Good afternoon Councilors, Vice Mayor, and Mayor,
Regarding Menlo Parks FLOCK surveillance system, may we enable the public
search audit to the FLOCK site
that includes at
minimum: the searching agency, user ID, case number, reason for search,
camera ID, search date and time, search terms/rules, and search ID.
Ideally this would update each day while covering a period of at least the
previous quarter to align with quarterly surveillance reporting to the City
Council. This basic audit log is of greater transparency than the current
limited view that shows an average of 11.6 searches per day and a total
~750k (99.5%) vehicles, not on a hot list from the previous 30 days, that
were recorded and will be retained for 30 days in FLOCK and 6 months in
Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) system. NCRIC is
accessible by Local, State, and Federal agencies. May we also add
the number of searches in NCRIC, by agency, that used Menlo Parks Flock
data over the past 6 months to the surveillance reporting brought to the
City Council?
Examples of this pre-existing option may be found on East Palo Altos FLOCK
site and
Redlands PD FLOCK site .
The California Highway Patrol, Redlands PD, SF PD, Riverside PD and
other departments have been at the center of controversy with potential
California Senate Bill 34 violations (CalMatters
,
404 Media
, SF Standard
, LAist
,
EFF
).
These very same agencies currently have access to search the ~750k vehicles
per month that are captured in Menlo Parks surveillance data. FLOCK has
adjusted some default sharing settings to mitigate issues with departments
enabling nationwide searches. However that adjustment was only done after,
and in direct response, to misuse reported by journalists with the company
on the one hand denying misuse and while on the other shifting blame
for misuse at Police agencies (404 Media
).
Essential to journalism and transparency is easy access to public records.
Proactively enabling the existing audit feature to its fullest extent would
increase transparency to a level that is in better alignment with Menlo
Park Police Departments leadership in the Police community.
Thank you for your time,
Randy
