Almost three years after the approval of this platform, the city of San Diego held listening sessions this summer about these streetlights. The city of San Diego calls these streetlights “the world’s largest smart city platform.” When the streetlights are fully installed by the end of the year 8700 will have been upgraded to what the city calls “energy efficient models” and 4200 sensors will be installed in total.

When asked about who designed this platform and why they would be surrounding the majority of the Mosques in the city, the cities sustainability department and police department would not answer this question. Part of the confusion with this information is that there are multiple city websites with multiple data sets that show different information. After reaching out to the city of San Diego Sustainability Department it seems that the correct website is the ArcGIS web application. The other data set was taken directly from the streetlights data website. Below is the placement of the streetlights in comparison to each of the Mosques in the city.

Many of the Mosques in the city of San Diego are under direct surveillance from these streetlights and while the city says this is passive information, with the joint terrorism task force agreements in place, federal agencies can monitor these cameras whenever they want. They can see all traffic coming in and out of all the Mosques in the city and in some cases if the audio technology was turned on they could in many cases pick up direct conversations.

Islamic Center of San Diego — 7050 Eckstrom Ave, San Diego, CA 92111