Restrictions on surveillance eyed
Purchases, equipment usage would require City Council’s OK
Oakland is considering prohibiting police and other agencies from acquiring or using surveillance equipment without City Council approval.
A proposed ordinance recommended by the city’s Privacy Advisory Commission also would require well-publicized public outreach and a hearing beforehand.
And it would prohibit existing equipment from being used for a purpose or in a location other than what was previously approved.
The commission unanimously endorsed the proposed ordinance earlier this month. It will be reviewed by various departments before being sent to committee and then the City Council.
“The commission and city are to be commended for these actions to consider the privacy impact of new and emerging surveillance technologies,” said Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of Center for Democracy and Technology, of Washington, D.C. “Oakland and other California municipalities are still in the vanguard.”
“This ordinance will set a benchmark,” she told the advisory commission.
She added it was important that data deletion be included, urging a short retention time before the information is destroyed.
O’Connor was the first privacy officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The Privacy Advisory Commission was created last year, an outgrowth of the fallout from the Domain Awareness Center. The law enforcement information hub was to have pooled footage from traffic cameras, license plate readers, the city’s gunshot detection system and police records information to aid law enforcement.
After considerable community push-back over concerns the center would monitor residents’ activities and complaints that people had not been alerted to the program, the center was scaled back to only the Port of Oakland properties.
Domain Awareness was not well-received because it showed up without any community outreach or conversation, commission Chairman Brian M. Hofer said.
Catherine Crump, of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, said surveillance is an issue throughout the country.
“Oakland is far from the only city in which the police department or city has rolled out surveillance technology and caught the public unaware,” she said.
Mike Katz-Lacabe, of San Leandro, gave an example.
Through a Public Records Act request he learned that San Leandro police had scanned his license plate 104 times from 2008 to 2010, or “about a photo a week over for two years,” he said. The photos showed his vehicle at his home, the library, cafes and other spots around San Leandro.
He told the commission the San Leandro City Council did not realize the city even had a license plate reader until three years later when the information appeared in a national news story.
Crump said the ordinance does not prohibit surveillance technology but prevents surreptitious acquisition, requiring law enforcement to disclose and explain what it is doing and why.