Electronic Privacy Rights Group Praises San Diego Surveillance Ordinances

Speaker 1: 00:00 Surveillance technology like cameras on streetlights as a hot button, privacy issue. New ordinances passed by the city of San Diego. This week. We'll give the public more, say over how they're used. There was an outcry last year when it was discovered that 3000 new street lights installed in the city in 2016 included surveillance cameras. One of the people who helped push for the new ordinances to regulate these smart street lights is our next guest Lilly Irani associate professor at UCLA who specializes in technology ethics. Lily, thanks for joining us. Speaker 2: 00:34 Thank you so much for having me and for covering this important issue. Speaker 1: 00:38 Yes and no. The existence of these savannas cameras came as a surprise last year. Even the police apparently didn't know they'd been installed back in 2016. Uh, it was part of a smart streetlights program designed to save energy. What are the main concerns that you have about this surveillance technology? Speaker 2: 00:57 I have a couple of, couple of concerns. I mean, one of them is the complexity of these technologies at something like the smart street lights. It has microphones video. It has artificial intelligence on each of those little streetlights. We see that have the surveillance devices on them. And then all that data is not stored by San Diego. It started by a company that has a cloud. So how are we going to keep track of where data is going? How are we going to make sure that when you sell a technology, that's going to observe everybody that we're paying attention to the different ways that people could be made vulnerable by that data being breached. How are we going to make sure our city departments are prepared to take responsibility for what sucking up that much data from our lives? You know, what kind of responsibility that places on the city that they can steward that properly. Those are some of my concerns. Speaker 1: 01:47 So you and others have been working on this ordinance for a while now. And, um, it got a unanimous vote from the city council this week. What would it do? Speaker 2: 01:55 So what this ordinance does is it make sure that the city has support when it's acquiring surveillance technologies and that it has a good process that it can just do over and over to make sure that it has both community input about what the potential impacts of this technology could be in ways that people in the city aren't going to anticipate because they don't live everywhere out in the city, out in these County, out in city Heights. Um, and then it also makes sure that there's experts at the table who are experts in accounting and cybersecurity and civil liberties law, open government transparency. So those experts can also take what we're learning from other places that are trying these technologies out and seeing they're impacting the ethical issues. And so the privacy advisory board brings all those people together to support the city in thinking through all the questions that we know are best practice questions to ask when you're acquiring these things. Speaker 2: 02:47 Um, and making sure that we're thinking about that and taking care of mitigating the risks, taking care of all communities upfront, rather than putting out fires as we discover that the technique costs more than we expected or works in ways we didn't anticipate. Um, the other important part of what the ordinance does is it introduces a transparency and oversight to how the city is acquiring surveillance technologies. So, you know, city council is going to get to come back every year and ask, okay, well, how did it go with the technology? Did it cost what we thought it was going to cost to, to fulfill the purposes that we thought it was going to fulfill? And if it doesn't, we have a chance to try to modify it or change the contract, or maybe just not use it anymore. That oversight is also a key way that we can kind of adjust democratically. If we learned that the technology is doing things that we didn't expect it to do that are good or bad, we can adjust our policies and adjust how much we're investing in it. Speaker 1: 03:46 So now the police obviously have found it very helpful. They're arguing that it's already helped them to solve crimes. How can you balance those public safety benefits with the privacy rights? Speaker 2: 03:57 Well, so this is precisely about balancing those public safety benefits with the privacy rights on a case-by-case basis. Um, you know, public safety is one part of the city and the city, um, has lots of departments that use surveillance technology that all needs to be part of the conversation. This is making sure that when we're talking about public safety, we're making, you know, we're solving those problems with the minimum surveillance that is needed to achieve the goal. And also sometimes technologies that seem like they're going to produce public safety through surveillance, actually have the opposite effect. So one example is automated red light detection devices that are posted at intersections. They are meant to deter people from running red lights by saying, Hey, you know, we're gonna catch you and, you know, send you a ticket to your house. If you run that red light studies that have looked at how the surveillance technology actually affected public safety found that it caused more accidents because people knowing there's an automated detector would re you know, hit the gas to run the red light, to make it past it. And we're likely to get into worse accidents. So this is why we need the oversight piece to make sure that the promises of the technology and the promises that big tech companies make about the technologies are actually being assessed to make sure they're fulfilling our goals. Speaker 1: 05:15 Right? However, the, the police union among other employee unions have been involved in this debate. And on, on Tuesday, San Diego police, chief Dave newsline expressed concern about the ordinance as it's written. Here's what he said Speaker 3: 05:28 In my initial review of the ordinance. I found that our public and officer safety issues, as well as language that may lead to charter violations, I'm also concerned this ordinance was drafted with little to no input from law enforcement, some advocate groups, neighborhood watch groups, and other community groups who are concerned with public safety. Speaker 1: 05:48 Are you concerned that, uh, you know, during this meet and confer process that still has to happen before the ordinance is finalized, things could change. I'm certainly Speaker 2: 05:58 Concerned that things are changing. You know, the trust coalition is continuing to work with city council members to make sure that they're hearing from the police officer's association. But they're also hearing from cybersecurity experts who, you know, who understand how to keep mission critical technologies and secure for federal government for the military. Um, the ordinance has been part of a public discussion in San Diego for over a year. It's been city council committees. It's been in the news. So I respect the neighborhood, watch associations and want to come out and participate, but we've seen overwhelming public support for the ordinance because I think everyone realizes these technologies are really complicated. And frankly, even the SDPD, sometimes isn't fully understand the functionalities of it. There was a case in 2018 where SDPD had a lice, automated license plate reader networks all over the city. They were uploading the, the, they were uploading the data from these license plates that they were detected. Speaker 2: 07:00 The contract. People go into the hospital, go to their house of worship, going to protests. They're uploading all that data to vigilance cloud. And through the vigilance cloud, they shared it. They shared all that license plate data with border control. Now, when voice of San Diego asked SDPD, they said, no vigilant shares that data. We didn't make that choice and vigilant, corrected them and said, Oh, actually, here's the piece of the software where you made that choice to make that data partnership with border control. Even at a time when SDPD has said, they're not collaborating with federal federal immigration enforcement. So we want to make sure that we have a PR a rigorous process in place so that SDPD can keep his promises to the people. But we have lots of examples of surveillance technology beyond the street life that show that these technologies aren't properly being managed right now. And that's why we need communities and experts and a good process to help bring things in order. Speaker 1: 07:55 What, what is the status of those cameras right now? Are they still on? Speaker 2: 07:59 From what I understand from Jesse Marks, voice of San Diego has done the reporting. This the cameras are rolling, they're recording data, and the data is being deleted after it's been on the hard drive for five days, but the city has asked ubiquity to basically keep, you know, auto deleting the data, um, instead of storing it and ubiquitous, ubiquitous says, we'll delete your data when you pay us your outstanding bills. So we're stuck in a really awkward situation right now with those cameras. Speaker 1: 08:30 Well, Lindsay, thanks so much for bringing us up to date on this. Speaker 2: 08:33 Thank you so much. It's really great to talk to you. Speaker 1: 08:36 We've been speaking with Lilly, Irani of the trust coalition, which helped to write the ordinance.