The San Diego City Council has approved more than a dozen amendments to a city ordinance intended to provide oversight on technologies used by city employees.
The council voted 6-2 in favor of the amendments to the Transparent and Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology Ordinance during a lengthy meeting Tuesday night.
Some of the amendments, promoted by Mayor Todd Gloria, include clarifying that city staff includes members of city-associated organizations, distinguishing between existing and new surveillance technologies, exempting “routine office hardware and software that is in widespread use by the general public” and exempting software used by the city to track requests and responses under the California Public Records Act.
“Provisions of the ordinance do not comply with current city process and the municipal code, which has made implementation and interpretation difficult for city departments,” according to a statement from the mayor’s office. “Tangible solutions are still necessary for all stakeholders to ensure the ordinance is workable while maintaining the principles of transparency and responsible use.”
However, some privacy advocates claim Gloria’s amendments are loopholes for law enforcement and provide less transparency, diluting the original intent of the 2022 law.
Council President Sean Elo-Rivera expressed reservations about the amendments, which he said would allow for the use of more of these technologies without review.
“What sits before us opens doors that didn’t need to be opened,” he said. “In a world in which A.I. is rapidly, rapidly advancing, and technology is rapidly advancing, I want us to be extremely measured as to what doors we open.”
The City Council adopted the ordinance in August 2022. It requires that technologies under a broad “surveillance” umbrella used by city employees are revealed to the public and can be evaluated with a privacy advisory board.
Initially, the council required a one-year deadline to review the technologies — which range from drones to internet search engines. In 2023, Gloria was able to push through an extension of the deadline to September 2026. As of 2024, only a few of the approximately 300 identified technologies — with more than 70 used by the San Diego Police Department — have been reviewed.
In 2016, the City Council made a $30.3 million decision to upgrade city infrastructure with several thousand “smart street lights” from General Electric. The street lights were equipped with sensors to help extract numbers on traffic, pedestrian flow and environmental data. However, concerns quickly arose from residents and civil liberties groups about the oversight and use of video footage that could be recorded on the lights.
The SDPD used footage hundreds of times in attempts to solve serious crimes, including more than 30 times in investigating homicides before the program was shuttered in late 2020 by then-Mayor Kevin Faulconer. The use of footage and data were proposed initially to help create traffic solutions. The SDPD began requesting the footage in 2018 to help in criminal investigations.
However, oversight of how the police department could use the footage was minimal. During protests over police practices and the treatment of Black Americans in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the SDPD used the smart street lights nearly 40 times in just five days to investigate protesters for incidents of vandalism and looting.
According to the department, the SDPD publicly posts information about the technologies used by the department, including access, data storage and retention, the release of data and information collected on its technology web page.
In 2023, the council gave the police department tentative approval to move forward again with smart street lights and automated license plate reader technology.
NBC 7’s Catherine Garcia has the latest on the smart streetlights saga.
