Re:San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance
by floatingatoll on Monday April 01, 2019 @10:36PM
(#19550555)
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!
Re:San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance
by mark212 on Monday April 01, 2019 @05:47PM
(#19548651)
“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?
Re:San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance
by orhmeh09 on Monday April 01, 2019 @10:25PM
(#19550506)
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.
Re:San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance
by _underfl0w_ on Monday April 01, 2019 @06:00PM
(#19548770)
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.
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.