South San Francisco considers license plate studying cameras | Native Information

South San Francisco could be the next town in the county to install vehicle security cameras along major traffic arteries in hopes of catching criminals and deterring future crimes, with the city council expressing its approval of the law enforcement tool this week.

Eddie Flores

On Tuesday, a plan was presented to the city council to place 25 cameras, called automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs, near entrances and exits along Highway 101 and Interstate 380. The cameras would be able to collect license plates and compare them with a “hot list” of vehicles involved in crime, as well as using artificial intelligence to identify and record vehicle make, model and color.

The proposal to use the technology comes after a surge in crime along the city’s hotel corridor, particularly after “smash-and-grab” car break-ins, city officials said.

“I would definitely like to support them, support the hoteliers and the companies. I think that’s important, ”said Councilor Eddie Flores.

Neighboring cities like Daly City, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Mateo, and others have or are planning to install ALPRs that mount cameras either in fixed locations or on police vehicles.

Despite widespread agreement, council members raised several privacy concerns, including how long data is retained, who can access it, how secure it is, and what is collected.

According to Police Chief Scott Campbell, ALPRs “are not designed to take photos of people,” and the information they collect can only be viewed by law enforcement agencies. The data is stored on encrypted servers for 30 days before being transferred to a Northern California database, where it is stored for a year before being deleted, unless the vehicle is suspected of being involved in a crime, said he.

The whereabouts of vehicles on the “hot list” can be quickly disclosed to nearby officials, said Campbell, who mentioned cases where the technology helped with an arrest.

“The good thing about this technology is that it is completely impartial, it only warns of vehicles that have been involved in crime, and officers have to review this information to make sure the camera isn’t inadvertently wrongly registered,” said Campbell . “It enables the officers to react to this information and to investigate crimes that have already been committed.”

Any outside agency, including Homeland Security or the CIA, would have to request data and it would be up to the city to grant access, he said. And depending on county and state regulations, immigration and customs enforcement would be strictly prohibited, he said.

The cameras would be used in crime cases from killing to catalytic converter theft, but not in “minor crimes,” and unlike red light cameras, they would not be used for monitoring traffic, Campbell said.

Although no cost estimates were provided for South San Francisco, Atherton, who was considering installing cameras in 2019, estimated the cost to be between $ 35,000 and $ 65,000 to equip an intersection with two cameras, excluding maintenance and licensing fees the required software. Foster City, where 20 cameras were recently approved, estimates the annual cost of running its program at $ 50,000.

Piedmont, where five ALPRs are installed, has created a portal for public access to the data collected by the system. It said the cameras collected data on 47,000 cars last month, 79 of which were classified as suspicious of criminals, and 26 of those cars were “searched”.

The cameras, which are increasingly used not only on the peninsula, have been carefully scrutinized by some state legislators who deal with data protection.

Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, drafted a law that year to tighten the ALPR regulations. In addition to restricting the exchange of data, the law, which has been put on hold, would also stipulate the deletion of the recorded data within 24 hours. A state audit commissioned by Wiener found that last year authorities in the country who used the cameras shared data with the police across the country and kept data for more than five years.

Police in Pasadena and Long Beach were found to have shared data collected by ALPR with ICE last year, despite the state protection law and despite the fact that police have made an express commitment not to do so, according to Wiener’s office.

Flores asked city officials to provide additional evidence that if cameras were installed, the data the city was collecting would not be unwittingly shared with anyone. Councilor Buenaflor Nicolas asked whether the companies responsible for keeping the data had ever breached the data and how the city would be liable in this case.

Campbell said he was not aware of any violations and would look into the liability issue.

Further answers to the Council’s questions and additional information will be presented in a public meeting at a later date.