No DAC for BART: BART Proposes Facial Recognition Surveillance Dragnet Part 2

On August 9, BART dropped a multi-million new security dragnet proposal with only three days notice. The Bay Area responded with 2 full hours of passionate public testimony leading to the tabling of 5 components of the plan, including the PSIM information platform and rumors of the possible adoption of facial recognition technology, as mentioned to the press by one BART director.

On September 13, part 2 gets underway.

After an unannounced and controversial installation of automated license plate readers at Macarthur BART in 2016, BART agreed to adopt a surveillance transparency ordinance, but after nearly two years of meetings, they had not done so and took advantage by trying to rush through a huge upgrade with little transparency, and no use policies or civil rights assessments.

At the August 9 meeting, the tabled items were postponed to a meeting in the suburbs to be scheduled at a later date. That meeting never happened, so they remain on the table. But the Board has committed to voting on the transparency ordinance on the 13th.

The ordinance will make sure there can be no mass surveillance upgrades on 3 days notice ever again, and that the community will get a say on what security measure we want - and which we don't want.

But we need you there to make sure it is passed and make sure it is strong and doesn't get watered down. Passing these ordinances is how we keep from having to mobilize on 3 days notice over and over and over again.

BART is currently planning to use the same platform that was proposed as the “brains” of the Domain Awareness Center (PSIM). The plan calls for 2000 CCTV cameras to be converted to IP-based for geospatial tagging and advanced real-time video analytics.

There are plenty of common sense things BART could do with $15-25 million dollars to improve security on the transit system without treating every passenger like a criminal suspect.

BART is a subway, not a perpetual lineup.

Please come and help us create community control over transit surveillance.

Tweet at hashtag #NODACFORBART