16-Year-Old Launches Organization to Battle Warrantless Surveillance

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Brandon Keibler, Founder and Director, Project Digital Privacy

Bran­don Keibler, Founder and Direc­tor, Project Dig­i­tal Privacy

Bran­don Keibler is just your ordi­nary 16-year-old from South­ern Indi­ana. At least that’s what some peo­ple might think. How­ev­er, hav­ing become an activist at four­teen and help­ing to estab­lish the Restore the Fourth orga­ni­za­tion, this young man has just launched an orga­ni­za­tion to encour­age grass­roots efforts aimed at a tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment that wish­es to dis­re­gard the fact that they are bound by law to gain a war­rant before they search or seize any­thing of any Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. This also includes war­rant­less sur­veil­lance of individuals.

logoProject Dig­i­tal Pri­va­cy was launched on Jan­u­ary 24, 2015 as a result of increased social activism in regards to gov­ern­ment surveillance.

Accord­ing to the orga­ni­za­tion’s web­site, “Tech­nol­o­gy and glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion has reached a steady rate of advance­ment, with new forms of com­mu­nica­tive devices and con­cepts being formed every day. As such, it is in the best inter­est of both cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States and the world to keep it from becom­ing cor­rupt­ed in any man­ner — to pre­serve the pow­er­ful and ever evolv­ing nature of these advance­ments. We are an orga­ni­za­tion that is ded­i­cat­ed to non-vio­lent­ly end­ing war­rant­less dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance at the local level.”

What we’re try­ing to do at Project Dig­i­tal Pri­va­cy is to end war­rant­less sur­veil­lance at the local lev­el by police depart­ments through the use of leg­is­la­tion and res­o­lu­tions in cities and coun­ties,” he told Free­dom Outpost.

In a sim­i­lar method to how Dan John­son of Peo­ple Against the Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (PANDAA) is orches­trat­ing a move­ment to nul­li­fy the 2012 NDAA with its uncon­sti­tu­tion­al indef­i­nite deten­tion sec­tions, Keibler is hop­ing to do the same in a fight against crim­i­nal war­rant­less sur­veil­lance by peace offi­cers. In fact, he said that the mod­el of his orga­ni­za­tion is based on Johnson’s.

In a press release by release by Project Dig­i­tal Pri­va­cy, Keibler wrote:

The goal of the orga­ni­za­tion is to end war­rant­less dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance by local police forces in which pro­grams, like STINGRAY, tap into and col­lect meta­da­ta on cell phones, com­put­ers, and more, with­out warrant.

These pro­grams, while very intru­sive and dis­turb­ing, have not been pub­licly shown to pre­vent crime because, in cities like Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, police have been extreme­ly reluc­tant to release the results of war­rant­less sur­veil­lance programs.

Our orga­ni­za­tion is being launched because of the recent pub­lic atten­tion to war­rant­less sur­veil­lance. We strong­ly believe that every per­son val­ues the nat­ur­al rights bestowed upon them – one of those being secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy, both in per­son and effects. We believe that with the recent uses of pro­grams like STINGRAY by local police depart­ments, the secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy of an indi­vid­ual are threatened.

Accord­ing to the orga­ni­za­tion’s mis­sion state­ment, they are seek­ing to “non-vio­lent­ly end local and state lev­el war­rant­less dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance in the Unit­ed States, includ­ing that allowed through the USA PATRIOT Act – Sec­tion 215, Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act for the Fis­cal Year of 2014 – Sec­tion 1061, The For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act of 1978, and any sim­i­lar laws, by any non-vio­lent means, includ­ing through the use of local leg­is­la­tion, spread­ing dig­i­tal tools, encour­ag­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials who are work­ing to stop sur­veil­lance, and fight­ing to keep laws expand­ing upon war­rant­less sur­veil­lance from pass­ing at any level.”

Keibler said that he was in the process of get­ting res­o­lu­tions put for­ward in two towns in Penn­syl­va­nia and a coun­ty in Flori­da with a pop­u­la­tion of one million.

Under the US Con­sti­tu­tion, the peo­ple are to be pro­tect­ed from this kind of inva­sion of pri­va­cy. The Fourth Amend­ment reads:

The right of the peo­ple to be secure in their per­sons, hous­es, papers, and effects, against unrea­son­able search­es and seizures, shall not be vio­lat­ed, and no War­rants shall issue, but upon prob­a­ble cause, sup­port­ed by Oath or affir­ma­tion, and par­tic­u­lar­ly describ­ing the place to be searched, and the per­sons or things to be seized.

The PDP web­site also has a mod­el res­o­lu­tion that can be down­loaded and used as a basis for activists to sub­mit to their local gov­ern­ments. You can also con­tact Bran­don if you are inter­est­ed in join­ing his orga­ni­za­tion and part­ner­ing with him.