On March 5, San Francisco residents will have the opportunity to vote on a ballot measure that will decide whether or not to turn them into guinea pigs for surveillance experiments by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD).
Proposal E purports to streamline the SFPD, with sections on community engagement, recordkeeping and the department’s policies for prosecution and use of force. But his contribution to the department’s use of surveillance technology is troubling.
Under an existing ordinance passed in 2019, the SFPD can only use “surveillance technologies” — such as surveillance cameras, automatic license plate readers or cell site simulators — that have been approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the legislative body of the city and county. The process requires the SFPD, like any other city or county agency, to submit a policy to the council for approval before using any new technology. The 2019 ordinance also banned the use of facial recognition technology.
But Prop E adds a clause stating that the SFPD “may acquire and/or use surveillance technology so long as it submits a surveillance technology policy to the Board of Supervisors for approval by ordinance within one year of use or acquisition, and may continue to use such surveillance technology after the end of that year, unless the Council adopts an ordinance disapproving the policy.”
In other words, the SFPD could implement an unapproved surveillance method and would have free rein to operate within the city for up to a year before having to ask city officials for permission. And until the city passes a bylaw specifically banning it, meaning banning a technology that at that point will be already in use– then the SFPD can continue to use it indefinitely.
“Let’s say the SFPD decides they want to buy a bunch of people’s geolocation data from data brokers — they could do that,” says Saira Hussain, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “They could use drones flying over the city at all times. They could use piloted robot dogs at the border. These are all surveillance technologies that the police don’t necessarily have right now, and they could acquire them and use them, effectively without any kind of responsibility, according to this proposal.”
If these scenarios seem implausible, it’s worth noting that they’ve already happened: As Hussain notes, the Department of Homeland Security recently tested robot dogs to help patrol the U.S.-Mexico border. And in 2012, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department enlisted civilian aircraft to fly over Compton and survey the entire area.
Not to mention that federal agencies already routinely purchase people’s cell phone geolocation information and Internet metadata without a warrant.
In a sense, Prop E would turn San Francisco residents into guinea pigs, on which the SFPD can experiment with all manner of surveillance technology. If that seems hyperbolic, a member of Mayor London Breed’s staff told the Board of Supervisors in November 2023 that Prop E “authorizes the department to have a one-year pilot period to experiment, to work with new technologies and see how they work.”
The San Francisco Ballot Simplification Committee’s description of the proposal notes that it would “authorize the SFPD to use drones and install surveillance cameras without Commission or Council approval, including those with facial recognition technology.”
The ACLU of Northern California calls Prop E “a dangerous and misguided proposal that strikes down three pillars of police reform: oversight, accountability, and transparency.” Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at the EFF, wrote that under Prop E, police could “expose already marginalized and over-surveilled communities to a new and less accountable generation of surveillance technologies.”
Despite these concerns, Prop E has its share of support. Breed defended the proposal, saying “this is about ensuring that our police department, like any other police department in the country, can use 21st century technology.” By January, groups supporting Prop E had raised more than $1 million, ten times the amount raised by opponents and considerably more than had been raised for any other proposal on the March ballot.
It also appears to be popular with the public: A January poll released by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce found that 61% of San Franciscans favor Prop E, with only 37% opposed. (One possible explanation: The same survey found that 69% of respondents believe crime has gotten worse. Recent data indicates that violent crime increased during 2023 even as it declined nationwide, and while the crime rate against assets declined, state and national rates fell faster.)
San Francisco is no stranger to potentially abusive surveillance practices. In 2022, the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that would allow the SFPD to request and receive real-time access to citizens’ private security camera feeds. While city officials like Breed and newly appointed District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the ordinance would help crack down on shoplifting rings, a recent city report detailed that in the third quarter of 2023, the vast majority of requests involved narcotics investigations.