It doesn't look like an ordinary street lamp on the scene of a murder in San Diego in 2018. It doesn't look like an ordinary street lamp on the scene of a murder in August in San Diego.
It's really different from the streetlights before. The pole is equipped with an optical sensor. While illuminating the city, it is capturing 24-hour video footage of the scene below it.
According to the San Diego police department, the city has recently been equipped with thousands of such smart street lights to monitor cars and people.
From one day on, police began to extract videos from street light sensors on a regular basis. So far, police have used nearly 400 street lamp videos to investigate cases ranging from sexual assault to vandalism.
Over the next few months, after more than a year of advocacy by a coalition of 30 local groups called trustsd, members of the San Diego City Council are preparing to introduce two new decrees. One of them is the introduction of new City Council approval procedures before the adoption of new technologies, and the development of clear guidelines for public reporting throughout the use of new technologies. The other is to establish a privacy Advisory Committee (PAC), composed of lawyers, privacy experts and community members, without police or elected officials, who can assess the impact of technology projects on civil liberties and keep their applications under review.
"There are some good uses for these products, but there is no supervision." Following the approval of the streetlighting scheme, Council member Monica Montgomery took office in 2018 and has since become a major advocate of the surveillance regulations. "It's very important for me to direct the introduction of (Technology) with complete transparency, parameters and accountability," said jorgette g ó mez, President of the Council who also supported the legislation. "We don't have any of these."
The high-tech intelligent street lamp is the fixed device of the international "smart city". European and Asian cities are scrambling to install streetlights equipped with functional modules that can monitor traffic, weather and other urban phenomena. It is not uncommon for them to fall into the hands of law enforcement. Concerns about camera monitoring and face recognition prompted Hong Kong's marchers to topple the city's smart street lights in 2019. As cities such as Baltimore, Kansas City, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Portland, Maine upgraded their streetlight networks, the American Civil Liberties Union has warned against introducing "surveillance technology" in "secret.".
When San Diego launched its smart streetlight pilot program with Ge current (now Ge current of Daintree) in 2016, officials promised that it would bring a lot of opportunities. Not only can LED lights save energy and money, but their sensors will also collect air quality and liquidity data. Parking will be easier, streets will be safer, and entrepreneurs will be able to do business based on this open data. The pilot project was expanded into a mature project in 2018. Under a $30 million contract, Ge upgraded 14000 of the city's 60000 streetlights and installed advanced sensors - including video capture tools - on 3200 of them.