Surveillance in parks expands in San Mateo

But last month, the Parks and Recreation Department expanded its own, lesser-known surveillance camera program with a new $91,000 contract with San Mateo-based Verkada. While the department has had cameras at Central Park, Beresford Park and Seal Point for a few years, the new agreement will replace the Beresford camera and add more permanent cameras to Martin Luther King Park, as well as Joinville and Parkside Aquatic Park. 

The camera at Martin Luther King Park was in part motivated by higher rates of crime compared to other parks, Officer Jeanine Ovalle, a spokesperson for the San Mateo Police Department, said. But overall, most of the camera placements have not been a direct response to increased crime rates, instead acting as a useful deterrent that allows more efficient use of resources, Parks and Recreation Director Joanne Magrini said. 

“As cities, we have limited resources, and we’re always looking to make better use of our resources,” Magrini said. 

The cameras connect to the police department’s Real Time Information Center, another new development, which Ovalle said allows law enforcement to monitor a situation before officers are able to arrive at the scene. 

“We have dispatchers or light-duty officers manning it. They are supplementing our dispatch services and providing information to officers,” Ovalle said. “It’s a center that allows for additional eyes on a call for service.” 

Camera footage is stored for 30 days, however, it’s still possible to access it under certain circumstances for crime investigations. And while the cameras have facial recognition technology, Ovalle said it has yet to be used. According to Verkada’s website, the cameras’ facial recognition capabilities allow for “person of interest only” face searches, which blur other faces that don’t match the provided description. 

Oversight ordinances

In response to the concerns over law enforcement’s heightened use of sophisticated surveillance technology, many cities, such as San Francisco, Palo Alto and Davis, have passed ordinances known as community control over police surveillance, which are meant to impose specific guardrails and oversight for law enforcement technologies. Some of the policies require annual public reporting, community advisory committees and City Council discussions that provide options for public comment. 

And Assembly Bill 481, signed into law in 2021, now requires jurisdictions to detail how they plan to fund and use military equipment, including drones, and provide an annual report on its use, including complaints and concerns — though, surveillance cameras used by the department don’t fall under the legislation. According to San Mateo’s 2024 report, no complaints on its military equipment were received. 

But the city doesn’t have a CCOPS ordinance, and because its contracts for the cameras were technically under $100,000, they didn’t require explicit City Council approval, which would have triggered opportunity for public comment.

Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the cost for such technologies is getting less expensive, and it doesn’t hurt that Verkada’s headquarters is in San Mateo, likely boosting the relationship between the security firm and the city. 

The technology provides an audit trail that shows who accessed footage, when it was accessed and for what reason. But there are no regular annual reports and no independent oversight committee that ensures the access was appropriate. 

Lipton said without clear measures of progress — including understanding if and how crime has decreased as a result of the cameras — or regular reporting and oversight, such practices are ripe for misuse.

“When they’re in that preliminary stage, they usually don’t set up a good process for evaluating success,” she said. 

No concerns

Ovalle said the police department has observed what seems like a decrease in crime, however, it’s hard to know if that’s a direct result of the new cameras. 

San Mateo resident Sandra, who didn’t want to give her last name, said she doesn’t mind the cameras at MLK Park, as it gives her peace of mind when she is with her young daughter at the playground.

“I think it’s great,” she said.  

Councilmember Nicole Fernandez, who represents the district where Martin Luther King Park is located, said she hasn’t heard any negative feedback about the cameras yet. While it makes sense for larger cities with higher crime rates to have stricter ordinances around law enforcement’s use of surveillance technology, she hasn’t had the same concerns for San Mateo’s police department.

“We don’t have the crime rates of San Francisco or San Jose,” Fernandez said. “If my constituents are concerned, I’m happy to respond to that, but I haven’t heard any concerns yet.”

Downsides?

But the downsides to such proactive surveillance aren’t just hypothetical, Lipton said, and any department, regardless of its crime rate or size, can abuse surveillance technology. Many cities throughout the county have now adopted automated license plate recognition systems as a way to more easily locate suspects for a wide range of crimes, and while it’s helped secure countless arrests, there have also been concerns about data sharing practices within Bay Area law enforcement agencies over the years. 

At least 10 ALPR data sharing violations occurred across several Bay Area cities and counties, including Contra Costa and Santa Clara-based agencies, according to EFF data. In 2021, Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle was sued after findings surfaced that his agency was providing ALPR data to hundreds of federal and out-state agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

A lawsuit from 2020 claimed San Francisco law enforcement illegally accessed video camera footage to surveil protesters, and in New Orleans, law enforcement allegedly violated the city’s ordinance that its facial recognition technology surveillance must only apply toward suspects of certain crimes, instead using it for broader monitoring purposes, the Washington Post reported in May.  

Surveillance becoming commonplace

While such surveillance approaches are becoming more commonplace nationwide, Lipton said, it still necessitates proactive guardrails and oversight, especially as many, including San Mateo, expand surveillance programs. The city has also recently gained momentum on its Connect San Mateo program, which grants law enforcement access to individuals’ and business’ private surveillance cameras for those who choose to opt in, creating a vast security network beyond the agency’s own cameras. 

“Any sort of surveillance and data in general is very leaky, and once you start giving people permission to access it, it quickly becomes very difficult to get a handle on who actually has access to it,” Lipton said. 

Verkada has also faced complaints from the Federal Trade Commission over data security violations. According to the complaint, the firm’s inadequate security practices allowed a hacker to access security cameras and view patients in “sensitive locations,” including psychiatric hospitals and women’s health clinics, which included access to over 150,000 live cameras. According to the company’s website, the two parties finalized a settlement in which Verkada completed enhanced security compliance, and “agreed to adopt the FTC’s “information security program” protocol, subject to biennial reviews by a third-party assessor,” it said.