Cambridge leaders meet with residents about surveillance technology

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Should police departments be able to purchase public surveillance equipment like drones or facial recognition technology without the approval of voters?

In Cambridge, the answer is no, and now the city is working to develop an ordinance to make sure that can never happen. 
 
The push initially came from the ACLU, which wanted to prevent police departments from buying surveillance technology like drones or facial recognition cameras
without the approval of city council and robust public discussion.

"At the risk of sounding too kumbaya, I don't really have a lot to add," the representative from the ACLU said at the Public Safety Committee meeting.
 
But this working relationship is not a given in an age where public safety and surveillance technology go hand in hand. Cambridge is hoping to set a model for other cities around the state, as the technology used by governments to keep people safe eclipses the laws surrounding civil liberties.
 
"Surveillance puts us in danger, it puts our human rights in danger and it puts democracy in danger," one resident said during public comment.
 
Commissioner Branville Bard Jr. told Boston 25 News, "The Cambridge Police Department has absolutely no interest in acquiring or using surveillance technologies absent public deliberation and approval, in my opinion, sound governance involves public deliberation."
 
Now the next steps are defining what technologies qualify as surveillance, creating laws around what processes must happen to get them, and creating enforcement of the laws.
 
"We don't have any of that technology in Cambridge, we don't have plans to get any of that technology in Cambridge absent some robust public process and that's what this meeting and subsequent meetings will be about, how do develop that robust public process," Public Safety Committe Chair Craig Kelley said.
 
The ACLU has created model ordinances and sent them to several cities around the commonwealth, city leaders in Cambridge said they hope to lead the process in creating an ordinance other cities can model after.

We asked viewers of Boston 25 News at 10: Would you be ok with your police department having drones & facial recognition technology?

Fifty-two percent of the voters said yes, they would be ok with it.

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