The Spy Street Lights of Ocean Beach and Point Loma

Without much fanfare or public notice, the San Diego City Council in December 2016 approved a $30.3 million project to upgrade 14,000 street lights with sensors — and a portion of them with cameras.

Since then 3,200 have been installed to collect data that the City or developers can use for future infrastructure and sustainability projects. They’re called “City IQ nodes” and as Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Erik Caldwell said,

“The information will give us great insight into how people move through the urban environment.”

Matt Potter at the San Diego Reader calls it “a video and audio surveillance network.” On top of street lights or inside lamp posts, the cameras an sensors can count cars and people, and can also keep track of the climate while the cameras record public property. And more. And police have access as do corporations.

Neighborhoods with the highest concentration of smart sensors include Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, Little Italy, Bankers Hill, North Park, Hillcrest, University Heights, Normal Heights, La Jolla and parts of Carmel Valley along Del Mar Heights Road and Carmel Valley Road. San Diego Union-Tribune. 

Here’s the “inter-active map” showing individual locations of the spy street lamps.

Here’s Matt Potter’s at the San Diego Reader with an overview:

San Diego’s own streetlight story has been plotted behind closed doors, and bereft of transparency, leading critics to question city hall’s ethos of secrecy and willingness to bend ethics in the pursuit of campaign money.

Here in California’s second largest municipality, at least 3200 streetlights have been equipped with video and audio collection devices at public expense, turning the city into a stealthy laboratory for infrastructure-embedded intelligence collecting with devices regularly used by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other security agencies. No notice was provided to residents or business owners where the devices have been installed and are now operating.

At the center of the intricate matrix, for which San Diegans are paying more than $30.2 million, is General Electric, the Connecticut multi-national whose ex-board member, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf, and his chipmaking company, is tied to San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, the mover behind the intelligence network.

Here’s background from the City’s website:

Background

With what began as a cost-savings effort to replace high energy use streetlights with more efficient LED lights, the City of San Diego is now deploying the world’s largest smart city sensor platform. The system is transforming the City’s existing street lighting infrastructure into a connected digital infrastructure which will lead to energy savings and new technological opportunities.

The anonymous data collected by the sensor nodes can be used to develop applications and systems that benefit the City and the community. These sensor nodes generate metadata (static data on parking, vehicle counts, pedestrian counts, temperature, humidity, pressure). The nodes connect to technology partner GE’s CityIQ cloud database to make the metadata collected by the sensors available. This open data platform possibilities range from pedestrian safety and directing drivers to open parking spaces to mobility planning and optimization, to helping first responders during an emergency and urban and real estate development planning. Our hope is that new applications will be built using this technology to help improve city services and initiatives.

Here some more important background:

• San Diego’s street lights that spy –  Faulconer’s secret dealings with G.E. and Qualcomm
  By Matt Potter San Diego Reader, Feb. 20, 2019
• Thousands of San Diego street lights are equipped with sensors and cameras. Here’s what they record. San Diego Union-Tribune, March 18, 2019
• Cameras on nearly 3,000 street lights all over San Diego, police take interest in video, San Diego Union-Tribune, March 19, 2019