SURVEILLANCE TECH NEEDS MUCH CLOSER LOOK

On Tuesday, the San Diego City Council will consider creating a nine-member Privacy Advisory Board — an idea that won its initial unanimous approval in November 2020. The board would protect privacy rights of both residents and visitors who face increasing technological surveillance in a city with a troubling history of adopting such programs without adequate — at times without any — public input.

The most infamous of these is a $30.3 million Smart Streetlights project. When the City Council initially approved it in December 2016, it was billed innocuously as a way to use energy-saving technology to assess traffic and parking patterns. But the streetlights were actually 3,000-plus sophisticated surveillance tools equipped with cameras and microphones. When reporting revealed this in 2019, the public backlash was intense, and then-mayor Kevin Faulconer suspended the program in 2020.

That made plain the need for a Privacy Advisory Board with mostly city residents who have legal, accounting, technology and open government experience, not to mention representation from communities of color, immigrant communities, religious minorities and groups concerned with privacy and protest, all of whom have historically been subjected to disproportionate surveillance. Yet it has now taken nearly a year and a half to hold a second council vote to fully approve an ordinance with just that language in it and to create a board to look out for all San Diegans. If the council vote isn’t unanimous Tuesday, it will be a surprise and an outrage.

One of the new board’s first orders of business should be weighing in on the current dispute over whether San Diego police should resume its contract — about $235,000 a year — with Shotspotter, a company that makes its money using microphones secured on streetlights to detect gunshots and then using algorithms to direct police officers to the site. In February, former San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman wrote an essay in The San Diego Uniontribune decrying the city’s decision not to renew the Shotspotter contract because a comprehensive city technology ordinance — which won initial council approval in 2020 the same day as the privacy board plan — had not gotten final approval.

The Union-tribune Editorial Board met recently with two executives from Shotspotter and, separately, three local community members to discuss the gunshot-detection technology and larger privacy issues. The former group made a case that its technology is an important tool to reduce gun violence. But the latter group — Khalid Alexander of Pillars of the Community, Lilly Irani of the Tech Workers Coalition San Diego and Geneviéve Joneswright of the TRUST SD Coalition — made a stronger case that San Diego should not consider such surveillance until the privacy board and the city technology ordinance are both in place.

As Alexander, who lives in one of the handful of neighborhoods with the technology, lamented, Shotspotter “creates kind of a hyper-vigilance and fear among law enforcement ... that gives them an excuse to essentially enter the community ready for battle.” This will only make the trust gap grow worse between communities of color and police — at a time when it’s already widening in the wake of studies showing disproportionate traffic stops for — and use of force against — people of color in San Diego.

But does the gunshot audio detection technology work? Various national reports have explored the issue as 120 agencies have contracted with the company, paying $65,000 to $90,000 per square mile per year to use the tool. Shotspotter is suing one of the outlets — VICE — for $300 million in a defamation lawsuit over its reporting, and it persuaded AP to clarify a 2021 story. But a 2021 study of Shotspotter’s use in large metro areas over 17 years in the Journal of Urban Health found results suggesting “implementing Shotspotter technology has no significant impact on firearm-related homicides or arrest outcomes.” And the company’s claims of few false alarms aren’t backed up by independent reviews.

There’s a lot to look at, enough to raise question about whether, where and how San Diego should use the technology. It’s past time a Privacy Advisory Board explored this issue of trust and technology.