Data gathered “exclusively for law enforcement purposes”
By Matt Potter / San Diego Reader / Feb. 21, 2019
As predicted by privacy advocates, a hoard of surveillance data collected by video cameras and audio sensors incorporated into San Diego street lights is exclusively in the hands of the city’s police department.
The sweeping police powers are contained in a freshly-minted Intelligent Streetlight Data Policy, signed and dated February 6, more than a month after the Reader‘s January 3 request under the California public records act to obtain the information gathered by city sensors housed in a single streetlight downtown.
The city denied that request after publication here on February 20 of “Streetlights that Spy,” an investigation into San Diego’s so-called intelligent streetlight program, in which more than 3200 light fixtures have been outfitted with an array of video, audio, and data sensors focused on streets and sidewalks below.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
San Diego has an “Intelligent Streetlight Data Policy”? So does that mean that most crime can be solved within minutes, saving taxpayers millions & billions? Are there cameras and audio in the mayor’s office, too? Crime occurs in places other than on the streets of San Diego.
This is another form of Organized stalking, the victims are Targeted Individuals, some are stalked to the point where they loose everything in there lives, Its a Gov Program.
People aren’t targeted for no reason. Do you really think the SDPD has nothing better to do then sit around and make up reasons to start spying on innocent people? I think they have better things to do with their time. Get over yourself Memo!
Haha, good one, Vern! if govt is so ‘transparent’, let’s start filming them!
Yep RB, it’s sure a heck of a thing. Lot of illegal stuff going on well away from the view of these “street” cameras. Maybe it’s just a “feel good” thing for the 24 hour news cycle!
Anybody that has read a lot of world history can see right through the blarney being spouted by the official gov’ment sources. There are so many past ‘surveillance states’ to choose from for examples of the same kind of bureaucrat reasoning for installing this spy system. Just look up East Germany, the Soviet Union, Marcos’ Philippines, Pinochet’s Chile…
So When Will We Finally Find the Courage to Challenge the Status Quo?
sealintheSelkirks
Or how about the UK? The crime rate is low and people don’t really seem to mind. If you don’t have anything to hide then you don’t have anything to worry about. Why are so many of you in OB so paranoid?
Haven’t read much history, Sam? Probably not I guess. Read anything of Orwell or Huxley or Vonnegut or Zinn or Atwood? Or Hedges, Chomsky, Paul Street? Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, Dalton Trumbo?
Do you understand the implications of the term ‘slippery slope’ and how it applies to bureaucratic governmental regulatory excess? Always done in the name of ‘order’ and ‘safety’ of course. What Hitler did was for the safety of the German People and started with…some perfectly legal regulations. Slipper slope, dude.
As for the nothing-to-hide, I guess you could apply that to VP Dick Cheney’s ‘Energy Task Force’ that we still don’t know who were invited by the US government nor what they spoke about paid for by our tax dollars. Nor all the Hillary Clinton $250,000 half hour talks to the bankers of Wall St. and the promises she made (before she lost the election), and of course be sure to think about the invisibility of Trump’s tax returns and how if you-have-nothing-to-hide should apply to the wealthy powerful…and never does.
Here’s a fun game to play for few days of rainy afternoons that will give you a grasp of that term. Read the ten amendments to the Constitution also known as the Bill of Rights, and I mean really read them and think of what they are actually saying and how they should be applied as the founding document of our society. Then read the 300+ pages of the new USA PATRIOT Act (available online) and try to reconcile the two.
Just for giggles, read the German ‘Enabling Act of 1933(or was it 34?)’ and see how close the un-PATRIOT Act follows the latter.
If your head hasn’t exploded at this point, and I’m truly sorry if cognitive dissonance affects your eating and sleeping habits, you should skim through the Progress for a New American Century report authored/signed in 1998 by all sorts of powerful names you’ll recognize (also available online). List all the foreign policy decisions the US has made since that correspond to the PNAC.
As an added treat, then read Milton Mayer’s ‘They Thought They Were Free; the germans 1933-1945’ published in 1955, and for dessert Jack London’s 1905 classic ‘The Iron Heel.’
We’ll discuss the meaning of ‘slippery slope’ after you have finished. No gag here, I truly hope you read the list above. As a citizen of the United States you should have a much better grasp of our country afterwards.
Wow my head just exploded. You must be the smartest man in the world, but your naive views of how the world actually works is quite stunning. If you believe for a second that we are not already living in a surveillance state then I have a business proposal for you.
If you can offer a way to put the genie back in the box, I’m all ears, but until then its best to play nice with the powers that be, so you don’t find yourself on the wrong end of camera designed to help keep our streets safe.
Are you sure you don’t have anything to hide?
Sorry about your head, hope you have somebody to help you clean up the mess. If not, dogs are really good for licking up all sorts of nasty icky stuff.
As for the compliment of being the smartest man in the world, well thank you but no I’m intelligent enough to not claim to be near any such exalted status…though it is possible that Trump and Hillary might fit your description. They certainly must be waaaay smarter or they wouldn’t be rich, right? Isn’t that how it goes? Rich = intelligence because if you work hard all your life and aren’t you must be stupid.
Or not in a position to absolutely screw over everyone you come in contact with to enrich yourself. Greed is powerful, yes?
Add in any other billionaire or multi-millionaire for that matter. I’ve noticed that since they are at the top of the status quo economic dung heap, they often seem to have delusions of overwhelming knowledge on every subject they get their sticky fingers into. And then some becomes politicians! Sounds familiar I’m sure. Think Ed Sec Besty (Blackwater) DeVos just for fun. Billionaire, never been in public school, never had a child in public school, never been inside a public school, and doubtful she knows a single public school teacher (being billionaires why would she?). But she KNOWS what is good for yours!
Maybe if I somehow became a billionaire I would be that smart, too???
As for living in a surveillance/militarized corporate police-industrial/military/prison state that is operated for profit by an oligarchy of very very wealthy rich corporate owners, I certainly do agree with you. Hope you don’t mind that I added to your meager description?
Having watched and experienced first hand since the mid-60s San Diego cops beating those they…disagreed with (like peaceful Vietnam war protestors, concert goers, pot smokers, longhairs, surfers, you know the dregs of society) and laughing about it proved to me at a tender young age just what kind of society I was really living in. No sense of the naive here, maybe a touch of jaded idealism, though. I’m just so thoroughly disgusted/repelled/dismayed/horrified (but not surprised) with the ever-downward spiral that has increased its, shall we say, rightward spin enormously as we flush down the toilet bowl since I became old enough to vote.
We got rid of Nixon. The Vietnam War stopped. We thought the world/our society actually had a chance at changing. And now 40+ years later? Bummer, dude.
So no, no business proposal necessary, Sam. Thanks but I’m getting a bit too old to step into such an unknown but obviously promising new venture (you wouldn’t steer me wrong now would you?).
Try the mayor, he may go for it. He likes to spend tax payer money in big lump sums. Make sure your proposal is about ‘security’ and ‘order’ and ‘patriotism’ or ‘increased revenue’ on the cover page!
But what you said about playing nice with the Powers That Be…that I have an ethical problem with. Historically I can’t think of a single instance where that has turned out well for any society. Ever. Of course there are always an elite few that really prosper under such conditions but personally I just have a real aversion to boot licking.
Life is temporary. Best that I die with memories of not being that kind of person.
But realize I am aware of just how much of the Holocene Era we as a species have been under the thumb of those elitist special chosen-by-the-gods PTBs…like almost all of the last 9,000 years full of kings, queens, warlords, religions, and all the other various assorted types of serial evildoers that always seem to rise to the top of the toilet bowl.
Is it me or does it get worse the harder it swirls?
As for me hiding in plain sight, you might see me one day paddling through the Pier to Southside on a mid-80s fading yellow twinfin I shaped & glassed at my old shop on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. that I still get out on now and then. No warrants out, never been in prison, but I have been homeless on the beach when I was young and there were no jobs (think Nixon’s ‘Stag-flation’ economy in the 70s). And I’m sure the Surveillance State is copying this and storing it like our illustrious 3-letter acronym spy agencies have already publicly admitted to doing for decades (so much for Amendment 4, eh?). And no I’m not even one of the homeless poor hanger-outs (Trolls and their BS I think you said) that you so distinctly dislike…
But hey, you gonna read any of the authors or books I suggested? Just asking :)