By Matt Potter,

An outspoken critic of the mayor departs her downtown condominium en route for her law office a few blocks away, monitored by an array of video cameras and audio sensors concealed atop the city’s streetlights. Each day, the routine is the same, and each day each minute detail of her activity is captured in a massive database for subsequent perusal by unknown actors.

Photograph by Matthew Suárez

Whether politicos, business people, or simply grandmothers out shopping or on their way to church, potentially compromising information on thousands of private citizens is stashed away on remote servers, open to city officials, law enforcement agencies, and corporations with the money and connections to purchase the information.

To critics, the notion was frightening, and one city took action.

“A web of surveillance technology is rapidly spreading across our urban landscapes,” wrote the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, civil rights advocates, Muslim groups, and San Francisco Bay Area privacy advocates in a February 2017 letter to the mayor and city council of San Jose, then considering approving a path to ubiquitous public surveillance via its streetlights.

At least 3200 San Diego streetlights have been equipped with video and audio collection devices at public expense.

Photograph by Matthew Suárez

“Devices capable of monitoring and recording residents invade privacy, chill free speech, and disparately impact communities of color. Certain technologies, adopted for benevolent purposes in the name of ‘smart cities,’ may gather and store information about how residents live their lives in public places, including churchgoing habits, participation in political protests, or visits to an abortion clinic.”

A growing outcry caused the city to back away from construction of its planned high-tech intelligence network. A “privacy advisory task force” was organized last fall to grapple with questions raised by the mass deployment of sensors monitoring the whereabouts and activities of cars and pedestrians, and the city vowed to await the panel’s recommendations.

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.

and more

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2019/feb/20/san-diegos-street-lights-spy/#