Many cities in Europe, America and Asia have similar "smart street lights" plans, hoping to monitor traffic flow, air quality, parking spaces and street safety in real time through sensors and cameras, but privacy issues have raised concerns. Image source: San Diego government official website
In 2016, the California city of San Diego (San Diego) passed a "smart street light" plan to transform more than 3,000 traditional street lights in the city and install sensors and cameras. Similar smart street light projects have also appeared in many cities in Europe, America and Asia. It can monitor air quality, monitor real-time traffic flow, parking space inventory, and even street safety. Some street lights also have built-in alarms, so passers-by can be in emergency situations. Alarm at time.
But the smart street light project has raised concerns about privacy. In addition, the application of face recognition cameras to law enforcement has also caused controversy. This technology is considered to be data-discriminatory and has low recognition accuracy for minorities, women, and the elderly.-January 2020, a black man in Detroit Men were accidentally arrested because of wrong face recognition.
Prior to this, cities including San Francisco, Oakland, Portland and other cities have passed bans, and law enforcement agencies have been suspended from using facial recognition technology.
On November 10, local time, with the promotion of community organizations, the San Diego City Council passed two privacy protection laws. One requires the City Council to regulate the approval, application, and funding of surveillance technology, and the other requires the establishment of an independent The Privacy Advisory Board (PAC), composed of lawyers, privacy experts and community members, supervises the entire process of technology application. Lilly Irani, a professor of communications at the University of California, San Diego, said in an interview with Motherboard magazine that the passage of the decree has inspired power from the community. Technology is no longer a "black box". Recently, Amba Kak, Director of Global Strategy and Projects of the AI Now Research Center of New York University, expressed similar views in an interview with The Paper (www.thepaper.cn), and more and more communities asked for participation. Supervising the application of technology. The most powerful promoter of
's adoption of the decree is a local organization called "TRUST SD", whose full name is Transparent and Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology San Diego (San Diego Transparent and Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology Alliance).
TRUST SD was established in 2019, and its members include technical experts, privacy experts, lawyers, professors, and residents of minority communities. Initially, they focused on the smart street light project, and soon they tried to promote related policies to pay attention to the wider privacy supervision issues.
Currently, the decree still needs to be reviewed by several local interest groups including the police union.
According to these two new laws, when the San Diego municipal department wants to use a new surveillance technology, it needs to submit a report to evaluate its possible impact and prohibit technology-related companies from setting up confidentiality agreements.
Every year, departments applying related technologies need to submit an annual report to the independent privacy advisory committee PAC, detailing the application methods, costs, and funding sources of the technology. It also needs to explain the type and amount of data collected, who has access to the data, and For the groups that these technologies may affect, is there data discrimination, especially racial discrimination?
It is worth noting that these two laws will also trace the monitoring technologies that have been approved and applied, including the smart street light plan mentioned above.
