In the opening scene of “The Conversation” (1974), a Francis Ford Coppola film, a private security firm, positioned in buildings around Union Square, is taping a personal conversation in Union Square.
Fast forward to 2020 and the SF Police Department, apparently with the acquiesence of local businesses, utilized their surveillance cameras to spy on peaceful protestors.
No need to worry about the Fascist Trump in Washington. The same activity is occuring right here in allegedly progessive San Francisco.
Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 10.6.2020
“This case isn’t about a tip or even a targeted investigation, Saira Hussain, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation said. “It’s about SFPD harvesting a private camera network for an entire week of dragnet, real-time surveillance, in blatant violation of the law.”
Hussain added that such dragnet police monitoring could cause a chilling effect on future demonstrations.
Civil-rights organizations and activists sued San Francisco Wednesday, alleging police illegally tapped into a network of more than 400 surveillance cameras to keep track of police-brutality protesters this spring.
The suit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, centered on the demonstrations that immediately followed the Memorial Day police killing of George Floyd, when thousands in San Francisco and elsewhere took to the streets to protest police violence against Black and brown people.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys claim that between May 31 and June 7, San Francisco police accessed real-time surveillance footage from private cameras in the Union Square area, without first obtaining necessary approval from the Board of Supervisors.
Photo atop Union Square- The Conversation (1974)
A 2019 city ordinance bans city agencies from using, borrowing or acquiring surveillance technology without prior approval from supervisors, in all but emergency circumstances. The cameras tied to the suit are all owned and operated by the same private entity, the Union Square Business Improvement District, or USBID.
Emails obtained and released by the EFF in July show how San Francisco police requested and were granted access to USBID’s web of cameras, which include remote zoom and focus capabilities.
Hope Williams, an activist who organized a June 2 protest in San Francisco and who serves as the case’s lead plaintiff, said tapping the surveillance cameras was “a tactic to keep people from speaking out.”
Williams and two other activists suing the city are represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation — a San Francisco-based nonprofit that focuses on privacy protections — and the ACLU of Northern California.
“It makes it so that people think twice before they venture out to these protests,” she said. “It makes the job harder for organizers like Hope, who try to bring people out and get them to participate and speak up to try to end police violence against Black communities.”
The plaintiffs are not seeking monetary damages, but rather a court order that would compel police to follow the city ban surveillance technologies.
EFF’s Hussain said such dragnet police monitoring could cause a chilling effect on future demonstrations.
“It makes it so that people think twice before they venture out to these protests,” she said. “It makes the job harder for organizers like Hope, who try to bring people out and get them to participate and speak up to try to end police violence against Black communities.”
The plaintiffs are not seeking monetary damages, but rather a court order that would compel police to follow the city ban surveillance technologies.
San Francisco police declined to comment on the lawsuit, deferring instead to the City Attorney’s Office. A spokesman for that office provided two letters in which San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott addresses the incident to members of the Board of Supervisors.
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