Oakland Privacy Working Group Wins Round One vs BART Spying

Alert members of the Oakland Privacy Working Group (OPWG) noticed the buried item on the BART Board’s agenda, and three OPWG members attended the 9:00 AM meeting to testify against this proposal going forward.

5B. Automated License Plate Reader Technology.
i. Test Deployment Report.
ii. Public Comment.

Prior to that notice very few people had any idea that BART police were deploying, or were about to deploy, automated License plate readers (ALPRs). In fact, it seems likely given the meeting comments that the BART board itself had no idea this was happening before the report was put on the agenda. That it was brought up at all before the Board is a consequence of a new California law, SB 34, which requires public notice and input, and that a privacy and use policy be developed, before deployment of ALPRs.

A Deputy BART Police Chief gave the report. The ALPR test system had been installed at MacArthur, and it wasn’t clear whether it was in operation yet (the agenda information suggested it was, but later statements by BART officials claimed it was not). License plate data collected by the cameras was to be stored not by BART, but in fact sent off to the local fusion center (aka the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, aka NCRIC), where it would be available not just to BART police, but to Federal agencies, including ICE, and State and local agencies.

Upon questioning, the Deputy Chief said that while they had occasionally looked into deploying facial recognition systems, no such systems had yet been deployed, either via ALPR cameras or platform surveillance cameras.

Thanks to the attention drawn to the item by OPWG members, some BART Board members voiced their own concerns about the system, the balance between privacy and security, and the need to be transparent (one recalled the debacle that ensued after BART killed cell phone transmission in 2011 due to a protest). Then the board “suggested” to BART officials that the program not be put into operation for the nonce, and that a committee be set up to create an overall surveillance equipment regulation ordinance. BART officials present agreed not to put the pilot project into operation, and a proposal for a committee is to be brought up at the next BART Board meeting. Community input and participation, including from OPWG and the ACLU, is to be sought.

There is no rational reason for BART to spy on the thousands of people who park at BART stations. There is no rational reason to install these systems. BART has operated for forty-four years without them and will continue to operate perfectly well for the next forty-four whether they are installed or no. The excuse provided by BART police was to help catch people breaking into cars and stealing catalytic converters. But if that’s what they want to do they would be far better off monitoring the parking lots for the people doing these things, rather than recording the comings and goings of the 99.999% of people who are simply trying to get from point A to point B.

Oakland Privacy Working Group orginally came together to stop the Domain Awareness Center (DAC) in the wake of the Snowden revelations. Recently, it has been working to get surveillance equipment regulation ordinances passed in various Bay Area locales, which will require public input and participation in the process of deploying new and ever-increasingly powerful surveillance technology by law enforcement. It is smart of the BART Board to recognize the need for such an overall policy before deployment of any further spying technology.

This was just Round One with BART. Hopefully, like the DAC, the ALPR’s will be TKO’ed at the end of the bout. Stay tuned.