BIG BROTHER - San Diego Police Department Spy Cameras

"Board rejects SDPD smart streetlight proposal Council may still approve plan for adding 500 cameras across city" by Lyndsay Winkley, San Diego Union-Tribune 25 Jun 2020

NOTE:  This was copied from the eNewspaper, so there is no link to the article.

The San Diego Police Department wants to spend millions of dollars to outfit a network of streetlights with sophisticated cameras.

This week, after months of deliberation, the Privacy Advisory Board — a volunteer group charged with evaluating the city’s surveillance technologies — issued their response to that request: No.

At a Thursday meeting that went late into the evening, six of eight board members voted to recommend to city officials that they not allow the streetlight program to move forward.

The vote marked a pivotal point in a process that started in September when the city’s new surveillance ordinance went into effect.  Under the legislation, city departments are required to disclose their surveillance technologies and compile reports outlining how those tools are used and their impact on communities.

That information then makes its way to the newly formed Privacy Advisory Board and, subsequently, to the City Council.  Council members will decide whether to adopt the board’s recommendation regarding the smart streetlights in the coming weeks.

The Police Department’s streetlight proposal was the first to be reviewed by the board, and the undertaking highlighted challenges that may plague the evaluation of future technologies.

Questions remain

Before voting on whether to support the technology, the board highlighted several pressing concerns.

Members felt the department hadn’t provided enough information about various aspects of the plan, including the purpose or goals of the streetlight program, how data would be collected and safeguarded, who would have access to the information gathered, how those individuals would be trained, and how the effectiveness of the technology would be assessed.

But one concern outweighed the rest.

Department officials have said they plan to install cameras made by Ubicquia, a telecommunications company, but no information has been provided about the vendor that would supply the accompanying automated license plate reader technology.

Board members said the ordinance requires that the department produce this information and that without it, they can’t effectively assess potential privacy or security risks the tools may pose.

“That’s why we keep asking all these questions, because we want to make sure that everything is spelled out as clearly as humanly possible,” said Pegah Parsi, board member and chief privacy officer at UC San Diego.  “We’re not trying to be obstructionist; we understand that the technology is here, but it’s very important for the Police Department and for the city to show how the cow eats the cabbage.”

Police officials said they haven’t provided information about a vendor because one hasn’t been selected.  Acting Capt. Charles Lara told the board during its meeting that, based on the department’s understanding of the ordinance, police need City Council approval of the technology before a company can be chosen.

It’s a challenge department officials expect will continue to crop up.

In a memo addressing several questions from the board, Lara said, “because of the way the ordinance was drafted, city departments will have to bring proposals without the purchasing and contracting process being completed, and all potential vendors being identified or selected.”

Seth Hall, a member of "TRUST San Diego Coalition," which helped craft the surveillance ordinance, said the department’s failure to provide even the name of a probable vendor flies in the face of the spirit of the legislation.

“They’ve said they welcome oversight,” Hall said.  “So welcome it.

“Bringing unknown technologies that you refused to identify, that we don’t even know who manufactures it or what it can or can’t do — that’s not participating,” Hall said.  “There’s no way for us to use that to inform the public.  It’s not sufficient.”

Report finds deficiencies

Hall, who is also the co-founder of San Diego Privacy, a community group that seeks to boost the public’s understanding of privacy issues, said his organization found serious flaws in the department’s plan.

The group compared the department’s proposed policies with best practices for video surveillance as established by organizations like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Security Industry Association.

The result?  A 74-page report detailing 43 deficiencies and 69 recommendations for how the department could improve its approach.

One recommendation suggested the department include additional information in its policy about how the system will be evaluated to determine whether it is meeting its objectives.  Another recommended the department place more stringent limits on how other law enforcement agencies access data collected by San Diego’s system.

“When we compare the Police Department’s policy to the way the standards say that it should be written, we just come out with a bunch of stuff missing,” Hall said.

The group also raised concerns about provisions that appeared to allow the department to surveil private property with permission from the property owner.

Hall noted that many San Diegans are renters, and the department policy doesn’t specify that officials would need to obtain permission from tenants as well.

“Perhaps a department person will come along and say, ‘Yeah, that’s what we meant.   We’ll get approval from the people that it affects.’  But that’s not what they wrote,” Hall said.  “And that’s the primary problem here.  These policies need to be carefully written.”

Department officials have said they believe the documentation they have provided, including its proposed policies, complies with the city’s surveillance ordinance.

Over the last few months, police have responded to 111 questions from the board about the streetlight proposal.  Police leaders have also stated that, in addition to the privacy board’s review, the technology is subject to vetting through the city’s information technology processes.

“The Department and the City work tirelessly to ensure our information technology systems are sound, protected from malicious intrusions and protect the civil liberties and data of San Diegans,” Lara said in a recent memo to board members.

Community outcry

Many of these concerns were echoed by community members who attended Thursday’s meeting — in person and online — to speak out against the streetlights.

Speakers said they worried the technology would invade people’s privacy and fuel unequal enforcement in communities of color.  Many said they didn’t trust the police to be good stewards of such powerful tools and felt the money to fund the program could be better spent if funneled to community groups that are already working to prevent crime and violence across San Diego.

“The goal for this technology is to enforce more safety, but I feel it will do the complete opposite by targeting innocent people,” said 16-year-old Sumaya Abdullahi.  “My community is already targeted and watched enough, and this will make it worse.”

Abdullahi is a member of the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans’ Youth Congress (PANA), a group that empowers young immigrants and refugees to participate in the organization’s policy work.

Moments after she spoke, other members of the Youth Congress who stood alongside her began to chant: “Every step we take, every move we make, we don’t want to be watched or surveiled — put the camera away.”

A few speakers voiced support for the technology, saying they were in favor of tools that would aid officers in solving crimes.

In the past, police and city officials have praised smart streetlights for their effectiveness, and cited their positive impact on police work as the reason for pursuing their installation.

In 2016, City Council members signed off on a $30 million project that pledged to use 3,000 energy-saving smart streetlights to assess traffic and parking patterns throughout the city.  What the public didn’t know — and wouldn’t know for years — was that the technology came with cameras that could be accessed by police.

The resulting outcry — based on concerns about privacy and equity — led San Diego to shut down the network and fueled the creation of the surveillance ordinance and the Privacy Advisory Board.

Before losing access to the technology, police had used footage from the smart streetlights to investigate hundreds of cases, including 56 homicides or attempted homicides, 55 robberies or burglaries and 55 assaults involving a weapon.

Smart streetlights installed in San Ysidro helped investigators zero in on a suspected gunman in the Nov. 6, 2019 shootings of three Church’s Chicken workers, one of whom was killed.

In downtown San Diego, they helped identify a man suspected of donning a costume mask and fatally shooting a business owner in October 2018.

Police officials also accessed streetlights 35 times to gather evidence against demonstrators suspected of committing crimes during protests held in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

On Thursday, Lara thanked both the board and community members for their active participation in the process.

“The board is working vigorously to defend the privacy rights of San Diegans, and that is an important charge,” he said.  “I also want to acknowledge the time and passion of all the people who came to express their opinion regarding this proposed program.”

What’s next

Despite its vote against the program, the Privacy Advisory Board is not a decision-making body.

The Police Department plans to present the proposal to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee on July 19.  Sometime after that, the City Council will vote on whether the tool should be given the green light.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria has already spoken out in favor of the technology, and the $4 million needed to kick start the program is included in this year’s budget.

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com

My Questions

What protections are included in the contract with Ubicquia (or any other company chosen) contain to protect the company from recording the information on their cameras and selling it outside law enforcement?

How long will SDPD keep the recordings?  There should be a time limit.

What protections are included to ensure the recordings cannot be used by ANYONE outside Traffic Courts, without a warrant (no blanket warrants)?

The ordnance was poorly written if it did not include the SDPD submitting (and updating) a list of camera companies being looked at BEFORE choosing any.  This would have prevented the SDPD wasting time looking at companies that would be rejected.

THE TRUMP INFECTION - Misuse of Federal Agencies

"How Trump attempted to use federal agencies to seize voting machines after 2020 election" PBS NewsHour 2/1/2022

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  New York Times is reporting that six weeks after the 2020 election former President Trump directed his attorney Rudy Guiliani to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could take possession of voting machines in key swing states.  New York Times congressional correspondent Luke Broadwater joins Geoff Bennett to discuss.

20th ANNIVERSARY - 9/11 Attack on America

"American Muslims remember how 9/11 changed America as they knew it" PBS NewsHour 9/6/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  This week, the PBS NewsHour is marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with stories examining some of the ways that day transformed the nation and the world.  Amna Nawaz begins our coverage with a look at the effect on millions of American Muslims.

 

 

"Middletown lost the most residents on 9/11 after NYC.  Here’s how the community is healing" PBS NewsHour 9/7/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Ali Rogin returns to Middletown, a New Jersey town where she grew up that was disproportionately affected by the 9/11 attacks in 2001, to see how residents and neighbors coped over the past two decades.

"Remembering the 40 heroes aboard Flight 93 and how they thwarted 9/11 hijackers" PBS NewsHour 9/8/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Since 2001, a great deal of attention has been paid to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon.  But less so for Flight 93.  The U.S. Capitol was the likely target of where hijackers had planned to crash the plane.  Instead, passengers and crew forced the plane down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — now an important touchstone site in the community.  William Brangham reports.

 

"How 9/11 weighs heavy on the generation born after the 2001 attacks" PBS NewsHour 9/8/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  PBS NewsHour's Student Reporting Labs network of high school journalism programs across the country gathered the reflections of teenagers to explore the legacy of 9/11 on their generation.  They present the voices of young Americans who were born after Sept. 11, 2001, and reveal how their lives were shaped by it.

 

 

"New York’s 9/11 first responders are battling a new kind of mass trauma" PBS NewsHour 9/9/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  For our endeavor to mark the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, John Yang spoke to first responders and medical workers who have lived and worked through both the attacks and have also more recently seen the mass trauma from COVID-19 in the city that was the epicenter of both: New York.

 

 

"Flight 77 crashed just below Robert Hogue’s Pentagon office.  Here’s his story" PBS NewsHour 9/9/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  PBS NewsHour's broadcast studio is just a few miles from the Pentagon here in Washington [DC].  On 9/11, that iconic structure designed to project American military might was struck clear out of the blue, just like the twin towers.  184 people died both in the building and on American Flight 77, excluding the hijackers.  But many more escaped.  We hear from Robert Hogue, one of the people who made it out.

 

 

"How the attacks of 9/11 reshaped America’s role in the world" PBS NewsHour 9/10/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  This week PBS NewsHour has been marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by exploring how they have impacted the U.S. at home and abroad.  Judy Woodruff leads our latest conversation on the ways the 9/11 attacks shaped American foreign policy over the last two decades.

 

 

"A photographer’s view of 9/11 from across the river" PBS NewsHour 9/11/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  On the morning of September 11th, photojournalist Jennifer Brown raced down to the waterfront in her town of Jersey City, NJ.  Directly across the river from the World Trade Center, Brown photographed the attacks for the former Star-Ledger, now NJ Advance Media.  She spoke to Hari Sreenivasan about the sights, sounds and emotions from her vantage point, and what it was like to capture a moment that changed history.

 

 

"20 years after 9/11, Dearborn market helps unify Arab community" PBS NewsHour 9/11/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The attacks of 9/11 fueled Islamophobia, and increased incidents of hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs.  NewsHour Weekend’s Christopher Booker reports on how the events of 9/11 were a catalyst for an Arab community in metropolitan Detroit to unite and combat stereotypes by building a stronger cultural identity through food.

 

 

"20 years later, a remembrance for the NYFD’s fallen chaplain" PBS NewsHour 9/12/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  When the two towers fell and the New York Fire Department rushed in to save victims, Father Mychal Judge, chaplain of the NYFD, entered the burning buildings, too: he prayed in the lobby for victims and first responders. One of the many searing images from 9/11 is Father Judge's body being carried out of the rubble. In remembrance, this animated segment from our partners at StoryCorps is told by his close friend, Father Michael Duffy.

TRUMP BUDGET - The Rich First, the People Last

[Advertisement]  "Fire Sale, bargain basement prices! National Monuments and Parks, Easy Access to all agencies!"  Contact 'Trump Sales" at 1-800-666-SALE (all payments made through Trump PAC)  Brown people need not apply.

"What Trump’s proposed 2021 budget says about his policy priorities" PBS NewsHour 2/10/2020

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Trump unveiled a $4.8 trillion budget proposal for the 2021 fiscal year on Monday.  His plan includes cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs, as well as an increase in funding for the Department of Homeland Security.  Yamiche Alcindor joins Amna Nawaz to discuss how the president’s “wish list” illustrates his continued commitment to a hardline stance on immigration policy.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - Acting Secretary of Homeland Security in El Salvador

"In El Salvador to discuss immigration, McAleenan emphasizes need for ‘well-managed’ border" PBS NewsHour 8/29/2019

But forget about really helping with the problems than cause South Americans to leave their countries and head for the United States.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan is currently on a three-day trip to Central America to discuss migration and border security with leaders in El Salvador.  Reporting from San Salvador, Amna Nawaz joins Judy Woodruff to talk about McAleenan's agenda, gang violence, and whether the Trump administration’s strategy to reduce Central American migration to the U.S. will succeed.

ELECTION SECURITY - Ongoing Election Interference

Fake news, Trump's boyfriend says he doesn't interfere.  Yah, right.

"DHS official warns of ongoing election interference from Russia, China" PBS NewsHour 10/11/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  As the midterm elections approach, administration officials continue to warn of attempts by foreign entities to influence their outcome.  But they also assert that their preparation could yield ‘the most secure election in the modern era.'  Judy Woodruff speaks with Christopher Krebs, undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, for more.

TRUMP AGENDA - Deport and Ignore Nationality

"Trump Plan: Deport to Mexico Immigrants Crossing Border Illegally, Regardless of Nationality" by Ginger Thompson and Marcelo Rochabrun, ProPublica 2/20/2017

The idea is part of a raft of immigration proposals signed by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly that are likely to spur international and legal challenges.

This article was co-published with Univision. (Spanish)

Update, Feb.  21, 2017:
In a call with reporters Tuesday morning, DHS officials confirmed they were working on a plan to send migrants who had entered the United States from Mexico back to Mexico, even if they were not citizens of that country.

Buried deep in the Trump administration's plans to round up undocumented immigrants is a provision certain to enrage Mexico — new authority for federal agents to deport anyone caught crossing the southern border to Mexico, regardless of where they are from.

If present immigration trends continue, that could mean the United States would push hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Brazilians, Ecuadorans, even Haitians into Mexico.  Currently, such people are detained in the U.S. and allowed to request asylum.

President Trump wants them to do so from Mexico, communicating via videoconference calls with U.S. immigration officials from facilities that Mexico would presumably be forced to build.

“This would say if you want to make a claim for asylum or whatever we'll hear your case but you are going to wait in Mexico,” a DHS official said.  “Those are details that are being worked out both within the department and between the US government and the government of Mexico … there are elements that still need to be worked out in detail.

Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will travel to Mexico later this week to meet with representatives of the Mexican government.  It remains unclear if they will discuss this issue.

The new authority for immigration agents is among the dramatic, some would say untenable, tactics the Trump administration is preparing to deploy as it upends President Obama's policies on illegal immigration.

A pair of memos signed by John Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary, and publicly released on Tuesday outline the plans for what present and former government officials say will be a massive roundup of undocumented immigrants.  Near final drafts of the memos had leaked over the weekend and had been first reported by McClatchy.

Officials disclosed that two former Senate aides to Attorney General Jeff Sessions drafted the plan without input from career DHS policy staffers.  The ideas aren't new.  Many of the approaches described in the memos come from a 1996 law that policy makers and law enforcement agents had disregarded as either unenforceable or absurd.

“Most of these provisions of law have been there for decades,” the DHS official said.  “We are simply trying to execute what Congress has asked us to do.”

Among them was the Mexico part of the plan, for example, which calls for returning undocumented immigrants “to the foreign contiguous territory from which they arrived.”  The memo goes on to point out how foisting the immigrants onto Mexico would benefit DHS's budget, saying that it would, “save the Department's detention and adjudication resources for other priority aliens.”

However, former senior Mexican and American immigration officials said it could very well create new security problems along the border, as authorities in each country push unwanted migrants back and forth.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association said that the proposal would violate U.S. law and international treaty obligations.  Mexico is as likely to embrace the plan as it did the notion of paying for a wall.  “I would expect Mexico to respond with an emphatic 'No,'” said Gustavo Mohar, a former senior Mexican immigration and national security policy official.

Whether viable or not, the Trump administration's deportation plans mark a dramatic departure from decades of policy and practice.  Current and former immigration policy officials say that while the details of how the administration intends to carry out the plans remain unclear — if not insurmountable — the administration's overall message to enforcement agents across the country is clear: the limits have been lifted.

President Obama attempted to focus enforcement efforts on immigrants who had been convicted of serious crimes, and on those who were caught while or shortly after illegally entering the country.  Still, his administration deported record numbers of immigrants, most of whom had only been accused of minor crimes and immigration violations.

The Trump administration says it, too, is focused on deporting criminals, but it has redefined crimes to include any activity that might bring a conviction, including entering the U.S. without permission.  Effectively, that makes virtually everyone in the U.S. without a proper visa subject to roundup at their workplace or home.

“If you are present in the U.S. without being admitted or paroled or having overstayed your visa, the immigration laws of the U.S. subject you to removal,” the DHS official said.  “Everyone who is in violation of the laws is theoretically subject to enforcement.  The Department has limited resources and we will, to the extent that we can, focus on folks who have committed serious crimes.”

The only clear exception, according to the enforcement plan and the DHS briefing, is for immigrants who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children, known as Dreamers.

“Anyone who complained about Obama as the deporter-in-chief,” said David Martin, formerly DHS's principal deputy general counsel, “is unfortunately going to get a taste of what it's like when someone is really gung-ho.”

Greg Chen, the policy director at AILA, said the Trump plan would “effectively unleash a massive deportation force with extremely broad authority to use detention as the default mechanism for anyone suspected of violating immigration law.”

The question looming over the proposals is how many of them, with all their legal and logistical obstacles, will the President actually be able to carry out.

The memos, for example, authorize the Border Patrol to hire 5,000 new agents, even though the force has never been able to fill the slots it has already been allotted.  Some 60 percent of applicants to the Border Patrol fail the required polygraph, and those who pass take 18 months to get sent out into the field.

The Trump plan calls for the expansion of a George W. Bush-era program, known as 287g, which allows DHS to deputize state and local police as immigration agents.  It was touted after 9/11 as a critical “force-multiplier.”  But by 2010, some of the country's largest police departments were refusing to participate because they believed it would shatter the trust between their officers and the communities they were sworn to protect.  Meanwhile, participating agencies, which foot the bill for the program, were suddenly saddled with new debts and hounded by accusations of racial profiling and other abuse, forcing the Obama administration to suspend expansion of the program.

Until now, the enforcement of summary deportation laws, known as “expedited removal,” have been limited to those apprehended within 14 days of illegally entering the country and within 100 miles of Canada or Mexico.  The memos signed by Kelly would allow use of those laws anywhere in the country against anyone who entered illegally within the past two years.

Lucas Guttentag, a former DHS adviser and Stanford law professor, said this would “unleash chaos,” violate due process, and meet challenges in court, similar to those that scuttled the administration's travel ban.

There would also be aggressive challenges, lawyers said, to plans that would allow immigration agents to deport unaccompanied minor children who crossed the border illegally, rather than uniting them with parents or other relatives in the U.S.

The reason for discussing unaccompanied minors is “ that they have been abandoned by their parents or legal guardians,” the DHS official said.  If it is “determined that there is a parent or guardian in the U.S. that they can be handed over to, then DHS needs to take a hard look over whether that person is actually'' an unaccompanied minor.

“There will be a renewed focus on ensuring that folks don't abuse the system,” the DHS official added.

They also expect legal opposition to a proposal that would strip undocumented immigrants of existing privacy protections, allowing personal information such as asylum cases or immigration violations to be publicly disclosed.

“We want to ensure that our privacy policies are consistent with the law,” the DHS official said.  “The Privacy Act applies by statute to citizens'' and green card holders.  “The President has asked us to align our laws with what congress has directed.”

“The Trump people have clearly bought into the model of harsh enforcement.  They apparently think, 'we'll be tough, and a lot of people will leave on their own,'” said Martin, an immigration law professor at the University of Virginia.  “They believe they'll win in the court of public opinion.  I'm not sure about that.  A lot of Americans know hard-working undocumented immigrants.  The kind of enforcement Trump's people are talking about will visibly create many more sympathetic cases than unsympathetic ones.”

Some of the provisions explicitly acknowledge that it could take years before DHS has the manpower and money to pull off what the President has ordered.  Immigration enforcement agents, however, have already begun filling the policy void by launching raids and deportations, including some that advocates worry are meant to test the limits.  Meanwhile panic has taken hold in many immigrant communities.

“The level of fear is more than anything we've ever seen,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.  She said the plan's sweep, “sent a chill to my bones,” because it threatens to do irreparable harm to millions of families.  She added, “This all seems aimed at changing who we are as a nation.”