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Bay Area transit system approves new surveillance-oversight policy
On Thursday, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board of Directors voted to approve a new policy that requires that it be notified if the local police department wishes to acquire new surveillance equipment.
BART is one of the largest mass transit agencies in northern California, with a system that stretches from the San Francisco International Airport, through San Francisco itself, across to Oakland, north to Antioch and south to Fremont—adjacent to Silicon Valley. This new policy puts it in line with a number of other regional cities that impose community oversight on the acquisition and use of surveillance technology. It is believed to be one of the first, if not the first, such policies for a transportation agency in the nation.
[...] The new BART policy was approved just one day after the Bay Area News Group reported that BART police had been using license plate readers at the parking garage at MacArthur station in Oakland for several months beginning in January 2017. The data collected was, in turn, shared with a "fusion center" of federal law enforcement data known as the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center.
Somehow, the MacArthur license plate reader (LPR) system was installed months after the Board had voted in 2016 to delay installation of the high-speed scanners until a policy for their use could be drafted.
Related: California Senate Bill Could Thwart Automated License Plate Readers
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Los Angeles to Become the First City to Use Body Scanners in Rail Transit Systems
California Officials Admit to Using License Plate Readers to Monitor Welfare Recipients
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Sunday September 16 2018, @11:14PM (3 children)
...would you rather they not adopt any community oversight policies and remain silent on the encroachment of the police state? Do you prefer that surveillance happen entirely in secret without civilian input? Or are you just so deluded that you think "no policy" means "can't use it"?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @12:33AM
I would rather we need have a police state at all. All forms of mass surveillance (license plate readers, stingrays, bulk data collection, facial recognition cameras installed everywhere in public places, etc.) need to be banned, and offenders need to be harshly punished. This includes both corporate and government mass surveillance, as any data from corporate mass surveillance will inevitably end up in the hands of a corrupt government. Anything short of this - including such weak oversight - will spell the end of what little democracy and freedom we currently have left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @12:38AM (1 child)
Encroachment of the police state to deal with problems the state created? I don't let people shit on the hall carpet I paid for any more than I'll let people shit on the sidewalk I pay towards.
I'd prefer no surveillance which is possible only when everyone has skin in the game. [wikipedia.org] This is how Western society and every civilization worked. Permitting mentally ill to roam the streets unabated is how no civilization ever worked.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday September 17 2018, @02:01AM
Perhaps Godwin's take would be constructive here: the NAZI Aktion T4 resulted in every patient of every mental hospital in german-occupied land being murdered.
There was a time when it was common for the mentally ill to spend their whole lives in state hospitals.
The de-institutionalization of the mentally ill was predicated on the observation that the mentally ill do better when we are treated in our home communities.
But funding for local mental health clinics has been regularly reduced. In Portland I found it impossible to see a shrink; that's why my clinic is in Vancouver, Washington, which has far better funding for the mentally ill.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]