Albany Planning Commissioner Remi Hill worries that local shoppers could find what’s really for sale is their privacy.
“Customers should simply be the customers,” Hill told city councilors July 7. “They shouldn’t be the products. Monetizing our data changes that relationship, and we need to consider carefully how we move forward as a society with that.”
Local businesses use surveillance cameras in their parking lots, ostensibly for security, but Hill said she’s not too sure that’s the real reason. Cameras — especially those designed to read license plates — can be used to collect people’s personal information.
That information can then be sold to businesses or used to tip off federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“Shopping or seeking temporary employment shouldn’t carry with it the hidden cost of possible abduction by masked men, jail time or deportation based solely on appearance and without due process of law,” she said.
In May, Albany City Council voted not to renew its $14,000 contract with the Georgia-based company Flock Safety to provide surveillance cameras on public property. However, city leaders took no action against surveillance cameras on private property.
Oregon Senate Bill 1516, passed last year, outlines how police can use license plate reader cameras. Under the new law, information must be deleted within 30 days, except in the case of an open investigation. Officers have to log into the system and leave a record of who is logging in and why. The same is true for attorneys in criminal cases.
Private cameras have no such legal guardrails. Albany City Attorney Sean Kidd told councilors July 7 that makes the cameras difficult to regulate.
“We could run into equal-protection clause challenges because we’re allowing some people (law enforcement) to use them for security purposes, for surveillance purposes, for whatever it is they’re using them for,” Kidd said. “But we’re telling private citizens or private companies they cannot use those in the same way to protect whatever it is they say they’re protecting.”
Jasmine Flores of Albany told councilors she doesn’t buy the protection argument.
“As a person of color myself, I know what it’s like to be physically assaulted due to racism, but that doesn’t mean I approve of masses of people being surveilled just so I can have some false sense of security,” Flores said.
How many private cameras are out there? There’s no way to tell. Because they’re not regulated, they’re also not tracked.
City Councilor Steph Newton said tighter laws should be considered, although perhaps not by the council.
“This sounds like a legislative priority we could get on board with during the upcoming legislative session,” Newton said.
Her fellow councilor, Carolyn McLeod, was more adamant.
“We don’t let our law enforcement do this, and I don’t think we should allow private companies to capture our data either,” McLeod said. “We need to protect our personal data like we protect our homes, families, bodies and our dignity.”
She said the council should at least consider a law requiring signs to let people know where the cameras are and what direction they’re pointing. Kidd said he would look into a possible sign law and report back to the council, possibly in August.