In 2015, a local resident joined a nationwide project to uncover how police use face recognition devices. He filed a public records request with the Carlsbad Police Department, which quickly responded that no documents existed because the city didn’t use that technology.

This was demonstrably false: Carlsbad police had been part of a regional face recognition pilot program for years. Eventually, CPD admitted 14 officers carried special smartphones that capture faces and match them against the county’s mug shot database.

But Carlsbad could not produce policies, protocols or guidelines for how officers may operate the devices. Nor did the city know how many times the devices were used.

Surveillance technology is rapidly advancing and can consist of automated license plate readers that track our travel patterns, fake cell towers that surreptitiously connect to our smartphones, algorithms that scrape our social media or devices that digitize our faces. Many technologies aren’t limited to gathering intelligence on suspects and instead collect information on everyone.


The Carlsbad incident raises questions about public trust and high-tech policing. Who should decide which surveillance technologies are appropriate for our communities? Should police have to disclose how these technologies are used and how often they’re abused?

Privacy and public safety are not mutually exclusive; it just takes a robust debate to land on the right balance. This conversation won’t happen unless the rules change so police obtain approval from the public and our elected officials prior to deploying invasive spy tech.

A bill before the California legislature — Senate Bill 21 — would ensure that police do not acquire surveillance technology without a public process.

Before moving forward, a law enforcement agency would submit a usage policy for public review during an open meeting. Elected representatives (e.g. a city council) would have the authority to approve or reject the technology. In exigent circumstances, police could temporarily bypass the process, but they would need to stop using such surveillance technology and submit proper disclosures after the emergency has passed.


Police and sheriff departments would publish biennial transparency reports, disclosing the kinds of data the technologies collect, how many times each technology was deployed, how often each technology helped catch a suspect or close a case, and the number of times the systems were misused.

In 1972, Californians voted to include privacy as an inalienable right in the state’s Constitution. “The proliferation of government snooping and data collecting is threatening to destroy our traditional freedoms,” the amendment’s authors wrote. They warned technology would allow police to create “cradle-to-grave” profiles of every American, which then could be used to humiliate us.

One need only look to nearby Calexico. In 2014, police spent nearly $100,000 from a slush fund of seized assets on sophisticated spy gear. They then allegedly used these systems to run illegal surveillance on city council members with the intent to extort. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation confirmed this corruption — but also found a troubling pattern in which the city approved a network of surveillance cameras, body cameras and automated license plate reader technology “before implementing the essential fundamentals of policing.”

To head off these kinds of threats to privacy, Santa Clara County has already passed an ordinance promoting transparency about surveillance technology. Other cities are considering similar measures.


SB 21, a bill by Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, would implement statewide standards — an important step for San Diego County, where police technology often flows freely between agencies. The bill enhances fiscal responsibility by providing policymakers with data to evaluate whether a costly technology is as effective as vendors claim.

As the U.S. government ramps up a new “War on Drugs” and aggressive immigration enforcement, we anticipate even more military-grade surveillance technology to flow down to local agencies through grant programs, equipment transfers and federal partnerships. California lawmakers must pass SB 21 to put adequate controls in place so these technologies are operated responsibly, transparently and with respect for our constitutional rights.

Maass is an investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that promotes civil liberties in the digital world.