San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Confusing S.F. law goes to ballot
In recent weeks, a relatively obscure piece of San Francisco’s administrative code appears to have provoked Mayor London Breed’s ire.
“There has been too much focus on … putting up barriers to new technologies that can improve policing in San Francisco,” Breed said in a statement last month, when she unveiled a March 2024 ballot measure that would, among other things, allow the police department to bypass Board of Supervisors approval to use surveillance technology like cameras and drones.
Breed also recently introduced legislation that she said was necessary to allow the police department to use 400 automated license plate readers, which the city received through a state grant to mitigate organized retail theft. Although supervisors have already authorized police to use license plate readers, Breed said that additional legislative approval was required to deploy readers from a different vendor that uses a different type of video format.
In both cases, Breed was taking aim at an ordinance passed by the Board of Supervisors in 2019, which banned the city from using facial recognition surveillance technology and also required city departments to seek board approval to use certain “surveillance technologies” that collect or store personal data.
Breed’s ballot measure, dubbed “Safer San Francisco,” would permit the police department to deploy new technologies under one-year pilot projects instead of seeking Board of Supervisors approval.
Currently, city departments must develop policies outlining how they plan to use a specific piece of surveillance technology. The report then heads to the Committee on Information Technology — a city department that develops tech governance policy and approves expensive tech purchases — where it’s reviewed by a subcommittee and the full committee. It’s then sent to a
Board of Supervisors committee, where it waits 30 days to be heard — a public comment period typical of most ordinances before the board, which can be waived by the president. Finally, it’s sent to the full board for a vote.
All in all, the process usually takes between six and nine months, according to Breed’s office.
On the surface, this sounds like yet another case of San Francisco red tape standing in the way of change. But is this law actually hindering the city’s public safety response? It’s complicated.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who sponsored the law, told me it’s achieved its intended effect of making departments think seriously about the impact of the surveillance technologies they’re using.
“There hasn’t been any drumbeat coming from the literally dozens of departments that are complying with this,” he insisted.
The San Francisco Police Department did not respond
to my request for a comment about the law’s impact, but it previously estimated that compliance would require two to four full-time employees.
However, Peskin added: “That isn’t to say that there can’t be any tweaks made.”
Case in point: When I browsed the Committee on Information Technology’s website to see which technologies city departments needed approval to use, the list included the online survey platform SurveyMonkey and the social media management tools TweetDeck, Hootsuite and Meltwater.
This is — as Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of the Media Alliance and co-coordinator of Oakland Privacy, put it to me — “absolutely crazy.”
A few days after I asked the committee why city departments needed approval to use such basic tools, the committee updated its website to remove “email and marketing analytic technologies.”
That isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Shortly after the law
passed, the city realized that it had outlawed iPhones equipped with Face ID for its employees and was forced to add an amendment exempting them.
Brian Hofer, chair of the Oakland Privacy Advisory Committee who co-wrote San Francisco’s law and similar ones in six other California jurisdictions, called Breed’s claims “bulls—” but acknowledged the law could benefit from more precision. He told me that a coalition of stakeholders is working with Peskin to negotiate a package of amendments — likely to be introduced shortly — to clarify language and reduce paperwork requirements.
“We don’t need to put this on the ballot,” Peskin told me. “We should just have a mature conversation about how to make it better.”
Breed’s ideal reforms, however, are likely more sweeping than what Peskin has in mind.
“I don’t see how (the surveillance law) would be sufficiently streamlined to not take months for public safety tools,” mayoral spokesperson Jeff Cretan told me.
Significant confusion over whether the law permits San Francisco police to use the state-funded automated license plate readers highlights how complex and murky the process can be.
Because supervisors already approved the police department’s policy for automated license plate readers, Hofer told me, Breed’s legislation to let it use the state-funded ones is unnecessary. He pointed out that already-approved technology doesn’t need to go through additional review unless it’s being used in a new purpose, manner or location — conditions that Hofer said don’t apply in this case, since the main changes are to the vendor and file format.
But not everyone sees the law as being so clear-cut.
“We would be happy to not be going through a convoluted process to get approval to use an already approved technology,” Cretan said. But “under the guidance of the City Attorney’s Office, we have to comply with the letter of the law, including to avoid potential litigation.”
A Committee on Information Technology spokesperson echoed Cretan’s concerns, telling me that the law has “gray spaces” that raise thorny questions: “If we operate in this gray space, will it cause harm? Will the city be liable? Is it a safe thing to do?”
It’s difficult to blame the city for erring on the side of caution: In 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union, the law’s co-sponsor, sued the San Francisco Police Department for allegedly violating it.
I think we would all prefer mature conversation to lawsuits and ballot measures. But this is San Francisco, where good-faith discussions and compromises between politicians with different perspectives are as difficult to find as a city process that’s simple.