*The Oversight Bloc
*Lilly Irani, Khalid Alexander
/How community organizers and tech workers joined forces to rein in San
Diego’s surveillance state.//
/
In July 2019, one of us, Khalid Alexander, received a tip from a fellow
San Diego community organizer. “You should be paying attention to the
city’s new streetlights.” The message continued, “Apparently, they have
cameras attached to them.” Alexander lived in one of the many
predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods in San Diego that was under
constant police surveillance, including by “gang suppression units” that
watch, harass, and document residents. He feared that streetlights with
cameras on them could supercharge these efforts.
Two weeks later, Alexander showed up at a public library for a forum
about the streetlights program (which the city named the Smart
Streetlights Program). The only other people at the meeting were the
presenters: a police captain, a city staffer, and an executive from
General Electric (GE), the company that produced the new streetlights.
Their presentation began with an infomercial for the technology, a
city-wide network of thousands of LED streetlights mounted with cameras
that recorded video around-the-clock. The footage was uploaded to the
cloud, where city agencies could use software to count cars,
pedestrians, and who knows what else. According to the police captain,
the smart streetlights were already being used to solve crimes.
[...]
Continua qui: https://logicmag.io/beacons/the-oversight-bloc/
_______________________________________________
nexa mailing list
[email protected]
https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
