Mask Up for San Diego’s Growing Surveillance State

The privacy advocates at the Electronic Frontier
Foundation are channeling their inner geeks to tie
this week’s San Diego Comic-Con to a protest against that city’s
growing snooping regime. “Put on your Batman mask or Sith paint
for the police surveillance camera network,” urges EFF via
Twitter.

Just know where to stop, unlike the guy in the photo.

Anyway
Operation Secure San Diego gives police in their cars access to
video feeds—not just from public cameras, but from a growing list
of private outfits that are cooperating with the cops. According to
the program’s website:

The SDPD in conjunction with the Hotel Indigo is starting
“Operation Secure San Diego“. This is the first
private group allowing SDPD to have access to their live video
transmissions. How this works is that from inside their vehicle,
officers will be able to connect to the live video feed used by
Hotel Indigo and they will be able to see what is going on inside
the business when a crime is occurring in a real time
environment.

This method of supplying video to our first responder while
enroute to the call is a force multiplier that will serve as both a
deterrent and a crime solving tool – ultimately making our
community a safer place.

The SDPD is encouraging additional partners throughout this
pilot program.

The SDPD promises that it has “procedures in place that allow
the viewing only when summoned to the Hotel Indigo (or any
additional partner) for a service call.” But privacy activist Jeff
Hammett filed a public records request for those documents and
was
told just last week:

There are no responsive documents for your request to any copies
of procedures regarding viewing these camera feeds. Operation
Secure San Diego is still in the development stages. There are no
procedures at this time.

Well, no doubt they’ll get around to it. Eventually. The Hotel
Indigo has allowed police access to its video feed
since 2010, but these things take time.

Until then, you may want to take a gander at the
locations of cameras Hammett has already plotted, to which
those procedures will, someday, apply.

And if you’re in San Diego this week, you have as good an excuse
as you’ll ever get to wear a mask and hide from prying eyes.