Oakland to limit surveillance center to port, airport Surveillance center only for port, airport

Opponents of the Domain Awareness Center make their feelings known at the council meeting Tuesday. Opponents of the Domain Awareness Center make their feelings known at the council meeting Tuesday. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Oakland to limit surveillance center to port, airport 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

Oakland will dramatically scale back a city surveillance center after members of the City Council said early Wednesday that there were too many unanswered questions for them to approve the full plan.

Instead, the council voted 5-4, with Mayor Jean Quan breaking a tie, to gut the Domain Awareness Center so it will monitor only the Port of Oakland and Oakland International Airport. The center was originally designed to pull in footage from surveillance and traffic cameras and license-plate readers around the city, along with data from gunshot detectors and police records.

Now, the feeds of information must be limited to port property, 40 city cameras must be disconnected, and ShotSpotter, the city's gunfire-detection system, cannot be used at the awareness center.

Linda Lye, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California who has been critical of the project, called the decision a "significant win for privacy."

Other project opponents disagreed. Several jeered the council after the vote, chanting, "Shame!" and, "You vote it in, we vote you out!"

Maya Shweiky, 26, of Oakland said she had hoped that hearing four hours of public comments opposing the project would persuade the council to scrap the whole thing.

"I am just really disappointed," she said. "I guess I have higher expectations" than the ACLU.

Quan said she supports the center and said she would resurrect parts of the plan for the council to reconsider once the city has written firm privacy rules.

"We'll bring them back one at a time," Quan said. "This is obviously an issue that is splitting the country. Unfortunately, the poor little video system gets to be the target."

The council meeting that began Tuesday night was the fourth at which city officials have debated the center, including one in November where police had to clear the council chambers.

Quan and police and fire officials have said the center would be used by rescue and emergency personnel during emergencies such as fires, earthquakes, terrorist incidents or hazardous material spills. It would not be used to spy on law-abiding residents, they said.

But opponents said that was a ruse. They worried the city was building an elaborate system to monitor the day-to-day activities of Oakland residents and likened the center to data-scooping efforts by the National Security Agency.

"All I see is failure after failure after failure to ensure that the civil liberties of Oakland residents are protected," said Nadia Kayyali of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

One man in a balaclava used his smartphone Tuesday night to take close-up pictures of city staffers and interim Police Chief Sean Whent as they waited to speak, apparently to show them what if felt like to be under surveillance.

Another man who covered his face and would only identify himself as "Shut It Down" read excerpts from Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" to the council.

Around 10:30 p.m., 9-year-old Indigo Gilliam of Berkeley told the council that the "D.A.C. stands for 'destroy all coolness.' " The crowd erupted in cheers. Indigo's mother later said her son was "up late past his bedtime in honor of democracy."

Councilman Larry Reid often dropped his head to his hands in frustration, while the booing of city staff got so loud at one point that Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney plugged her ears.

Some in the gallery posted to Twitter that they could see Quan sorting through a stack of mail and leafing through catalogs during public comment.

Quan said after the vote that she was frustrated that city staff hadn't done a better job of explaining the center to the public since it first came before the council in July.

"I wish I had paid attention to it a little earlier - I really thought it was a no-brainer," Quan said. "I think it is just the time, because people are mad about the (National Security Agency). ... It didn't occur to us that a system that would help the existing cameras coordinate in an emergency would become so controversial."