SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Sept 5, 2017) – Last week, a bill that would have required all law enforcement agencies in the state to get local government approval before acquiring or using surveillance technology died in a California Assembly committee. Passage of the bill would have taken the first step toward limiting the unchecked use of surveillance technologies that violate basic privacy rights and feed into a broader national surveillance state.
Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) and Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Inglewood) introduced Senate Bill 21 (SB21) earlier this year. The legislation would have required law enforcement agencies to propose a Surveillance Use Policy for each type of surveillance technology it operates and the information collected. It would then have had to submit the policy to its governing body for approval at a regularly scheduled hearing, open to the public. If the governing body failed to approve the plan, the law enforcement agency would have been required to cease using the surveillance technology within 30 days. The proposed law would have require law enforcement agencies to amend their use policies for any new surveillance technology they acquire in the future, subject to the same approval requirements.
SB21 was held in …
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