The opposite side of the coin to the people’s right to privacy is their right to government transparency.
California has a strong public records law, made even stronger by some fairly recent California Supreme Court rulings. The Freedom of Information Act is the corresponding Federal law, governing access to Federal government records.
While these tools can be very useful in ferreting out information which a government either doesn’t want revealed, or hasn’t had time or reason to otherwise make publicly accessible, many a jurisdiction flaunt these laws by disregarding the time limits imposed on disclosure (in California it is generally 10 days), or by withholding information using reasons listed in the law but which do not stand up to legal or logical analysis. Unfortunately, often the only recourse in these cases is a lawsuit, a procedure which take a long time and can entail spending a fair amount of money.
As one might imagine, information regarding surveillance techniques and equipment, by its nature, is often kept hidden, with special efforts made to keep it secret. Oakland Privacy has had successes (and failures) attempting to extract information from local jurisdictions about their surveillance. Occasionally, just the threat of exposure can cause a jurisdiction to re-evaluate what they are doing, as was the case with surveillance cameras at the entrance of Highland Hospital in Oakland, removed once we exposed them to the public and demanded to know the whys and whats of their existence.
Here are a few “case studies” :
A public records request resulted in the removal of a license plate reader at Highland Hospital in Oakland. Here’s how. We made a public records request to the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) for a list of agencies submitting license plate reader data to NCRIC. The records provided in response to the request included a listing for “ACSO HIGHLAND HOSPITAL.” We went to Highland Hospital, confirmed that there was a license plate reader at the vehicle entrance to the emergency room area and wrote about. Local journalist Darwin BondGraham took that information and found that hospital personnel were unaware of the license plate reader and it was removed not long afterwards.