Oakland passed an innovative law in 2018 that gave citizens the right to speak up about police surveillance technology use. It was hailed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the new standard for community control over police surveillance technology.
Brian Hofer, one the original architects of Oakland's law, now says it is not working. Hofer, one of the architects of Oakland's law, filed suit earlier this month against the city, and the police department, claiming that they had repeatedly violated it.
Hofer said in an interview that we ignored the human nature. Police are not open to transparency. Police don't like transparency.
The law gives critics of police surveillance an opportunity to speak out even in Oakland. Hofer filed suit under a provision in the law that permits citizens to bring the city to trial. It is his hope that it will lead to the appointment of an impartial counsel to review and assess the surveillance tech data of the police department.
As with any law, the surveillance ordinance must be enforced. Matt Cagle is a staff attorney at the Technology and Civil Liberties Program of the ACLU of Northern California. It's why it's so wonderful to see people from Oakland and San Francisco using it to bring the police to trial.
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CCOPS stands for Community Control of Police Surveillance. A national review of these laws suggests other small successes. Nashville's opposition to a proposed city purchase of automated license plate readers was a temporary halt to a proposal by a community group.
Each law is different. There are some laws that require regular meetings between police officers and members of the community, annual audits for effectiveness or potential bias, greater transparency among vendors and the cost of any new tech to taxpayers, and a period where public comment is allowed before buying new tech like body cameras and ShotSpotter which use microphones to detect gunfire.
The Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at Berkeley School of Law stated that many of the ordinances are less strong than those in Oakland. Grand Rapids and New York City don't allow citizens to file suits, unlike Oakland. Police are exempted from the rules in six jurisdictions including Palo Alto (California) and Cambridge, Massachusetts. While a school or library would need to permit public comment on surveillance tools, police are exempted from the rules if they execute a warrant or respond to a crisis.
The majority of cities allow police wide latitude to use surveillance technology in emergency situations. This can lead to loopholes in citizen oversight.
Takemoto claims that we know that different local governments considered racial justice protests, such as those last summer, to be extenuating exigent situations.
The authors acknowledge that there is no perfect set of rules. They suggest ordinances that empower citizens to sue, and establish independent bodies to supervise police and provide support. Chivukula believes that the most important thing is outside help. This could be a local non-profit or community group that will stay engaged. There is no pressure if you don't engage the public.
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Oakland began to reform its police surveillance in 2014 when ACLU and EFF groups protested the proposed Domain Awareness Center. This fusion center would combine microphones, CCTV and surveillance data.
The city had been first created to protect port security. It was now moving towards approving an entire citywide expansion. Advocacy groups succeeded in securing cancellation of the expansion and the creation of a temporary privacy commission that would create policies for the city's use technology. This was an early version of the CCOPS model.
Hofer states that with an ongoing reporting obligation, real data would be available for the first-ever time to assess efficacy, inform policy decisions such as retention limits and third party access, and identify any civil liberty impact. He says that we believed at the time that law enforcement would be honest in the presentation and discussion of the pros and cons of possible uses.
Hofer claims that the Oakland police refuse to give the required use policies for technology before the ordinance was in effect. Federal officials have also been able to access surveillance data, according to the suit. The suit claims that although the police had agreed to audit the use license plate readers for bias or effectiveness, they have not produced audits since 2018.
Nashville created a Community Oversight Board in 2017 that advocated for a referendum to allow residents to vote for the adoption of a local CCOPS. Courtney Johnston, a city councilmember, introduced a bill last year that would allow police to buy and install license plates readers. This was in response to a rise in crime and ongoing street racing problems.
Andrs Martnez was the chairman of the oversight board. He helped to rally opposition, citing reports questioning technology's effectiveness. The proposal was repeatedly deferred.
Martinez states that when you examine what license plate readers do, it is actually very small compared to how much data they collect. My view is that we would be better off spending our time and money on community-based solutions for our public safety problems.
This story first appeared on wired.com
