Dirt Coming Out on SF’s New Police Surveillance Law

In September the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a law that allowed the police basically unlimited access to any video feed which the owner allows them to access – without a warrant or judicial oversight and basically, for an unlimited period of time (although there are some limited restraints on this).

A coalition of privacy focused groups like the EFF and ACLU recommended changes to the bill to strengthen privacy, but only one of many edits was actually included.

Of course a business owner or resident could say no, but possibly, the next time they called the police, they might get a chilly reception.

There is no process documented in the law for how police get such a feed or end it. So, basically, there is no audit trail of what they are doing.

The cops say it will help stop crime and that is possible, but it is unclear exactly how the plan to do that. After all, you would need a whole bank of monitors and people to watch them 24x7x365. The reason they want this is because they are short of people. So, maybe, the plan is to selectively pick neighborhoods that maybe, political donors have property in? Or a neighborhood where if they lowered crime a bit they might get mentioned in the news.

Also, it doesn’t say how they would do that. For my security cameras and a lot of others, they would need to put software or software+hardware on my network to access the feed. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG WITH THAT?

It is also coming out that the SF police department privately handed out talking points to citizens who then used those police provided talking points during the public comment period to advocate in support of the bill.

Some how this does not increase public trust or transparency.

The police have always been able to ask someone for a copy of video footage or obtain it via a warrant – this has not changed; they still can. This just makes it easier to do and abuse.

It is likely that this will be used in high crime areas, but since there are no rules or even documentation, it will be unclear how they are using it.

Will other cities follow? I don’t know but it is certainly a possibility.

It will be interesting to see how this is used and whether it is effective.

Check out the link for a more detailed explanation. Credit: Motherboard by Vice

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