By José Martinez / Electronic Frontier Foundation / March 15, 2024
In a stunning reversal against the popular Transparent & Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology (TRUST) ordinance, the San Diego city council voted earlier this year to cut many of the provisions that sought to ensure public transparency for law enforcement surveillance technologies.
Similar to other Community Control Of Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinances, the TRUST ordinance was intended to ensure that each police surveillance technology would be subject to basic democratic oversight in the form of public disclosures and city council votes. The TRUST ordinance was fought for by a coalition of community organizations– including several members of the Electronic Frontier Alliance – responding to surprise smart streetlight surveillance that was not put under public or city council review.
The TRUST ordinance was passed one and a half years ago, but law enforcement advocates immediately set up roadblocks to implementation. Police unions, for example, insisted that some of the provisions around accountability for misuse of surveillance needed to be halted after passage to ensure they didn’t run into conflict with union contracts. The city kept the ordinance unapplied and untested, and then in the late summer of 2023, a little over a year after passage, the mayor proposed a package of changes that would gut the ordinance. This included exemption of a long list of technologies, including ARJIS databases and record management system data storage. These changes were later approved this past January.
But use of these databases should require, for example, auditing to protect data security for city residents. There also should be limits on how police share data with federal agencies and other law enforcement agencies, which might use that data to criminalize San Diego residents for immigration status, gender-affirming health care, or exercise of reproductive rights that are not criminalized in the city or state. The overall TRUST ordinance stands, but partly defanged with many carve-outs for technologies the San Diego police will not need to bring before democratically-elected lawmakers and the public.
Now, opponents of the TRUST ordinance are emboldened with their recent victory, and are vowing to introduce even more amendments to further erode the gains of this ordinance so that San Diegans won’t have a chance to know how their local law enforcement surveils them, and no democratic body will be required to consent to the technologies, new or old. The members of the TRUST Coalition are not standing down, however, and will continue to fight to defend the standing portions of the TRUST ordinance, and to regain the wins for public oversight that were lost.
As Lilly Irani, from Electronic Frontier Alliance member and TRUST Coalition member Tech Workers Coalition San Diego, has said:
“City Council members and the mayor still have time to make this right. And we, the people, should hold our elected representatives accountable to make sure they maintain the oversight powers we currently enjoy — powers the mayor’s current proposal erodes.”
If you live or work in San Diego, it’s important to make it clear to city officials that San Diegans don’t want to give police a blank check to harass and surveil them. Such dangerous technology needs basic transparency and democratic oversight to preserve our privacy, our speech, and our personal safety.
Our friend, Dave Maas, used to write for City Beat (Not Voice of SD) but then moved to the Bay Area to work for this publication EFF.
Hi Frank – Dave wrote for San Diego CityBeat, not Voice. Just keeping you honest!
Thanks Seth! Yes, the ol City Beat was where Dave worked, not VOSD. (I corrected my original comment.) I was saddened when he decided to move after proving to be a very able reporter. (I had originally given CityBeat some caca for hiring “without”, not hiring a new reporter from those already working in San Diego when they first hired Dave.)
This should rightly frighten everyone. Or at least the 75% of voters who approved Measure B in 2020*, that amended the City Charter to curb government surveillance.
Sadly, the Establishment’s pattern is to slow-walk any attempts to derail what they want to happen, hoping we’ll fatigue or forget. And more sadly, we just sit back and let them.
Democracy doesn’t always die in darkness: Here it dies in broad daylight.
* https://ballotpedia.org/San_Diego,_California,_Measure_B,_Commission_on_Police_Practices_Amendment_(November_2020)
End the Strong Mayor form of government for good! Todd Gloria’s repeated abuse of power epitomizes why City government is not worthy and cannot be trusted. We must return to the City Manager form of government in order to shore up all of this chaotic out-of-control runaway corruption.
TRUST, Genevieve Jones-Wright, Mat Wahlstrom, EFF, ACLU, and privacy advocates worldwide including myself warned the public repeatedly, cautioned the City Council, and flat out chastised the Mayor and Police Dept. for this shifty, unconstitutional, proposal BECAUSE of the loopholes deliberately written into it. We need a petition to have the program immediately terminated until the matter can be placed on the ballot for the people to decide.
…and this morning I read in the UT where the Mayor wants to lease space costing millions to move the DSD employees to two new locations. He’s already got the City of SD $167 million in debt and now going to push it to about $200 million with this new disgusting bad idea. Can an Injunction be placed on him to stop the out of control destruction? Nov. can’t get here soon enough and Larry Turner is the mayoral man to vote for. He needs to call for a complete audit of income and outgoing City funds. And maybe some heads will roll in the departments who consistently determined to smile sweetly at the mayor, to get what they want. And he’s not about accepting indebtedness from developers.
Gloria will undoutedly relocate Developmental Services to vacant bank buildings replete with vaults to streamline bribery process, so deveopers can pay off politicians and they’ll be able to conveniently stow all of the dark money cash away from prying eyes.