Viewpoint: I have concerns about proposed 'technology upgrades.' Let's start with the name.
I recently attended a Community Action Group meeting about governance and policy for the proposed “public safety technology upgrades.” I remain concerned about the haste in implementing this program and I have the sense that many of the decision-makers have relied almost exclusively on the marketing material provided by the vendor to inform themselves.
More:South Bend announces policies for 'real time crime center,' facial recognition technology
Few if any of us are equipped in the age of Big Data to sufficiently review and comprehend the impact ofsurveillance technologies on our quality of life. While many of us accept surveillance and the surrender of privacy to an array of personal devices, it is still incumbent upon elected representatives to exercise due diligence before entering into contracts that potentially suppress our collective voice and which could expose our community to liabilities both fiscal and legal.
∙ Let’s be more authentic in naming the program. It is a municipal surveillance program. If that is somehow less appealing than “public safety technology,” that should give us all pause. The South Bend Common Council, South Bend Police Dept. and the mayor’s office should genuinely apprise the public of what they are contemplating. The use of vague euphemisms for the sake of pushing through a potentially controversial program is disingenuous.
∙ Who is responsible if the system is found to have violated the civil rights of an individual or groups of people? Does the vendor, Fusus, have the financial wherewithal to meet its obligations? Is it financed by private equity? The concepts of governance and policy are especially important when evaluating a contract with a private entity. Most importantly, who owns the data? Although the draft policies indicate that SBPD will not retain or will “delete” certain irrelevant data, how can we be assured that the vendor does not profit from the sale of it? If South Bend terminates its contract with Fusus, could it be possible that we would have to pay for the use of our own datasets? It is noteworthy that the city of Chicago partnered with a university and the Argonne Labs to create their own system. In that case, the data is open and publicly available for a variety of civic applications − a true public safety technology program.”
∙ What about other surveillance technologies that are currently in use, such as ShotSpotter? All of these should be identified and subject to the same governance and regular review as those in the current proposal.
∙The presentation referred frequently to the Detroit model. It made no reference to Detroit’s well-documented community resistance or to its ongoing Detroit Community Technology group. It is imperative that South Bend establish a formal external review board with specialized skills for monitoring policy guiderails, establishing and revising policy as new needs arise, and for regular and clear communications to the public. Problems in theDetroit program prompted the ACLU to create and publish the CCOPS model bill, which can be adapted for use by any community.
It is beyond the capacity of most of us to really comprehend the impact of implementing new technologies, especially those that involve AI algorithms. I urge the mayor, SBPD and the council to give this project more time for study and consideration of what is really best for our town. It is not unusual to find that even staff who work with surveillance programs do not understand the underlying technologies enough to be able to explain them to the general public.
Although there is a time boundary for spending American Rescue Plan funds, there is no empirical evidence that implementation of the proposed surveillance systems has had the desired crime-reducing effect. Staff assigned to this project have surely already consulted the literature on surveillance projects in other cities but I offer this list of open source resources for anyone who might like to know more:
• Municipal surveillance regulation and algorithmic accountability. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2053951719868492• Public Policy Meets Public Surveillance. https://www.spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/12247• ACLU CCOPS Model Bill −https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/community-control-overpolice-surveillance-ccops-model-bill• Big 'Tsek: Surveillance and public space in Johannesburg.https://wits.journalism.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/220127-Ruth-First-Lecture-2022.pdf
Laurie McGowan is a retired digital project manager for the University of Notre Dame.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: A few questions about South Bend's proposed surveillance plan
