Somerville partners with ACLU to enact surveillance transparency policy

The city of Somerville, in cooperation with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), enacted the Executive Policy on Surveillance Technology on Oct. 4. The new policy is intended to enforce heightened transparency and public control over government surveillance technology.

According to the city’s accompanying press release, the policy includes “new approval, operational, and public notification and meeting requirements on the purchase and implementation of surveillance technology,” barring any “emergency police investigative or public safety needs.”

Mayor Joseph Curtatone, who signed the policy with the full support of the Somerville Police Department (SPD), said in that the policy would attempt to reconcile civil liberty protections with the need for "effective police work," according to the press release.

"This policy introduces checks and balances designed to keep the public safe from crime as well as from privacy and rights violations," he said in a statement quoted in the press release.

SPD Police Chief David Fallon stated in the press release that the policy’s intention of encouraging more transparent surveillance implementation alines with the department’s community policing goals.

“When we build trust and confidence in our force and our methods, we strengthen the community connections that ultimately help us keep Somerville safe,” Fallon said.

According to the city's legislative liaison, Annie Connor, the specific steps the city is taking in order to make video surveillance practices more transparent will be "shared with the community and posted in a public place." As well, the SPD will release their policies and procedures for the use and operation of their video surveillance technology along with an inventory of all of security cameras placed in the city, according to SPD Deputy Police Chief Paul Trant.

Connor noted that video surveillance is the only surveillance technology that the city currently uses.

This video surveillance takes the form of pole-mounted cameras located on major thoroughfares in the city, which are primarily used to monitor evacuation routes, Trant said.

"Detectives more often than not rely on private establishments' video surveillance and residents' home security systems when investigating crimes," Trant said.

Discussing the policy's genesis, Kade Crockford, director of ACLU of Massachusetts’ Technology for Liberty Program, said that the organization had reached out to Somerville because of a strong membership presence in the city and the Curtatone administration’s reputation as progressive.

However, Crockford had hoped that instead of Curtatone passing an executive policy, the Board of Aldermen would pass the policy as legislation.

“[The executive policy] has its benefits in the sense that doing the executive policy didn’t require going through the much longer and arduous process of getting something passed through the Board of Aldermen, but the downside is that the public wasn’t as involved in the process,” Crockford said.

Crockford said another problem with the executive policy approach is that Curtatone’s successor, should they wish, could erase the executive policy.

“In terms of ensuring that protections are in place for not just people who live in Joe Curtatone’s Somerville but people who live in Somerville under future administrations, the Board of Aldermen process is preferable,” Crockford said.

Ward 6 Alderman Lance Davis, whose constituency includes most of the Davis Square neighborhood as well as the intersection of Powder House Blvd and College Ave, affirmed the importance of clarity within his community regarding the usage of municipal surveillance.

“Any time you’re talking about a government entity, whether it’s municipality, state or federal government secretly utilizing surveillance on a general level, that raises alarm bells for me from a civil liberties standpoint,” Davis said. “I hope that I reflect the concerns of the people in the community who would also look very cautiously at any plan or policy that constituted the type of regular surveillance that would impede on people’s civil liberties.”

Crockford said that she has found problems with police surveillance in other communities. One Jamaica Plain resident called Crockford after seeing Boston Police Department (BPD) officers flying a drone in his community. Crockford followed up by filing a public records request with BPD and found that the department owned three drones, which startled her. The incident was later reported in the Boston Globe. 

“They did not tell anyone, including the president of the city council in Boston, that they were planning to buy those drones, so there was no public debate about the purchase of the drones,” Crockford said.

The consequence, she said, was that there was no privacy policy for drone use formalized in the department.

The push by ACLU was part of the Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) effort launched in fall 2016. According to ACLU’s website, by summer of this year, CCOPS laws had been secured in Seattle, Wash.; Nashville, Tenn. and Santa Clara County, Calif., with 19 other cities currently in the process of adopting the legislation. Maine and California, as well, have adopted statewide CCOPS laws.

Crockford said these laws are designed to prevent incidents like the unexpected drone in Jamaica Plain.

“[CCOPS] ordinances require law enforcement to actually explain to the public, ‘This is why we want this thing and if you allow us to get it this is how we plan to use it … and here is the privacy policy that we intend to govern this technology with,’" Crockford said. "It’s truly about bringing the conversation about surveillance out of the shadows, out of the police department and into the public square.”