At the same time the BART Board of Directors was creating a Sanctuary Transit policy, the mass transit system was sending 57,000 license plate scans from devices installed at the MacArthur BART station to the Department of Homeland Security’s Norcal fusion center and their ALPR database which ICE can access.
The Board had previously instructed BART staff not to proceed with license plate reader technology at the MacArthur station, after word leaked out about an undisclosed pilot program. But despite the board’s instructions, the license plate readers remained in operation and uploading tens of thousands of scans to DHS in what BART described as a mistake to the East Bay Times.
The error was discovered via a public records request to the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) by Oakland Privacy member Mike Katz-Lacabe.
On September 13th, BART will vote on the surveillance transparency ordinance they began drafting in mid-2016 after the secret ALPR installation drew negative public attention. The meeting will begin at 9:00am at the BART Board Room at 2040 Webster Street in Oakland.
BART is attempting to water down the ordinance into just a policy and insert exceptions from the transparency and disclosure requirements for pilot programs like the Macarthur BART license plate readers.
East Bay Times.coverage BART Staff Ignored Board To Spy on Riders; Sent Info ICE Could Access
KPIX coverage: BART Sent License Plate Info To Database Accessed By ICE
Telemundo coverage: Acusan Al BART De Cooperar Con ICE
NBC coverage: Thousands of License Plate Readers Recorded at MacArthur BART
ABC coverage: BART Accidentally Records Tens of Thousands of License PlatesBART Says It Was An Accident
KTVU coverage: BART Says It Was An Accident
The Blaze coverage: BART Sent License Plate Pics to Database Accessible To ICE
You can write to the BART board here.
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