, equality, equity, and ethics. In this context, some of these foundational values conflict with each other and must be resolved by judges who must decide actual cases. In analyzing the applicable laws and rules (class action rules, constitutional provisions, and ethics rules) we find answers or suggestions that are often ambiguous or contradictory. All of these unresolved ambiguities raise the question of whether mass torts are any different from any number of difficult cases our legal system faces. I do think that mass torts present us with some novel issues that question the transsubstantivity of our laws and rules. While others in this symposium focus on the procedural and substantive issues raised by such cases, I will focus on the ethics of such settlements in two senses: First, at the level of professional ethics, I will examine what is ethically permissible behavior in the way in which such settlements are arranged. Second, at the higher, broader level of ethics, I will examine the nature of an ethically just or fair settlement. Although lawyer ethics are only part of the larger considerations of what makes a settlement ethical, the professional responsibility questions raised in recent mass torts cases reveal a bigger problem for legal ethics generally. This problem involves situations where rules are so ambiguous or self-contradictory that they cannot govern behavior clearly

Before You Log-On: Incorporating the Free Web in Your Legal Research Strategy

In 2006, the American Bar Association (ABA) published its Legal Technology Survey Report, which included a volume on Online Research. In the report, attorneys responded that 91% are conducting at least some of their research online. Though 39% report that they start their research using a fee-based service like Westlaw or Lexis, the report shows that even those who start their research with a fee-based resource eventually get it right-87% of attorneys report using some free online resources at some point over the course of a research project

Brooklyn Park: Improving Safety and Policing

This report presents findings from community interviews, a review of community indicators, and a literature review to better understand the root causes of community violence, policing in Brooklyn Park, and ways to address violence in the city