Law enforcement agencies now have a wide array of high-tech tools with which to gather information on people — tools that some eagerly use without having thought-out policies on privacy and in many cases without adequate public disclosure.

In 2015, two state laws were enacted in California that required police agencies to develop privacy and appropriate-use policies for cell-phone intercept and automatic license-plate reading devices. Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, thinks this should apply to other related technologies as well. His Senate Bill 21 is predicated on the idea “that surveillance devices are only used for their intended purposes — to catch criminals and fight crime — and not to collect vast amounts of data on a wide array of non-criminal residents.” Hill’s bill would require law enforcement agencies that use facial recognition technology, social media “scrubbers,” portable biometric scanners and other surveillance tools to develop privacy and usage guidelines — and, no less importantly, would require agencies to give an overview of their surveillance activities at least every two years.

The measure passed the Senate and two Assembly committees but may falter in the Assembly Appropriations Committee due to objections from law enforcement groups. This opposition is misguided. To build public trust, law enforcement should accept the need for surveillance transparency.



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