BERKELEY — A groundbreaking Berkeley city ordinance requires the city’s use of surveillance technologies such as surveillance cameras, license-plate readers and cellphone trackers to be approved by the City Council and subject to citizen oversight.
The City Council unanimously approved the first reading of the “Surveillance Technology Use and Community Safety” ordinance last week after an hours-long city council meeting. The ordinance is scheduled for a final approval vote at the council’s March 27 meeting.
City departments seeking to purchase surveillance technology must now seek review from the appropriate citizen oversight committee, such as the Police Review Commission or the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. In addition, they must submit an impact report and use-policy detailing how the technology works, how it will be used and the “potential impacts on civil liberties and possible mitigation of such effects,” according to a recommendation by Berkeley’s Police Review Commission, which championed the ordinance.
The department must also disclose the types of data that will be collected, the cost of the technology, a list of alternatives to the technology, what information will be collected, who has access to it and what safeguards are in place to protect the data.
“This kind of spy tech requires transparency and community control,” Jason Kelley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at protecting civil liberties in the digital world, said at the March 13 meeting.
After the commission reviews the technology, the City Council will decide whether to approve it.
City departments currently using surveillance technology must seek approval from the council to continue using it, the ordinance said.
The City Council will re-evaluate the technology every year to make sure it meets the requirements that first garnered approval, and the department that requested the approval must submit a “surveillance report” to the reviewing commission.
Tessa D’Arcangelew, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said cities across the country are considering similar regulations to the use of surveillance technology. Berkeley is one of the first cities to adopt an ordinance of this kind, she said. Santa Clara County adopted a similar ordinance in 2016.
“Every technology used for government surveillance raises a thicket of difficult questions. … These are questions that should be answered by the people of Berkeley and their city council before any city department adopts a new surveillance technology,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation organizer Nathan Sheard. “When all concerned stakeholders participate, we make better decisions.”
Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission chair Brian Hofer, in a blog post on Oakland Privacy’s website, said similar ordinances are expected to pass soon in Davis and Oakland and the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Alameda County and Palo Alto also are considering their own versions of the ordinance, he said.
