I think the money is a red herring here.

In Oak Park, Illinois, we ran into a rhyming version of this problem: the only control we had about what technology OPPD deployed was a spending limit ($15K, if I'm remembering right), above which they had to ask the board for an appropriation. Our pilot deployment of Flock cameras easily went underneath that limit.

I'm not reflexively anti-ALPR camera. I don't like them, but I do local politics and know what my neighbors think, and a pretty significant chunk of my neighbors --- in what is likely one of the top 10 bluest municipalities in the United States (we're the most progressive in Chicagoland, which is saying something) --- want these cameras as a response to violent crime.

But I do believe you have to run a legit process to get them deployed.

OPPD was surprised when, after attempting to graduate their pilot to a broader deployment, a minor fracas erupted at the board. I'm on Oak Park's information systems commission and, with the help of a trustee and after talking to the Board president, got "what the hell do we do about the cameras" assigned to my commission. In conjunction with our police oversight commission (but, really, just us on the nerd commission), we:

* Got General Orders put in place for Flock usage that limited it exclusively to violent crime.

* Set up a monthly usage report regime that allowed the Village to get effectiveness metrics that prevented further rollout and ultimately got the cameras shut down.

* Presented to the board and got enacted an ACLU CCOPS ordinance, which requires board approval for anything broadly construed as "surveillance technology" for policing, whether you spend $1, $100,000, or $0 on it.

Especially if you're in a suburb, where the most important units of governance are responsive to like 15,000-50,000 people, this stuff is all pretty doable if you engage in local politics. It's much trickier if you're within the city limits of a major metro (we're adjacent to Chicago, and by rights should be a part of it), but still.

I cannot imagine a scenario where I'd want those in my neighborhood. Glad you like them, but I hope they don't make it to the west suburbs where I live.

This is very helpful information, thanks for sharing. Vegas is unlikely to be an outlier here, especially given the involvement of Horowitz. I expect that many cities and towns will face similar moves to do an end run around citizen's rights and knowledge.

This is all well and good, but the problem is that those systems leak left and right. No amount of politics can stop that.

Back in the day when first ALPRs went into operation (I don't remember, was it 10 or 15 years ago) it took about two weeks for the data to appear on darkweb.

Then the same happened to citywide face recognition.

The only way to stop abuse is to not collect the data : ban the systems entirely.

The money being a red herring is a convenient excuse to say “surveillance capitalism is fine because there’s already a legal path to this dystopia and this idea fits right in”. These capital interests have shown even if there is a legal path to stop they will ignore it and try to circumvent it. So the money isn’t a red herring because the money is being used to bypass the legal pathway to stop the deployments.

Why is the money a red herring? Just like in Oak Park, the police in Vegas are required to follow a democratic process for large purchases, and they were only able to avoid that with the money.

> Metro funds the project with donor money funneled into a private foundation. It’s an arrangement that allows Metro to avoid soliciting public comment on the surveillance technology

It doesn't matter whether the cameras are a good idea or not, the police should not be able to use a "donation" (from a guy who's going to profit from the donated equipment) to pretend they haven't done anything the public needs to know about.

The money is the main issue here, without it the public would have had a chance to discuss all the things you're talking about, and maybe reject them or put in some limitations. I would object to any secret arrangement like this, even if it was something completely innocuous like pencils for schools. There's no reason for significant acquisitions to be secret, and even if the government is acquiring something good and necessary, I don't want public services to be dependent on the generosity of some random dude without public discussion.