After banning facial recognition in 2020, the Oregon city is taking a much softer approach to vetting surveillance technology for potential privacy risks.
As cities, and especially police, increase their use of surveillance technology, Portland, Oregon, is joining a handful of municipalities taking steps to increase transparency.
A resolution passed unanimously in Portland Wednesday requires the city to assess its use of surveillance-related technologies, such as traffic-safety sensors and police license plate readers. In the making for the last two years, adoption of the policy comes as the city’s police force moves toward testing use of drones equipped with sensors and video cameras, and aims to purchase a gunshot detection system.
But unlike Portland’s bold ban on facial recognition in 2020, the surveillance resolution does not prohibit use of any technologies, nor does it create direct pathways for blocking them. The softer approach was by design, in part a way to ensure the policy did not hit roadblocks from a city council whose political makeup has shifted toward centrist positions on policing. In fact, changes to the initiative’s language before its passage moved the focus away from law enforcement’s use of technology to clarify that more transparency is needed around surveillance tech use by all city bureaus.
“This policy is not going to ban any technology,” said Hector Dominguez, open data and privacy coordinator for Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability Smart City PDX program, who helped draft the policy. “We think also that banning technology is a very blunt measure, that we really need to go deeper into what are the benefits, what are the risks, deal with the risks [and] optimize the benefits.”
Instead, the policy is intended to create more meaningful assessment of the impacts of surveillance tech before it’s used, and to develop guidance for how data collected or generated by the systems should be handled.
“There’s a limited public trust in how the city uses technology,” said Judith Mowry, senior policy advisor in the city’s Office of Equity and Human Rights, who also helped write the policy. She said the city hopes to “build more trust through our transparency with the community.”
Portland’s resolution recognizes the privacy risks of surveillance technologies and notes that electronic or analog equipment, software or automated systems used for surveillance have had historically disproportionate negative impacts on marginalized people including “Black and Brown people, those who don’t have personal devices, people living with mental health issues, people experiencing houselessness, and those participating in civic engagement activities.”
Taking Stock
The policy moves the city in the direction of other west coast municipalities such as San Diego, Seattle and Oakland, which have already established policies that require assessments of the privacy and equity impacts of surveillance tech. Portland’s approach involve
community engagement through a series of public discussions and policy workshops involving local Asian, Black, Indigenous, LatinX and immigrant rights groups. The city even published a zine-style pamphlet in English and Spanish to raise community awareness about digital justice and surveillance technologies.
The next big step set in motion by policy adoption is an inventory of surveillance technologies owned or used by city bureaus today.
While Portland’s is a binding resolution requiring agencies to comply with inventory procedures, the seemingly simple step of taking stock of tech use has been difficult elsewhere. When a New York City task force attempted to conduct an inventory of automated decision systems used by city agencies, the agencies were unwilling even to provide lists of what they used.
The new Portland policy calls for development of Privacy Impact Assessments that will be required when new surveillance tech is purchased. At least 10 privacy assessments have been conducted for agencies including the city’s bureaus of Transportation and Police. Those existing assessments are likely to serve as templates for future ones.
The policy also calls for the development of a privacy and information protection program, and surveillance technology accountability and oversight procedures. It looks ahead to potential future policies addressing algorithmic and AI-based technologies, calling for an assessment of the impacts of Automated Decision Systems, such as software that employs machine learning algorithms.
Police Drones in Discussion
Accountability and oversight procedures, as well as AI policies, will be just what some lawmakers and city residents want when it comes to a limited trial of Small Unmanned Aerial Systems that the Portland Police Bureau has discussed launching. The drones would be equipped with sensors and infrared real-time video cameras for supporting search and rescue operations, conducting traffic flow studies of high-crash roadways, and documenting and assessing traffic crash scenes for presence of explosives or suspicious items.
“All discussions regarding a pilot are centering around reducing time spent and public inconvenience during major crashes and critical incidents,” Portland Police Bureau Public Information Officer Lieutenant Nathan Sheppard told Citylab, adding, “We don’t yet have a pilot program underway, nor is there a projected start date.”
A privacy impact assessment of the police drone program by the city found that the plan had a “Medium Risk” of privacy impacts related to the possibility of civil rights infringements, unauthorized data sharing, data breach, lack of transparency and lack of oversight and public reporting.
Portland is also moving toward acquiring ShotSpotter or similar technology which attempts to detect the sound of gunshots and relays information to law enforcement about where and how many shots were heard.
Read More: Gunshot Detection Technology Spurs Debate Over Policing and Surveillance
The potential city use of these and other forms of surveillance tech has many who supported Portland’s resolution advocating for more guardrails in the near future.
Local advocates for protections against surveillance, including the Portland-based nonprofit PDX Privacy, women in tech group PDXWIT and food and housing justice group Sisters of the Road signed on to a Jan. 31 letter sent from advocacy group Fight for the Future to Portland City Council calling for them to pass the resolution and move quickly to draft a subsequent surveillance ordinance requiring a vote to decide whether surveillance tech should be procured.
“The resolution being considered today is a great first step towards a more comprehensive surveillance policy,” said Chris Bushick, founder and director of PDX Privacy, who testified at the hearing in a personal capacity before the council vote. Bushick said she would like Portland to establish a privacy commission; for example, Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission advises on city tech acquisition decisions and has evaluated Oakland’s data agreements with tech vendors such as ShotSpotter.
“A privacy commission or board is needed to help council members assess the potential harms of surveillance technologies being considered for adoption, and the ability for those technologies to be misused,” Bushick said.
Source: Bloomberg
