Burlingame council supports exploring citywide surveillance technology policy

In nearby Mountain View, for example, federal and state law enforcement agencies accessed the ALPR data in violation of city policy, spurring community concern and an end to the program. Other local municipalities, like Santa Clara and Santa Cruz, have also cut ties with the company. 

Burlingame has 17 ALPR cameras in place managed by its police department. It has its own policies in place to guide data protection and also adheres to state law, which prohibits data-sharing with out-of-state agencies. The city does not have a policy of its own to guide data use purpose, collection and auditing, staff said. 

For Mayor Michael Brownrigg, that lapse in local legislation is unacceptable, he said. 

“I am confident our department is treating this data sensitively. Unfortunately, the world isn’t Burlingame,” he said. “I just don’t think in this environment nationally, you can look around and say, ‘I trust every law enforcement agency in the country.’ I don’t anymore. I can’t, after Minneapolis. I just can’t.” 

Brownrigg, alongside Councilmember Desiree Thayer and Vice Mayor Andrea Pappajohn, were all proponents of the policy, highlighting the benefit of public transparency regardless of whether the city would be creating new regulation or simply restating existing rules. 

“I would be interested in pursuing a policy. I understand we would be the first in the county putting something together, but I don’t think that should prohibit us from doing so,” Thayer said. 

Councilmember Donna Colson said she was supportive of a baseline technology surveillance policy when it was first introduced to the council in 2023, but felt that the council’s prolonged discussion and eventual decision to put off the policy at the time was political. 

The Burlingame Police Department already does “a really good job,” Colson said, adding she was concerned with bogging down officers with convoluted data management rather than having them out on the streets if the city moved forward with a tandem technology impact report to accompany the surveillance policy. 

“I want my police on the ground policing,” she said. “I don’t want them sitting in an office collecting data, analyzing data, looking at data, when we haven’t had a problem.”  

Residents have not expressed major concerns about the ALPRs, Councilmember Peter Stevenson said.

“I think we do a good job in our police. I don’t hear from my neighbors or residents, ‘why do we have those cameras,’ or ‘why do we do that?’” he said. “Quite the opposite, [they’re] quite enthusiastic about how this technology has actually caught people that have violated the law.” 

Despite tepid interest from Colson and Stevenson, with a majority of councilmembers in support, staff will be moving forward with a potential future policy.  

It’s important for the city to engage proactively with data security issues, Brownrigg emphasized, particularly given the impact that artificial intelligence will have on them not just in Burlingame, but nationally and around the globe. 

“One of the scariest things about what’s happening nationwide and actually, globally, is a whole lot of data gets collected by the government, a whole lot, and most of it never gets looked at by anybody, because no one has the time,” he said. “AI is going to make time.”