Congress has mandated that starting later this decade, all cars must have a built-in ability to detect drunk drivers and to disable their cars. However, Congress left the Department of Transportation wide latitude to figure out how best to implement such a technology, creating a very real potential that we’ll end up with a system that could be a privacy disaster.

The measure, which was included in the $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill signed by President Biden last week, says vehicles must be equipped with “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.” What is that? Nobody really knows, but Congress defines it as a system that can either “passively monitor the performance of a driver” to detect if they are impaired, or “passively and accurately detect” whether the driver’s blood alcohol level is above the legal limit. If impairment or an illegal blood alcohol limit is detected, the system is required to “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation.”

Driving under the influence of alcohol is a serious problem that results in thousands of preventable deaths every year. But of course, mandating something called “advanced drunk driving technology” doesn’t mean that Congress can conjure such a capability into existence, and it’s far from clear how it would work — or how well.

One key word in the measure is “passively.” Some states already require in-car breathalyzers for people with DUI convictions. Known as “ignition interlock devices,” they require drivers to blow an alcohol-free breath into a tube before their car will start. But Congress has ordered that cars with technology produced to meet this mandate must “passively” detect impairment or intoxication. That means they don’t want breathalyzer tubes; they want a system that will work automatically without drivers having to do anything.

One possibility is that such a system would involve video analytics. Some automakers have already begun equipping their cars with AI cameras that warn drivers if they appear distracted or drowsy. Employers such as Amazon have imposed similar machine-vision nannies on the workers who drive for them. This kind of an ignition interlock system would raise a lot of questions:

• How would it work? Video analytics technology (as we discussed in this report) has made great strides but continues to work poorly in many respects. In particular, a number of driver monitoring products are based on “emotion recognition” algorithms that are so problematic as to basically constitute snake oil. The visual detection of intoxication would seem to be an even harder problem.
• Would such a system falsely classify people with certain disabilities as being intoxicated?
• Such a system would require every car to have a built-in camera focused on the driver. Would that video be stored, or processed in real-time? Would that camera be available for other applications? If so, would the data all flow to the same place?
• Would the system check the driver when they start their car, or continuously monitor them while they’re behind the wheel? The latter concept would involve the collection of far more data. It would also raise questions about how a car that is in motion — and potentially in the middle of merging onto a highway — could be safely disabled.
• Will the system minimize false negatives (allowing some people to drive even though they’re drunk) or false positives (missing fewer drunk people but preventing more sober people from starting their cars)? Every system has errors, but depending on how sensitive you make it you can tilt the balance between false positives and false negatives.

It’s also possible that DOT or automakers (if DOT issues performance-based regulations that leave it up to carmakers to select their own technology) could turn to some kind of system that remotely analyzes the driver’s breath or gathers other physiological information.

In any case, any technology imposed to fulfill Congress’s mandate will involve sensors that collect data about drivers’ bodies, and no technology should be implemented that doesn’t strongly protect that data. Cars today are basically computers on wheels, and the state of privacy of those computers/cars is shameful, with automakers collecting all sorts of data without the meaningful knowledge or consent of drivers. It would be utterly unacceptable for data from AI interlock devices to become part of that data stream. Any system should be required to be designed at an architectural level to prevent the sharing of data. No data should be permitted to be collected that isn’t necessary for the operation of the system or stored any longer than necessary. The purpose of this system is not forensic — it is not to help catch and prosecute drunk drivers. The purpose is to prevent drunk people from driving at all.

This is not some free online ad-supported service that people are choosing to pay for with their privacy or can opt out of; it would be mandated by the federal government. Privacy protection must be included.

Congress mandated that regulations implementing this mandate be issued within three years of the bill’s enactment, with the option for another three-year extension if necessary. That means there will likely be many years in which to consider this issue and to debate how it’s implemented. We will be carefully watching every step of the way.

Learning about dynamics of race and gender is an integral part of any student’s education and necessary to understand U.S. history. But instead of fostering an open and honest dialogue, a handful of states — including Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, and Oklahoma, among others — are passing censorship bills that ban conversations about race and gender in public schools. These bills chill students’ and educators’ First Amendment right to learn and talk about the issues that impact their everyday lives. They further marginalize communities, create an unsafe learning environment, and shortchange students of their right to receive an inclusive education, free from censorship or discrimination.

Anthony Crawford, Regan Killackey, and Lilly Amechi are part of a group of students and educators who sued Oklahoma for its censorship bill, HB 1775, which passed in May. Their stories show how the bill has already had a detrimental impact in classrooms and campuses and why learning about race and gender benefits all students, no matter their background.

AJ Stegall

It’s not the first time America has tried to eradicate certain truths out of history books. When I was a junior in high school, I was kicked out of AP History class when I asked the teacher when we were going to learn about Black history. It was Black History Month, and we weren’t learning anything about any Black people. My question made the teacher uncomfortable. I remember his face turning red. He said, ‘You’re not going to disrupt my class, so please step out.’ So I tossed the books on the floor and left the class.

Later, when I became a teacher, the first thing I noticed was that students still didn’t have a clue about what was going on in society. They didn’t understand what happened during the Jim Crow era. They didn’t understand Reconstruction. They didn’t understand slavery one bit. So I made it my goal to catch them up and equip them with the knowledge they need to navigate society when they graduate. That means creating a curriculum that incorporates readings on race and gender and gives them an accurate picture of history and the systems that created the realities we see today.

Most of the time, my students are the ones who want to talk about race and gender, because these are the issues they deal with in their everyday lives. It helps them make sense of what they witness when they step outside school, like police brutality, mass incarceration, and the school-to-prison pipeline. It also helps them understand themselves, their communities, and each other.

AJ Stegall

AJ Stegall

As an English teacher, my classroom discussions often center themes of race, sex, gender, and equity. These discussions are critical to my students’ understanding of literature, society, and each other.

Most importantly, as a teacher, I must ensure all my students can see themselves reflected in course material — not just the white students. When we unpack To Kill A Mockingbird and Their Eyes Were Watching God, my Black students get to reflect on pieces of their stories by connecting with the author and content within the narrative, which is critical for their development. Their peers — often for the first time learn through literature what it is like to be Black in America and the discrimination that my Black students and students of color experience every day. To share that experience with others is empowering for my students. Students of color and from other marginalized communities should have their voices heard in a predominantly white classroom. A diverse authorship and the themes that necessarily accompany it allow them the space to do that.

Oklahoma’s HB 1775 causes school districts to distrust teachers’ ability to lead these discussions, and as a result, schools are attempting to silence teachers for fear we may violate the bill. School officials specifically instructed us to avoid books by authors of color and women authors, leaving two books written by white men — The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Crucible by Arthur Miller — as our only remaining anchor texts. English teachers in my district can possibly face formal admonishment or lose their Oklahoma teaching licenses if they don’t comply with this directive and are found to be in violation of HB 1775.

As a result of the censorship bill, my school is endorsing a whitewashed version of English literature that is detrimental to all my students and prohibits me from providing an inclusive education to the next generation of responsible citizens. In essence, it prohibits me from doing my job.

AJ Stegall

Courtesy of Lilly Amechi

After two racist incidents in February 2020, BERT led a sit-in and created a list of demands for OU. One of those demands was to create a new diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) course that would enable students to be more aware of how bias and discrimination impacts minorities. When HB 1775 was passed, OU no longer made the course a requirement. I think the impact will be detrimental to all students. And, to students of color, it sends a message that there is no willingness for people to understand our experiences.

The reality is that race pervades the classroom even when it’s not the main subject. In a political science class, we discussed President Andrew Jackson’s role in the Trail of Tears, a mass atrocity committed against Indigenous people, without acknowledging the horrors they faced and continue to experience today.

I’ve been similarly uncomfortable during conversations about slavery. In one class, a student argued that the Three Fifths Compromise is evidence that the Constitution is anti-slavery because it could have not counted slaves as people at all. These kinds of ignorant and racist comments create an uncomfortable learning environment for students of color. The censorship bill will make it worse because it targets anti-racist messages and viewpoints.

Courtesy of Lilly Amechi

The university also removed a sexual harassment training as a requirement supposedly in order to comply with the censorship bill. The training teaches students about consent, respect, and human decency. It is rape and assault prevention. Sexual assault has also been a huge worry for women on campus, and particularly Black women, women of color, and LGBTQ+ women, and we are already seeing the negative effects of no longer requiring this training.

The sexual harassment training and DEI course served as early interventions for students who might consciously or unconsciously engage in harmful behavior. Now we feel we are much more on our own trying to stand firm and push back.

In October, Anthony, Regan, and Lilly were among a group of students, teachers, and organizations that sued the state of Oklahoma with representation from the ACLU, the ACLU of Oklahoma, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and pro bono counsel Schulte, Roth & Zabel. The other plaintiffs include the Black Emergency Response Team (BERT); the University of Oklahoma Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (OU-AAUP); the Oklahoma State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP-OK); and the American Indian Movement (AIM) Indian Territory.

American Civil Liberties Union

BERT v. O'CONNOR

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of plaintiffs the Black Emergency Response Team (BERT); the University of Oklahoma Chapter of the American...

For two weeks, we’ve heard trial testimony and seen evidence of the events that occurred on August 25, 2020 — the night that Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two people and injured another during a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. While Rittenhouse was not found guilty, he was not the only one whose conduct on that deadly night should be scrutinized. The actions — and inaction — of the Kenosha Police Department and the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department in the preceding 72 hours played a critical part in the tragic events that took place.

As we reflect on that night, we must remember what ignited these protests. Two months after the murder of George Floyd, on August 23, 2020, Kenosha Police shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, in the back multiple times, paralyzing him. Faced with this latest manifestation of law enforcement’s systemic mistreatment and disregard for the lives of Black and Brown people, people took to the streets of Kenosha. Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth oversaw law enforcement’s response to these protests, including the coordination of over 40 local, state, and federal agencies.

The day after Kenosha Police shot Mr. Blake, former city alderman and self-proclaimed commander of the Kenosha Guard Kevin Mathewson wrote a racially charged “call to action” inviting armed civilians to protect Kenosha from “evil thugs” the following day. The comments on his Facebook invitation, corresponding Reddit threads, and Infowars degenerated into racist threats to kill and maim protestors.

On the night of August 25, law enforcement not only failed to protect protestors calling for police accountability and more humane treatment of Black people, but actively put them in harm’s way. Officers enabled and encouraged predominantly white, right-wing armed civilians and militia groups that night, creating a situation in which tensions escalated and people were killed.

Following the violence in Kenosha, an investigative team at the ACLU filed approximately 40 public records requests to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies; reviewed more than 800 records and 50 hours of video footage; and conducted over 40 in-depth interviews with community members to better understand what happened in Kenosha and how we can avoid these tragedies in the future. Here is what we found:

Kenosha law enforcement was aware of the threats that these armed civilians and militia groups posed to protestors exercising their First Amendment rights. Mathewson asked Sheriff Beth and Kenosha Police Chief David Miskinis to deputize these armed civilians and militia groups, noting that more than 3,000 people accepted the online invitation to “protect” the city. In addition to this correspondence, community members in Kenosha contacted law enforcement with concerns for their safety after reading this online vitriol. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security told local law enforcement that the Boogaloo Bois, a right-wing group with a history of violence, were planning an event in Kenosha on August 24. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also warned that the conflicting ideologies of protestors and these armed civilians and militia groups could “potentially be a flashpoint for violence” the next day.

Despite the obvious safety threats, law enforcement embraced the incendiary presence of armed civilians and militia groups. In a widely seen video, law enforcement thanked and even offered water to the armed civilians and militia groups attending the protests, as they instructed those protesting police brutality to leave. In text messages retrieved through our public records requests, after someone circulated a video of the Rittenhouse shootings, a Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department officer commented “nice video” in a message to colleagues and added that he was “[l]istening to gunfire. Such a nice night.”

In fact, it appears Kenosha law enforcement coordinated an effort to push protestors south on Sheridan Road, towards armed civilians and militia groups. Ryan Thomas Balch, an armed civilian affiliated with the Boogaloo Bois, was recorded saying on the night of the shootings, “Do you know what the cops told us today? They were like, ‘We’re gonna push them down by you, because you can deal with them, and then we’re gonna leave.’” In an August 26, 2020 written statement, Balch added, “K[enosha] P[olice] D[epartment] made a conscious decision to abandon the people of Kenosha to people they felt justified in using machines and weapons of war against. And were going to piss them off and drive them at us and let the chips fall where they may.”

The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department, led by Sheriff Beth, commanded law enforcement agencies to clear Civic Center Park and push protestors south towards the danger that lay multiple blocks from the park at the intersection of 60th and Sheridan. Multiple law enforcement officers documented their knowledge that armed civilians and militia members were concentrated in that direction, near 60th and Sheridan. Officers from various law enforcement agencies described the use of armored vehicles, foam bullets, tear gas, and flash bangs to herd protestors from the park toward the intersection, and to prevent the return of protestors to the park. After pushing the protestors south for over an hour, Kenosha law enforcement took a strategically timed break, consistent with Balch’s description. These efforts were well documented in the records our investigative team obtained:

• 9:43 pm: The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department documented “gas being deployed in front of the courthouse, goal to push crowd south.”
• 10:32 pm: Kenosha Police Department dispatched patrol to 58th and 8th to “keep crowd moving south on Sheridan.”
• 10:40 pm: Three bearcats moved south from 56th on Sheridan.
• 10:44 pm: Law enforcement continued to push protestors down the road.
• 10:57 pm: Law enforcement took a break.
• 11:12 pm: The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department reported that protestors “have been pushed south and we are holding our position at the park.”
• 11:40 pm: Bearcats from Racine, Walworth, Waukesha, and Sauk Counties held protestors at 60th and Sheridan, and noted a loud crowd at the gas station.
• 11:44 pm: An Oneida County bearcat moved to 60th and Sheridan.
• 11:50 pm: Rittenhouse shootings begin at 63rd and Sheridan.

The West Allis Police Department also described its actions:

At the request of tactical command, the armored vehicles and crowd control [o]fficers would direct the protestors south and hold or move the protestors south and back away north. Tactical command requested several times for this process to occur which led to the protestors being directed as far south as 60th St. & Sheridan.

Three important lessons emerge from this tragedy.

First, entrenched racism contributed to the events that unfolded. Make no mistake, the shooting of Jacob Blake and the related protests and fatalities stem from the deep-seated white supremacy that pervades our criminal legal system. Police officers brutalizing people of color who are protesting that very brutality and leaving people of color and their supporters at the mercy of armed white vigilantes is a pattern that recalls the origin of American police in slave patrols. These patrols sought to capture and return formerly enslaved people to the violence of enslavement, and their later connections to white supremacist agitation during the Civil Rights movement are echoed in the violence seen in Kenosha. In today’s world, Black and Brown people are not only targeted by police and frequently treated as presumptively guilty, but white people brandishing weapons of war are given the benefit of the doubt and even encouraged by officers of those same police agencies.

Second, law enforcement must not be permitted to weaponize the presence of armed civilians and militia. Jacob Blake’s shooting and the subsequent tragic, fatal shootings by Rittenhouse should usher in a significant wave of change, not only in Wisconsin but across the nation. Kenosha is not even the latest example of this pattern of police ignoring (at best) or facilitating (at worst) white mob violence: Following the January 6 insurrection, it was revealed that over 30 off-duty police officers attended the rally, and several joined the mob that stormed the Capitol. We must reexamine the roles and powers of police in American society, and listen to the communities of color in Kenosha and elsewhere that are calling for new approaches to public safety that protect all people, regardless of the color of their skin.

Finally, more officers and weapons do not increase safety. Law enforcement should play no role in protests, unless it is to protect our First Amendment rights, and they should not use violence to control the crowd or silence those they disagree with. Beyond the context of protests, there is little evidence that police effectively prevent or reduce violence, while there are many alternatives to policing that do make communities safer.

As our investigation illustrates, approximately 40 local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies responded to the protests in Kenosha, utilizing various forms of force against protestors. This massive show of force failed to keep people safe — and in fact facilitated grave harm by pushing protesters into close proximity with Kyle Rittenhouse and other armed white civilians. The violence that night is a further reminder that well-resourced law enforcement agencies are failing to protect and even harming the communities they are sworn to serve. It’s time to acknowledge this failure and invest in measures that actually keep communities safe.