I frankly do not care how limited access is, or if parts of the hardware are disabled. I do not trust governments to act transparently.

There are a few telling things in the article you link to that make it clear that the government values expediency over protecting citizens' rights.

The first notable one is the process: a police officer has to submit a request to view video records... but to whom? It looks like just to their superiors? If they actually cared about protecting people's rights, the request should have to be made to a court, in the same way a warrant needs to be requested.

The city points out that the audio recorders aren't active because they don't have a use case for the audio. They claim that they would engage the public before activating them, but... is that really true? And regardless, I would not want that activated, ever. Any use case audio recordings of public spaces could possibly have... I do not want that. Having the hardware there and ready is just too tantalizing to public officials.

I've been thinking about moving to SD at some point, but this kind of thing really gives me pause.

I do care about nuanced use cases, so I’m grateful to upthread posting a source that’s reporting in a tone that contrasts with the pitchfork-waving of the original post. I wouldn’t move back to SD regardless, but that’s not due to the smart lights!

“Too tantalizing to public officials”? Please explain. The city is run by nine elected members of the council. For what possible purpose would they wish to have audio recordings of street traffic?

When they have purchased machinery with microphones and set out policy and procedure like the following: ‘The policy adds that "audio from the City's intelligent streetlight sensors may be accessed exclusively for law enforcement purposes with the Police Department as the custodian and departmental owner of these records."’

That means they are planning to use audio recordings.

That's a straw man.

This is clearly not about recording audio of vehicle traffic, but about recording conversations between the same citizens they're visually monitoring.

Plus, they were very quick to pull the trigger and install these without asking. Clearly asking people who would do such a thing to "exercise self control" in regard to enabling yet another degree of surveillance seems like an exercise in futility.

> strict protocols

Much like discussions about corporate policies, I find it helps to ask what happens when the handbook isn't followed...

How many years in prison does someone get for unauthorized access or (if an authorized user) abusing their access for improper use?

It’s classified the same as other confidential information. There was a senior detective fired because she mishandled the same class of info on a case, so yeah there are serious consequences for breaking these rules. It’s not at all like corporate policies.

So... No criminal charges, just fired? How is that markedly different?

The subtext of my post was that virtuously rigorous guidelines with no enforcement mechanism are a paper tiger.

anything short of criminal charges is "no enforcement mechanism"? You do realize that if you're a POST-certified peace officer and terminated for cause (1) you lose your pension and (2) are utterly unemployable by any other law enforcement agency. That means you're in your mid-50s and can't find a job in the field you've worked in for a few decades, and probably can't get hired as a security guard because lack of POST certification means you can't carry a gun on the job.

It's quite a harsh punishment for accessing records inappropriately.

"Access to the video is very limited and subject to strict protocols for use in investigations."

That's what they all say. It's an empty platitude at best.

"the audio recording capability isn't live"

Yet. It is still present, though, and could become live should San Diego decide it to be useful.

Yes exactly this. The "trust us, we are very careful with this ability to spy on you" should be taken with a grain of salt.

Every person in these towns that have this violation of basic rights, should be demanding the takedown immediately but they won't. Again and again the people of this country fall for the "trust us. We are her to help you." lie that our government sells. If they do care, many people are in a state of disagreement and division so much that they won't work together out of spite if it means working with another ideology.

America, land of the free and home of the obedient and fearful. Seeing this, I can't help but feel like we have gone too far to have any return to what privacy we did have.

Serious question, natural rights aside, is this actually a violation of basic rights in a legal sense (laws, constitutions, etc)?

See section 632(b) of California Penal Code:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xh....

I actually read through that entire document out of curiosity. As far as I can tell it only applies to audio recording (and telegraphs, and cable TV, and a couple other misc items, but not video from what I see). Also, there's the bit right at the top:

> Therefore, it is not the intent of the Legislature to place greater restraints on the use of listening devices and techniques by law enforcement agencies than existed prior to the effective date of this chapter.

I'm not sure how large or small that loophole is according to the courts.

-----

Then as I was glancing through it, I noticed that this is the law that makes CA a two party consent state:

§632(a)

> without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication

§632(d)

> evidence obtained as a result of eavesdropping upon or recording a confidential communication in violation of this section is not admissible

So that sucks.

§633.5

> do not prohibit one party to a confidential communication from recording the communication for the purpose of obtaining evidence reasonably believed to relate to the commission by another party to the communication of the crime of

But at least it's slightly better as of... 2018. It only took them until 2018 to add that. FFS.

-----

This one was a pleasant surprise though:

§637.7

> No person or entity in this state shall use an electronic tracking device to determine the location or movement of a person.

So is it a misdemeanor to track your child via their cellphone in CA? I'm also wondering about all that cell phone location data that was sold (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3b3dg/big-teleco...). Have I misunderstood something?

> So is it a misdemeanor to track your child via their cellphone in CA?

It's worth looking at the whole section:

    CA Penal Code § 637.7 (2017)  
    
    (a) No person or entity in this state shall use an
    electronic tracking device to determine the location or
    movement of a person.
    
    (b) This section shall not apply when the registered
    owner, lessor, or lessee of a vehicle has consented to
    the use of the electronic tracking device with respect
    to that vehicle.
    
    (c) This section shall not apply to the lawful use of an
    electronic tracking device by a law enforcement agency.
    
    (d) As used in this section, “electronic tracking
    device” means any device attached to a vehicle or other
    movable thing that reveals its location or movement by
    the transmission of electronic signals.
    
    (e) A violation of this section is a misdemeanor.
    
    (f) A violation of this section by a person, business,
    firm, company, association, partnership, or corporation
    licensed under Division 3 (commencing with Section 5000)
    of the Business and Professions Code shall constitute
    grounds for revocation of the license issued to that
    person, business, firm, company, association,
    partnership, or corporation, pursuant to the provisions
    that provide for the revocation of the license as set
    forth in Division 3 (commencing with Section 5000) of
    the Business and Professions Code.

I guess it depends on how you define "vehicle or other movable thing". Children are technically things and they are technically movable, so if the child didn't consent to being tracked, I guess it's technically illegal (and since a child probably does not fit the definition of "vehicle", it's not sufficient for the "owner, lessor, or lessee" of a child - i.e. a parent or guardian - to provide that consent).

However, IIRC there are a lot of cases where a parent's consent is considered to be equivalent to the child consenting, and this might be one of them; as long as the parent consents to the child being tracked, it'd be legal in such a case.

Obligatory "I ain't a lawyer".

Agreed in general, but the thing is... children can't generally enter contracts or otherwise "consent" to most things in a legal context. True that parents can be stand-ins sometimes, but I'm not at all clear on what the limits for that are.

I too was initially confused by the "or other movable thing" part, but I'm pretty sure the the cell phone itself qualifies as a movable thing in this context.

Great point: let’s have an honest and fact-based discussion. This blog post isn’t that. Turn up at a council meeting and tell the elected politicians that you don’t want to be spied on. Make the police defend their use of the footage. Convince others to agree with you. That’s democracy and at this level of government it works pretty well.

"Benevolent dictatorships" only last until the term of the politician is over. The successors didn't make any promises to not use the surveillance system to the fullest extent possible and therefore at least one of them will.

This is, mind you, the exact reason why I tend to be averse to the notion that we should habitually make exceptions to things like freedom of speech/expression, freedom of religion, "states' rights", etc.; they always sound great when your party is the one in power, but when (not if) that changes, you've now handed your opposition the means to more heavily oppress you.

You have it backwards. The Union Tribune is known to shill for the establishment and has been called "not a credible source of information". The San Diego Reader is local, independent and has a good reputation for honesty.

Source: I've lived in San Diego for the last 50 years.

The Reader is independent and the UT is corporate-owned, but on the other hand, the Reader is not really much of a news outlet. Its role in the local ecosystem is kind of halfway between PennySaver and Reader's Digest. They're not dishonest, but they're not shelling out for top-notch reporters either.

The Reader doesn't shell out, but it doesn't pressure writers to dumb down their work to 9th-grade reading level either. So it's a haven for work like this:

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/staff/matthew-lickona/ https://www.sandiegoreader.com/staff/don-bauder/

Are there video camera and microphones installed city-wide on streetlights or not?

No, there aren’t. This is a few hundred cameras and it’s mostly downtown. San Diego is the eighth largest city in the US and this is a tiny fraction of the city. Evaluate it on the merits, but be clear about what’s really going on.

This is factually incorrect. There are currently over 3000 cameras live on this system, with the goal to increase to over 4000.

You can see them all here: https://cityiqmapsd.herokuapp.com/

This is inaccurate. Only a small fraction are live. And it would take a lot more than 3,000 cameras to be "city wide" in SD. It's a really large city in geographic terms.

I live here and have talked to the city officials running the system. I also linked a source.

What's your source?

>> No, there aren’t. This is a few hundred cameras and it’s mostly downtown.

Wrong. I've seen these from Pacific Beach to Imperial Beach. That is around 40 miles from North to South. They are _everywhere_. You can spot them by the black antennas sticking out the bottom of the light fixture.

Source: I've lived in San Diego for 50 years.

that's a different system. They don't have cameras.

SD Reader was, in my opinion, more honest and willing to do municipal reporting requiring attention to detail than the Scripps/Tronc-owned UT, which was often a vehicle for whatever local real-estate magnates wanted to be in print.

The Union-Tribune is owned by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong now, along with the Los Angeles Times. The reporting has been a little better lately, at least in the Times.

It has an impact on your behavior in public no matter if the camera is on or off, because you cannot be sure.

I like having the ability to speak openly about my feelings towards the government without being put on a watchlist regardless of where I am.

The government != moral authority.

It's very possible to do things the government wouldn't like without doing something that would be considered "amoral".

Is a right to privacy expected in public?

Regardless, the fact that there is a street light next to my house, almost over my property, which is most definitely not public, is very concerning.

Yes, people expect privacy when moving through their day in public, even though they may not expect it in an particular location. If they didn't expect that, stalking wouldn't be a concern.

This assumes that your morals are the same as whoever is behind the camera. You don't know that, which compromises the integrity of any moral value knowledge of being watched would have given.

It isn't about the content in which someone is recorded. It's about having consent to have someone record you.

> Access to the video is very limited and subject to strict protocols for use in investigations. And the audio recording capacity isn’t live because the City has no use for it.

How did placing this kind of trust in our government work when we last tried it (patriot act & fisa)?

"Access to the video is very limited and subject to strict protocols for use in investigations. And the audio recording capacity isn’t live because the City has no use for it."

This is a good and instructive example of statements that contain no information.

If access to the video were liberal and careless, it would be described as "very limited and subject to strict protocols". If, on the contrary, access to the video was very limited and subject to strict protocols ...

You get the idea. Zero weight should be given to assurances that would be given out regardless of the actual state of affairs.

A good heuristic is to ignore these communications and concentrate only on actions, but in this case where there may not be concrete evidence of misbehavior, we need to rely on a different heuristic: potential risks and worst case outcomes.

Access to mobile phone location data is also very limited and subject to strict protocols for use in investigations which absolutely everyone ignores.

These strict protocols would normally be called warrants.

I'm sure the systems were secure so that Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning couldn't leak either.