Oakland puts off acting on controversial surveillance system

Activists are keeping an eye on Oakland as city officials grapple with new proposed restrictions for the Domain Awareness Center, a controversial surveillance system at the city’s port.

But people will have to wait awhile for the city to act on the new policy, drafted over the course of a year by an ad hoc committee of lawyers, techies, and privacy buffs. City Council public safety committee Chair Desley Brooks postponed a planned Tuesday vote on the policy, saying it needs to be reformatted.

Nadia Kayyali, an activist with the civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was frustrated after arriving 20 minutes late to the meeting, only to find out the item had been postponed.

“This is the second time this has happened, in a city with a real lack of trust between the elected representatives and the people,” Kayyali said, noting that the policy first appeared on a public safety committee agenda in February, but was delayed then, too.

Activists have been closely monitoring Oakland’s plans for its Domain Awareness Center, which was quietly launched in 2009 with grants from the Department of Homeland Security. Originally it aggregated video feeds from throughout the city along with license plate readers and data from the city’s gunfire detection system, Shotspotter.

The idea was to coordinate responses to a major disaster like a terrorist attack or tsunami, though privacy advocates worried it would also be used against protesters exercising their First Amendment rights.

Last year, the council voted to drastically scale back the center in response to public outrage, stoked by a national dialogue that had begun with the revelations of Edward Snowden. The council formed the all-volunteer advisory committee in response to public pressure. Joe DeVries, an assistant to the city administrator, was dispatched to run it.

“I’m really in the middle,” said DeVries, who acts as a peace broker between law enforcement who find the data system useful and regular citizens who don’t like being watched.

DeVries said the Domain Awareness Center has been useful even with its limited reach. Recently, the system’s camera feeds spotted a sideshow at the port, he said, and officials were able to shut it down in moments.

Brooks told an audience of about two dozen people that city legislators had to reformat the policy before moving it forward. According to Brian Hofer, a lawyer who serves on the ad hoc committee, the proposal has to be converted into an ordinance for parts of it to be legally enforced.

“That’s a good signal to me that they’re considering adopting at least one of the enforcement mechanisms,” Hofer said, referring to two recommendations within the policy that have become sticking points for city staff. One would make it a misdemeanor for anyone to violate the policy. The other lays out ways for injured parties to sue for damages.

The proposal also encourages the Oakland City Council to establish a permanent privacy committee to monitor all the city’s surveillance issues.

Even a modified version will put Oakland way ahead of other cities, Hofer said.

“Since last year we’ve been doing interview with other cities...that are going through a similar thing,” he said.

He only wishes that the Oakland City Council had made its plans transparent from the beginning, instead of building a Domain Awareness Center and then appointing a committee to deal with it.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: rswan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @rachelsw an