Police used ‘smart streetlights’ to surveil protesters, as feared

Well, we can't say we weren't warned.

San Diego police have turned a technology pitched on the promise of reducing traffic fatalities and tracking carbon emissions into a tool to surveil protesters. And yes, legal and tech experts saw this coming years ago.

In the midst of ongoing Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality protests following the killing of George Floyd, San Diego police looked to an unexpected source to gather surveillance footage: the 3,200 so-called smart streetlights installed across the city beginning in 2017. So reports Voice of San Diego, which, through public records requests, determined that in late May and early June the network of smart streetlights was accessed at least 35 times.

"Records obtained by VOSD show that the San Diego Police Department was primarily looking into incidents of vandalism, looting and destruction to property," reads the Voice of San Diego report, "as well as objects being thrown at passing vehicles or police."

While authorities' use of a supposedly progressive technology to monitor protesters might come as a surprise, it shouldn't. In 2017, the Electronic Frontier Foundation predicted the exact situation on the ground in San Diego today.

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A map of installed CityIQ sensors. Credit: Screenshot / city of san diego

"There is an inherent risk of mission creep from smart cities programs to surveillance," warned the EFF in a blog post about a San Jose City Council smart streetlight proposal. "For example, cameras installed for the benevolent purpose of traffic management might later be used to track individuals as they attend a protest, visit a doctor, or go to church."

And if that wasn't enough, in 2018 the American Civil Liberties Union put forth a similar — and similarly on the nose — warning.

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"Many of these [smart city] technologies involve cameras that can be tasked with jobs that range from keeping track of traffic to monitoring when the corner trash can gets full," reads the ACLU blog post. "In a city blanketed with cameras — including in LED light bulbs found in streetlights — it would be very easy for the government to track which political meetings, religious institutions, doctors offices, and other sensitive locations people go to and to focus its attention even more on traditionally over-policed communities."

In other words, the experts not only saw this potentially troubling use of smart streetlights coming, but warned the public about it as well.

Perhaps next time we'll listen.