Watching the Watchers since 2021
In October 2020, South Orange's previous Board of Trustees passed an ordinance to spend $50,000 to install 11 Verkada surveillance cameras around town, operated by the Police Department. They budgeted another $50k for another batch of cameras in the next year. An IT department presentation proposed repeating this for 5 - 6 years. There was budget approval, but no debate or special consultation with the public, nor consideration of civil liberties. In their defence, they truly didn't realize that the public would have serious concerns.
This group formed to influence the plan. Some police cameras may be OK. Our call is for
no AI on the cameras, such as Face Match or People Analytics
no internet-connected cameras
public consultation, transparency, and strong policies, including forbidding connection to Fusion Centers
A policy to moderate the number of cameras that considers local crime rates, and that ubiquitous networked cameras have profound consequences for civil liberties, especially location privacy.
Update July 2024: The Village Council and police proceeded with original plans from before our protests.
These plans are documented in Village's FAQ item 4 paragraph 3 (archived).
~$50,000 per year capital costs, ~10 cameras per year, plus operations costs
We now have ~40 Verkada cameras.
FAQ item 18 links to a policy document (archived) which does not mention face recognition.
FAQ items 14 - 16 strongly implies SOPD will continue to use Face Recognition (FR), including Verkada's, and more importantly, outside Verkada. Moreover, there is no way to control what others do with video from our cameras, including FR.
With much attention in the state and local media, Trustees announced (at a Board meeting?) they will not use FR. I can't find this in writing anywhere.
FAQ Item 17 says Village will consider labeling cameras with who is operating them (SOPD). Betraying a failed understanding of the issue, the key factor for them is whether this increases deterrence. We still have no signage, nor document of decision.
There are still way too many cameras, and they still are connected to Internet.
Verkada's site says thumbnails and License plate characters (one of our greatest concerns, e.g. see "WIRED: The Danger of License Plate Readers in Post-Roe America") are kept in the cloud for 12 months.
Update June 2021: Our new Board of Trustees are sincerely listening. They:
clarified that there is no firm plan after the first year of cameras.
have generously granted our first two wishes: suspending the initiative, and consulting the public.
However, they have still installed 7 of the 11 Verkada cameras.
Our next request is more substantive: taking down the Verkada cameras, and replacing them with nothing, or with a less-scary system. This will be harder for them, and thus harder for us. Let's try to make it easy for them to fix this, and hard not to.
Village Green
The Setonian: SOPD to expand surveillance network, adding dozens of facial recognition cameras
CBS News New York 2024-Jan-03 (also on YouTube)
Governing 2024-Jan-04