Thousands of runners will sweat their way past the scenic highlights of central Baltimore in the city’s marathon on Saturday, but the action will not only be at ground level. An aircraft equipped with advanced cameras is set to circle high above their heads, as part of a secretive surveillance programme funded by Texan billionaires.
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“What I like about their philanthropy is that they are bold and they are more willing to take risks and be controversial than your typical foundation,” said Aaron Dorfman, president and CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a research and advocacy group. “That said,” he added, citing their pensions work and the surveillance scheme, “some of the things that they are trying to make happen in the world are of dubious merit.
“The problem here is that policing is a public good and decisions about how to do policing ought to be made by the public and in the sunshine with full transparency. In this case you had none of that – you had donors who thought it would be a good idea to test this new technology and a police force that was willing to take their money and try this out and the community had no idea this was going on. To me that’s a big problem.”
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