Abuse of Surveillance Technology

An officer commits Abuse of Surveillance Technology when the officer knowingly accesses, queries, searches, shares, retains, manipulates, conceals, or weaponizes any law-enforcement surveillance system for a purpose unrelated to a lawful investigation, authorized public-safety function, or documented agency duty. This includes misuse of automated license plate readers, Flock cameras, facial-recognition tools, real-time crime centers, body-worn camera analytics, drones, private camera networks, geolocation databases, fusion-center data, or any comparable surveillance platform. The offense includes using surveillance tools to track spouses, romantic partners, former partners, political opponents, journalists, witnesses, defendants, protected classes, activists, or private citizens for personal, retaliatory, discriminatory, investigative, or unlawful purposes. It also includes entering false search reasons, omitting surveillance use from reports, concealing surveillance-derived evidence, failing to disclose surveillance searches to prosecutors, or relying on surveillance-derived information while obscuring its origin.

This offense is Brady material because surveillance abuse directly bears on the officer’s credibility, bias, truthfulness, investigative integrity, respect for constitutional limits, and reliability as a government witness. The Brady List’s existing offense framework already recognizes as disclosable any information that casts doubt on the credibility or accuracy of a witness or evidence, misconduct connected to law-enforcement service, and misconduct findings reflecting truthfulness, bias, or moral turpitude.  Recent reporting demonstrates the operational need for this category: officers have been accused or convicted of using ALPR/Flock systems to track romantic partners, ex-partners, coworkers, and private citizens for personal reasons, with reported cases in Wisconsin, Florida, Kansas, Georgia, California, and other jurisdictions.