San Francisco Police Illegally Spying on Protesters
Last summer, the San Francisco police illegally used surveillance cameras at the George Floyd protests. The EFF is suing the police:
This surveillance invaded the privacy of protesters, targeted people of color, and chills and deters participation and organizing for future protests. The SFPD also violated San Francisco’s new Surveillance Technology Ordinance. It prohibits city agencies like the SFPD from acquiring, borrowing, or using surveillance technology, without prior approval from the city’s Board of Supervisors, following an open process that includes public participation. Here, the SFPD went through no such process before spying on protesters with this network of surveillance cameras.
It’s feels like a pretty easy case. There’s a law, and the SF police didn’t follow it.
Tech billionaire Chris Larsen is on the side of the police. He thinks that the surveillance is a good thing, and wrote an op-ed defending it.
I wouldn’t be writing about this at all except that Chris is a board member of EPIC, and used his EPIC affiliation in the op-ed to bolster his own credentials. (Bizarrely, he linked to an EPIC page that directly contradicts his position.) In his op-ed, he mischaracterized the EFF’s actions and the facts of the lawsuit. It’s a mess.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit wrote a good rebuttal to Larsen’s piece. And this week, EPIC published what is effectively its own rebuttal:
One of the fundamental principles that underlies EPIC’s work (and the work of many other groups) on surveillance oversight is that individuals should have the power to decide whether surveillance tools are used in their communities and to impose limits on their use. We have fought for years to shed light on the development, procurement, and deployment of such technologies and have worked to ensure that they are subject to independent oversight through hearings, legal challenges, petitions, and other public forums. The CCOPS model, which was developed by ACLU affiliates and other coalition partners in California and implemented through the San Francisco ordinance, is a powerful mechanism to enable public oversight of dangerous surveillance tools. The access, retention, and use policies put in place by the neighborhood business associations operating these networks provide necessary, but not sufficient, protections against abuse. Strict oversight is essential to promote both privacy and community safety, which includes freedom from arbitrary police action and the freedom to assemble.
So far, EPIC has not done anything about Larsen still being on its board. (Others have criticized them for keeping him on.) I don’t know if I have an opinion on this. Larsen has done good work on financial privacy regulations, which is a good thing. But he seems to be funding all these surveillance cameras in San Francisco, which is really bad.
Subscribe to comments on this entry
Clive Robinson • January 20, 2022 7:01 AM
@ ALL,
Not exactly unexpected,
Again not exactly unexpected.
So there is a law suit, and the police will probably get bad publicity and might even get fined.
But ask yourself this,
Based on history do you expect anything to change?
Of course not, for that to happen seniors have to loose not just their credibility in the public eye, they have to loose there jobs and pensions and do jail time as any other law breaking criminal should. Also they should be barred from any form of public office or involvment with public office (so no consolation jobs as an industry advisor or the like).
In fact they should know better, and thus get treated less leniently, so an increased tarriff of 20% that must be served before any other considerations should be considered appropriate. So if they get sentenced to three years eligable for parole after a year… What should happen is they serve 20% or 7months and a week without any consideration of time served. Then when that has passed they spend another year before parole considerations kick in.
Then maybe they will realise that they are in a position of trust and breaching it is not a game where they will either win or not loose, they need to realise they could loose big time.
But also the “lackless oversight” has to stop, citizens should expect those who stand in positions of trust to be tested and verified not just on entering office/employment but continuously. That needs competant and effective oversight.