PRIVACY LAW CHANGES: WHAT’S THE REAL GOAL?

The San Diego City Council’s 6-2 vote Tuesday to make sweeping changes to the city’s 2022 Privacy Ordinance was sought by Mayor Todd Gloria. He says police are right — the complex ordinance, covering more than 300 technologies, “has proven unworkable operationally.” The law was prompted by the “Smart Streelights” scandal, in which the city installed cameras monitoring many different neighborhoods in 2016 — supposedly to evaluate traffic patterns. Then it was revealed in 2019 the streetlights were actually sophisticated surveillance devices. The law requires a multilevel vetting process of the appropriateness of each tech tool the city uses. Body-worn cameras, emergency dispatch systems and fire surveillance cameras are often cited as tools put at risk by the clunky law.

Yet advocates say the real goal of critics is not to make a flawed measure more practical but to make it toothless. Seth Hall of the group San Diego Privacy cites evidence of years of foot-dragging by the city on key privacy issues — in particular, the city’s suspicious struggle to compile an accurate official inventory of existing surveillance technology.

Gloria and police leaders have a case for some of their points. The idea that reviewing all the tech tools used by the city could require more than 2,700 community meetings is, yes, “unworkable.” But if warnings come true — that revisions and how they are interpreted by officials emasculate the Privacy Ordinance’s intent — that will not seem like a surprise. There is substance to advocates’ claims that city leaders have not always acted in good faith.